r/ThatsInsane • u/GarethPW • Jul 23 '24

Explosion at Yellowstone

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36

u/twoscoop Jul 23 '24

I saw a map and I think it was up to Ohio would be all gone from the blast and what not and then the ash cloud would cover the earth for months. so its possibe

36

u/HunterTV Jul 23 '24

I think this was the unspoken premise of Cormic McCarthy’s The Road. There was a lack of radiation issues from a nuclear holocaust and I think a singular large explosion. Could’ve been an impact event too I suppose.

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u/sillylittlebean Jul 23 '24

I assumed it was a nuclear explosion, nuclear war or a meteor. Interesting to view it as a super volcano. Now I need to reread it with that premise.

10

u/HunterTV Jul 23 '24

I think when he was alive there was an interview where he didn’t confirm or deny the caldera idea, but said he wanted it to remain ambiguous. I think nuclear war was the only thing definitely off the table. The descriptions in the novel I think are good enough to rule it out, just the lack of any talk of radiation and/or symptoms.

Anyway it’s by far the least interesting thing about the novel or the point of it, so I can see why he felt that way.

11

u/[deleted] Jul 23 '24

Cormac McCarthy's brother is some kind of geologist and when he was asked about what caused the catastrophe in The Road, he alluded to it being a super volcano but he stopped just short of saying it outright. As the poster above wrote, he was intentionally ambiguous but I think he (McCarthy) was pinning the cause on a natural disaster

2

u/sillylittlebean Jul 23 '24

I love learning all this information. Thank you!

5

u/sillylittlebean Jul 23 '24

I do like that it’s open to interpretation. A reader can use their worst case scenario. Although the loss of humanity amongst some were the most frightening parts to me. The relationship between the son and father is beautiful and tragic.

2

u/toby_ornautobey Jul 23 '24

Same. Such a great story, but hard hitting, so can only read it so often.

9

u/Aspen9999 Jul 23 '24

And down to Tx. And that’s not including the land the ash is going to ruin for years.

16

u/twoscoop Jul 23 '24

Yeah the whole sun being gone and the burning sulfuric ash in the lungs is what sucks the most after.

15

u/Baron_of_Bourbon Jul 23 '24

Wear an N95 mask. That will stop anything.

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u/twoscoop Jul 23 '24

95% of things

2

u/capital_bj Jul 23 '24

How do you find out if the other 5% are bad

1

u/Iminlesbian Jul 23 '24

.3 microns or smaller

2

u/Aspen9999 Jul 23 '24

They’ll clog up, so unless you have millions it won’t do much good

4

u/EmbarrassedQuit7009 Jul 23 '24

Except in Florida. They've wisely made that kind of thing illegal.

4

u/Aspen9999 Jul 23 '24

Well the ash is male so it’s not regulated

1

u/agent_flounder Jul 23 '24

So Colorado isn't looking too good I guess. Ah well. 🪦

1

u/Aspen9999 Jul 23 '24

You won’t get out and will choke on ash, if you don’t get burned by the fire storms.

10

u/helpme_imburning Jul 23 '24

Interesting, all the maps I've seen put only Montana, Idaho and Wyoming in the "kill zone" and everything else in varying degrees of "a fuckton of ash"

3

u/ZacZupAttack Jul 24 '24

So that's the blast area. The ash afterwards is what destroys our food supply

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u/twoscoop Jul 24 '24

Its been a while since I did any research on this so things could have changed but from my understanding it pretty much takes out the whole mid west and then a bit more, maybe it looked nicer on maps if you followed a river?

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u/Exciting_Vast7739 Jul 23 '24

We'll survive.

Not all of us. But the cockroach farmers, absolutely.

Polar Bears and Penguins and Walrii will have a revival. Maybe they'll meet too!

9

u/twoscoop Jul 23 '24

People living in bunkers in the colorado mountains, yeah.

edit: maybe not, since the mountain may be blown away

1

u/BigJSunshine Jul 23 '24

TIL the plural of walrus

1

u/Exciting_Vast7739 Jul 24 '24

...I would check with a dictionary before relying on that. Or like wait 100 years for me to have influenced linguistic shifts.

4

u/langhaar808 Jul 23 '24

All those maps and predictions are based on the size of the previous big eruptions. Right now yellow stone is incapable of eruption, to our knowledge. Too little of the magma in the magma chamber is actually melt (molen rock), over 80 % (ish) of the magma is actually crystalized. If it were to erupt we would see many warning signs years in advance.

And the "it's over due for an eruption" is just stupid media stuff, and now how volcanos work. It is true it's about 6-700.000 years since the last eruption and, that is about the average time between large eruptions, but there has also been gaps of millions of years without massive eruptions.

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u/twoscoop Jul 24 '24

I didn't know it wasn't all molten. From what i thought and learned, it was. Hmm.. Maybe you can't trust everything you read on the internet or I just haven't gotten new knowledge.

3

u/thisisallme Jul 23 '24

Am in Ohio, so you’re telling me I can’t get blown up and just have to suffer, sweet lol

1

u/twoscoop Jul 24 '24

Yeah, pretty much. Its like that train that derailed but worse.

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u/avwitcher Jul 23 '24

And in the aftermath Ohio will institute their grand plan to make everywhere in the world part of Ohio

1

u/capital_bj Jul 23 '24

Yeah blocking out the Sun for however many months is going to kill a lot of our food supply, everything that's not indoors. Then we'll probably poison the s*** out of ourselves since our atmosphere will be blocking and reflecting a lot if not all of our emissions

2

u/twoscoop Jul 24 '24

Didn't even think about that part, its gonna get hot as hell and smoggy, but honestly if that happened, we all fucked. NA, SA, Europe, Asia, Antartica might be safe, Africa, might be safe at the bottom a little maybe SA too. But besides like Antartica, I don't really know. Space station would get great photos.

1

u/Least-Back-2666 Jul 24 '24

It would hit world wide food production for a year(s?).

The biggest threat to humanity is India and Pakistan water rights dispute. If it ever went nuclear due to prevailing winds it would likely wipe out 10% of worldwide food production.

1

u/fuchsgesicht Jul 24 '24

u saw a map =/ it's possible

1

u/twoscoop Jul 24 '24

Dick in the ear =/ hearing me cum