Supervolcanoes are not your average bear (no pun intended), nor volcano, as Toba proved some 70,000 years ago catapulting us into the last ice age that lasted nearly 60,000 years. The hundreds of small earthquakes at Yellowstone National Park in recent weeks have been an unsettling reminder.

Scientists believe it wouldn’t take much to set this hot spot off.

So, tell me, why has George W. Bush authorized some 10,000+ drilling rights (for oil)? It’s not like letting off a little steam is going to be helpful. In fact, just the opposite is the case. Underneath the park’s famous geysers and majestic scenery lurks one of the world’s biggest volcanoes and we shouldn’t be messing with it.

Explore it only!

In the ancient past, the Yellowstone has erupted 1,000 times more powerfully than the 1980 blast at Mount St. Helens, hurling ash as far away as Louisiana. No eruption that big has occurred while humans have walked the earth. Supervolcanoes have their own dynamic and if this one goes, well, let’s not go there.

Some observers are nonetheless warning of imminent catastrophe. “To those of us who have been following these events, we know that something is brewing, especially considering that Yellowstone is over 40,000 years overdue for a major eruption,” warned a posting on the online disaster forum Armageddononline.org.

While we need serious attention to what lurks beneath the national park, we need not go ballistic and irrational. One web site contained a page entitled “Yellowstone Warning” that encouraged “…everyone to leave Yellowstone National Park for 100 miles around the volcano caldera because of the danger in poisonous gasses that can escape from the hundreds of recent earthquakes.”

Listen, if Yellowstone activates no one in America is safe, let alone those within 100 miles!

Earthquakes are hardly unusual in Yellowstone. Hundreds occur in the park every year. Earthquake “swarms” like the recent activity also aren’t uncommon, although the 900 or so quakes that began Dec. 26 and significantly tapered off about a week later appear to have been the most energetic swarm in more than 20 years. The most powerful temblor was magnitude 3.9, just short of being able to cause moderate damage.

Scientists knowledgeable about Yellowstone’s geology aren’t publicly speculating about what caused the swarm before they can analyze data and that will take months. “I could come up with 100 different theories without any evidence for them and they would all be equally likely,” said Jake Lowenstern, the Menlo Park, Calif.-based scientist in charge of Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. “Unless you have some reason to say that’s what’s going on, then you’re not going to get a whole lot of people convinced by your speculation.”

Hydrothermal explosions in which underground water encounters a hot spot and blasts through the surface isn’t uncommon. Small hydrothermal explosions producing craters a few feet wide occur in Yellowstone perhaps once or twice a year. But with such a testy environment as we have with Yellowstone, any increased activity from afar; pulsars, and hyper sun spot activity, would be bad news.

So, maybe we can cool out jets until December 21, 2012 or thereabouts. Maybe!

When people speak of the impending events of December 21, 2012, they are making one assumption that none can make. Who has a guarantee that one will make it over the next five years? And what is it that the terrorists know that our politicians can’t tell us? On March 11,2004 the Madrid bombings carried a message related to our very own Yellowstone Supervolcano that most have not heard anything about. I’ve been to Yellowstone and I can still smell the sulfur!

The Yellowstone Caldera in Yellowstone National Park is located in the northwest corner of Wyoming. The caldera was discovered in the 1960s and 1970s. After a BBC television science program coined the term supervolcano in 2000, it has often been referred to as the “Yellowstone supervolcano.” And it is MASSIVE!

It explodes every 700,000 years so what’s the problem?

The problem is that the 700,000 year date is now due, give or take a few thousand years. SO what’s to worry about? Well let me give you two things to at least consider!

1-That message from the Madrid terrorist spoke of setting off a “black wind of death” in America by setting off a nuclear device in the Yellowstone Lake which just needs a pin-prick to blow.
2-A 1993 NASA infrared photographic equipment designed for moon scanning revealed the largest single caldera ever in history! A what?

Calderas are large underground depressions containing magma, solid and liquefied rock, as well as highly combustible volcanic gases that are super-charged! Unlike normal or conventional volcanoes, supervolcanoes aren’t dome, but depressions. And guess what! The Yellowstone supervolcano is showing massive movements of late. Geologist and geophysicist, Robert B. Smith has reported that the Yellowstone Lake’s topographical distortion is so great of recent that the caldera upon which it rests is tilting such that water is now draining out the South end of the Lake. Trees that were once on dry land are being inundated.

Think we should ask Grandma Chandra her opinion?

A caldera is a volcanic feature formed by the collapse of land following a volcanic eruption. They are often confused with volcanic craters. The word ‘caldera’ comes from the Spanish language, meaning “cauldron”. Yellowstone, like the Hawaiian Islands, is believed to lie on top of one of the planet’s few dozen hot spots where light, hot, molten mantle rock rises towards the surface.

Supervolcanos, of which there are only a few, are far more powerful than conventional volcanoes. The VEI rating (volcanic explositivity index) of all volcanoes is from 1-8 with 4 being average. All supervolcanos carry an EIGHT rating. Ground zero isn’t New York but Montana and Wyoming. Check it out Robert Redford!

The bulge in the bottom of Yellowstone lake is growing, distortions are happening more rapidly, ground surface temperatures have reached 200F degrees (in 2003) causing a 200 mile basin to be closed, and we have terrorists talking about what might be done to cause this caldera to explode. But, the news in America is will Britney Spears lose her kids or wear panties the next time she’s out drinking.

Houston, America, World, we have a problem and we don’t have to wait until 2012 to experience it.