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[Loud Whispers]

The Yellowstone Park volcano is acting up again.

[Frumple]

I'll just... sit here and hope no actual eruption happens. In, like, my lifetime or something. S'fairly unlikely, I think, but still...

Last I checked yellowstone going off would be... bad. As in world economic collapse bad, since the states would be pretty much flat fucked and most everything would come tumbling down with it. As a sort of base minimum.

... maybe my memory's shoddy on that one?

[Darvi]

's about damn time.

[WealthyRadish]

Thank god for this, my media-fueled fear of imminent death was starting to wane here in Colorado. It'd suck to have to wait for next summer for more doom-spelling wildfires, or next spring/autumn for flooding.

...and just as I write this, we flash forward to 1500 years in the future, where Swedish archaeologists dust volcanic ash off of an ancient computer monitor, which after restoration shows the faint image of a sarcastic forum post typed moments before pyroclastic flows burned the image into the screen forever.

[Bauglir]

Don't worry. Your computer monitor will most likely have been destroyed.

[MrWillsauce]

Is now the time to start planning our real-life subterranean bunker?

[Flying Dice]

Fuck. Wasn't that supervolcano or whatever already overdue for eruption?

[DeKaFu]

Is it true that the next caldera-forming eruption of Yellowstone is overdue?
No. First of all, one cannot present recurrence intervals based on only two values. It would be statistically meaningless. But for those who insist... let's do the arithmetic. The three eruptions occurred 2.1 million, 1.3 million and 0.64 million years ago. The two intervals are thus 0.8 and 0.66 million years, averaging to a 0.73 million-year interval. Again, the last eruption was 0.64 million years ago, implying that we are still about 90,000 years away from the time when we might consider calling Yellowstone overdue for another caldera- forming eruption. Nevertheless, we cannot discount the possibility of another such eruption occurring some time in the future, given Yellowstone's volcanic history and the continued presence of magma beneath the Yellowstone caldera.

Source: http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/volcanoes/yellowstone/yellowstone_sub_page_50.html

Feel free to keep panicking though.

[Darvi]

Yes. Man was I pissed when they cancelled the show. I had tickets and everything!

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Man, I hope Nic Cage makes a movie about this.

[kaian-a-coel]

It's one of those things that are very unlikely to happen, but CAN happen, and if they do we're all fucked.

Yellowstone is somewhere on my list, neighbouring "killer asteroid", but well under "void metastability event" (this one scares me shitless).

[Urist McScoopbeard]

even MORE fuel for the Nic Cage movie. I love it.

seriously this IS the thing Nic Cage would do a movie about (typecasting ahoy).

EDIT: The Rage in The Cage aside, a False Vacuum Metastability issue is one of those things where it is either going to happen or not, there isn't a whole lot anyone can do about it.

[Loud Whispers]

It's one of those things that are very unlikely to happen, but CAN happen, and if they do we're all fucked.

Well not all of us. People on the other side of the planet will starve, shiver and survive - plus in America, homeless in the subways will hunker down pretty well. We metro 2033 now.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

The hotspot is still in the wrong place for an eruption, you know.

[wierd]

Well, considering I am on what would be the windward side of the eruption plume, and right next door (next state eastward), if I see the deadly white snow, i'll be sure to post it, M'kay?