Re: Geology Behind Those Mudpots Near Niland
Author: FUD
Date: 07-04-2021 - 13:39
Yellowstone and some others - at least low-end supervolcano eruptions seem to happen somewhere on earth about every few hundred years. Of course, a supervolcano, even a big one, won't terminate (by itself) the human species, just whatever passes for civilization at the time. There's too many of us around, spread over just about everywhere, for a human extinction event due to one volcano, even full-power-Yellowstone. Could of course drive some short-term evolution, biological and/or cultural.
FWIW, there's a supervolcano right in the middle of the Walker Lane - Long Valley, with the town of Mammoth Lakes inside the caldera. Last Big Blow was 3/4 million years ago, but it ain't dead, and has some friends and relations that have erupted more recently (Mammoth Mountain, some cones in the Sierra, and the Inyo-Mono Craters chain that last erupted only a couple of hundred years ago. No trains in the area any more, though; Carson & Colorado is long gone, unless you count the little museum near Bishop.