Chaos Earth might come sooner then later ---

[NMI]

Is the Surging Yellowstone Caldera -the World's Largest Supervolcano- Poised to Erupt?

With some 80% of airports in Europe shut down last summer due to the lingering ash cloud created by Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano, we thought it would pay to take an updated look at the possibility of the world's most massive volcano -the Yellowstone Plateau- erupting and the potential consequences. Recent earthquakes on the west side of Yellowstone caldera were part of the intense January/February 2010 earthquake swarm of ~2,350 earthquakes.
Yellowstone National Park's caldera, which covers a 25- by 37-mile (40- by 60-kilometer) swath of Wyoming, is an ancient crater formed after the last big blast, some 640,000 years ago. The simmering volcano has produced major eruptions—each a thousand times more powerful than Mount St. Helens's 1980 eruption—three times in the past 2.1 million years. The supervolcano has recently caused miles of ground to rise dramatically, scientists report beginning in 2004, which saw the ground above the caldera rise upward at rates as high as 2.8 inches (7 centimeters) a year.Is it poised for yet a fourth major explosion?

Some 600,000 years ago there was a colossal cauldron of magma, a supervolcano, that exploded with such violence that it left an ash layer almost ten feet deep a thousand miles away in eastern Nebraska killing all plant life and covering almost all of the United States west of the Mississippi. Modern geological surveys have shown that this supervolcano erupts catastrophically every 600,000 years, and the land that supervolcano is trapped in was called by Blackfoot Indians 'the land of evil spirits' -what we call today, Yellowstone National Park.

[Dustin Fireblade]

I recall seeing this a couple of days ago somewhere, but then couldn't find it again oddly enough. Thanks for posting it.

[jaymz]

I'd say it is a real possibility

[RoadWarriorFWaNK]

awesome. BADOOOOOM!!! extinction.