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What you have to understand, OP, is that scientists know very little about supervolcanoes. We don't fully understand how the mantle plume hot spot that powers a supervolcano is even created, much less how long it persists on average. And while supervolcanoes are capable of huge eruptions, they also can produce much smaller-scale eruptions, and indeed the smaller eruptions generally outnumber the huge ones. This lack of knowledge makes any predictions iffy at best. We'll probably be able to tell in advance that Yellowstone is nearing eruption, but we won't be able to tell exactly when that eruption will take place, or whether it will be one of the more common small eruptions or one of the more rare big ones. We just don't know enough yet.
I voted yes based on my very uneducated opinion. Which was swayed slightly by my intuition.
Okay; maybe more like 50% uneducated opinion + 50% intuition.
However; I *feel* like it will not manifest itself as one big kaboom ... I feel like we would see some minor/moderate increase in activity; including a "blow" in my lifetime (I'm 48).
You are missing a 3rd option. It is entirely possible that that particular supervolcano may not ever blow again. They don't continue forever, and there is at least A possibility that that one is on it's way out. But there are dozens of hotspots around the planet, and they form up and dissipate over time, so the next major eruption could be from somewhere else, and the magma may drain out of that particular hotspot. We don't really understand how or why hotspots form, dissipate, or why some are explosive and others are not (Hawai'i is over a hot spot, as is Iceland, and dozens of other places as well)
Human lifespans are so short by comparison to the age of the earth that the odds of it blowing in any individual person's lifetime are infinitesimal, practically nonexistent. The last time Yellowstone had a major eruption, humankind wasn't even humankind yet. We were still a different species, and there were still Neanderthals walking around. So that puts it into a realistic timescale. It is fairly egotistical to believe that it will erupt in OUR lifetime. Like right now is all that important on the grand scale. Unless we do something stupid, like set off a nuke or start oil fracking too close by, that throws off the balance. Which I wouldn't put out of the realm of possibility.
I'm not sure how "prepared" you can be for an eruption though. The Deccan Trap eruption in what is now India is now considered to have been a major factor in the extinction of the dinosaurs. It is now believed that the meteor impact, as serious as it was, may not have been enough, by itself, to cause the number of extinctions that occurred, and that many species were already on their way out because of that supervolcano. And if Yellowstone does go, it will cover a good portion of the US in ash, rendering it uninhabitable for a long time to come. There was a BBC movie some time back called simply "Supervolcano", which is fairly accurate, and terrifying for what would most likely happen in the case of an actual super eruption.
Yellowstone's last eruption was categorized as a VEI 8 (bigger number equals bigger eruption, but like earthquakes' Richter scale, it isn't a linear progression. An 8 is 10x larger than a 7, 100x larger than a 6, 1000 times larger than a 5, etc). There hasn't been a VEI 8 since around the time humans crossed the landbridge from Asia into North America. Even the eruption of Krakatoa, generally called the loudest sound ever heard in modern history, was only a VEI 6. Mt Saint Helens was only a VEI 4, so that is 10,000 weaker than Yellowstone. Hard to even imagine the scale.
I live in Idaho, so I figure if it happens, I'll likely be dead in minutes, so no need to prepare at all. In fact, my family has a cabin about 6 miles from Yellowstone, so if it goes in the summertime, I may be there for a front row seat. I don't worry about things I can't control, especially when that thing is so unlikely in the first place.
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