So, the first and most important rule of any super-secret science team working to create Godawful aberrations of nature for who-knows-what purpose is pretty self-evident: shut the fuck up and say nothing. So it’s both amusing and disheartening to hear that the fount of all super-secret military industrial complex conspiracy theories – DARPA – announced right in it’s annual budget – it’s annual fucking budget, I shit you not – that it is working on synthetic organisms that will live for ever and, should they turn out to be harmful, contain a genetic kill-switch. WTF? More info after the jump.

Wired magazine’s DARPAwatch section revealed this scary fact. Seems that the Pentagon is fed up with the “ randomness of natural evolutionary advancement” and has directed DARPA to work on creating fully synthetic organisms that will be immortal, but that will, should the highly predictable shit-hitting-the-fan outcome that we can all see coming a fucking mile away like a train with a massive headlight all the way down at the other end of the tunnel come to pass, include a biological kill-switch – allowing the organisms to be stopped dead in their tracks.

Of course, Darpa’s got to prevent the super-species from being swayed to do enemy work — so they’ll encode loyalty right into DNA, by developing genetically programmed locks to create “tamper proof” cells. Plus, the synthetic organism will be traceable, using some kind of DNA manipulation, “similar to a serial number on a handgun.” And if that doesn’t work, don’t worry. In case Darpa’s plan somehow goes horribly awry, they’re also tossing in a last-resort, genetically-coded kill switch: “Develop strategies to create a synthetic organism “self-destruct” option to be implemented upon nefarious removal of organism”.

As part of its budget for the next year, Darpa is investing $6 million into a project called BioDesign, with the goal of eliminating “the randomness of natural evolutionary advancement.” The plan would assemble the latest bio-tech knowledge to come up with living, breathing creatures that are genetically engineered to “produce the intended biological effect.” Darpa wants the organisms to be fortified with molecules that bolster cell resistance to death, so that the lab-monsters can “ultimately be programmed to live indefinitely.”

Now, forgive us here for sounding a little thick, but it seems to me that there can’t be that many practical, non-weaponizeable, non-evil-plan-formed-in-a-secret-volcano-base things you can do with a synthetic organism. After all, they are not talking about building something that can do the shopping, mow your lawn, or look after grandma whilst you are out to make sure she doesn’t drop another hip or something. And quite what they mean by the “intended biological effect” we are not sure. But, after doing a lot of SCIENCE! in our brains, we are pretty sure that something that is living and breathing isn’t going to be a cure for penile warts or halitosis.

And it stands to reason that if the genetic loyalty built into this organism is intended to avoid  nefarious enemy subjugation of the organism itself, then we are talking about something here that you would be designing to use against such an enemy.

So, one one hand, we have to applaud the openness of DARPA for telling everyone exactly what mysterious secret government projects they are working on. If only the guys with capture UFO tech in Area 51 could be so forthcoming, there would be a whole lot less tin-foil hat loonies about.

On the other hand…isn’t it about time they stopped screwing around with microbes and finally got on with making laser-toting dinosaurs and nuclear dolphins and all that shit? Man, they are taking, like, for ever. You may have the greatest minds in there, DARPA, but the internets have been ahead of you for years. Just hire 300 web-literate man-children and you will have weapons that would give any military  leader a pants-tent like a flagpole. Then again, thinking about it, whilst this would give rise to armored space-jellyfish and power-armor wearing kangaroos, a weaponized Pedobear would be somewhat less awesome. Just stay away from the chans, is all we’re saying.  

Read the full article here.

Well, I had this one half-done so I thought it would make a nice holiday treat for you all. If you don’t get the joke, then it’s clear you know nothing about videogame history and clearly are not awesome. Which you should sort out.

I’m going to put a little strip up on New Years’ day too, and then back to normal the weekend after. See you on the other side!

Catch this week’s second and totally not catastrophic strip right here 

These, I am afraid, are mere irritants. Nothing major. How about an event that would guarantee 100% extinction, with no notice whatsoever until it actually happened? How about something that may have already taken place? Worried?

Meet WR 104. More after the jump.

Pretty isn’t it? This is a picture of WR 104 taken from the Keck infrared telecope. WR 104 is a binary star system, located, it is thought, about 8000 light years out from Earth, towards the center of the Milky Way. Two stars, locked in a graceful dance, one an 0-type star, one possibly a Wolf Rayet type star. Both are super-massive, and both super luminous, and both (if our assumptions about their type and makeup are correct) the kind of stars that die in tremendous super or even maybe hypernovae.

The type 0 star poses no real threat, at that distance it will merely be something bright and pretty to look at in the night sky. The other, though, does not seem quite as appealing – there is the slim chance that this star, when it dies, could generate what is the most powerful event known to exist in the universe – a gamma-ray burst.

As is well postulated, when a star dies the slow breakdown of its material leads to a shrinking and a tremendous increase in density. Finally, when the matter within the star can be reduced down no more, and there is no more nuclear fuel to be spent – the core of the star containing only the inert heavy element remnants of past nuclear activity – the star dies in a huge explosion – a supernova - the central remnants crushed by increasing gravitational force to a single point of infinite gravity and infinite mass forming a singularity (a black hole). Matter and gas blown outwards wend their way across space, seeding the formation of new stars and planets. It’s how we came to exist – all matter in the universe came from such destruction – it’s the only place the heavy elements are made. We are all made of start stuff. These things are pretty tame – you’d have to be within, say, 20 light years of a regular supernova to suffer any adverse effects from it.

But, just occasionally, instead of this more typical supernova, something else can occur: sometimes, when a star is massive enough, as well as the outburst of material and the crushing of the inner core the explosion can unleash a torrent of gamma radiation – a gamma-ray burst.

Since their existence was first observed and origins suggested, astronomers, cosmologists and astrophysicists have studied gamma-ray bursts. They are incredible things: they last anywhere from seconds to a few minutes, and the energy unleashed by the star in such an event  can be far greater than our Sun will put out in its entire lifetime. The energy is released in two pencil-thin streams, one from each of the stars’ poles – and they utterly destroy anything that lies in their path.

Well, yeah. But what are the odds that we would even be in the path of such a burst?

Well, as it turns out, the odds ore actually pretty good. See, the image above shows the gases around the stars in a familiar pinwheel shape. The gas and material ejected by the star moves outwards, and as the stars spin around their axis, the material is pushed out into a flat plane about the equatorial area – like the old ice-skater’s arms analogy. So, what does the image tell us? It tells us that if we see the star as a pinwheel, then we can only be facing one place - one of the poles. We are lined up with the axis, more or less. The pole. We could be staring right down the barrel of a loaded gun.

So, let’s assume for a minute that Earth is lined up exactly, and that a gamma-ray burst occurs. What would happen? Well, it is suggested that at the very least, the gamma radiation would destroy ozone  in our atmosphere and create a smog of nitrogen dioxide. Not so bad then.

Not quite. It is thought that it could burn off up to 50% of the Earth’s ozone by ripping apart the ozone molecules in the atmosphere. When you think that the issues we are having now with regards to global warming are caused by a mere 5% depletion of the ozone layer, 50% sounds like a bad thing. And the nitrogen oxide could be a thick blanket that would not only block out the sun – putting a supervolcano’s feeble efforts to shame – but would also be water soluble, precipitating out as acid rain. And this is the best-case scenario. Add to that the theory – still hotly debated at this stage – that the incredible numbers of cosmic rays beating down could lead to mass extinctions  (this is radiation – there is a reason the Apollo missions were scheduled during periods when it was assumed solar activity was at a minimum) and it begins to seem that this may not be a good thing at all, and there would be no way to “escape” the effect.

Now, it is not known for sure that the second star will emit such a burst. Heck, astronomers cannot even really agree on how far the binary system really is from Earth. Maybe 5000 light years, maybe 8000 (any astronomer will tell you that  distance is one of the hardest things you can try to measure). And there is also some evidence that perhaps we are not quite so perfectly lined up with the poles – the burst could, as physicist Michio Kaku puts is, “graze the earth“. And, it has to be said, we have no way to know if this will happen tomorrow, next week, or in a milllion years. But it certainly gets you thinking.

And the best bit? the burst would travel at the speed of light, The same speed as the light from the explosion. So that would, basically give us no warning at all. We would only know it happened, when it happened. For all we know, it happned many years ago.

Maybe even 8000 years ago.

With the Baxter pharmaceuticals company due to release its A/H1N1 influenza vaccine next month, Burgemeister contends that the swine flu epidemic is, in its entirety, a manufactured event intended to severely reduce the human population, notably in the United States. She contends that an illicit co-operation between pharma companies and shadowy goverment agencies intends to remove the burden of population from the resources that the United States and other major countries have, allowing both the pharma companies to profit (from sales of the faux vaccines) as well as secret controlling cabals (who will then control the resources of the de-populated countries). In her charges, she accuses the pharma companies of manufacturing the swine flu and avian flu virus to incite the need in the public mind for the vaccine – which , when delivered, will be a concoction of toxins intended to create a mass cull.

Sounds pretty tin-foil, right? Well, for once, the accuser actually comes up with some facts to back her theories up. And they can make for scary reading.

In her charges, Burgermeister presents evidence of acts of bioterrorism that is in violation of U.S. law by a group operating within the U.S. under the direction of international bankers who control the Federal Reserve, as well as WHO, UN and NATO. This bioterrorism is for the purpose of carrying out a mass genocide against the U.S. population by use of a genetically engineered flu pandemic virus with the intent of causing death. This group has annexed high government offices in the U.S.

Specifically, evidence is presented that the defendants, Barack Obama, President of the U.S, David Nabarro, UN System Coordinator for Influenza, Margaret Chan, Director-General of WHO, Kathleen Sibelius, Secretary of Department of Health and Human Services, Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Department of Homeland Security, David de Rotschild, banker, David Rockefeller, banker, George Soros, banker, Werner Faymann, Chancellor of Austria, and Alois Stoger, Austrian Health Minister, among others, are part of this international corporate criminal syndicate which has developed, produced, stockpiled and employed biological weapons to eliminate the population of the U.S. and other countries for financial and political gain.

The charges contend that these defendants conspired with each other and others to devise, fund and participate in the final phase of the implementation of a covert international bioweapons program involving the pharmaceutical companies Baxter and Novartis. They did this by bioengineering and then releasing lethal biological agents, specifically the “bird flu” virus and the “swine flu virus” in order to have a pretext to implement a forced mass vaccination program which would be the means of administering a toxic biological agent to cause death and injury to the people of the U.S. This action is in direct violation of the Biological Weapons Anti-terrorism Act.

Burgermeister’s charges include evidence that Baxter AG, Austrian subsidiary of Baxter International, deliberately sent out 72 kilos of live bird flu virus, supplied by the WHO in the winter of 2009 to 16 laboratories in four counties. She claims this evidence offers clear proof that the pharmaceutical companies and international government agencies themselves are actively engaged in producing, developing, manufacturing and distributing biological agents classified as the most deadly bioweapons on earth in order to trigger a pandemic and cause mass death.

In her April charges, she noted that Baxter’s lab in Austria, one of the supposedly most secure biosecurity labs in the world, did not adhere to the most basic and essential steps to keep 72 kilos of a pathogen classified as a bioweapon secure and separate from all other substances under stringent biosecurity level regulations, but it allowed it to be mixed with the ordinary human flu virus and sent from its facilities in Orth in the Donau.

In February, when a staff member at BioTest in the Czech Republic tested the material meant for candidate vaccines on ferrets, the ferrets died. This incident was not followed up by any investigation from the WHO, EU, or Austrian health authorities. There was no investigation of the content of the virus material, and there is no data on the genetic sequence of the virus released.

In answer to parliamentary questions on May 20th, the Austrian Health Minister, Alois Stoger, revealed that the incident had been handled not as a biosecurity lapse, as it should have been, but as an offence against the veterinary code. A veterinary doctor was sent to the lab for a brief inspection.

Burgermeister’s dossier reveals that the release of the virus was to be an essential step for triggering a pandemic that would allow the WHO to declare a Level 6 Pandemic. She lists the laws and decrees that would allow the UN and WHO to take over the United States in the event of pandemic. In addition, legislation requiring compliance with mandatory vaccinations would be put into force in the U.S. under conditions of pandemic declaration.

She charges that the entire “swine flu” pandemic business is premised on a massive lie that there is no natural virus out there that poses a threat to the population. She presents evidence leading to the belief that the bird flu and swine flu viruses have, in fact, been bioengineered in laboratories using funding supplied by the WHO and other government agencies, among others. This “swine flu” is a hybrid of part swine flu, part human flu and part bird flu, something that can only come from laboratories according to many experts.

WHO’s claim that this “swine flu” is spreading and a pandemic must be declared ignores the fundamental causes. The viruses that were released were created and released with the help of WHO, and WHO is overwhelmingly responsible for the pandemic in the first place. In addition, the symptoms of the supposed “swine flu” are indistinguishable from regular flu or from the common cold. The “swine flu” does not cause death anymore often than the regular flu causes death.

Burgermeister notes that the figures for deaths reported for the “swine flu” are inconsistent and there is no clarity as to how the number of “deaths” has been documented.

There is no pandemic potential unless mass vaccinations are carried out to weaponize the flu under the guise of protecting the population. There are reasonable grounds for believing that the mandatory vaccines will be purposely contaminated with diseases that are specifically designed to cause death.

Reference is made to a licensed Novartis bird flu vaccine that killed 21 homeless people in Poland in the summer of 2008 and had as its “primary outcome measure” an “adverse events rate”, thereby meeting the U.S. government’s own definition of a bioweapon (a biological agent designed to cause an adverse events rate, i.e death or injury) with a delivery system (injection).

She alleges that the same complex of international pharmaceutical companies and international government agencies that have developed and released pandemic material have positioned themselves to profit from triggering the pandemic with contracts to supply vaccines. Media controlled by the group that is engineering the “swine flu” agenda is spreading misinformation to lull the people of the U.S. into taking the dangerous vaccine.

The people of the U.S. will suffer substantial and irreparable harm and injury if they are forced to take this unproven vaccine without their consent in accordance with the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act, National Emergency Act, National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51, Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20, and the International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza.

In the U.S. since 2008, Burgermeister charges that those named in her allegations have implemented new and/or accelerated the implementation of laws and regulations designed to strip the citizens of the U.S. of their lawful constitutional rights to refuse an injection. These people have created or allowed provisions to remain in place that make it a criminal act to refuse to take an injection against pandemic viruses. They have imposed other excessive and cruel penalties such as imprisonment and/or quarantine in FEMA camps while barring the citizens of the U.S. from claiming compensation from injury or death from the forced injections. This is in violation of the laws governing federal corruption and the abuse of office as well as of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Through these actions, the named defendants have laid the groundwork for mass genocide.

Using the “swine flu” as a pretext, the defendants have preplanned the mass murder of the U.S. population by means of forced vaccination. They have installed an extensive network of FEMA concentration camps and identified mass grave sites, and they have been involved in devising and implementing a scheme to hand power over the U.S. to an international crime syndicate that uses the UN and WHO as a front for illegal racketeering influenced organized crime activities, in violation of the laws that govern treason.

She further charges that the complex of pharmaceutical companies consisting of Baxter, Novartis and Sanofi Aventis are part of a foreign-based dual purpose bioweapons program, financed by this international criminal syndicate and designed to implement mass murder to reduce the world’s population by more than 5 billion people in the next ten years. Their plan is to spread terror to justify forcing people to give up their rights, and to force mass quarantine in FEMA camps. The houses, companies and farms and lands of those who are killed will be up for grabs by this syndicate.

By eliminating the population of North America, the international elite gain access to the region’s natural resources such as water and undeveloped oil lands. And by eliminating the U.S. and its democratic constitution by subsuming it under a North American Union, the international crime group will have total control over North America.

Has to be said, looking into her accusations, this does not all come across as total made up nonsense. Consider this: pharmceutical companies in the U.S. are now exempt from prosecution for deaths arising from vaccinations. This may be all hokum, but it’s a hell of a risk to Burgemeister’s reputation and career if it is. Just keep all this in mind if you suddenly find that you no longer have the constitutional right to refuse the vaccination. Go do your research, and see what you think.

You can read Burgemeister’s blog here, and a somewhat confusing partial translation of part of her charges here.

So, you can’t imagine the internal battle that raged in my GRATE BRANE to get the strip up today. Seriously, all I wanted to do was get up, get a coffee, do some natrual processes, and play Fallout 3. All day.

Hey, there’s people in the Capital Wastelands depending on me, man.

But, I have a three-day weekend this weekend, so I guess I still get two solid days to hang out in the future and shoot the extras from Mad Max. And I still  haven’t found Dogmeat yet (don’t tell me, I want the surprise).

Anyhoo, fire up your Pip-Boy, smoothskin, and catch this week’s strip right here, for only twenty bottlecaps or a pack of Mentats.  

“Don’t hit me!”
Posted in art, artwork, avoid spikes, cartoons, comics, doomsday, furry, sci-fi, video games, war, web comic Tagged: anthro, anthropomorphic, avoid spikes, Bethesda Softworks, Capital Wasteland, comic, dogsounds, doomsday, Fallout 3, foxx, furry, mart, Martin & Wolf, Pip-Boy, web comic, webcomic, Xbox 360 ]]> http://blog.dogsounds.com/2009/05/17/new-avoid-spikes-comic-now-online-24/feed/ 0 dogsounds Avoid Spikes, dogsounds, Martin & Wolf, webcomic, furry, Fallout 3 http://blog.dogsounds.com/2009/04/12/life-after-people/ http://blog.dogsounds.com/2009/04/12/life-after-people/#comments Sun, 12 Apr 2009 19:42:34 +0000 dogsounds http://dogsounds.wordpress.com/?p=1363 ]]>

 What would happen if every human being on Earth just suddenly disappeared? What would happen to our cities and towns, our buildings and structures, without humans there to maintain them? Would anything be left behind to reveal to some far-distant civilisation of some sort of creature that we ever even existed? Find out after the jump.

The following is a fascinating (and somewhat sobering) look at what would happen if such an unlikely even occurred, based on current knowledge of the nature of decay, structural engineering, biology, nature and the way in which mother nature reclaims territory (hint: aggressively). How long would power stay on for? How long would a car last? Would skyscrapers remain standing? How do the rigid and seeingly permanent structures we build hold up when we are not there to keep them in working order? The film looks at what might happen after one day, ten days, one year, five years, ten, fifty, all the way up to 100,000 years after people.

Most haunting is about half way through where the film examines what has happened in the last thirty years in Pripyat, Ukraine (the infamous “ghost town” of the Chernobyl disaster is one of the few examples available of a true abandoned location that serves as a test-bed for what happens when no one is around). Slightly jarring when one of the experts commenting was speaking almost verbatim from Call Of Duty 4: “Fifity thousand people used to live here Now it’s a ghost town.”

Have a watch of this thought-provoking and very arresting film. Facebook readers click here to see the video.

I can spend hours trawling through without even realising it. But what keeps me hooked? There are, of course, good, solid and well-researched dialogs on these sites, well-thought out, well-written and filled with keen logic. But then there are also the insane ramblings of people who will believe, to coin a phrase, “any old shit their feeble mind can conjour up”.  Example after the jump.

Many of these more comical (by “comical” I, of course, mean “pathetic”) themes are recurrent: the Galactic Federation Of Light (the prophet of this nonsense shot herself in the foot by predicting when we would see thousands of alien ships over our cities. Despite the fact the date came and went with no action, many idiots still believe in this rubbish), The Mayan Calendar (despite the fact that evidence that the Mayan calendar ending in 2012 (meaning  the end of civilisation) has been shown to be utter nonsense as it was based of a badly-translated Mayan inscription, many people still believe this) and more.

But one of the most annoying is the whole myth of Planet X, also called Nibiru. If we are to believe the doomsayers out there, this is a mysterious planet that only passes the Earth every now and then, and contains a race of aliens that are in some posts out to destroy us, and in others out to save us. Apparently, despite the fact Nibiru roams around the Solar System, it also hides behind the Sun (which is why we can’t see it).  Apparently, it’s scheduled passing by Earth (in, you guessed it, 2012) will cause the poles to shift and the oceans to rise, yada yada yada.  Google it for more detail – it is the finest example of buffoonery you will come across. Despite every single person on the face of the planet Earth who has the slightest bit of knowledge of astronomy saying “look, this is basically complete and utter bollocks”, many still believe. And this post, from a popular conspiracy website (which actually has a high percentage of intelligent and thoughtful discussions going on about other subjects) is a classic example of wearing a tinfoil hat so tight it cuts off the blood to the brain:

Prepare To Save Yourselves OR Prepare To DIE

********TURN OFF EVERYTHING AND LISTEN FOR YOURSELF*********

The Anunnaki who inhabit Nibiru are able to create, destroy, and manipulate whole solar systems – able to switch between multiple dimensions. The movement of the PlanetX group is intelligently controlled and appears to stay behind the Sun to avoid the attention of the masses until late in the going. Got it?? COINTEL AGENTS claim that PlanetX is a hoax but THEY ARE LIEING since they falsely claim it would have to be prominent in the sky by now.

The evidence for PlanetX is growing more abundant every day. For about three weeks, I’ve been able to hear the unsettling noises of its approach in the south skies. Saturday night the sounds were briefly so intense and my wife and I had to turn our music up pretty loud to block it out. I can hear it as I type this message… similar to a distant howling wind. Reports of these noises, though plentiful, WILL NOT show up on google search results. NASA is also tampering with all imaging systems that would otherwise show absolute proof. The internet is under close scrutiny make no mistake about it.

You can either prepare to save yourselves or prepare to die. 

Classic. Because, of course, you can hear the sound of a planet OUT IN THE VACUUM OF SPACE from Earth. This must be why we can hear the Sun… 

Guess it is just totally impossible that this sound, like the howling wind, could, y’know, be the howling wind? He later decribes it as sometimes like “a cosmic jet” or a vacuum cleaner, to which one responder suggested maybe the writer had heard maybe a jet and a vacuum cleaner.

Important to note, of course, that the poster does not include any of this growing evidence.

So this is the kind of thing I love to get caught up in. It both amuses and frustrates me, and what keeps me hooked is the responses to threads like these. I pity the folks that lap it up, and I give a thumbs up to those who take the piss out of them.

I often wonder how these people maintain a normal, functioning everyday life. If I knew for a fact that this was going to happen, would I be sat on the internet posting on some forum? Or would I be heading to the hills to find a cave and lay low till it all passed? Would I calmly go to work each day and say nothing?  Surely, if these people are so convinced of this nonsense they shoul by now be jobless pariahs, shunned by cow-orkers and friends alike for being gibbering idiots? Certainly, if someone I employed babbled on about this all day (which, you think you would, if you believed it) I would consider not only his continued employment, but his mental health.

Anyway, check out the full forum thread here. Have a browse around the site, there is actually some some good serious stuff to be read, if you can get past all the insane tin-foil nonsense like this.

This week’s strip was planned to be something else, but the recent seismic activity at Yellowstone prompted this strip instead.

I seriously doubt anything will happen at Jellystone to rob Yogi of his lucrative picker-nick basket supply, but if it did, well, nice knowin’ ya!

You can read the harmonic tremors of this week’s strip right here.

Currently, the tinfoil-hat brigade are working themselves up into a shitless frenzy over a run of seismic activity underneath Yellowstone Lake. People talking about the end of civilisation, ELEs, and even the occasional moron wittering on like a dribbling idiot about all the Planet X/Nibiru nonsense being to blame. Nibiru is coming!! Jeez, those morons will work that into any event. Idiots.

So what’s all the fuss then, eh? More after the jump.

Well, Yellowstone Park just happens to one of a small number of locations around the world where you can find a Supervolcano – the biggest and most powerful of all volcanoes. These things would make the Mount St. Helens eruption look like “a bit of an old man’s dribble”.

Now, Supervolcano is not actually a genuine scientific term. It was in fact coined by the BBC on their scientific magazine programme Horizon – but many geologists and vulcanologists will use the term in public as it has a generally understood meaning (and carries more impact), and may sometimes refer to them as Megacaldera. In fact, an eruption that rates 7 or 8 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) would typically be referred to in the field as a Super Eruption – not nearly as exciting. Essentially, a Supervolcano is no different to your bog-standard volcano that we have all come to know and love (like Etna, Krakatoa, Mt. St. Helens and so on) apart from in one main respect –  size. Anything that spits out over 1000 cubic kilometres of rock is classed as a Supervolcano. Mt. St. Helens spewed just 2 cubic kilometers of rock out. Feeb.

Most of Yellowstone Park sits in a volcanic caldera – a region of the earths’s crust that has dropped to form a sort of crater. The floor of the caldera is effectively the ‘cap’ that sits atop the massive magma chamber under the surface. In a regular volcano, the structure is the familiar pointy cone, with volcanic deposits…er…depositing…at the top and down the sides. With a Supervolcano, the explosive force is such that there is no cone building – as the magma or pulverized magma (depending on the type of eruption) vents, the crust drops down to fill the space left by the magma. In the case of Yellowstone, this caldera is huge – really huge. 34 miles by 45 miles, approximately, and the “cliff” formed by the drop can be in places up to 1,000 feet high. Quite a big chicken, then.

It is thought – as far as we can tell – that the human race has only ever been around for a single Supervolcano eruption. Lake Toba, in Sumatra. This lake, over 1,000km long and 30km wide, was the site of a massive super eruption around 75,000 years ago – as far as we know, the largest in the last 25 million years. With a VEI of 8, it is believed that the ash cloud from the eruption reached the very edge of space and was so large and so dense that it covered the skies over much of India and deposited up to 10cm of ash right across that landmass. It is believed that up to 10¹⁰ tonnes of sulfur dioxide were released into the atmosphere with two noticeable effects: firstly, the sulfur dioxide combined with water to create a rain of sulfuric acid. Secondly, it also attached to dust particles in the atmosphere to form droplets, making the upper atmosphere more reflective and, as a result, reduced the amount of heat and sunlight reaching the earth’s surface. It is believed the the average global temperature could have dropped anywhere between three and five degrees Celcius. The drop in temperature, combined with the more localised ashfall, would have meant that very little plant life would have survived in the Asian continent, and it is possible that globally there would have been a devastating reduction in plant and animal life due to the harsh, ‘volcanic winter’ that would have ensued (and lasted for many years). Studies of mitochondrial DNA in the world’s human population seem to suggest that at exactly this time the human race went through a ‘bottleneck’. Studies of DNA in the indigenous poulation of Inida has been shown to have the least mitochondrial variation of all the world’s populations, and is is postulated that the entire human population in India may have been as low as 600 – and across the globe, reduced to tens of thousands.

So…we come to the Yellowstone Caldera. With its massive magma chamber, Yellowstone has the potential to at least equal Toba in violence and scale. It is entirely possible that the Yellowstone volcano could erupt with an event easily at a VEI of 8. But it is not as clear cut as that.

It is believed, from gelogical evidence, that the volcano has erupted on this scale three times. 2.1 million years ago, 1.3 million years ago, and 640,000 years ago. There have also been numerous smaller eruptions more recently and throughout this time, the latest being a lava flow about 70,000 years ago, and much smaller in scale. Today, the only obvious volcanic activity is in plain sight every day – the hydrothermal vents dotted about the park (such as Old Faithful). Yellowstone contains almost two-thirds of the world’s hydrothermal vents. Of course, there is also the rise and fall of the base of the caldera, but that is not something the naked eye notices.

There are two possibilities, should the volcano decide that time is up and it is ready to blow. The volcano could erupt as a massive lava flow: the more traditional view of a volcano, with rivers of lava – super-hot molten rock – pouring out to the surface. Whilst these would cause tremendous local damage and incinerate anyting upon contact, this would offer the least threat to life in the area. After all, molten rock does not travel very fast. You could likely walk away from it.

However, the other option is the more devastating. If the explosion is poweful and fast enough – if the built-up pressure is great enough – then the magma could be pulverised by the force of the explosion. This pulverised matter – tiny particles of magma and basalt dust – would be blown skywards in a massive column of dust, ash, and pumice, driven higher by its immense heat. As Toba showed, this column - should the blast and heat be powerful enough – could reach the edge of space itself. Pretty nasty so far. But then, as the particles cool, they start to fall. Firstly, as the column collapses, the heaviest debris would collapse out sideways from the base of the column. This is called a pyroclastic flow, and this is the point at which things get very bad, very quick.

The clouds that billowed out from the side of Mount St. Helens, ripping through the trees and forests, were an example of a pyroclastic flow. Doesn’t sound too scary? Then bear in mind that the ash and dust in the flow is six times as dense as snow, can be up to several hundred degrees Celcius, and can travel at up to several hundred kilometres per hour.  If you see one of these bearing down on you, you are already dead. It is postulated that, should Yellowstone erupt with a VEI of 8 in this way, everything within, say, a hundred miles of the caldera would be vaporized by the flow. And, even if the flow was not that hot – not enough to vaporize you on the spot, well, that would be worse. Ask the people who died in Pompeii. If they weren’t killed by ashfall, or by building collapse caused by the weight of the ash and pumice, they were caught in the flow, cooked, and fried. Studies of the remains at Pompeii show widespread damage to the skulls – where the brain simply overheated to such a degree that it exploded and cracked or shattered the skull from the inside. And that was just a feeble, run of the mill pointy volcano.

What about the lighter dust and ash? Well, this would eventually fall to earth in a more genteel manner. Ashfall is the biggest killer when it comes to volcanoes. The ash itself, as I explained, is made of tiny, microsopic particles of pulverised magma, basalt and minerals - basically rock. Small enough to breathe in. The particles are not like normal fire ash, rather they are jagged, pointy, nasty little things and full of tiny cavities and holes from the gas that was contained in the magma (the gas dissolved in the magma is what creates the enormous pressure that can lead to powerful explosive eruptions). This makes the ash very porous. The ashfall from a Supervolcano would be devastating, and over an unimaginable area. It is thought that, should the eruption have a VEI of 8, then the ashfall would reach as far as the East Coast of North America, and possibly reach down south as far as Florida, if not further. Depending on your distance from Yellowstone, the ashfall could range in depth from several centimtres to twenty or thirty metres. But we are not talking of an incovenience here when we talk of ashfall. The ash is all-pervading, gets into every nook and cranny, and is utterly, utterly fatal. Engines would not function. Aircraft flying through volcanic ash simply stop and fall. Hiding inside would not protect you – as ash is many times denser than snow most houses and buildings would suffer roof collapse due to the sheer weight. Power lines and overhead cables would collapse and snap. And worst of all? Remember, the ash is porous. If you were to breathe this in, your lifespan would not be very long; the ash would very quickly mix with the fluids in your lungs and mucous membranes to form a solid cement.

Conservative estimates currently suggest that if Yellowstone was to do it’s worst, the death toll in North America could be up to several million over the course of the first few weeks. And geologists say that as far as they know, a VEI 8 eruption could go on for days, weeks, or even months. There is no way to tell.

Most of North America’s arable farmland would be rendered useless, buried under the thick ash layer. Most of North America would be uninhabitable, and even if there could be some sort of sustained cleanup operation, this would likely take decades, if not a generation. Rescue efforts would be, let’s face it, impossible. With a huge percentage of the country’s population dead or dying in the first few weeks, who would rescue whom? With absolutely no infrastucture of any kind over most of the country, it would not be good times. Canada and Mexico would be faced with being next door to a humanitarian crisis the like of which humanity has never experienced.

And what of the global impact? In a word, devastating. Although outisde the U.S. there would be no ashfall, after only a few weeks the eruption would start to have its effect around the globe. With unimaginable amounts of dust still in the atmosphere all over the globe, and with hundreds of millions of tonnes of sulfur dioxide belched out of the caldera, acid rain – real acid rain – would soon follow. As the U.S. economy collapsed overnight – due to the fact it no longer existed - so too would the rest of the world markets. As the global temperatures plummeted over the following weeks and months, man’s ability to grow and sustain crops and livestock would all but vanish. There would be nowhere to go – it would be the same everywhere. Life would die out around the world. We would have no way to feed ourselves. There would be no viable economy. Most of society’s rigid infrastructure would collapse. After all, would you go to work as normal whilst ice sheets formed around you, or whilst you starved to death? Much of the Northern Hemisphere would be cloaked in a deep layer of ice in a new and sudden ice age. Mass pogroms and migrations to the Equatorial regions and Southern Hemisphere would take place. Given our violent and territorial nature, and ever-dwindling resources, this would soon lead no doubt to conflict. We really are that stupid. And even these migrations would cull the population further. After all, you would be on foot – who would be driving a train or a bus, or flying a plane at the end of civilisation? Early man survived catastrophes in the past because of his way of life – it was migrant, and flexbile, he lived off the land. The interdependece we now have with technology, communication and transport – our inability to survive off the land without assistance – means that we are weak, and this weakness would be our downfall.

Current convervative estimates as a worst-case scenario suggest that the estimated death toll from the volcano, starvation, cold, exhaustion, disease and conflict would be in the billions. There would be no safe haven , no ‘higher ground’ to evacuate to. No spared land where crops can grow and animals can be raised.

So, you can see why the tin-foil hat brigade are a bit twitchy right now. The quakes under Yellowstone Lake are frequent – at the last time I checked, about 60 in the last three days, ranging from 1.8 to 3.5 in magnitude. But on the flipside, the U. S. Geological survey advise that such collections of quakes – called ‘swarms’ – are commonplace all over Yellowstone. They may just be a sign that magma is moving around under the surface, and the crust is jostling about as it does so, hopefully releasing pressure as it goes. They advise that if anything it could just be that all that happens is that a few cracks appear and hydrothermal venting takes place.  Or nothing could happen. There have been massive earthquakes causing slippage and landslides in the park over the last 50 years, and nothing happened as a result. The quakes could be a result of the crust shifting, or fault lines moving. They advised that the common figure of the last eruption being 640,000 years ago is actually slightly off, and that rather than an eruption being ‘overdue’ (the popular thinking being that it erupts every 600,000 years or so) the actual last eruption was more like 750,000 years ago. And that volcanoes don’t follow a timetable. They don’t erupt on the clock. It could be another 50,000 years before it erupts again.

On the other hand, they advise, they just don’t know. Nature does what it likes, and man is not in control. It could erupt tomorrow. No way to tell. They don’t even have a way to know for sure how much magma is down there, or what exactly it is doing. The only thing they do know for certain is that Yellowstone will erupt, someday.

Although there have never been such swarms recorded under the lake  before.

My thinking: don’t sweat it. Most likely nothing will happen, and this is just normal seismic activity. And if it isn’t?

You would do what, exactly?

Some things never leave you, etched in the mind from when you were young. The music from World At War, the snake-eating scene from Capricorn One or the damn noise that is featured in this strip.

Never mind hiding behind the sofa to watch Doctor Who, this was hardcore stuff, and Day Of The Triffids gave me bad dreams for months.

And being a kid, I loved it. Read the full strip here.