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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nyeshet" data-source="post: 2342625" data-attributes="member: 18363">By a factor of only x3 or x5? Not much difference at all. North America alone has suffered worse than that several times in the last few million years. I just googled Super Volcano to see if I could find a few good articles I once read about such. One of the more 'end of the world' type articles out there is almost word for world similar to the first post: <a href="http://armageddononline.tripod.com/volcano.htm" target="_blank">http://armageddononline.tripod.com/volcano.htm</a>Here's a more realistic view of the Yellowstone situation: <a href="http://www.unmuseum.org/supervol.htm" target="_blank">http://www.unmuseum.org/supervol.htm</a>A few more realistic* articles *(Okay, I'll admit the Discovery one is a little sensationalistic.) <a href="http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/supervolcano/supervolcano.html" target="_blank">http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/supervolcano/supervolcano.html</a><a href="http://www.solcomhouse.com/yellowstone.htm" target="_blank">http://www.solcomhouse.com/yellowstone.htm</a><a href="http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/050308_super_volcano.html" target="_blank">http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/050308_super_volcano.html</a>Here's a nice image dealing with the major Yellowstone and Valles Caldera eruptions<a href="http://www.livescience.com/images/050308_nm_volcano_yellowstone_02.jpg" target="_blank">http://www.livescience.com/images/050308_nm_volcano_yellowstone_02.jpg</a>Of course, if you want a true 'end of the world' type eruption, I suggest you look to the Siberian Traps. The result of that super-volcanic eruption (the greatest known in the last half billion years) was the Permian-Triassic extinction event: 90% of all marine life and 70% of all land life dead within - at most - less than 60k years (perhaps even as little as 8k years), and it took about 50k to 100k years for the world to begin true recovery (in terms of spread of plantlife, etc) . It is the single greatest extinction event known to human kind. Of course, the continuous output of lava lasted for millions of years. It was only the start and the worst of it around the extinction period. Note also that there is evidence of a massive (ie: 200km wide) crator that seems to date to the extinction event. Many current scientists seem to agree that the extinction was the result of a double-whammy: massive volcanism combined with a major meteor/comet strike within a few centuries or millinia of each other. Problem with this: no adventurers survive to deal with the problem. Or perhaps the adventurers are the only survivors. Only those brave and daring enough to seek a sheltering area and start anew in terrible conditions are likely to survive, perhaps. <a href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/P/Pe/Permian-Triassic_extinction_event1.htm" target="_blank">http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/P/Pe/Permian-Triassic_extinction_event1.htm</a></blockquote>

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