[HN Gopher] Hydrothermal explosion at Yellowstone National Park
___________________________________________________________________
Hydrothermal explosion at Yellowstone National Park
Author : jandrewrogers
Score : 528 points
Date : 2024-07-23 19:49 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jhnewsandguide.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jhnewsandguide.com)
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| From the US Geological Survey:
|
| "At around 10:00 AM MST on July 23, 2024, a small hydrothermal
| explosion occurred in Yellowstone National Park in the Biscuit
| Basin thermal area, about 2.1 miles (3.5 km) northwest of Old
| Faithful. Numerous videos of the event were recorded by visitors.
| The boardwalk was damaged, but there were no reports of injury.
| The explosion appears to have originated near Black Diamond Pool.
|
| Biscuit Basin, including the parking lot and boardwalks, are
| temporary closed for visitor safety. The Grand Loop road remains
| open. Yellowstone National Park geologists are investigating the
| event."
| m_a_g wrote:
| > no reports of injury
|
| I feel like that's pure luck. Things could've gone way worse
| willy_k wrote:
| Is this a potential sign of the fault shifting or whatever the
| correct terminology is? A warning shot before a massive
| earthquake? Or just a geyser-like phenomenon?
| swatcoder wrote:
| From
| https://www.usgs.gov/volcanoes/yellowstone/science/hydrother...
|
| > These very large and violent hydrothermal explosions are
| independent of associated volcanism. None of the large
| hydrothermal events of the past 16,000 years has been followed
| by an eruption of magma. The deeper magma system appears to be
| unaffected even by spectacular steam explosions and crater
| excavations within the overlying hydrothermal system.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Note, however, that much larger hydrothermal explosions have
| occurred than the one that just happened. There are some
| large craters in Yellowstone Lake from hydrothermal
| explosions. These would certainly kill people who were nearby
| if they happened again.
| ofalkaed wrote:
| If it was a sign of something larger it probably would not be
| so isolated, all the geysers in the area would have gone off. I
| would guess this is either the formation of a new geyser or an
| old one which has a long duration between eruptions or just a
| one off.
| DaoVeles wrote:
| Arm chair take here. Probably means nothing. On the scale of
| earthquakes and larger geology, this is insignificant.
|
| Look at the White Island eruption a few years back. If you are
| on the island it was an awful event. But in terms of eruption
| scale it was so small it barely registered.
| docbarlow wrote:
| Seems to have happened before - this article has a small
| thumbnail of an explosion at the same site a few years ago:
| https://www.usgs.gov/observatories/yvo/news/hydrothermal-exp...
| mikeodds wrote:
| Yellowstone supervolcano eruption
| https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/yellowstone-vol...
|
| pros:
|
| - band aid on global temperatures
|
| - interested in any others commenters may know of
|
| cons:
|
| - several states getting reset
|
| - volcanic ash covering the North American bread basket
|
| - pretty long list really
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I do not have links for you, but the last time I checked there
| was a general consensus among the majority of scientists that
| given the low percentage of molten lava in the upper chamber
| and low percentage of molten magma in the lower chamber we
| would have at least 10K years of low probability of a VEI 8
| eruption. An eruption currently may damage part of the park
| from low basaltic flows and part of the park would be shut
| down. Should that happen it _may_ impact the park 's tourist
| revenue but the governor is working on diversifying the states
| income. The risk level of eruption was a decision making factor
| in my moving so close to Yellowstone.
| mikeodds wrote:
| Thanks, it does look a great part of the world to live in.
|
| I've taken liquefaction maps into account previously when
| finding places to live, but not had to look up magma chamber
| reports yet.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| My only concern is flood plains. I had 8' of water in my
| basement at the first house I lived in. Technically not in
| a flood plain but close enough to a river. Never again.
| FredPret wrote:
| 8 '!
|
| How high were your basement ceilings - was there any
| breathing room at all?
| robocat wrote:
| Yeah: common risks across a neighbourhood will usually
| lead to severe problems trying to claim your cover. And
| subsequent property resale issues: if insurance is
| unavailable, a mortgage is unavailable; if a home can't
| get a mortgage then you can only sell for cash at extreme
| discounts.
|
| Avoid risky areas unless you can afford to lose your
| home.
|
| Lots of people in Australia got caught out during floods,
| in part due to unobvious exclusions.
| https://mdlaw.com.au/news-insights/flood-insurance-
| australia...
|
| In my city Christchurch, an earthquake led to problems
| for many many people.
| moralestapia wrote:
| >Should that happen it may impact the park's tourist revenue
| but the governor is working on diversifying the states
| income.
|
| Oh no! Wyoming might lose 0.007% of their GDP. I hope the
| governor can save them in time!
| mlhpdx wrote:
| If you want to worry, worry about Newberry.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newberry_Volcano
| mikeodds wrote:
| There truly is a website for everything:
|
| https://hypotheticalvolcanoes.fandom.com/wiki/2081_Eruption_.
| ..
|
| I'll be sure to give it a wide berth in 2081
| redleggedfrog wrote:
| I go to Paulina Lake every year. It's a glorious place, even
| with all the geological activity.
| solardev wrote:
| Hey, I live right there, and just hiked it a couple months
| ago! I didn't realize it was still active (dormant?). Kinda
| cool to think about.
|
| If it goes boom, I'll try to take pics and report back.
| lukan wrote:
| "If it goes boom, I'll try to take pics and report back."
|
| Better do a livestream then, in case we cannot recover your
| camera/mobile.
| solardev wrote:
| 2124 Show HN: I found a GoPro buried in lava from the GPT
| era
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| If Yellowstone blew up like it has before, human civilization
| would end as would our contribution to global warming. More
| than a band-aid!
| fullstackchris wrote:
| As far as I remember, the caldera erupting is not an
| extinction level event (for humans at least)... would be bad
| for sure, but southern hemisphere would manage I think
| Filligree wrote:
| Depending on size, duration and prevailing winds, there's a
| pretty good chance the EU would be fine. Even parts of the
| USA could survive!
| BirAdam wrote:
| I wouldn't say "fine". It would be a year without summer,
| and the loss of life due to starvation would be rather
| severe.
| Kostic wrote:
| Would starvation be a problem? Don't most countries have
| food reserves for these cases? At least enough food for
| one season?
| southwesterly wrote:
| Ha ha ha ha ha where is the profit in that?
| throwaway290 wrote:
| You are unsure where is profit in having alive
| workers/military/etc?
| bregma wrote:
| Leftist radical.
| 0xBDB wrote:
| Having a supply of something that is suddenly supply
| constrained is pretty much a literal definition of how to
| make a profit. No need for a ??? step on that one. Of
| course you will take a storage cost loss for potentially
| thousands of years first.
| abofh wrote:
| We didn't have toilet paper because some people freaked
| out, you think there's a maintained warehouse of
| perishable supplies? Or just a big vault of cans
| somewhere?
|
| No, nations do not have the means to feed their
| constituents in a nation ending disaster. It's easy to
| move food from Florida to California in a state sized
| crises, but the logistics of maintaining a just in case
| food supply for hundreds of millions distributed around
| the country? It's a safer bet to assume you'd die in the
| disaster than to convince people to plan for the future.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I find this result in researching many things. For instance
| in nuclear armageddon, the southern hemisphere is
| relatively ok, temperature and fallout wise. Wondering if I
| should move there.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1bvy6sz/by_popula
| r...
| StimDeck wrote:
| Ok, but it did just blow up a little.
| hanniabu wrote:
| cons:
|
| - would set back solar adoption
| hindsightbias wrote:
| pros:
|
| - volcanic ash would replenish the NA bread basket soil erosion
| cyberax wrote:
| Supervolcano for the president! Vote for TRUE destruction!
| sliken wrote:
| A fair bit of the rich soil in the mid west, west, and north
| west are from previous volcanic eruptions. Substantial areas
| have 1 meter or more of high quality soil, which we are
| squandering by over watering, overly intense agriculture, not
| preventing erosion, and using too much fertilizer.
|
| Not only is fertilizer very energy intensive to produce, it
| also contributes to de-oxygenation of lakes, rivers, and the
| ocean. It's no exaggeration that this might well end
| civilization on earth. If we lose the oceans (which are already
| becoming oxygen depleted) it's going to be that much harder to
| feed everyone.
|
| So I'd consider volcanic ash a pro, not a con. Sure we might
| lose a single growing season, but could help us for centuries,
| if properly managed.
| rocqua wrote:
| Fertilizer isn't just energy intensive, the phosphorus part
| of it is non renewable. We get it from mining, there are
| limited deposits, the process of building the deposits
| happens on geological timescales. My hope is that the running
| out will be a slow process that comes with a slow price
| increase so people are eventually incentivized to find
| alternatives.
|
| Also, the mining process leaves very toxic tailings, but that
| is true for most mining.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Eventually we'll be mining average crustal rock for
| phosphorus, at 0.1% concentration, as well as recycling
| phosphate-containing wastes back to soils. It could be the
| mineral that sets the minimum global annual mined volume
| after fossil fuels are done (those currently dominate,
| ignoring such things as gravel and ground water.)
|
| On the positive side, I believe most phosphate fertilizer
| is not immediately absorbed by plants, but instead goes
| into forming relatively insoluble phosphates in the soil
| (phosphate fertilizer is formed by solubilizing phosphate
| minerals by treatment with large amounts of acid). This
| forms a phosphate bank in the soil. Over time, if I
| understand correctly the residual solubility of these
| minerals (especially under the influence of organic acids
| secreted by plant roots) will reduce the need for
| additional phosphate additions, assuming the soil doesn't
| erode away.
| kmbfjr wrote:
| Volcanic ash is extremely acidic, you will lose more than
| just a single growing season.
|
| It also pulverized rock and volcanic glass, which causes all
| manner of hell when the wind blows.
| coltonv wrote:
| Yellowstone will not explode and end civilization (or American
| civilization for that matter) in many many lifetimes:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypn3Fe_PLts
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| Are the tourists lucky to not get hit? Since the bridge goes
| through the pool maybe it could erupt right under their feet?
| kzrdude wrote:
| See the second video of the broken bridge and the rocks thrown
| around. Clearly someone could have been badly injured if they
| were there. I don't think it goes through the pool, just close
| to it.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Ideally we should be mining Yellowstone completely for its
| geothermal power, starting at its periphery, then digging inward
| gradually. If we don't, the only other eventual outcome is
| destruction of North America from its supervolcano eruption.
| Mining it kills two problems with one stone, the energy problem
| and the supervolcano problem. Of course no fracking chemicals
| should be used.
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| National Parks (and the ADA) are some of the few great things
| that America has going for it and turning Yellowstone National
| Park into a power plant would not be one of them.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| You are not even trying to understand. Aesthetics is not more
| important than existence. If Yellowstone is not mined, then
| when it blows, there will be no Americans left to appreciate
| it.
|
| Secondly, the mining stations will be limited. Yellowstone is
| a vast land. There is expected to be no diminishing of the
| forest.
| tomrod wrote:
| Supervolcanoes in the area have blown many times and
| recovered. I was surprised to learn this from PBS Eons:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ofNufZVcMU
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Norway doesn't seem to have a problem with it.
| dboreham wrote:
| Iceland.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Indeed, thank you for the correction.
| iSnow wrote:
| In Iceland, they don't drill into the geysir park, they
| have some hydrothermal plants, but in other areas.
| altgoogler wrote:
| Mining yellowstone for its geothermal power in order to prevent
| a volcanic eruption would be a Kardashev Scale Type I
| accomplishment.
|
| In other words, such a thing is completely infeasible given our
| current understanding of science and technology.
|
| The time required to develop such a capability would span so
| many lifetimes that is it effectively science fiction.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| It is not that big a deal. It is in fact a lot easier than
| mining deeper geothermal which we can also do, but at much
| greater expense. Yellowstone aside, exploitation of resources
| is one thing America is profoundly good at. If we start now,
| we can finish it in say one thousand years and fully
| eliminate the supervolcano risk, also enjoying much green
| energy in the process.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Extracting geothermal power for its own sake would not be,
| and probably should be done.
| akira2501 wrote:
| And you're going to transmit it.. where?
| cossatot wrote:
| I wrote about this in a previous HN thread a few years back.
| Not clear that it's a great idea:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28593452#28599027
| OutOfHere wrote:
| The answer to your concern is right there for you, both by
| YokoZar, and also in my comment above.
|
| It is that we start at the periphery, very gradually going
| inward over a thousand year period. We should have enough
| data of the effects of our peripheral perturbations in the
| first few hundred years. It should provide a testable model
| for how to proceed safely as we go inward.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I've made this suggestion myself in the past.
|
| Via a flagged comment, a counterargument is deep geothermal,
| accessed via boreholes, and not strictly limited to extant
| surface geothermal fields:
|
| <https://www.quaise.energy/>
|
| Thomas Homer-Dixon is also an advocate that I'm aware of:
| <https://homerdixon.com/a-big-bet-on-geothermal-could-help-
| pr...>
|
| I'm not sold on this (deep geothermal pilots such as the
| Geothermal Habanero project in Australia have proved expensive
| busts, and the productive lifespan of a given borehole is
| limited to a few decades). But it's worth consideration.
|
| I've written on Habanero previously. The project consistently
| overran time and cost estimates, and delivered far less power
| than initially planned. That's not to say that the concept is
| fatally flawed, but it's also not the panacea first projected.
| By contrast, surface geothermal fields have been and _are_
| developed _at commercial scale_ worldwide, and have been for
| years: The Geysers in California, in Iceland, Japan, the
| Philippines, New Zealand, and elsewhere. In fact _most_ viable
| fields have already been tapped, with the largely untapped
| resources now existing in the African Rift Valley (largely
| within Kenya, where it could hugely bolster the country 's
| fairly anemic generating capacity), and of course Yellowstone
| in the US, where there are significant environmental and
| political barriers. A USGS survey getting on two decades ago of
| US geothermal resources conspicuously excludes Yellowstone from
| any consideration at all. From 2007:
| <https://www.usgs.gov/publications/usgs-national-
| geothermal-r...>
|
| See:
|
| "Habanero Geothermal Project Field Development Plan". A largely
| sober summary of the project, noting that it's been concluded
| rather than expanded. <https://arena.gov.au/knowledge-
| bank/habanero-geothermal-proj...>
|
| My own 2014 summary: <https://web.archive.org/web/2023060107371
| 7/https://old.reddi...>
| OutOfHere wrote:
| In Yellowstone, if I am not mistaken, the energy is
| extractable at its land surface, or quite close to it.
| Drilling 4 km does not seem necessary at Yellowstone. Is this
| incorrect?
|
| Secondly, there exist efficiencies of scale that come with
| drilling at ten or a hundred sites rather than just one or a
| few.
| zamadatix wrote:
| The top of the magma chamber starts ~5-17 km from the
| surface with another magma chamber ~20-50 km from the
| surface. Heat starts and goes well above that of course but
| if your goal is to meaningfully hook into and extract the
| heat of the chamber itself it's quite deep. Put from
| another perspective: if a significant amount of the energy
| of the chamber were imminently near the surface it would
| already fizzle itself out over thousands of years without
| the need of digging short holes to do it in a few.
|
| Geothermal in Yellowstone is no better or more useful than
| geothermal at many other less important places. It isn't
| even the place with the most surface level geothermal
| energy in the first place. Overall geothermal technology
| advancement makes a lot of sense but starting said
| advancement via sandbagging for an outcome 1000 years after
| developing one of the best national parks to do so does not
| make sense.
|
| Regardless of all of that, there are significantly more
| than the two possibilities of either starting drilling
| today or having catastrophe in an eruption.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| The reason why I noted a thousand year period is because
| Yellowstone is said to have a lot more energy than we can
| use right now.
|
| Regarding the investment, if a 5 km well is dug, I don't
| expect it to exhaust its energy without a significant
| payback.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| AFAIU the "last mile" (or last 5--17 km) transfer largely
| occurs through ground-water migration. Yellowstone
| combines extensive geothermal energy with ample surface
| water flow (e.g., Lake Yellowstone, which is itself a
| major geothermal zone). I'm _really_ well beyond my depth
| here, though looking up soem background:
|
| Geological diagram of Old Faithful: <https://public-
| media.smithsonianmag.com/filer/bd/06/bd0603df...>
|
| From this _Smithsonian_ article:
| <https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/seeing-
| beneath-old...>
|
| "Old Faithful's Geological Heart Revealed": <https://www.
| sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171005190243.h...>
|
| Mostly addresses seismic activity, though there's some
| discussion of inferred structures from that. Based on the
| journal article by Sin-Mei Wu, Kevin M. Ward, Jamie
| Farrell, Fan-Chi Lin, Marianne Karplus, Robert B. Smith.
| "Anatomy of Old Faithful from subsurface seismic imaging
| of the Yellowstone Upper Geyser Basin". _Geophysical
| Research Letters_ , 2017; DOI: 10.1002/2017GL075255
| <http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2017GL075255>
|
| (The _Smithsonian_ piece is based on the same article.)
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Exactly. I am not convinced that drilling 5 km is
| necessary at Yellowstone. I suspect the energy is ripe
| for the taking much closer to the surface due to this
| water migration.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| AFAIU yes, absolutely.
|
| Yellowstone has accessible thermal gradients. Even if a
| remote approach is made, say, outside the National Park
| boundaries and intended to minimise surface impacts,
| necessary drilling should be minimal, and a small number of
| wells should provide far more energy return than a large
| number of deep boreholes.
|
| That said, I'm, ahem, well out of my depth here ;-)
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Efficiencies of scale from multiple drilling operations
| likely pale in comparison to the costs of each well. Keep
| in mind that some factors, such as well casings, drilling
| mud, drill bits, labour, and support costs remain high on a
| per-well basis. A 10% savings evaporates quickly if 100
| wells are required to match the energy return of 1 or 10.
| Well depth and diameter are major determinants of drilling
| costs in both petroleum and geothermal operations.
|
| The ability to achieve a high, long-term return on
| relatively shallow drilling operations probably trumps any
| learning-curve efficiency improvements in drilling itself.
| Sites such as Yellowstone (based on some former research
| I'd made) contribute significantly to US baseload
| electrical generation, should the US choose to exploit
| them.
|
| It's also worth noting that there already _is_ considerable
| expertise in drilling generally, with over 160 years of
| experience over millions of individual wells, and that the
| efficiency / improvement curve is likely fairly ... well
| ... exploited.
|
| "Geothermal Drilling Costs" (2006)
| <https://www.thedriller.com/articles/84584-geothermal-
| drillin...>
|
| "Cost analysis of oil, gas, and geothermal well drilling"
| (2014) <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S
| 092041051...>
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| I am probably one of the most free-market leaning ppl on HN.
| National Parks are a _very_ good place to curb the free market.
| It 's a classic Tragedy of the commons, the value is huge and
| would not exist without the government. There is no incentive
| structure where privatization would leave millions of acres
| open for a token fee.
|
| I quite often think how people should be encouraged more to go
| to the natl. parks, they really take your breath away and are
| something to cherish. Buffalo running wild, Grey wolves if
| you're lucky, crazy weird geysers, go!
| dboreham wrote:
| I live about 40 miles from the edge of the caldera. I've
| wondered about drilling down to get heat. Nobody else has done
| it though, with the exception of the various hot springs around
| here. There is a hot-ish spring on our property, in that it
| stays snow free through the winter. That said, if there was a
| bunch of heat near the surface presumably our well water would
| be hot. It isn't.
| Aeroi wrote:
| Used to guide in Yellowstone. This has no bearing on the greater
| Yellowstone Caldera (supervolcano) which spans nearly 30miles by
| 40miles. In my time there I never saw anything like this. If
| you're ever in a situation similar to this, run as fast and as
| far as you can.
|
| The interesting thing about geysers and pools is how relatively
| predictable they are... until they are not. A mathematical and
| statistical person would have a lot of fun building prediction
| models for all the different geysers.
| 0xdde wrote:
| > A mathematical and statistical person would have a lot of fun
| building prediction models for all the different geysers.
|
| It's so popular that one of the datasets immediately available
| in base R is the set of waiting times between eruptions for a
| Yellowstone geyser [1].
|
| [1]
| https://www.rdocumentation.org/packages/datasets/versions/3....
| verandaguy wrote:
| In fairness, the geyser in question is Old Faithful, among
| the best-known geysers in the world, renowned for its
| regularity.
|
| I'm not sure that it's particularly more regular than most
| other geysers, but that's what is known for.
| dmckeon wrote:
| Before a 1959 earthquake, Old Faithful had a very regular
| cycle time - thus the name. Since then, the name has become
| less apt.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Very exciting time for a geologist! Once every few hundred
| years I'm guessing?
| bandyaboot wrote:
| They're not that rare. The USGS statement references a few
| examples of similar events including one from 2009 in this
| same basin, one from 1989 in the Norris basin, and another
| (small) event in the Norris basin earlier this year.
| glennon wrote:
| Over 60 observations of this hot spring erupting in some
| fashion over the last 18 years.
| https://geysertimes.org/geyser.php?id=Black+Diamond Many of
| the reports mention black water and rocks and "big" -- so not
| particularly rare. This eruption appears to be larger though
| -- typically the rocks and debris do not make it to the
| boardwalk.
| glennon wrote:
| A geyser gazer friend of mine shared the following image
| pair: a "before" Google Earth image and a USGS overhead
| image captured today after the event. The debris field
| surrounding the spring is evident -- including the damaged
| boardwalk. (links to a png) https://drive.google.com/file/d
| /1Dcd55YX7oF8KPrHsog75vPS_Mc9...
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _If you 're ever in a situation similar to this, run as fast
| and as far as you can._
|
| Yellowstone tourists have a proud tradition of not running from
| things they should be.
| aargh_aargh wrote:
| Oh yeah, bring it, mama bear...
| johnla wrote:
| I think most of them are new to this type of nature so you're
| stuck in "is this normal? Am I in danger? If I run, will I
| look like a fool?" So you're standing there and looking for
| other people's reactions before making your own. So it's a
| bunch of people frozen and looking at each other before 1
| person makes a run for it and everyone else does too.
| jsbg wrote:
| They're presumably referring to people e.g. taking selfies
| with bison.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Yeah, lots of folks think they have a similar demeanor to
| cows and don't realize they are in danger while doing so.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Even cows can be dangerous if you make them mad.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Of course but bison are way less predictable and don't
| have 10K years of selective breeding for docile behavior
| like modern cattle do.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I saw one take a rearview mirror clear off a car with a
| lazy flick of its head, while walking past without
| breaking stride, just because it didn't like something
| about the car.
|
| As Sean Connery says in _Hunt for Red October_ , "We must
| give this American a wide berth."
| 1659447091 wrote:
| ..and the big cute deer (elk or moose) and calves. Let's
| go feed them...
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Absolutely. That's what you see in the videos. Finally one
| person starts really running, and it prompts the others.
|
| I think of it as the National Park discontinuity: few
| people these days have experience being in environments
| that can be rapidly lethal.
|
| And there isn't a sign in National Parks saying "Past this
| line, there are apex predators, dangerous natural features,
| no cell phone service, and/or the nearest medical facility
| being a backcountry airlift away."
|
| That's a big change from most people's everyday normal.
| Aeroi wrote:
| A great followup for someone looking to dive into the
| statistical side of this would be the Steamboat Geyser in
| Yellowstone. [1] (Worlds tallest active geyser)
|
| It has a pretty irregular major eruption pattern. What people
| often forget, is that geysers don't wait for the day time, so
| many events occur at night when nobody is around to witness the
| beauty. When a geyser like this only erupts a handful of times
| a year and for approximately 3 minutes, you have to get very
| very very lucky to witness it. Especially when you take into
| account how enormous YNP is.
|
| [1] https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/steamboat-
| geyser.htm#:....
| malingo wrote:
| Just this morning when I couldn't sleep I was reading the
| Wikipedia E-M algorithm page with its illustration of
| clustering the bimodal eruption distribution of Old Faithful:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectation%E2%80%93maximiza...
| firewolf34 wrote:
| If ya can't sleep, ya might as well learn something. Thanks
| for the link! Sincerely, ~also can't sleep.
| LeonB wrote:
| Hmmm -- isn't it possible that too much awareness of our
| pending apocalyptic peril at the mercy of the Yellowstone
| Caldera is what's arresting your slumbers in the first
| place?
| progmetaldev wrote:
| If only my late night existential crises were based on
| realistic apocalyptic peril, rather than some kind of
| unknown that's impossible to put into words. At least
| then, there's some kind of science and "natural rules" to
| limit the exposure.
| 38 wrote:
| https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectation-
| maximization_algorith...
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| Is a geyser not inherently self-destructive? As in its a load-
| bearing pressure test-run on a random set of connection in
| stone. Meaning the rock fracks itself, and only the valve to
| above ground allows for repeated runs? Or do they fix fractures
| with minerals?
| pfdietz wrote:
| There's nothing about a geyser that requires rock to be
| fractured during an eruption. Geysers occur due to positive
| feedback as liquid water is removed, reducing the pressure on
| underlying heated water, allowing it to boil.
| sqeaky wrote:
| Sort of a temporary equilibrium of boiling temperatures as
| long as water keeps coming out? but because water supply is
| finite that will only be a few second or ms?
| consf wrote:
| The complexity and variability of geothermal features
| bnug wrote:
| Anyone know how apparent bot posts like this wind up here?
| Third one I've seen today, now easy to notice after someone
| pointed it out on another topic.
| progmetaldev wrote:
| I can only theorize, but my guess is that a human signs up,
| then allows the bot to post. I get this quite often from
| clients where they have an online form with a reCAPTCHA,
| and they are getting regular spam. I have to explain that
| some bots are able to figure out the reCAPTCHA, as well as
| let them know that sometimes real humans are just paid to
| fill out forms and bot detection isn't going to help in
| those cases. This is especially true with services like
| Fiverr.
| animal531 wrote:
| Another tip, if you're running away from rocks falling out of
| the sky (or extremely big hailstones) then at least put an arm
| over your head.
|
| It might just save your life.
| toss1 wrote:
| Another tip for falling objects (although this applies only
| on the descent phase, so more for objects falling from cliffs
| or building above you):
|
| If when looking up, the object has an apparent motion
| (left/right/back), it won't hit you, and certainly don't move
| in the direction it appears to be moving. If it appears
| stationary in the sky, it _WILL_ hit you or very close, so
| _move_ fast. Best default strategy with limited time &
| options is to hug the rock face, especially under an
| overhang.
| syngrog66 wrote:
| > and certainly don't move in the direction it appears to
| be moving.
|
| I hereby dub this the Ridley Scott's Prometheus Rule
| staplung wrote:
| It's not just for falling objects. In ship navigation this
| is known as Constant Bearing, Decreasing Range.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constant_bearing,_decreasing_
| r...
| toss1 wrote:
| Yup! Also applies to cars on intersecting roads
| especially at odd angles; if it's staying in the same
| spot in the windshield/side window, one of you needs to
| change speeds or you'll have an unscheduled rapid
| disassembly at the intersection.
|
| It's also a real problem for certain intersection angles
| where vehicles or bicycles with unfortunate timing will
| be obscured behind the A-Pillar until nearly too late.
| There was an article (iirc) on HN years ago about just
| such an intersection repeatedly injuring/killing
| bicyclists. I once had to seriously threshold brake at an
| off-angle intersection to avoid a fire truck running a
| red light, when the timing/speed/distance/angle all lined
| up to hide the entire truck behind the A-Pillar for a few
| seconds approaching the intersection.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| And in aviation. Aircraft tracking across your
| canopy/windscreen? Usually NBD. Aircraft staying in the
| same spot on your canopy/windscreen? Potentially a Very
| Bad Thing.
| rconti wrote:
| And on the racetrack: car in front of you out of control?
| Drive to where it is, because it won't be there for long.
| billsmithaustin wrote:
| Just playing back what you said because it's surprising. You're
| saying that explosion was not caused by water that was
| superheated by the supervolcano below the greater Yellowstone
| Caldera? It was heated by some other source?
|
| Interested because I was there a few weeks ago.
| mapt wrote:
| A defined hydrothermal basin like this is heated by a very
| local pocket of magma or more properly magma-that-has-mostly-
| solidified-into-hot-rock, only a kilometer or so deep in this
| case, that has leaked up from multiple layers of deeper
| basins creeping up through faultlines, and which is being
| gradually cooled by water seepage in a dynamically stable
| way. Depending on the area, there may or may not be an
| intermediary superheated brine functioning as a heat
| transport mechanism, per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothe
| rmal_areas_of_Yellowston...
|
| Local explosions like this are not very indicative of
| movements in the county-sized reservoir of magma ten times
| deeper down that underlies the entire caldera.
|
| Local hydrothermal basin, upper magma chamber, lower magma
| chamber, mantle plume:
| https://www.yellowstonepark.com/news/supervolcano-magma-
| cham...
| burtonator wrote:
| > If you're ever in a situation similar to this, run as fast
| and as far as you can.
|
| I really really want to underscore this point.
|
| You're literally standing on top of ground and under that is
| boiling water.
|
| If that breaks and you fall in you're going to be in boiling
| water with no way to get out and you will die screaming.
|
| Also NEVER walk on ground that has no vegetation. If you look
| around a geyser you will see that the ground is white and has
| no vegetation. That's because the temperature is too high and
| it has water under it that's heating the ground.
|
| Walk on that and there's a chance you will fall in.
|
| In the back country there are no fences so you can fall right
| through the crust.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> Also NEVER walk on ground that has no vegetation.
|
| There are also places on this planet where toxicity issues
| preclude vegetation. If there are fumes coming through the
| soil so powerful that grass doesn't grow, take the hint.
| sqeaky wrote:
| They mean never in the context of fleeing from these
| explosions.
|
| My sidewalk has no vegetation, but that is because I
| weedwhacked on Tuesday not because a geyser 10 meters away
| is flash boiling water in a pressure vessel made of stone
| and glass shrapnel-to-be.
| lostlogin wrote:
| White Island exploded and killed 22 visitors here in New
| Zealand in 2019 [1]. As you say, if an eruption starts, run.
| Video from that day is chilling, with comment made about how
| different to normal the pools looked.
|
| Those with uncovered skin suffered horribly, and it's quite
| surprisingly how little covering was helpful.
|
| There is a good documentary on it [2].
|
| [1]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Whakaari_/_White_Island...
|
| [2] https://m.imdb.com/title/tt21439528/
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I saw that movie. Not much scares me, but that did!
| advantager wrote:
| I am a groundwater modeler (hydrogeologist) and often work in
| fractured rock (mainly for mining clients). No experience with
| modeling for hydrothermal projects though. While the physics of
| modeling fluid flow in these environments is possible (e.g.
| discrete fracture networks), mapping and having confidence in
| the distribution and actual inter-connectivity of the fractures
| (i.e. preferential flow pathways) is incredibly difficult.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Is the difficulty because the sensing techniques give general
| but not-localized results? I.e. porosity in an area, but no
| information about specific connected fissures? Or something
| else?
|
| My cousin is in hydrogeology as well! Fascinating subject!
| strangattractor wrote:
| Surprisingly no one stopped to take selfie:)
| stouset wrote:
| Every time I see videos like this I'm astonished by how blase
| onlookers are about the whole thing.
|
| I know it's armchair quarterbacking but please don't be like the
| people in the video. If the Earth is erupting in front of you:
| turn and run. Don't stay there filming. Don't gently jog while
| constantly checking over your shoulder. Turn. And run.
|
| I'm not saying panic. I'm not saying trample anyone in front of
| you. But get to a safe distance with alacrity. You have _no_ idea
| if the situation will rapidly escalate, and you may only have one
| opportunity to put enough distance between you and the unfolding
| situation. Assume the worst until you know better.
|
| In this scenario, falling rocks are a concern. Superheated steam
| is a concern. Poisonous gases could have been a concern.
| Corrosive liquids could have been a concern. Lava could have been
| a concern. Further eruptions could have been a concern. For all
| of these your odds are improved with distance. In the moment you
| have no idea of the full extent of the dangers and in many cases
| by the time you realize it's too late.
|
| That said I'm very thankful nobody was hurt in this incident.
| Murky3515 wrote:
| I don't understand the psychology of it either. It's like they
| think that appearing overly concerned about something
| potentially dangerous is more embarrassing than being killed by
| something actually dangerous. That or they have lived such safe
| and sheltered lives that they cannot identify real danger. I
| don't have any other explanation.
| secstate wrote:
| Years ago there was a hurricane that made it up the New
| England coast. I remember a story of a father and daughter in
| Acadia National Park who had wandered out onto some exposed
| rocks (with about 40 other people) to watch these huge waves
| crash just below them. Eventually one wave was larger than
| the others and it knocked all 40 people onto their asses,
| while dragging the father and daughter (who were right on the
| edge) into the ocean. The father drowned.
|
| All I could think was how colossally dumb you had to be to
| assume the waves just going to sit there crashing below you.
| It was clearly a huge storm surge. And then how horribly
| tragic and preventable the outcome was. Some people, man.
|
| EDIT: Misremembered it. Three people were swept out, and it
| was the 7-year-old daughter who died. God damn, how awful.
|
| https://www.bangordailynews.com/2009/08/23/news/three-
| swept-...
| wahern wrote:
| Here on the US West Coast so-called sneaker waves kill a
| handful of people every year, sometimes sweeping (and
| killing) entire families into the ocean who were strolling
| along a beach with unthreatening surf. I was oblivious to
| this until the _3rd_ or so incident that caught my
| attention, then on a hunch poked around with Google search
| enough to realize (after over 15 years living in the Bay
| Area) it 's actually a regular occurrence. It happens on
| some stretches more than others, and its more likely in the
| winter, but it's not confined to "dangerous" beaches and
| can happen at any time. For some reason it hasn't captured
| the public's (or media's) attention to become a "thing"--a
| known hazard that people keep in mind. Every incident tends
| to be reported in isolation, notwithstanding any blurbs
| about recent incidents if they happened to occur close
| enough in time and locality.
|
| It's natural to qualify and rate tragic events by degree of
| perceived "innocence". Families swept off quiet beaches to
| their doom without warning is about as innocently tragic as
| you can get. That said, some incidents are arguably less
| innocent then others, such as fishermen venturing onto
| narrower stretches of beach at low tide during winter, when
| Pacific surf is stronger and more varied. But even then
| usually it seems people aren't doing anything that
| onlookers would consider inviting tragedy, and quite often
| it happens on well trafficked beaches and during times of
| the year that people wouldn't consider risky.
|
| Fortunately I grew up along the Gulf Coast so Pacific surf
| has always felt ominous to me. OTOH, I have a higher risk
| tolerance than many others, especially of younger
| generations, so maybe it's a wash for me.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| I had one in Oregon with my then 8 or 9 year old step
| daughter. We were on rocks WELL above the wave line (like
| 6+ feet, dry rock leading the surf maybe 20 feet away).
| And (this is where I screwed up) we were about 50-100
| yards out on this outcrop (so rapid scramble not
| possible).
|
| Then, sneaker wave. I basically had her jump up "into my
| arms" so to speak, wrap arms around my neck, legs around
| my waist, while I situated myself as best I could, and
| grabbed onto rock with both hands. The water came up to
| my waist.
|
| That was a genuinely terrifying experience.
| joemi wrote:
| I would assume it's more due to them not realizing that this
| isn't just something that periodically happens at the park
| (like Old Faithful). It might seem unusual, but they don't
| know how unusual or dangerous it is. It might just be no more
| unusual than a low road near a body of water that gets a tiny
| bit flooded in one spot after a heavy rain -- the kind where
| locals who know about it just drive through because it's only
| an inch or two deep but visitors might be more hesitant
| about. In the case of this explosion, the aftermath video
| shows that it was indeed very unusual and dangerous.
| xeromal wrote:
| It's not that. I was on a plane where a guy tried to break
| open the door to the outside mid flight and it takes a good
| 30-60 seconds for people to comprehend reality and make a
| decision. It's easy to judge from a screen but when an actual
| disaster hits, the brain does weird things
| pixl97 wrote:
| It typically takes much longer for people to process and
| make 'intelligent' decisions on novel information than we
| realize.
|
| Again, typically the brain will skip these checks and go
| into fight or flight mode where you punch or run without
| knowing what you are doing. I'd like to think we break a
| lot of this response in the modern world by not being
| around a lot of spontaneous dangerous stuff, which leaves
| us gawking at times.
| highcountess wrote:
| It is a combination of those factors along with what I call
| TV-Brain, a subconscious assumption that it's not real, it's
| just like when I see it in the rectangle.
|
| Remember, most people in the western and especially American
| world, simply do not experience real world risks and dangers,
| everything is so sanitized and cleaned and protected and
| safe, that they simply do not connect reality with their own
| demise or even a risk to it. On a related note, it is alway
| why I believe there are so many and increasing numbers of
| injurious contacts with bisons, moose, elk, bears, etc in
| Yellowstone, because they think they're cuddly animals that
| they saw in wildlife documentaries and know from cartoons and
| tv stories of the child that is friends with the talking
| bear, etc. most people are simply so detached from reality
| that they simply have no reference for what they are doing
| that is extremely dangerous to their continued state of being
| alive.
| lanstin wrote:
| The first time I visited the Everglades there was a family
| that had been at Disney for some time and the kids would
| not believe the many enourmous alligators laying around
| were real.
|
| On the other hand, my two year old (who had been hitting
| kids in preschool and getting a lot of "don't hit"
| messaging, turned and queried, of an alligator on the
| boardwalk about ten or twenty feet in front of us "No hit
| the Alligator?"
|
| While my heart and heart rate spiked, I swiftly grabbed him
| up and agreed, "yes, no hit the alligator!"
| FireBeyond wrote:
| The other side of that is "everything is very survivable on
| TV". Like you see constant explosions and people just
| getting knocked over, dusting themselves off, and keep
| going.
|
| Real life, a lot less so.
| ordu wrote:
| If you run in a panic when normal geyser erupts, it would be
| embarrassing, right? Now, what is a normal geyser eruption
| and what is not normal? If you never tried to research this,
| you do not know.
|
| So we come to an uncertainty. This seems pretty big, and
| probably is not normal, isn't it? Or it is? So you are not
| sure, should you shake off social norms of behavior (being
| calm, not shouting, acting like a grown adult) and to switch
| to a survival behavior (running away, shouting commands "run"
| to others, dragging people with you by their limbs, or doing
| whatever you think is the adequate behavior for such a
| situation).
|
| Looking at the video carefully, people in a few seconds come
| to a conclusion that this is dangerous and start moving away,
| but they didn't get away from norms of everyday behavior.
| These two different priorities (to act normal or go to the
| survival mode) are still there, and they are still fighting
| in minds of people for a dominance.
|
| Their response was "gently jog while constantly checking over
| your shoulder", because they decided it is dangerous and you
| need at least jog away, but they are feel that they may be
| underestimating (or overestimating) the danger, and they keep
| themself aware of the events to be able to change their
| behavior accordingly to them.
|
| The very situation prompts for rapid change from a normal
| mode of existence to a survival mode, and there is no clear
| unambiguous signal that it is the case. The geyser erupts?
| Didn't we come here to watch geysers? Wouldn't it be
| embarrassing to run from the geyser? There are a lot of
| questions, and System 2 is a slow one. People are educated to
| keep System 1 in a check and to think things through. They
| are educated to know some dangerous situations and they can
| react to them immediately, but this is something unusual,
| they are not trained for it, and their minds become
| overwhelmed by a massive visual stimulus and by all the
| thoughts and ideas that may be relevant, but only System 2
| could decide and to prioritize them properly.
|
| When I was watching the video I instantly saw that it is
| dangerous, but I was prompted about it by the article, so I
| was ready to see something impressive AND dangerous.
| Therefore I'm not sure would I be better in that situation if
| I was watching it in real life without any prompting.
|
| _> they have lived such safe and sheltered lives that they
| cannot identify real danger._
|
| I wrote about it above, but I want to stress it out:
|
| 1. we are conditioned to _think_ before acting,
|
| 2. most of us have no experience with geysers and we cannot
| access the hazard level of a geyser at the first glance, and
| we know that we can't, so... goto 1.
| creer wrote:
| There is also the imperative to get the video. Which for
| once was well done.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > It's like they think that appearing overly concerned about
| something potentially dangerous is more embarrassing than
| being killed by something actually dangerous.
|
| This is a real psychological phenomenon. Most people don't
| want to be the first person to yell "fire!", or to appear to
| take a situation more seriously than it warrants, because
| they might be wrong and they'd stand out as being wrong and
| feel embarrassed. That feeling can "stick" shockingly long
| after you'd think the situation was obvious.
|
| We have not socially normalized and trained the concept that
| it's better for people to _occasionally_ be understandably
| wrong than to delay reacting to problems. The right reaction
| to quick reactions that turn out to be incorrect should be
| "Thanks for calling attention to what might have been a
| problem!", not an array of signals that all convey "what a
| weirdo".
| prewett wrote:
| Having been there recently, it definitely would not have been
| immediately clear to me that there would be a problem. The
| boardwalk is next to the pools but clearly not in structural
| danger. The videos show the eruption being basically
| vertical, so if you aren't directly next to it, it isn't
| obvious that the ejecta will spread out a little, and that
| doesn't happen for a couple of seconds. So if you aren't
| right next to it, it initially doesn't seem unsafe.
|
| Also, you are likely to visit this area before Old Faithful,
| so the most you will have seen is some steam going up. My
| visit was the first time I'd ever seen a geyser, so I would
| have had no idea what to expect, and presumably the boardwalk
| is in a safe location. If it were unsafe, they wouldn't have
| built the boardwalk there, right? (And it doesn't seem like
| anyone was injured, so...)
| beejiu wrote:
| Most people are familiar with "fight or flight", but there's a
| third response which is "freeze". That's probably what you are
| seeing in the video.
| bloopernova wrote:
| There's also "Fawn". i.e. play along in the hope you don't
| get hurt.
| paxys wrote:
| Pulling out your phone and hitting record doesn't quite
| qualify as "freeze".
| datavirtue wrote:
| The default is freeze, or trip and fall.
| mycodendral wrote:
| I felt the same way when watching the Trump Assn. attempt. The
| number of people in the stands who just remained standing and
| gawking with no self preservation instinct (duck!) was eerie.
| odyssey7 wrote:
| Agreed: don't end up like Lot's wife.
| sebastiennight wrote:
| Someday close to the Dead Sea we'll find Edith's clay tablet
| with what would have been the ultimate TikTok video of an
| epic rain of fire
| swatcoder wrote:
| It's a big boardwalk feature at a high-profile park and sees
| hundreds of visitors a day with vanishingly rare incident. It
| triggers the same kind of passive trust that people bring with
| them to Disneyland or a dinner theater, where guests default to
| thinking everything is part of the show and needn't warrant
| actual concern. It's the same reason people get too close to
| the wildlife there.
|
| It's thoughtful of you to encourage people here to be more
| vigilant, but the lack of that vigilance is a direct outcome of
| the park trying to culture an experience of safety and wonder
| instead of danger and awe (in its traditional meaning).
| freedomben wrote:
| Exactly. It's very well developed and seems an incredibly
| "safe" environment. People aren't in the mindset that there
| could be danger (even if they should be).
|
| It takes processing time before people even realize that this
| isn't normal. Also there's social proof all over. When it
| goes off people look around, see that nobody else is bailing,
| so they assume things are ok. It takes a little time to
| override that tendency and get people to start moving.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "People aren't in the mindset that there could be danger
| (even if they should be)."
|
| This could be said of life generally. It seems like very
| few people even have a minimal level of situational
| awareness while walking to the mailbox or walking through a
| store.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| And having that situational awareness at all times can
| easily result in exhaustion.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Not really. There are different levels of situational
| awareness. One doesn't have to be on high alert. Just
| being alert enough that you hear a pallet jack coming
| down the cross aisle is more alert than half the people
| seem to be.
| xattt wrote:
| As GP said, it's hard to maintain that situational
| awareness on a constant basis.
|
| However, it may be prudent to tune in when you are in a
| new environment or you hear a new sound in an environment
| you're used to.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "or you hear a new sound"
|
| What you've just described _is_ situational awareness.
|
| Maintaining condition yellow "relaxed awareness" should
| not be hard to do at all.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| Maintaining any level of vigilance is still more
| exhausting than maintaining none at all, even if at some
| personal level you believe it shouldn't be hard to do.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| And insensitivity. That's why we put one person on guard
| so everyone else can go 'shields-down'. Dangerous
| situation requires an assigned responsible person whose
| job is to be heads-up for that time and empowered to
| raise alarms, order people back etc. I guess if this is
| some kind of "nature spectacle theme park" you need
| someone permanently around who is an expert on the
| situation and knows when to call it.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > minimal level of situational awareness
|
| "People don't pay for things they don't plan on using."
|
| > while walking to the mailbox or walking through a
| store.
|
| Traditionally _not_ dangerous activities.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Being near, or crossing, streets are traditionally
| dangerous. There are plenty of lawsuits from people
| getting hurt in stores every year. People who think they
| don't need to pay attention to what's around them in
| those situations are just ignorant.
| freitzkriesler2 wrote:
| Doesn't matter. People need to wake TF up. Even Disney world
| can be dangerous. I know the NPC meme is dehumanizing but FFS
| people make it so hard sometimes.
| mindslight wrote:
| At least when I last visited Yellowstone, the place was full
| of signs and stories about how people have died (and IIRC,
| their bodies were never recovered) from trying to swim in the
| colorful fun-looking pools of water, or from kids and pets
| wandering off. I don't know what else they could do to add
| more "danger and awe" apart from planning on having some
| sacrificial tourists every day. People are just generally bad
| at perceiving or respecting abstract danger.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Never walk alone.
| mindslight wrote:
| I'm not sure if you're commenting on Yellowstone
| specifically, national parks and wild areas in general,
| or simply the everpresent risk from our heads being ~6ft
| above the ground and kept aloft by one hell of an
| inverted pendulum problem.
| krisoft wrote:
| But that also adds to the same effect! Their moral is to
| stay on the boardwalk and don't stray off from it. Their
| morale is to look out for your kids and pets that they do
| the same. Which equates boardwalks with safety. Which, as
| an approximation is kinda true. But then something like
| this happens which undermines the assumptions under that
| approximation and if you are still using it as a heuristics
| you can be in trouble.
|
| > People are just generally bad at perceiving or respecting
| abstract danger.
|
| Maybe? But also, all the yellowstones hydrothermal features
| look like the gods have cursed the land. If you were just
| galavanting through the forest and you come up seeing that
| without any prior knowledge or park rangers to assure you
| you would say "oh, hell no" and you would turn around. The
| park cultivates a sense of safety otherwise it wouldn't be
| a park.
| mindslight wrote:
| > _If you were just galavanting through the forest and
| you come up seeing that without any prior knowledge or
| park rangers to assure you you would say "oh, hell no"
| and you would turn around_
|
| I think you're assuming much more individualism in the
| primitive dynamic than actually existed. As I said,
| individual humans are terrible at judging danger. There
| was an article posted a few days back about collapses
| while trenching for construction, and the difficulties of
| getting people to take that risk seriously until it
| actually happens.
|
| So at the state you're envisioning, I'd say it's more
| like others in your tribe telling you to stay away from
| those weird holes in the ground, because some tribe
| members had already been killed by them. And the
| contemporary dynamic is more like an extreme scaling up
| of that, with a much more nuanced understanding of the
| dangerous mechanisms.
| slg wrote:
| >It's a big boardwalk feature at a high-profile park and sees
| hundreds of visitors a day with vanishingly rare incident.
|
| It is also important to consider the context of the park
| itself. Roughly half of the world's known geysers are in
| Yellowstone. One of the primary reasons to go there is to see
| all the hydrothermal features. It is easy to watch this video
| from your laptop and _know_ it is dangerous, but if you saw
| this explosion an hour after seeing this[1], the danger would
| likely be much less obvious.
|
| [1] - https://www.youtube.com/shorts/L5a0zinKGA8
| jaza wrote:
| Similar issue was at play in the 2019 Whakaari / White Island
| eruption in New Zealand (which, sadly - unlike today's
| Yellowstone explosion - caused numerous deaths and serious
| injuries). The visitors were made to feel safer than they
| actually were. The tour operators were complacent, and were
| later found negligent of having an inadequate safety regimen
| in place. Too much trust, too little vigilance, human memory
| too woefully short compared to geological event timescales.
| xyst wrote:
| If it erupted as per your hypothetical, then they wouldn't have
| stood a chance anyways. Video wouldn't exist because the
| headline would read as "Dozen of tourists died at Yellowstone
| due to sudden eruption"
|
| I think we underestimate people's reaction to dangerous events.
| Surprisingly, most people will appropriately respond.
|
| Millions of years of evolution, right?
| voisin wrote:
| The same could be said of how many people barely reacted to the
| shooting in the Trump assassination attempt. For god's sake, if
| someone is firing, hit the deck!
| nashashmi wrote:
| There is a funny meme About this: cameraman never dies.
| sebastiennight wrote:
| Disaster movie directors hate this one simple trick!
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| People are overly comfy and out of touch with reality.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| this, I feel like a lot of people are just so abstracted away
| from harsh reality in the modern world that many don't take
| things seriously. Massive normalcy bias and enhanced
| bystander effect. A lot of people's first instinct is to pull
| out their phone and record something as well
| jarsin wrote:
| Ever since I watched that documentary on the steam volcano
| eruption that killed all those tourist in New Zealand I would
| never go near anything steam related coming out of the ground.
| metadat wrote:
| If you check out the video
| (https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z64etOuLZDQ), most people did in
| fact immediately begin running and urging others to do the
| same.
|
| I appreciate your concern for folks' safety, though I'm not
| sure how the criticism applies to this instance. The bystanders
| behaved reasonably.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| Did you watch the whole thing? Skip to the 1:15 mark where
| people go back. The criticism is absolutely warranted here. I
| guarantee none of those people are capable of predicting what
| comes next after an explosion like that. I certainly don't.
| What if the next one is beneath where they're standing at the
| 1:15 mark and beyond?
|
| I'm not sure how OP's comment doesn't reflect HN's standard
| of quality. It's exactly the type of quality response that's
| appropriate for this instance. I'd say your response isn't
| quite up to it if anything because you're making an argument
| against someone that is encouraging safety and well-being;
| and for no apparent reason at all but to point out someone is
| flawed? I don't get it.
| metadat wrote:
| After it stopped and no additional material was being
| expelled, they do go back to look. Not recommended, but how
| often are big eruptions followed by even bigger eruptions?
|
| Are you saying they should've run away from the park for
| the entire rest of the day or trip?
|
| See @Saurik's sibling comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41051381
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| Three simple facts here: 1) This is obviously abnormal
| enough for the people in the video to flee 2) the
| aftermath - (1:15+) - clearly demonstrates it was unsafe
| to be there and 3) there is no way to predict if the next
| eruption would be equally abnormal or worse unless one
| were trained in this field
|
| There is no arguing those facts, it's 100% clear from
| that video you linked. Am I going to stay away from the
| park the rest of the day? I don't know, maybe. It really
| depends on the circumstances. I am not a volcanologist.
| I'm not even a scientist. I don't understand the
| specifics involved here. If it were me, and I can clearly
| see something abnormal happened, I would NOT risk going
| back unless I can somehow verify it was safe to do so.
| That's common sense. It might involve finding a park
| ranger to speak with or calling the ranger station to get
| more information. I've been to the geyser at Iceland
| where they have signs that explicitly tell you about the
| unpredictable nature of it and how people have been badly
| burned. This is not a no-risk situation, especially when
| the situation is not the norm.
|
| I've been to the big island of Hawaii during volcanic
| activity and they explicitly tell you to stay away from
| it due to the gasses, rocks, lava, etc. Maybe that
| elevates my skepticism over the safety here, but it seems
| that's for good reason.
|
| EDIT: here you go mate, you don't need to look at Hacker
| News comments. Take it from the Park itself:
|
| https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/news/240723.htm
|
| > Biscuit Basin, including the parking lot and
| boardwalks, are temporarily closed for safety reasons.
| The Grand Loop Road remains open.
|
| > Park staff and staff from USGS will monitor conditions
| and reopen the area once deemed safe.
| oxygen_crisis wrote:
| > how often are big eruptions followed by even bigger
| eruptions?
|
| Quite often, I'd say.
|
| Disruptions in the stability of geological processes
| frequently have a compounding domino effect... a volcanic
| eruption is often preceded by the opening of smaller
| vents, small landslides can trigger large landslides,
| small sinkholes can suddenly develop large ones, a
| trickle over a levee can turn into a total breach, most
| M>7.0 earthquakes have foreshocks...
|
| You can't tell where the peak severity will be in a
| cluster of geological events except in hindsight after
| the entire cluster is passed.
| jquery wrote:
| >how often are big eruptions followed by even bigger
| eruptions?
|
| Extremely often. Just like earthquakes, the #1 predictor
| of a big quake is a smaller quake shortly before.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=993wlZ6XFSs (not an
| eruption, but eruptions are a type of explosion)
|
| Another - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNJ2Z6hrCPc
|
| There's no way to know if you're dealing with that until
| after the fact. A lot of the gawkers taking video ended
| up with serious injuries (not sure they all survived,
| some of those videos are quite close in retrospect)
| aaron695 wrote:
| > What if the next one is beneath where they're standing at
| the 1:15 mark and beyond?
|
| Looks to me like they are forced to walk back to get home.
| A couple of people are dawdling, otherwise it's an exit. Do
| you want to disagree and OSINT it?
|
| Map to get started - https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bisc
| uit+Basin+Geyser/@44.4...
|
| I don't want to argue with dumb nerds flipping out brain
| farts. Have you thought about it from the safety of your
| own home and felt like they actually went back in that
| video or is this thread a waste of time?
|
| Under your "anywhere could explode" "theory" you'd be
| getting angry if they sheltered in place and waited for
| helicopters.
|
| HN is why women don't like men anymore, sitting around
| circle jerking about being irrationally afraid of stuff
| that hasn't and won't happen to them. How will they ever
| do... public speaking?
| saurik wrote:
| I honestly can't tell which part you think wasn't normal. Other
| people have kind of poked back at what you are saying, but I
| feel without really questioning which part of this you don't
| like, as it kind of sounds as if you are just saying "don't
| hang around near geysers... and, thereby, don't go to visit
| Yellowstone".
|
| If you saw this same video but without the black color, would
| you have run? Because that would feel a bit silly to me: these
| kinds of explosions are happening all around you the entire
| time you are there. Some are even larger than this one, and you
| don't just stay as they happen: you sit on a bench and wait for
| an hour or two hoping to see it while you are there, and there
| are giant clocks trying to estimate when the next eruption will
| be.
|
| Now like, what if the color were grey and there was mud? Some
| of the geysers have mud. Most of these are not a concern. What
| was a concern here was the black color... but as someone who
| has spent a bunch of time filming these geysers I found the
| black color so _confusing_ that it really took me a moment to
| go "oh shit those are rocks". I could easily see myself having
| that pause we see from the other people before they all start
| running.
|
| But, again: I don't feel like you are saying "these people
| should know rocks are dangerous" or "this was obviously
| different and you should be informed and on your toes ready to
| run"... you seem to be saying that, if you were standing
| somewhere and the ground suddenly exploded that you'd _of
| course_ run; and, maybe that would be the absolute safest thing
| you could do, but then... why are you even there in the first
| place, if not to see an explosion of superheated steam?
|
| Also, remember that the entire region seriously smells like
| sulfur and other strange gases... this is an area of terrain
| that people have long ago artistically (maybe even
| mythologically) described as the doorway to hell, between the
| smells, the color, the explosions, and the regions of trees
| that are either scorched, petrified, or merely poisoned. It
| honestly does make sense to question why people visit such an
| area in the first place, but once you decide to be there...
| well, it seems strange to question why you don't see everyone
| panicking about the explosion.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| I've seen people at Yellowstone pet bison and surround grizzly
| moms walking with their cubs for a quick photo op. I don't
| think a lot of these people have a real concept of nature and
| the unlimited ways it can kill or permanently injure you.
| jayknight wrote:
| You see all kinds of things splashing and shooting out of the
| ground at Yellowstone. It would be easy to initially assume
| this is just another splashy thing you normally see. From the
| videos it seems people figure out this isn't the norm in about
| the right amount of time.
| doe_eyes wrote:
| It's really easy to offer advice like that on the internet, but
| having found myself in a couple of unexpectedly dangerous
| situations in real life... it just happens. You're not as
| rational as you think you are. I keep going back to these
| situations and thinking how I should have acted differently,
| but it's not how your brain works at the time - not unless you
| train for it beforehand.
|
| Even on a conscious level, this advice just doesn't work. If
| you duck for cover because a nearby car misfires, you're gonna
| get mocked or worse. Modern life gives as far more
| opportunities to overreact than to underreact to risk, so to
| appear rational and function in a society, we learn not to be
| too jumpy.
| stouset wrote:
| This isn't a car misfiring. This is a large eruption of tens
| of feet in front of you. Even primed to anticipate geysers,
| this needs be setting off alarm bells. The quicker you can
| assess danger and override your social instincts that
| minimize your response in a situation like this, the more
| likely you are to survive.
|
| Yes it's easy to armchair quarterback. I have no idea if I
| would perform any better than those in the video. But we
| should all aim to respond more accurately when in actual
| danger.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _I 'm astonished by how blase onlookers are about the whole
| thing_ When people are in groups, they make
| decisions about risk differently from when they are alone.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupshift
|
| > _please don 't be like the people in the video_
| A person is less likely to take responsibility for action or
| inaction when other bystanders or witnesses are present.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility
| gensym wrote:
| About a year ago, I was in the United Club at O'Hare, and the
| fire alarm went off. I was getting a Bloody Mary when it
| happened, so I left my drink on the bar, went to the table
| where my family was, and said "let's go". Other than the sound
| of the alarm, you wouldn't know anything was happening. People
| were still getting food from the buffet, sitting at their
| tables, like nothing was going on.
|
| A minute after we left the area, everyone else came out - not
| all willingly, it seems. Fortunately, the fire turned out to be
| nothing (flare up in the kitchen, I heard) and we were let back
| into the club after a bit. I learned quite a bit about human
| nature that day.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| A life time of fire drills teaches everybody that a fire
| alarm is just some box tickers way of pointlessly
| interrupting your day to confirm that nobody has forgotten
| how to walk out of a fire exit. You can pretty safely bet
| your life that nothing bad is happening.
| lmm wrote:
| Meh. It takes an incredibly fine-tuned level of danger for run
| vs jog to make a difference.
| pants2 wrote:
| Looks like it would be difficult to run in this scenario where
| you're confined to a narrow wooden platform. You'd either have
| to start shoving people off or risk burning your feet in the
| ground below.
| compiler-devel wrote:
| Adding this to my copypasta collection
| whyenot wrote:
| Are we watching the same video? The people in the video I saw
| turned and started running almost immediately.
| Keyframe wrote:
| Yeah, even away from (their own) kid. I am judging, but I
| haven't been in the situation. What I know is I couldn't live
| with that.
| dheera wrote:
| Unfortunately we have created a reward system that gives a huge
| number of "followers" to the one who records. Followers are
| capital that translate to money (cf. cougar guy, hawk tuah,
| etc.) Someone could be the next to monetize their following as
| the "yellowstone lava dude".
|
| Can we somehow instead create an socioeconomic system that
| instead rewards those that turn and run?
|
| Like if you can prove that you turned and ran, you don't have
| to pay taxes that year to the IRS.
|
| The government in turn saves money on rescue efforts of sorts.
| It all works out.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Unfortunately we have created a reward system that gives a
| huge number of "followers" to the one who records.
|
| What's unfortunate about that? Everyone else benefits from
| the recording.
| beardedwizard wrote:
| They had to go that way to get back to the parking lot. The
| alternative would be walking on the ground, which is even more
| dangerous and why the boardwalk exists.
|
| Every time I see posts like this admonishing people I am
| astonished by the apparent ego of the authors and the power of
| assumptions.
| stouset wrote:
| Nowhere in my post do I criticize the direction in which
| onlookers left the scene. My concern was the lack of urgency
| in their response.
| xattt wrote:
| In a similar vein, I've heard an old priest say that if you
| start seeing a supernatural phenomenon, including the second
| coming of Jesus, don't stick around.
| 0x1ceb00da wrote:
| Or it wasn't that big. It's hard to tell the actual scale of
| the explosion from a phone video.
| nilamo wrote:
| We will all die. But if a historic event can be captured on
| film, the event can be studied in greater detail. I'm all for
| people choosing to place their very lives at risk in order to
| further our scientific understanding of the universe.
| francisofascii wrote:
| Humans take risks all the time to fulfill our desire to explore
| or see wondrous things. Travelling to space for example. Maybe
| all the other intelligent life in the universe is prioritizing
| survival.
| racl101 wrote:
| I think I would've just ran and not kept looking back. Screw the
| chance to get a video from my phone.
| bugbuddy wrote:
| Yellowstone mass extinction event is exactly the curve ball no
| one expects for 2024.
| anthk wrote:
| Nah, the UFO comes first. As an European, Go, Nevada, Go!!!
| jaza wrote:
| Don't look down!
| metadat wrote:
| Direct link to the actual video (TFA "Play Button" image wasn't
| clickable for for me).
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z64etOuLZDQ
| munchler wrote:
| That's actually a slightly different video from the one in the
| article, which is
| https://www.facebook.com/1288518484/videos/465839182979896/
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| this one shows the explosion as well!
| metadat wrote:
| Thanks for pointing this out, else I might not have seen
| it! Really cool.
| pimlottc wrote:
| You can actually see the person filming the FB video you
| posted in the YouTube video!
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| warning for the annoying screaming you're about to endure.
| there's not much sound for the geyser so you may as well just
| mute.
| CorpOverreach wrote:
| It saddens me that we've normalized the recording of vertical
| videos. There'll be so many more historical events caught on
| video... but it's now so much more likely that it'll be a
| vertical video. :(
| tamimio wrote:
| To be fair, the vertical recording here fits the context.
| Also, the fact that the recorder held the camera steady and
| kept the content within the frame is great by itself. A lot
| of times, you end up with shaky, useless footage.
| usefulcat wrote:
| > To be fair, the vertical recording here fits the context.
|
| Briefly, near the beginning. But not for the rest of the
| video.
|
| If you're watching a video on a phone, it's trivial to
| rotate the phone 90 degrees. On a TV or computer, not so
| much, so you end up with a ridiculous amount of wasted
| screen real estate and objectively inferior image
| resolution.
| xvector wrote:
| The primary modality through which most people experience
| media today is their phones, so vertical video is just
| fine.
| archerx wrote:
| Vertical video is never fine.
| ddalex wrote:
| Isn't this a technological choice though? Cameras are
| sufficiently advanced nowadays so it's possible to take
| horizontal video while keeping the phone vertical, so
| it's just a software feature away (at the expense of
| horizontal resolution), or hw feature away (at the
| expense of a device internal gimbal)
| rhplus wrote:
| You'd need square sensors, not an internal moving gimbal,
| so manufacturers would be left with a choice: should the
| square fit the circle or the circle fit the square? The
| first would lower quality and the second would increase
| costs and add wasted pixels (vignette).
| ddalex wrote:
| Aren't all sensors square already (well 4:3, or 3:2) ,
| and fitting the circle ?
| rhplus wrote:
| No, 4:3 is not a square.
|
| I found a discussion on the topic here[*]. The consensus
| seems to be that "wasted" sensor area outside the circle
| would not be marketable.
|
| https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/109452/is-
| there-an...
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| It's not a technological choice, at least not at the
| level of camera design. It's trivial to record videos the
| right way; people just can't be arsed.
|
| Suppose you implement horizontal recording while the
| phone is vertical; this would mean the _video preview_ is
| now scaled and takes only a fraction of the screen (the
| same way watching horizontal video on YouTube while in
| "portrait mode"), which people would find annoying.
|
| Alternatively, you could _not scale_ the video; now the
| video preview displays only a vertical slice of the
| frame. It looks OK, but people would soon discover the
| actual video _a screen 's worth of image on each side of
| the preview_, leading to anxiety and worry - people would
| have pay extra attention to not capture things that
| weren't intended to be on the video; they'd soon look for
| a way to turn this off.
|
| The unfortunate reality is, it's a social problem
| partially caused by a technological one. Vertical videos
| are driven by the phone form-factor _and_ because
| portraits and selfies actually need to be vertical, and
| people being people, shooting photos of themselves and
| other is what they care about the most.
| ddalex wrote:
| So this comment and the sibling mentioning square sensors
| raise some good points. Let me rephrase the technological
| challenge: Make all phone screens square. All phones are
| now squares. Use Generative AI to fill in the sides of
| non-square screens. Problem solved. I think I need to
| make this an AI photo startup.
| esskay wrote:
| For amateur footage it's absolutely fine, especially in
| this instance where it's actually a benefit. Nobodys
| advocating for vertical movies or tv shows.
|
| There's far better things to focus false internet
| collective outrage at.
| baq wrote:
| Vertical video is perfectly fine if the device on which
| it is played back on has a vertical screen. _Never_ is
| very out of place here.
| immibis wrote:
| And that's the vast majority of devices that are used to
| watch videos. "Vertical video is never fine" stems from
| the good old days of PCs with monitors. In these phone
| days, according to the same logic, horizontal video is
| never fine.
| ryankrage77 wrote:
| But the phone can easily be rotated to landscape, so
| landscape has wider compatability.
| falcolas wrote:
| If, and only if, the application supports it.
| Frustratingly, not all do, so you're stuck with the
| biggest black bars framing a microscopic landscape video.
|
| Contrast with a monitor, where it will at least be
| viewable vertically, even if it too only fills a portion
| of the monitor horizontally.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| For something you want to capture immediately, the amount
| of time it takes for the phone's accelerometer to decide
| you have rotated it is already too long.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| Vertical video and picture is fine when the thing you're
| capturing is vertical, eg a person or something shooting
| into the air
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| Rotating a phone 90 degrees is trivial and takes a
| fraction of a second. Rotating a computer monitor 90
| degrees is a pain at the best of times. Rotating a laptop
| 90 degrees makes it unusable. Rotating a television 90
| degrees probably requires a toolkit and an assistant.
| Which of these adaptations seems more reasonable?
| KronisLV wrote:
| For people who don't use computers and TVs much, no
| adaptation probably makes the most sense. There's a
| surprising amount of people out there who are mostly just
| on their phones nowadays, plus I'm pretty much sure large
| platforms like TikTok and YouTube Shorts and such also
| pander to that format.
| lynx23 wrote:
| TVs and Computers are a boomer thing :-) Still alive, but
| almost dead...
| greenish_shores wrote:
| "Mainstream" (as opposed, to, say, amateur SSTV) video
| broadcasting, aka TV, is definitely very obsolete and too
| elitist in implementation to even get me "onboard". Not a
| second of interesting content per day for me there. But
| you know that you couldn't have written this comment
| without a computer? Regardless of its form-factor...
| MattRix wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of views also come
| from people viewing vertical screens, so it kind of makes
| sense? I personally have started to prefer the vertical
| format for certain kinds of videos, especially when viewing
| them on my phone... so I've also started taking more vertical
| videos with my phone.
| avz wrote:
| Phones can easily be oriented either way, unlike most
| laptop and workstation screens.
|
| Majority of views certainly come from people whose eyes are
| horizontally next to each other and therefore whose field
| of view has a greater extent in the horizontal rather than
| vertical direction.
|
| Admittedly I don't understand where the vertical recording
| fad comes from. Personally I take pictures and photos that
| are almost exclusively horizontal except in rare cases like
| taking a picture of a very tall building.
| basil-rash wrote:
| Or... a geyser? Kinda the one thing absolutely known for
| going up and down.
| jaza wrote:
| I assume that the vertical recording fad primarily comes
| from:
|
| 1. the people doing the recording being too lazy to
| rotate their phones, and/or the people doing the
| recording catering to the lowest common denominator of
| expecting viewers to be too lazy to rotate their phones;
|
| 2. so many "influencer" and related videos these days
| consisting solely of the narrator's face being right in
| front of the camera, which makes for vertical being the
| optimal orientation, due to the human face being taller
| than it is wide (hence the term "portrait orientation"!).
|
| I also hate it, and I also still shoot almost all my
| photos and videos in horizontal / landscape orientation.
| I guess that makes me old.
| floating-io wrote:
| IMO, it's also because vertical orientation is
| effectively the default on a phone.
|
| Nobody expects to have to turn their video camera
| sideways to capture in the "correct" orientation... but
| you must on a phone.
| lynx23 wrote:
| Well, I used to want to do photos/videos in landscape
| mode. Until I learnt the hard way that orientation
| detection is not very reliable on (at least the older)
| iPhones. Had my share of "come on, turn 90 degrees you
| useless thing" moments, until I gave up completely on
| wanting to reorient my phone. Since then, it has stayed
| in portray mode forever.
| notachatbot1234 wrote:
| Watching videos on phones, which "natively" have a
| vertical orientation, is pretty popular. I expect the
| majority of videos watched this way.
| xinayder wrote:
| For social media, vertical pictures and videos is
| preferred. Instagram adds some borders around your media
| if it's in landscape mode, same with TikTok, so the idea
| is to use vertical recording to not have added black bars
| around your media.
| bregma wrote:
| When you're taking a self-portrait it's easier to hold a
| phone vertically one-handed, your self image fits the
| screen better, and your followers are going to view it in
| portrait mode on TikTok anyway.
|
| When you go yo take a selfie of something other than your
| face, you just keep the habit.
| wruza wrote:
| I can't easily re-orient my phone when I'm laying (my
| main use circumstance) because then I have to hold it
| above my stomach awkwardly. Gets worse when it's
| charging. Can't put it because I'm fat enough for screen
| to "dive" and become obstructed. Vertical mode has no
| such issue.
|
| When I'm sitting, holding vertical feels natural, holding
| horizontal feels awkward again. I can put my hand on a
| lap and basically rest in vertical. High risk of dropping
| it in horizontal (and while rotating). Same for walking.
|
| I don't really see how you can do it "easily" apart from
| purely geometric considerations. I can rotate my PC
| display more easily cause it's arm-mounted (which is one
| of the PC life changers).
|
| _where the vertical recording fad comes from_
|
| Most popular content today is "person focus". People are
| vertical.
| metadat wrote:
| Being "saddened" by the dimensions of a recording of a
| potentially life changing scenario comes across as
| excessively pendantic.
|
| Your comment history demonstrates you are an exceptional
| human being who cares about human beings and the has
| humanities best interests at heart - which is inspiring and a
| really good sign. Cheers and best wishes @CorpOverreach.
| JaggedJax wrote:
| To be fair, a geyser is one of the better situations to film
| in vertical.
| m463 wrote:
| aren't our eyes spherical?
| DaoVeles wrote:
| Yes this is true, but we tend to favor horizontal
| information over height. Thus our eyes are horizontal. A
| decent rational would be because that would favor our
| survival since most things are pinned to this plane via
| gravity.
| jaza wrote:
| Yes, but there are two of them, and they're to the left and
| right of each other, not above and below each other.
| notachatbot1234 wrote:
| The subject is in a vertical orientation, so it is perfect
| and desirable that the original video has all its resolution
| dedicated to capturing the phenomenon in the best quality
| possible. A horizontal video would mean that there are less
| pixels on the subject matter.
| thanatos519 wrote:
| Even worse this video appears to have been padded to 16:9 so
| I can't fullscreen it properly on my phone on YouTube web or
| app.
| wruza wrote:
| Can't you pinch in? Double tap? Something like that should
| work, afair.
| VeejayRampay wrote:
| it's really sad that videos are recorded in the exact format
| that fits the medium used to read them :(
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| PSA: Vertical Video Syndrome
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dechvhb0Meo
| amw-zero wrote:
| What a weird thing to care about
| gosub100 wrote:
| It's a redditism
| whycome wrote:
| I mean, the action was happen vertically.
| buescher wrote:
| I grew up in the surrounding area. Tourists, and some locals,
| died every year, frequently at Yellowstone. Relevant Baudrillard
| quote:
|
| > Disneyland exists in order to hide that it is the "real"
| country, all of "real" America that is Disneyland (a bit like
| prisons are there to hide that it is the social in its entirety,
| in its banal omnipresence, that is carceral). Disneyland is
| presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest
| is real, whereas all of Los Angeles and the America that
| surrounds it are no longer real, but belong to the hyperreal
| order and to the order of simulation. It is no longer a question
| of a false representation of reality (ideology) but of concealing
| the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus of saving the
| reality principle.
| _wire_ wrote:
| Fantastic reference!
|
| More to enjoy...
|
| The Precession of Simulacra" by Jean Baudrillard, Translated
| from English into American by Sean Joseph Patrick Carney
|
| https://continentcontinent.cc/archives/issues/issue-2-2-2012...
| buescher wrote:
| If you've been socialized not to really believe anything is
| really real, and your life is mostly spent in social
| modulation, physical danger that doesn't register immediately
| with the hindbrain can really trip you up.
|
| I know of a scenic overlook someone falls off every couple of
| years, going well back before the smartphone selfie era.
| istjohn wrote:
| Thanks for the reminder to check out the book Death in
| Yellowstone. According to Randall Munroe it's quite a read.
| sharpshadow wrote:
| I've heard that a very big explosion ontop of the Yellowstone
| expanding magma bubble could burst it with devastating
| consequences.
|
| Is something like this realistic and considered in national
| security?
| chx wrote:
| At least for the next 2500 presidential cycles or so the
| chances of the Yellowstone Supervolcano erupting is considered
| quite low. We have some understanding of the physics involved,
| there's not enough lava and magma in the chambers currently for
| such an eruption. Even if a previously unseen phenomenon
| started to rapidly fill those, rapidly on a geological scale is
| still measured in thousands of years.
|
| Also, similar things like "the Big One is due in the Northwest"
| are just sensational headlines. The Cascadia Subduction Zone
| indeed produces earthquakes every 3-500 years and the last one
| was in 1700 but that doesn't mean there's an equivalent of a
| hourglass. It just means there's a historical average of that.
|
| And it's the concern of FEMA to act after something like this
| happens, not a matter of national security. National security
| concern, I imagine, would involve defusing these via some
| military ways and defusing such events are far beyond the
| capability of humankind at this time.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| As explosions go, especially volcanic explosions, this was
| pretty tiny. Also I don't know where you're getting this idea
| of an "expanding magma bubble" that could "burst". There's
| magma chamber that is not to my knowledge changing size, and it
| can't really erupt at all right now. There's certainly no air
| inside it, unless you want to count dissolved gas in the magma.
| sharpshadow wrote:
| I mean an external explosion which triggers the burst of the
| magma bubble. For example L. Ron Hubbard speaks about it
| where Xenu does this. "Hydrogen bombs were then lowered into
| the volcanoes and detonated simultaneously, killing all but a
| few..."[1].
|
| 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu
| andrewflnr wrote:
| L. Ron Hubbard is one of the worst sources on volcanology I
| can imagine. Are you trolling?
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| It would probably take a sizeable nuke to have that kind of
| impact. And if someone is lobbing nukes at us, we have more
| immediate concerns that a potential volcanic eruption.
| sharpshadow wrote:
| But would it actually be possible to bring an volcano to
| errupt with a explosion? They don't remove a lot of soil
| layers as far as I understand.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I doubt that it is even possible. I was pointing out that
| in that scenario, the last thing to be worried about is an
| eruption.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I doubt that it is even possible. I was pointing out that
| in that scenario, the last thing to be worried about is an
| eruption.
| consf wrote:
| The importance of respecting and understanding the natural forces
| at work in geothermal areas
| Bluescreenbuddy wrote:
| The survival instincts of a bag of rocks.
| randomtoast wrote:
| What is the estimated TNT equivalent of this explosion based on
| what we can see in this video?
| tonetegeatinst wrote:
| Expert scientist here. The estimated TNT equivalent is about
| tree fitty
| gosub100 wrote:
| 5 millitons
| EchoReflection wrote:
| archived version:https://web.archive.org/web/20240723212115/https
| ://www.jhnew...
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