put a huge circular dike around yellowstone park, fill with water, lake yellowstone, you lose a beautiful park, but maybe save the human race for the billions of tons of water will possibly keep the hatch on this pressure cooker and prevent catastroph of biblical proportions from happening....

If the caldera blows anyway, the 45 degrees sloped and concrete plated dikes will reflect schokwave upward and the water catch many fine dust that otherwise would put earth in dark nuclear winter like conditions.

Put some windmills on top of the high dikes to make some good use of the elevated windspeed during peacetime, perhaps the lake could be coupled with the windmills for pumped storage / peak grid usage buffer.

Develope fish farms and watersports...
-- jvanguts, May 24 2006

bold scope and scale + green energy + mentions explosions + on edge of feasibility + offends huge numbers of people by destroying something considered important = my bun. in this case only.

better yet, open it up for geothermal powerplant development.
-- sninctown, May 24 2006


The presence of large amounts of water does not seem to have prevented cataclysmic explosions at various other hot spots around the world.

I don't think there is any solution to this other than living on the seacoasts well away from Yellowstone. Oh, wait, I forgot about the rising sea levels and the hurricanes.

Btw, your numbers are off. The last three caldera explosions went off 600,000 and 900,000 years apart. So even past history was a guide to future performance, we are not quite overdue. But three instances are not enough to be any kind of reliable guide.
-- DrCurry, May 24 2006


Well, this _is_ a case of selling the sizzle. +
-- reensure, May 24 2006


Get off that volcano, you freaking dike!
-- EvilPickels, May 24 2006



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