Distinctly Montana Magazine

w w w . d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m 33 T HE BLAST IS UNTHINKABLE, IMPOSSIBLE TO UNDER- STAND IN HUMAN TERMS. Still, there are some who are far enough away that they have a moment to try. They can see a flash that overtakes the horizon, and then for a moment, they see a black streak rising into space. The scale of it is enormous beyond reckoning. Their mind searches for anything that will help them to understand what they're looking at. It is some- thing no other humans on the planet have ever seen. Even before the sound of the blast can reach Ennis, White- hall, Bozeman Livingston, Jackson, Cody and Gardiner, those folks are instantaneously cooked alive by a pyroclas- tic flow, a mixture of superheated gas, water, debris, lava and ash also known as a lahar. The volcanic hurricane travels downslope from the initial blast at speeds ap- proaching 1,000 mph and destroys any structure standing in its way. Then comes the sound, one of the most booming and clamorous ever to occur on the Earth, and many, many times louder than the eruption of Krakatau, the previ- ous record-holder for loudest recorded sound. Myriad eardrums, human and otherwise, burst as the sound of the blast travels for thousands and thousands of miles in every direction. But first, anything within the limits of the park is, essentially, atomized. Every living thing, from the smallest blade of grass to the most ferocious grizzly, is quite literally vaporized as the magma chamber under Yellowstone empties in a series of explosions considerably larger than any explosion ever wrought by man. The explosion at Mt. St. Helens, North America's most significant and famous volcanic event in the twentieth century, exploded with the force of 500 of the bombs dropped on Hiro- shima. The blast at Yellowstone is 2,000 times the size of even that eruption. The magma chamber being empty, the entire area on top of it, or what hasn't been instantly obliterated, falls into the resulting cavern, creating a caldera nearly fifty-five miles across. The ejected magma, an unthinkably immense volume of liquid basalt, is 600 cubic miles of material—the equivalent of filling a cube that measures eight miles along every edge. The magma may reach into the atmosphere before falling and blanketing an area the size of Connecticut in red-hot lava 500 feet deep. Up in the clouds of ash, there are hypnotic, frighteningly beautiful flashes as additional explosions, igniting gas, and thunder- storms form in the tumult. Aside from that, the sky is as black— blacker, perhaps, than night. Ash has entered the atmosphere and begun to spread, blot- ting out the sun for the majority of the United States before reaching Europe, Asia Minor, the Far East, and finally the entire globe. In the weeks and months to follow, the Earth will enter a long volcanic winter. Even in tropical climes, the average tem- perature will go down by as many as ten degrees. Viewed from one perspective, the people killed in the first blast and resulting lahars are lucky, because the volcano will proceed, over hours, months and days, to change the lives of every living human on the planet. Volcanic winter results in paltry, if not nonexistent, crop yields. Ash blankets the entire western United States, and cities like Missoula or Billings must dig themselves out of a dozen feet of ash as they would a nightmarish blizzard. The ash is ultra-ab- sorbent, drying up or reducing to mud any bodies of waters for hundreds of miles. In fact, for most of the people unlucky enough to survive, ash is what will get them in the end. Ash clogs the engines of jets in the air. The volume of ash is so great that the plane cannot escape it, and the engines, flooded with ash, can no longer ignite. They stall. Planes drop to Earth. Ash clogs generators and machinery. Nothing works: no engines turn over, not without incredible labor devoted to what would have taken just moments before. As a result, those outside the initial blast but close enough to be under ash starve after the initial reserves of food are spent— even if cities in the East are able to keep their supply lines open, they are unable to fly or drive those supplies to affected areas. The best bet are small teams of people making the trek on foot, carrying what they are able, but the benefits of such expedi- tions, compared to the cost, are likely prohibitive. Millions of people and animals across North America will be exposed to extremely heightened amounts of poisons like flu- orine and sulfur hydroxide. The exposure to fluorine short-cir- cuits the body's ability to construct new bones. Millions develop a condition that casues their bones start to develop rough AIRPLANE ENGINES STALL OUT! ASH!

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