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Question by Ted Mosby: yellowstone book question?
I am writing a book about the the yellowstone super volcano eruption. My plot includes a family surviving the eruption by going into a bomb shelter with another family, that has food for an entire year, and facilities and all that, specifically built for this cataclysmic event.

also, the shelter is in bozeman, montana, about 50 miles are so from yellowstone

please help

if not, and i’m positive the answer is no, they cannot survive, can you please dream up a scenario in which someone could survive that is along the lines of being remotely possible? obviously, my book is a fictional book but i would like to maintain some realistic aspects.

Thank you so much!
alright

so how do you feel if i include an advanced us military bunker designed specifically for this worst case scenario…..i would assume that they could survive if it was made specifically for this purse

thanks for your responses

Best answer:

Answer by Mark V
In the given worst case scenarios of a massive Yellowstone eruption, Bozeman would be under about 30 feet of solid (or at least cooling) basalt on top of their shelter. Then a very thick layer of ash on top of that. In a better case scenario, they would be right on the edge of the actual flood basalts themselves, but still covered over by many feet of ash that would rapidly weld itself into a near solid-rock consistency.

So unless they can dig themselves out of that… even just the ash… it’s implausible. Now, I’ll admit, I’m not an expert on Bozeman, but this is probably fairly accurate for one of the really big, cool volcanic scenarios.

Answer by NoPlate
From my reading there would *probably* not be basalt flows in a modern eruption. It would likely be explosive, like Mt. St. Helens on steroids. The last eruption killed hundreds of rhinos by burying them in ash *one thousand miles away*!

I’d move your shelter a lot further away. At just 50 miles the shock waves from a major explosion could easily cave in the shelter. And there’s the problem of breathing. An underground shelter would still need to pull in air from the outside. At 50 miles the air is likely to be so full of sulfur as to be poisonous. Expect the ashfall to cover the entire US to a thickness of several feet. If they are far enough away to avoid immediate death they could dig out fairly quickly and maintain a path to the surface through the ash. It will harden into a soft rock-like substance pretty quickly. If your family lives in a mountainous area they will have to be concerned about lahars – floods of hot mud – every time it rains for many years.

Answer by Daniel
http://scienceray.com/earth-sciences/geology/yellowstone-supervolcano-when-will-it-erupt/

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