Teleidoscope

Sun, Jun 03, 2007

Super Volcano

Posted at 5:27 pm MDT to Media

The Discovery channel went through a phase I call "all disasters, all the time" where they produced dramatizations of possible enormous future disasters: a worldwide flu epidemic worse than 1918, a killer blizzard hitting Toronto, tsunamis, earthquakes... I don't remember if they did one about a hurricane.

Today their HD channel re-ran "SuperVolcano", (originally from spring 2005, before Katrina) which is about the super-caldera in Yellowstone blowing up.

They admitted that they showed a worst case scenario as far as the eruption went. I think the movie's creators might have been surprised to find that what made it most unbelievable was protraying the heads of FEMA and Homeland Security as at least moderately competent and concerned. Since Katrina, it's hard to imagine the federal government handling any kind of emergency without making matters worse.

This is a sad and dangerous thing for our country.

Over on Making Light they have a thread on preparedness for hurricanes and other disasters. They mention a crank-operated radio available at Costco that also has a USB jack for charging cell phones. I may look into getting one of those, just in case of power outages. Otherwise, aside from probably being doomed if Yellowstone really blows, I'm in pretty good shape here for riding out disasters (as the past winter demonstrates)

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