the corner office

Sheesh...

Yellowstone National Park sits on top of a supervolcano. It's active, causing parts of the area to rise and shift, scientists calculate that it's over 30,000 years past its expected eruption date, and when it blows, our planet isn't going to be a fun place to be:

We have absolutely nothing to compare it to. The biggest blast in recent times was that of Krakatau in Indonesia in August 1883, which made a bang that reverberated around the world for nine days, and made water slosh as far away as the English Channel. But if you imagine the volume of material ejected from Krakatau as being about the size of a golf ball, then the biggest of the Yellowstone blasts would be the size of a sphere you could just about hide behind. On this scale, Mount St. Helen's would be no more than a pea.

It's estimated that only a few thousand human beings survived the last supervolcano eruption, some 74,000 years ago. More interesting detail and links at The Agitator.