In SpecOps: The Line the largest sandstorm in recorded history completely fucks up Dubai and transforms that global playground for billionaire oil sheikhs into the most expensive disaster zone in the world. You may be thinking, “that place is way far from here” and, “that sorta shit would never happen where I’m from,” au contraire. There’s a whole gamut of horrifying natural disasters itching to destroy America and interestingly, none are Russian nuclear warheads or dirty bombs made by Islamic fundamentalists. In fact, just like fictional Dubai, Mother Nature is going to give us some long overdue payback for years of unbridled industrial rape. Every week we’re going to look at one natural disaster waiting to happen, right here on American soil.
Yellowstone Caldera AKA America’s Favourite Supervolcano
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This might be the scariest shit of all time. Basically the entirety of Yellowstone National Park, the place where golden bears and majestic herds of buffalo roam free, is actually a slumbering megaton bowl of lava just waiting to explode. Imagine if that shitty baking soda volcano you made in third grade was actually the floor of your classroom and when it erupted it blew up the entire school then poisoned all the remaining survivors with insidious gas. Well that’s what Supervolcanoes do to the world and the most volatile one is in Wyoming, which unfortunately, is not some far off place you can’t pronounce.
It’s literally that big.
The Fallout
Besides potentially sending the world into another Ice Age, this thing is predicted to launch spewing lava way into the sky, creating unholy amounts of ash that would fan out into clouds and dump a layer of toxic soot ten feet deep and as far as a thousand cubic miles wide. Most of the U.S. would be uninhabitable from the colossal gas storms floating around leading to mass evacuations and general chaos. To give you some perspective, the Yellowstone Supervolcano is over a thousand times more powerful than that ridiculously named volcano in Iceland that went off in 2010, and everyone thought it was the apocalypse just because some planes were fucking grounded. Oppositely, this thing will probably wipe out modern existence.
It’s going to make this thing in Iceland look like a total pussy.
When the Yellowstone Caldera blows it’ll turn the world into a Cormac McCarthy novel with human meat farms, lots of lice, and Mad Max gangs stealing kids. Calling in the National Guard will be pointless, so start forming a militia or a squad of people you trust and wouldn’t mind eating if push comes to shove. Food resources would be eradicated, the sudden climate change would make hippies finally shut the fuck up about global warming, and water would be the new blow. At best you’ll be a starving refugee when this calamitous, subterranean, 400 mile deep lava vat, decides to burst.
When it’ll Happen:
Short answer–soon. Some specialists say it could erupt in three to four thousand years, but then again it could be next Tuesday. Outdated studies indicated that it took thousands of years for the magma pools to build enough pressure to explode, but a recent 2012 study says it could take as little as a hundred years. Since 2004 scientists have noticed a giant pulsating bulge at the floor of Yellowstone Lake, which sits right on top of the unpredictable lava reservoir. And whatever the hell that means it doesn’t take a geologist to figure out that it cannot be good. In other words, start hording canned soup and toxic ash-proof umbrellas.
One thing to look forward to in the post-apocalyptic world is fighting cannibals on a helicopter.
