Fun Cartoon Shows What Would Happen if a Nuke Hit Yellowstone

Living near Yellowstone is fun and educational. This cartoon is a great example of the kind of theories we get to hear on a somewhat regular basis. It wonders out loud what would happen if someone put a nuke in the super-volcano.

This is the question that the evil geniuses from The Infographics Show asked:

What would happen if we detonated a Nuke in Yellowstone Volcano?

The surprising answer is not much, but there's a catch. They estimate that if a nuke was dropped into one of the two magma chambers under Yellowstone, it's possible the magma could be vaporized and the heat COULD trigger an eruption, but it's not a certainty.

If somehow a nuke didn't detonate until it was actually inside the magma chamber instead of above, that would pose a bigger problem. It would likely cause all of the doomsday scenarios we've heard over and over about an ash cloud covering half of the United States, etc.

They also point out that even though bombing a volcano sounds like a dumb idea, it's been done before at Mauna Loa in Hawaii albeit with a non-nuclear bomb.

IFL Science provided a little more peace of mind mentioning that US nuke tests had little to no effect on nearby volcanoes. Whew. That was a close one.

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