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Re:Supervolcano Campi Flegrei Stirs Under Naples Italy by f_allwein on Monday January 02, 2017 @03:29AM (#13299818)
As Michio Kaku said, "Any advanced civilization must grow in energy consumption faster than the frequency of life-threatening catastrophes (e.g. meteor impacts, ice ages, supernovas, etc.). If they grow any slower, they are doomed to extinction." ( http://mkaku.org/home/articles/the-physics-of-extraterrestri... ).

Any guesses how far we are from being able to control volcanoes so that they would not pose a threat? Too far, I would guess.

Re:Supervolcano Campi Flegrei Stirs Under Naples Italy by adrianN on Monday January 02, 2017 @07:26AM (#13300759)
I don't think we have actually tried anything like that, but people have thought about the problem. Possible engineering avenues include drilling relief holes to reduce pressure, siphoning heat with geothermal energy plants and inducing eruptions using explosives. It seems like making volcanoes safer is doable with concentrated research effort, but currently nobody wants to pay for it. I guess that'll change after Naples is destroyed.
Re:Supervolcano Campi Flegrei Stirs Under Naples Italy by marcosdumay on Monday January 02, 2017 @11:52AM (#13302279)
It should be possible to make siphoning the heat away lucrative, instead of an expense.

I really don't know how much heat we are talking about (still, I don't think migrating all aluminum plants into above the supervolcanos would be enough), but it is not the kind of thing we should count as expense.

Re:Supervolcano Campi Flegrei Stirs Under Naples Italy by tajen on Monday January 02, 2017 @04:46AM (#13300158)
Add the Big One in SF, the 180ft tsunami of Vancouver, the global warming acceleration, the halt the Gulf Stream and the Yosemite explosion, and 2017 can be awesome. Or 5017, which is geological times is the same.
Re:Supervolcano Campi Flegrei Stirs Under Naples Italy by ewhanley on Monday January 02, 2017 @07:24AM (#13300750)
I think you mean Yellowstone rather than Yosemite.
Re:Supervolcano Campi Flegrei Stirs Under Naples Italy by goda90 on Monday January 02, 2017 @10:14AM (#13301536)
I think civilization's best hope would be that technology manages to keep a small group of people thriving without direct sunlight(for growing food) until the negative affects of the catastrophe are reduced by natural processes or geo-engineering. If we can setup systems that can provide energy without need of a large network of resources and manufacturing to maintain(nuclear with a stockpile, geothermal, robust wind turbines), then people could live on artificially lit agriculture for generations.
Re:Supervolcano Campi Flegrei Stirs Under Naples Italy by aaron695 on Monday January 02, 2017 @09:23PM (#13306169)
Volcanoes have never extincted all life, why are you worried they might extinct human life in the next million years?

If we haven't found out everything by then we never will.