Which do you prefer, Brazil, Argentina or Australia?

[Spaced_Out]

No bears, nor lions or tigers nor rattle snakes.

Yip no large predators so one can walk anywhere in safety, although wild dogs are becoming a problem in some areas. Australia is truly one of the safest places.

But but I would not use the 'snake' word, there is too much 'fake' media coverage about the gorgeous Aussie snakes..

[Rose Garden]

No bears, nor lions or tigers nor rattle snakes.

Let me see....bears, lions, tigers, and rattle snakes, or large spiders..... it's a toss up....

[Yahtzee]

=)) How dumb can you be.

But I'd pick Argentina. I've watched enough Discovery Channel to decide humans were not meant to live in Australia.

Evidently dumb enough to try and make a joke on LDSFF.

[brianj]

No bears, nor lions or tigers nor rattle snakes.

I'll take a western diamondback rattlesnake over an eastern brown snake any day. Rattlers will typically give an audible warning before striking a person.
I've been around bears. If there's a bear by the stream and you need to fill your canteen, unless it's a hungry grizzly or with cubs the bear will depart as you approach. Could I expect the same behavior from a Johnstone's Crocodile or should I expect to risk my life refilling a canteen?

[brianj]

I didn't feel it in Utah. And the reporter who wrote this story is a shameless fear monger. The epicenter of these quakes is about 175 miles from the Yellowstone caldera so there's no rational reason to link today's activity to Yellowstone. The only reason for doing so is to scare people so they share the story and his employer makes more advertising money off the page hits.

It is connected to the same fault system so movement in one area can affect other areas. It also indicates with all the other micro seismic events that have occurred leading up to the recent multi-decade medium quake is symptomatic of the region becoming active. What surprised me about the recent quake is how shallow it was - very close to surface which is never a good sign.

So what? Remember the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake? It's part of the same fault system that threatens Southern California. Do you recall the entire San Andreas slipping? Me neither. It didn't even trigger quakes on other faults within the immediate area, and a much smaller fault that has been so quiet that nobody knew it was there is far less likely to have an influence on an adjacent fault and totally unlikely to have any influence on a region over 150 miles away.

[Yahtzee]

Did anybody on LDSFF feel this one? Cool stuff at the link that is not pasted below.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-0 ... e-20-years

"Supervolcano" Concerns Rise After Montana Hit By Strongest Earthquake In 20 Years


by Tyler Durden
Jul 6, 2017 9:05 AM

Following a swarm of over 1100 earthquakes recorded in the Yellowstone caldera over the past month, prompting scientists to voice concerns about a dormant Yellowstone "Supervolcano" slowly waking up, overnight these concerns escalated after a strong M5.8 earthquake hit western Montana early on Thursday morning - the strongest quake to hit the area in the past 20 years - the U.S. Geological Survey reported, with Reuters adding that the tremor was felt hundreds of miles away, from Missoula to Billings and some surrounding states.

The quake appears to be the largest to hit Montana since a slightly weaker M5.6 struck outside of Dillon a dozen years ago. By comparison, the state's largest quake which struck the West Yellowstone region 58-years ago was 7.2 magnitude.

The quake's epicenter was about 6 miles south of Lincoln, originating from a depth of nearly 3 miles underground, according to a preliminary report from the U.S. Geological Service.

Subsequently the USGS recorded seven more tremors in the same area within an hour of the initial quake, which ranged in magnitude from 4.9 to 3.8.

The quake which struck at 12:30 a.m. local time was strong enough to knock items off of walls and shelves in Helena and Missoula. Some Twitter users posted feeling tremors as far as Spokane, Wash., Boise, Idaho and Calgary, Canada.

Mike Stickney, seismologist at the Earthquake Studies Office, Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology on the Montana Tech campus in Butte, said the quake was probably the strongest in Montana since October 1964. The location, he said, is not surprising. “It’s right along the axis of the intermountain seismic belt.” He said the quake occurred on a strike/slip fault, a vertical fault where one side moves horizontally against the other, similar to the kind of movement experienced along the San Andreas Fault in California.

That said, he said he "does not believe" the quake is seismically tied to the recent “swarm” of smaller earthquakes in the Yellowstone National Park area. “I don’t see any direct relationship between these two sequences,” he said. “This is a pretty sizeable earthquake. It would certainly have the potential to do structural damage near the epicenter, but we’ve had no reports indicating damage yet.” Others, however, disagree.

Residents in Lincoln briefly lost power and there was a gas leak in Helena, the National Weather Service in Great Falls said on Twitter. Lewis and Clark County Sheriff Leo Dutton said Lincoln lost electricity as a result of the quake, but the power has since been restored.

Lisa Large, a bartender at the Wheel Inn Tavern in Lincoln, said the power went out and bottles flew off the shelves when the earthquake hit. Other than that, she said, there wasn’t any major damage there. She was in a fairly jovial mood when called by a Missoulian reporter near closing time at 1:50 a.m. “It slopped all the grease outta the fryer,” she said. “The kitchen’s a mess right now. The lights have been out and they just came back on. Hopefully we don’t get any more aftershocks.”

Quoted by the Missoulian, Dutton said the fire chief in Lincoln was sending people out to check for damage, but they have not found any yet. Missoula Police Department Corporal Mick McCarthy said the department has had calls from people asking what was going on with the earthquake and some medical calls, but no power outages reported or gas leaks. "No property damage reported yet, but it's still early," McCarthy said.

Ray Anderson, 76, told the Associated Press that it was the strongest quake he had ever felt.

Carolyn Kennedy, who lives in South Calgary, said she felt about 20 seconds “of waves” from the tremors. “We heard rumbling noises,” she messages FoxNews.com, adding that perfume bottles on her desk shook from the tremblor.

Twitter lit up around Montana seconds after the quake, with people weighing in from Bozeman to Kalispell to Glacier National Park to Billings and elsewhere in Montana.

"Did the entire state of Montana just have an earthquake?" tweeted Brandon Furr. Sean Ryan of Butte tweeted, "Now that everyone in Montana is awake from that earthquake ... you guys want to play Monopoly or something?" Glacier National Park account tweeted, "Western Montana just had a decent-sized earthquake. Good shake here at Park HQ in West Glacier #geology."

My family in Billings did not feel it. I also have family currently visiting Yellowstone and they did not feel it. But my friends in Cardston apparently did.
Weird.

[Elizabeth]

Who knows? Crocodiles are only in a few places in the far North, top of Australia. Fortunately, though I have seen them from the car from a distance when travelling, I have never lived nor stayed near their habitat.

No bears, nor lions or tigers nor rattle snakes.

I'll take a western diamondback rattlesnake over an eastern brown snake any day. Rattlers will typically give an audible warning before striking a person.
I've been around bears. If there's a bear by the stream and you need to fill your canteen, unless it's a hungry grizzly or with cubs the bear will depart as you approach. Could I expect the same behavior from a Johnstone's Crocodile or should I expect to risk my life refilling a canteen?

[Silver]

Bunch of graphics at the link. Oh yeah, we're all gonna die.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-0 ... pervolcano

"Ready To Blow" - National Geographic's Guide To The Yellowstone Supervolcano

by Tyler Durden
Jul 8, 2017 9:15 PM

Amid a growing 'swarm' of over earthquakes (now over 1000), and Montana's largest quake ever, scientists are growing increasingly concerned that the so-called 'super-volcano' at the heart of Yellowstone National Park could be building towards a Category 7 eruption. So what is a 'super-volcano' and what does its explosion mean for life on earth? NatGeo explains...



As National Geographic details...

Think of Yellowstone as a gigantic pressure cooker, fueled by a massive supervolcano. Water from rain and snowmelt, much of it centuries-old, percolates through cracks in the Earth’s crust until heated by molten rock reservoirs deep below. The water then filters upward, eventually finding release in the thousands of geysers, hot springs, and other hydrothermal wonders.



Eruptions of this supervolcano expel so much material that the crust caves in, creating a craterlike depression called a caldera.

Yellowstone is known as a supervolcano because of the violence and size of its explosions.



The plume of hot rock has been calculated at more than 600 miles deep. But scientists suspect it actually descends as far as 1,800 miles, all the way to what’s known as the Earth’s outer core-mantle boundary.



The reservoirs and plume are superheated, spongelike rock holding pockets of molten material called magma. The reservoirs’ heat, which originates in the plume, is what keeps the area’s geysers boiling.



Ancient rain and snowmelt seep down to just above the volcano’s magma reservoirs, until they are superheated and rise again through the fractures. Volcanic heat and gases help propel steam and water toward the surface, where they escape through hot springs or geysers.



Hot water rises from a deep reservoir into a teapot-shaped chamber. As water and gases fill the sealed space, pressure builds, preventing boiling. Some water spills into the spout, releasing pressure and allowing the water in the chamber to boil. Steam and water then blast up the spout.



Pressure builds behind a narrow constriction until steam shoots through. Some water splashes out, then jets of steam and water explode, rising on average 130 feet. As the chamber drains, pressure drops, and the process begins again.

Highest recorded eruption - 184ft
Eruptions per day on average - 17
Minutes length of eruption - 1.5 to 5
The park’s hydrothermal features cluster in basins at the margins of lava flows or near faults. Rivers and streams are heated as they pass through these basins. Heat and escaping gases are also evidence of the subterranean forces that lie below Yellowstone.



So how would a supervolcanic eruption at Yellowstone impact the regional ecosystem, and the US more broadly? Well, as The American Dream blog's Michael Snyder points out, it would be nothing short of catastrophic.

Hundreds of cubic miles of ash, rock and lava would be blasted into the atmosphere, and this would likely plunge much of the northern hemisphere into several days of complete darkness. Virtually everything within 100 miles of Yellowstone would be immediately killed, but a much more cruel fate would befall those living in major cities outside of the immediate blast zone such as Salt Lake City and Denver.



Hot volcanic ash, rock and dust would rain down on those cities literally for weeks. In the end, it would be extremely difficult for anyone living in those communities to survive. In fact, it has been estimated that 90 percent of all people living within 600 miles of Yellowstone would be killed.

Experts project that such an eruption would dump a layer of volcanic ash that is at least 10 feet deep up to 1,000 miles away, and approximately two-thirds of the United States would suddenly become uninhabitable. The volcanic ash would severely contaminate most of our water supplies, and growing food in the middle of the country would become next to impossible.

In other words, it would be the end of our country as we know it today.

The rest of the planet, and this would especially be true for the northern hemisphere, would experience what is known as a “nuclear winter”. An extreme period of “global cooling” would take place, and temperatures around the world would fall by up to 20 degrees. Crops would fail all over the planet, and severe famine would sweep the globe.

In the end, billions could die.

So yes, this is a threat that we should take seriously.

[BeNotDeceived]

My hope is that OTEC will provide many safe havens before she blows.

It would be redundant to say "hope and expectation" which is something I learned recently.

[Sasquatch]

Australia's probably the easiest country to integrate into, due to the lack (well, relative lack) of a language barrier and broadly similar culture to the U.S. As far as geography and climate are concerned, Argentina would be my pick (though Chile has a better climate and terrain in my opinion, but I guess it isn't an option.)

It is rather impressive just how wasted much of Australia is, though. There are definitely beautiful, fertile areas, particularly the east coast and the southwest corner of WA, but most of the continent is arid and overall it's very flat and desolate of people. Just look at these two maps:

https://acpermaculture.files.wordpress. ... te-map.jpg
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/73 ... lution.jpg

I've wondered what Australia would be like if it were a few degrees further south and much more rugged. For example, double the height of the highest peaks such as Kosciusko (2,228 m/7,310 ft to 4456 m/14,620 ft), which would be high enough to sustain glaciers, which would probably increase the discharge of the Murray and other rivers by several orders of magnitude. Increase the height of the entire Great Dividing Range so that it's a sold chain of mountains all over 2500 meters high and add more mountains and highlands to SA and, especially, southwestern WA. Simply adding some mountains high enough for glaciation would probably go a long way towards alleviating Oz's soil and water problems, I think the difference would be drastic.