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Comment by ourmandave | Hacker News Reader

There was a fascinating show on the Discovery Channel about the super volcano under Yellowstone and how truly large and potentially devastating it is.

Unfortunately being the Discovery Channel they spent more time animating the end of the world (in the US anyway) aspect than anything.

And ending on the ominous message that's is a only a matter of time before it blows. Could be tomorrow or in 100,000 years, we're not sure.

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I once curiously asked this to Richard Campbell after a couple great Geek Out podcasts on geothermal & super volcanoes.

I was told the difficulty in volcanoes vs other popular geothermal sources is that volcanoes are an "unstable magma chamber" which makes it very difficult, expensive & risky.

Of course if this could be perfected, it could be a huge source of energy not just on Earth but places like Mars as well.

All the more reason to set aggressive goals for alternative energy.

How does that follow?

Cool down and solidify the caldera by extracting heat via geothermal energy use!

Heh... I wonder how much of the USA you could power by extracting energy from that thing?

Unfortunately it's a park, so you'd have to find a way to do it very unobtrusively. Maybe tunnel and drill into it from outside the park? Call the Boring Company. :)

If someone could cook up a truly credible plan to defuse that bomb over a century or three, environmental concerns could be sidestepped.

There was a novel written on exactly that idea. In the story this idea results in exactly what the above poster was proposing to avoid.

http://prosecraft.io/library/robby-akart/yellowstone-hellfir...

Yea except for one problem. You can’t possibly predict what the caldera would do when you interact with it because we can’t simulate it with any model we currently have. You could cause it to erupt in the process of trying to extract energy or cool it

Our current energy sources would be in jeopardy during the aftermath.

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