- Todd Strandberg -
A strange thing about humans and natural disasters is that we tend to fear the ones that are the least likely to happen. For decades the media have warned about the possibility of a large meteor striking the earth and creating a massive loss of life. If NASA suddenly discovered that a 5-mile-wide meteor was projected to come very near to the earth in 15 years, the talk would suddenly be about how the vastness of space and our faulty projection would likely mean that the meteor would miss earth.
I've written before about the danger from the Yellowstone caldera. Scientists have learned that this super volcano has exploded several times with massive force. An eruption today would kill tens of millions of people. There has been an endless series of earthquakes in the area.
Over the past few months, the Steamboat geyser has sprung to life and now seems to be erupting somewhat on a predictable schedule, at least for the moment. On Jun 15, it sent boiling water hundreds of feet into the air for the 10th time this year. Before this recent string of eruptions, Steamboat had been dormant since 2014. This is the most amount of eruptions since 1965.
Scientists continue to tell the public not to worry. Yellowstone has a 600,000-year eruption cycle, and oddly enough, the last one occurred 600,000 years ago. We really don't know what to make of these warning signs. The going assumption is that we are safe from danger by the chance of an actual eruption being thousands of years down the road.
I've looked at several young-earth creationist sites on the timing of Yellowstone's eruptions. They say its last one occurred possibly in 2,000 BC, but they are strangely silent on any future events. If our safety margin is actually 150 times smaller, they need to boldly speak up on this issue.
There is another danger to the world that has a much shorter cycle-a massive landslide in the Hawaiian Islands. About every 30,000 years, a large section of an Island will break off into the ocean.
The southern section of the Big Island of Hawaii has had a spectacular occurrence of lava flows. The USGS notes that an estimated 7 billion cubic feet of lava has poured out in a massive eruption which began on May 3. The lava is "enough to cover Manhattan 8 feet deep" and fill 15 million average dump trucks, it said. The fresh lava has added 11 square miles to the Island.
The buildup of this new material on the ocean's edge will eventually result in a landslide. The average slope of the northern side of the Big Island is three degrees. The pitch at the southern end is six degrees. A return to stability would require a 100 cubic mile section to slide into the ocean.
The collapse of the south flank would cause an earthquake in excess of a 9 in magnitude, and generate a mega-tsunami. A previous mega-tsunami in Hawaii may have created waves 1,400 feet tall on the nearby islands. One evidence of the power of this type of event is the discovery of large sections of coral the size of houses that were ripped from the ocean floor and carried several miles inland. Geologists have discovered huge blocks of land up to 10 miles wide on the sea floor that fanned out over 150 miles from the coast.
A Hawaiian mega-tsunami would hit the western coast of the US with a wave at least 200 feet tall. It would take about 5 hours for it to reach the coast, but there is no way to move 20 million Californians from the danger zone. The cities of Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco would be absolutely devastated by the giant wave.
The activity of the last couple of months has added to the danger. When a magnitude 6.9 earthquake occurred on May 4th, the south flank moved about two feet toward the sea. The opening of over 20 vents was the result of a giant ripping of the eastern rift zone of Kilauea. The addition of billions of tons of weight to the south flank increases the chance of a major collapse.
Another indication that the danger may be all too real is the removal of information related to Kilauea and tsunamis. Wikipedia maintains a history of its article edits. I ran across a page that had gone from saying mega-tsunamis are a "natural" event to "Geologists are confident no such failure is likely" and "...supposed threats of mega-tsunamis are exaggerated."
I don't think there will be a mega-tsunami in the Pacific Ocean any time before the Kings of the East invasion. China would be shattered by such a wave, and I don't see how it could launch a 200-million- man army invasion of the Middle East after being hit by a mega-tsunami.
When Jesus returns to earth and generates some type of pulse that will cause every mountain and island to move, the south flank will certainly collapse. In fact, dozens of sections of Hawaii will likely go crashing into the ocean. His return will be very glorious, but it will also be very terrifying to the lost.
"The sky receded like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved from its place" (Revelation 6:14).
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