Yes, it will! But the next eruption is likely to be pretty small, just a bit of lava extruding with maybe minor amounts of ash. If the next enormous eruption happens in our lifetimes, there will of course be death and destruction, but not enough to destroy the United States, or even just the American West.

Composite volcanoes

The explosivity of an eruption depends on the composition of the magma. If magma is thin and runny, gases can escape easily from it. When this type of magma erupts, it flows out of the volcano. Pressure builds up until the gases escape violently and explode.

Explosive eruptions occur where cooler, more viscous magmas (such as andesite) reach the surface. Dissolved gases cannot escape as easily, so pressure may build up until gas explosions blast rock and lava fragments into the air!

Vesuvius volcano

Volcanoes typically are categorized thusly: active (a volcano that has erupted in the past 10,000 years), erupting (an active volcano that is experiencing an eruption), dormant (an active volcano that has the potential to erupt again), and extinct (a volcano that has not erupted in over 10,000 years and is unlikely to …

The world’s most famous geyser, Old Faithful in Yellowstone, currently erupts around 20 times a day. The mathematical average between eruptions of Old Faithful is currently 74 minutes, but it doesn’t like to act average! Intervals can range from 60-110 minutes.

There are about a dozen supervolcanoes on Earth — each one at least seven times larger than Mount Tambora, which had the biggest eruption in recorded history. If all of these supervolcanoes erupted at once, they’d likely pour thousands of tons of volcanic ash and toxic gases into the atmosphere.

Do these earthquakes impact Yellowstone? Some do, but only in terms of hydrothermal behaviors — geysers and hot springs. These earthquakes, however, do not cause volcanic eruptions at Yellowstone. The last time magma reached the surface there was a lava flow about 70,000 years ago.

This gives an average daily number of earthquakes of 4.7, or one earthquake every ~5.1 hours (of course, about half of these events occur in swarms, so are not evenly distributed over time).

Proximity to Yellowstone doesn’t matter. In 1959, the M7. 3 Hebgen Lake earthquake occurred right on the Montana-Idaho border, essentially on the western boundary of Yellowstone National Park.

“None triggered an eruption. Since the last caldera-forming explosion 631,000 years ago there might have been hundreds of such earthquakes.” So in conclusion, nothing would happen and Yellowstone would not erupt if for some reason a nuclear bomb was detonated near the supervolcano.