"As with many things in nature, it helps to understand the past when trying to predict the future.
Ilya
Bindeman, an associate professor of geological sciences at the
University of Oregon, believes this is true of the Yellowstone
supervolcano and the likelihood that it will produce an apocalyptic
eruption as it has three times over the last the last 2 million years.
"Yellowstone
is one of the biggest supervolcanos in the world," he says. "Sometimes
it erupts quietly with lava flow, but once or twice every million years,
it erupts very violently, forming large calderas," which are very large
craters measuring tens of kilometers in diameter.
If it happens
again, and he says most scientists think that it will, he predicts such
an eruption will obliterate the surroundings within a radius of hundreds
of kilometers, and cover the rest of the United States and Canada with
multiple inches of ash. This, effectively, would shut down agriculture
and cause global climate cooling for as long as a decade, or more, he
says. A volcanic event of such magnitude "hasn't happened in modern
civilization," he says.
Yellowstone volcano
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The risk of getting colorectal cancer increases with age. More than 90% of cases occur in people who are 50 years old or older. 
