I'd call it: Simmer-down, Mr. Caldera

The Tetons, gateway to Yellowstone's caldera

Perhaps you've heard that September was a mile-stone month for Yellowstone.  Not in visitors or grizzly bear photo ops.  For earthquake swarms.

My home is on the western slope of the Tetons (you're looking at the eastern view, here).  The Tetons border the Yellowstone caldera.  (A SUPER volcano.)  In September the caldera hosted three 'earthquake swarms' totaling one hundred and thirty quakes in about six days.  Not all of them could be felt but still!!!  As you can imagine, our nights around the dinner table have been filled with what-if scenarios.

"What if the caldera blows?" my daughter asks.
"I'm for blowing with it," I say.
"Me too," my husband agrees.  "Who wants to fight it out for resources in a ten-thousand-year-long nuclear winter?"
"What?!" (my daughter says this, every time.)
We all agree to stop talking about things we can't control and instead discuss what happened in math class.

If you've ever visited Craters of the Moon you've seen the fabulous map they have that charts the North American plate's movement over the caldera.  Every million years or so the thing blows a huge hole in whatever chunk of real estate sits above it, and the effect is a trail of 'footprints' across the western portion of our continent--one footstep for every time the caldera has lost it.

Don't fret!  The last time the caldera went ballistic was six-hundred and forty thousand years ago.  So we've got about four hundred thousand years of smooth sailing ahead of us.  Who knows what we'll evolve into in that time?  Though when the caldera DOES blow all those dystopian stories we love to read will feel like fairy tales by comparison . . . .