What If We Nuked Yellowstone? (The Answer Is Surprising)

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]What if I told you that Earth has roughly 13,000 nuclear weapons? Now imagine every single one of them detonated in the same place, Yellowstone. The immediate result would be catastrophic. Thousands of nuclear detonations would flatten the entire region, vaporizing huge parts of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. But here's the twist. Scientists say even a nuclear bomb wouldn't trigger Yellowstone. The magma system sits miles underground and the energy needed to destabilize it is vastly larger than any nuclear explosion humans can create. In fact, volcanic eruptions can dwarf nuclear weapons.

[00:00:34]Even recent eruptions have released more energy than the most powerful bombs ever detonated. So nuking Yellowstone wouldn't trigger a supervolcano. It would just create a massive nuclear disaster while the volcano beneath it barely notices. Which raises a bigger question. If thousands of nuclear weapons can't wake Yellowstone, what kind of force actually could?