Every time I see videos like this I’m astonished by how blasé onlookers are about the whole thing.
I know it’s armchair quarterbacking but please don’t be like the people in the video. If the Earth is erupting in front of you: turn and run. Don’t stay there filming. Don’t gently jog while constantly checking over your shoulder. Turn. And run.
I’m not saying panic. I’m not saying trample anyone in front of you. But get to a safe distance with alacrity. You have no idea if the situation will rapidly escalate, and you may only have one opportunity to put enough distance between you and the unfolding situation. Assume the worst until you know better.
In this scenario, falling rocks are a concern. Superheated steam is a concern. Poisonous gases could have been a concern. Corrosive liquids could have been a concern. Lava could have been a concern. Further eruptions could have been a concern. For all of these your odds are improved with distance. In the moment you have no idea of the full extent of the dangers and in many cases by the time you realize it’s too late.
That said I’m very thankful nobody was hurt in this incident.
It's a big boardwalk feature at a high-profile park and sees hundreds of visitors a day with vanishingly rare incident. It triggers the same kind of passive trust that people bring with them to Disneyland or a dinner theater, where guests default to thinking everything is part of the show and needn't warrant actual concern. It's the same reason people get too close to the wildlife there.
It's thoughtful of you to encourage people here to be more vigilant, but the lack of that vigilance is a direct outcome of the park trying to culture an experience of safety and wonder instead of danger and awe (in its traditional meaning).
At least when I last visited Yellowstone, the place was full of signs and stories about how people have died (and IIRC, their bodies were never recovered) from trying to swim in the colorful fun-looking pools of water, or from kids and pets wandering off. I don't know what else they could do to add more "danger and awe" apart from planning on having some sacrificial tourists every day. People are just generally bad at perceiving or respecting abstract danger.
But that also adds to the same effect! Their moral is to stay on the boardwalk and don’t stray off from it. Their morale is to look out for your kids and pets that they do the same. Which equates boardwalks with safety. Which, as an approximation is kinda true. But then something like this happens which undermines the assumptions under that approximation and if you are still using it as a heuristics you can be in trouble.
Maybe? But also, all the yellowstones hydrothermal features look like the gods have cursed the land. If you were just galavanting through the forest and you come up seeing that without any prior knowledge or park rangers to assure you you would say “oh, hell no” and you would turn around. The park cultivates a sense of safety otherwise it wouldn’t be a park.
I think you're assuming much more individualism in the primitive dynamic than actually existed. As I said, individual humans are terrible at judging danger. There was an article posted a few days back about collapses while trenching for construction, and the difficulties of getting people to take that risk seriously until it actually happens.
So at the state you're envisioning, I'd say it's more like others in your tribe telling you to stay away from those weird holes in the ground, because some tribe members had already been killed by them. And the contemporary dynamic is more like an extreme scaling up of that, with a much more nuanced understanding of the dangerous mechanisms.
Never walk alone.
I'm not sure if you're commenting on Yellowstone specifically, national parks and wild areas in general, or simply the everpresent risk from our heads being ~6ft above the ground and kept aloft by one hell of an inverted pendulum problem.
Exactly. It's very well developed and seems an incredibly "safe" environment. People aren't in the mindset that there could be danger (even if they should be).
It takes processing time before people even realize that this isn't normal. Also there's social proof all over. When it goes off people look around, see that nobody else is bailing, so they assume things are ok. It takes a little time to override that tendency and get people to start moving.
"People aren't in the mindset that there could be danger (even if they should be)."
This could be said of life generally. It seems like very few people even have a minimal level of situational awareness while walking to the mailbox or walking through a store.
"People don't pay for things they don't plan on using."
Traditionally _not_ dangerous activities.
Being near, or crossing, streets are traditionally dangerous. There are plenty of lawsuits from people getting hurt in stores every year. People who think they don't need to pay attention to what's around them in those situations are just ignorant.
And having that situational awareness at all times can easily result in exhaustion.
It is also important to consider the context of the park itself. Roughly half of the world's known geysers are in Yellowstone. One of the primary reasons to go there is to see all the hydrothermal features. It is easy to watch this video from your laptop and know it is dangerous, but if you saw this explosion an hour after seeing this[1], the danger would likely be much less obvious.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/shorts/L5a0zinKGA8
Similar issue was at play in the 2019 Whakaari / White Island eruption in New Zealand (which, sadly - unlike today's Yellowstone explosion - caused numerous deaths and serious injuries). The visitors were made to feel safer than they actually were. The tour operators were complacent, and were later found negligent of having an inadequate safety regimen in place. Too much trust, too little vigilance, human memory too woefully short compared to geological event timescales.
Doesn't matter. People need to wake TF up. Even Disney world can be dangerous. I know the NPC meme is dehumanizing but FFS people make it so hard sometimes.
I don't understand the psychology of it either. It's like they think that appearing overly concerned about something potentially dangerous is more embarrassing than being killed by something actually dangerous. That or they have lived such safe and sheltered lives that they cannot identify real danger. I don't have any other explanation.
If you run in a panic when normal geyser erupts, it would be embarrassing, right? Now, what is a normal geyser eruption and what is not normal? If you never tried to research this, you do not know.
So we come to an uncertainty. This seems pretty big, and probably is not normal, isn't it? Or it is? So you are not sure, should you shake off social norms of behavior (being calm, not shouting, acting like a grown adult) and to switch to a survival behavior (running away, shouting commands "run" to others, dragging people with you by their limbs, or doing whatever you think is the adequate behavior for such a situation).
Looking at the video carefully, people in a few seconds come to a conclusion that this is dangerous and start moving away, but they didn't get away from norms of everyday behavior. These two different priorities (to act normal or go to the survival mode) are still there, and they are still fighting in minds of people for a dominance.
Their response was "gently jog while constantly checking over your shoulder", because they decided it is dangerous and you need at least jog away, but they are feel that they may be underestimating (or overestimating) the danger, and they keep themself aware of the events to be able to change their behavior accordingly to them.
The very situation prompts for rapid change from a normal mode of existence to a survival mode, and there is no clear unambiguous signal that it is the case. The geyser erupts? Didn't we come here to watch geysers? Wouldn't it be embarrassing to run from the geyser? There are a lot of questions, and System 2 is a slow one. People are educated to keep System 1 in a check and to think things through. They are educated to know some dangerous situations and they can react to them immediately, but this is something unusual, they are not trained for it, and their minds become overwhelmed by a massive visual stimulus and by all the thoughts and ideas that may be relevant, but only System 2 could decide and to prioritize them properly.
When I was watching the video I instantly saw that it is dangerous, but I was prompted about it by the article, so I was ready to see something impressive AND dangerous. Therefore I'm not sure would I be better in that situation if I was watching it in real life without any prompting.
> they have lived such safe and sheltered lives that they cannot identify real danger.
I wrote about it above, but I want to stress it out:
1. we are conditioned to think before acting,
2. most of us have no experience with geysers and we cannot access the hazard level of a geyser at the first glance, and we know that we can't, so... goto 1.
There is also the imperative to get the video. Which for once was well done.
It's not that. I was on a plane where a guy tried to break open the door to the outside mid flight and it takes a good 30-60 seconds for people to comprehend reality and make a decision. It's easy to judge from a screen but when an actual disaster hits, the brain does weird things
Having been there recently, it definitely would not have been immediately clear to me that there would be a problem. The boardwalk is next to the pools but clearly not in structural danger. The videos show the eruption being basically vertical, so if you aren't directly next to it, it isn't obvious that the ejecta will spread out a little, and that doesn't happen for a couple of seconds. So if you aren't right next to it, it initially doesn't seem unsafe.
Also, you are likely to visit this area before Old Faithful, so the most you will have seen is some steam going up. My visit was the first time I'd ever seen a geyser, so I would have had no idea what to expect, and presumably the boardwalk is in a safe location. If it were unsafe, they wouldn't have built the boardwalk there, right? (And it doesn't seem like anyone was injured, so...)
I would assume it's more due to them not realizing that this isn't just something that periodically happens at the park (like Old Faithful). It might seem unusual, but they don't know how unusual or dangerous it is. It might just be no more unusual than a low road near a body of water that gets a tiny bit flooded in one spot after a heavy rain -- the kind where locals who know about it just drive through because it's only an inch or two deep but visitors might be more hesitant about. In the case of this explosion, the aftermath video shows that it was indeed very unusual and dangerous.
It is a combination of those factors along with what I call TV-Brain, a subconscious assumption that it’s not real, it’s just like when I see it in the rectangle.
Remember, most people in the western and especially American world, simply do not experience real world risks and dangers, everything is so sanitized and cleaned and protected and safe, that they simply do not connect reality with their own demise or even a risk to it. On a related note, it is alway why I believe there are so many and increasing numbers of injurious contacts with bisons, moose, elk, bears, etc in Yellowstone, because they think they’re cuddly animals that they saw in wildlife documentaries and know from cartoons and tv stories of the child that is friends with the talking bear, etc. most people are simply so detached from reality that they simply have no reference for what they are doing that is extremely dangerous to their continued state of being alive.
This is a real psychological phenomenon. Most people don't want to be the first person to yell "fire!", or to appear to take a situation more seriously than it warrants, because they might be wrong and they'd stand out as being wrong and feel embarrassed. That feeling can "stick" shockingly long after you'd think the situation was obvious.
We have not socially normalized and trained the concept that it's better for people to occasionally be understandably wrong than to delay reacting to problems. The right reaction to quick reactions that turn out to be incorrect should be "Thanks for calling attention to what might have been a problem!", not an array of signals that all convey "what a weirdo".
If you check out the video (https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z64etOuLZDQ), most people did in fact immediately begin running and urging others to do the same.
I appreciate your concern for folks' safety, though I'm not sure how the criticism applies to this instance. The bystanders behaved reasonably.
Did you watch the whole thing? Skip to the 1:15 mark where people go back. The criticism is absolutely warranted here. I guarantee none of those people are capable of predicting what comes next after an explosion like that. I certainly don't. What if the next one is beneath where they're standing at the 1:15 mark and beyond?
I'm not sure how OP's comment doesn't reflect HN's standard of quality. It's exactly the type of quality response that's appropriate for this instance. I'd say your response isn't quite up to it if anything because you're making an argument against someone that is encouraging safety and well-being; and for no apparent reason at all but to point out someone is flawed? I don't get it.
After it stopped and no additional material was being expelled, they do go back to look. Not recommended, but how often are big eruptions followed by even bigger eruptions?
Are you saying they should've run away from the park for the entire rest of the day or trip?
See @Saurik's sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41051381
Three simple facts here: 1) This is obviously abnormal enough for the people in the video to flee 2) the aftermath - (1:15+) - clearly demonstrates it was unsafe to be there and 3) there is no way to predict if the next eruption would be equally abnormal or worse unless one were trained in this field
There is no arguing those facts, it's 100% clear from that video you linked. Am I going to stay away from the park the rest of the day? I don't know, maybe. It really depends on the circumstances. I am not a volcanologist. I'm not even a scientist. I don't understand the specifics involved here. If it were me, and I can clearly see something abnormal happened, I would NOT risk going back unless I can somehow verify it was safe to do so. That's common sense. It might involve finding a park ranger to speak with or calling the ranger station to get more information. I've been to the geyser at Iceland where they have signs that explicitly tell you about the unpredictable nature of it and how people have been badly burned. This is not a no-risk situation, especially when the situation is not the norm.
I've been to the big island of Hawaii during volcanic activity and they explicitly tell you to stay away from it due to the gasses, rocks, lava, etc. Maybe that elevates my skepticism over the safety here, but it seems that's for good reason.
EDIT: here you go mate, you don't need to look at Hacker News comments. Take it from the Park itself:
https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/news/240723.htm
Quite often, I'd say.
Disruptions in the stability of geological processes frequently have a compounding domino effect... a volcanic eruption is often preceded by the opening of smaller vents, small landslides can trigger large landslides, small sinkholes can suddenly develop large ones, a trickle over a levee can turn into a total breach, most M>7.0 earthquakes have foreshocks...
You can't tell where the peak severity will be in a cluster of geological events except in hindsight after the entire cluster is passed.
Extremely often. Just like earthquakes, the #1 predictor of a big quake is a smaller quake shortly before.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=993wlZ6XFSs (not an eruption, but eruptions are a type of explosion)
Another - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNJ2Z6hrCPc
There's no way to know if you're dealing with that until after the fact. A lot of the gawkers taking video ended up with serious injuries (not sure they all survived, some of those videos are quite close in retrospect)
Looks to me like they are forced to walk back to get home. A couple of people are dawdling, otherwise it's an exit. Do you want to disagree and OSINT it?
Map to get started - https://www.google.com/maps/place/Biscuit+Basin+Geyser/@44.4...
I don't want to argue with dumb nerds flipping out brain farts. Have you thought about it from the safety of your own home and felt like they actually went back in that video or is this thread a waste of time?
Under your "anywhere could explode" "theory" you'd be getting angry if they sheltered in place and waited for helicopters.
HN is why women don't like men anymore, sitting around circle jerking about being irrationally afraid of stuff that hasn't and won't happen to them. How will they ever do... public speaking?
Most people are familiar with "fight or flight", but there's a third response which is "freeze". That's probably what you are seeing in the video.
The default is freeze, or trip and fall.
There's also "Fawn". i.e. play along in the hope you don't get hurt.
Are we watching the same video? The people in the video I saw turned and started running almost immediately.
Yeah, even away from (their own) kid. I am judging, but I haven't been in the situation. What I know is I couldn't live with that.
Agreed: don’t end up like Lot’s wife.
Someday close to the Dead Sea we'll find Edith's clay tablet with what would have been the ultimate TikTok video of an epic rain of fire
There is a funny meme About this: cameraman never dies.
Disaster movie directors hate this one simple trick!
People are overly comfy and out of touch with reality.
this, I feel like a lot of people are just so abstracted away from harsh reality in the modern world that many don't take things seriously. Massive normalcy bias and enhanced bystander effect. A lot of people's first instinct is to pull out their phone and record something as well
About a year ago, I was in the United Club at O'Hare, and the fire alarm went off. I was getting a Bloody Mary when it happened, so I left my drink on the bar, went to the table where my family was, and said "let's go". Other than the sound of the alarm, you wouldn't know anything was happening. People were still getting food from the buffet, sitting at their tables, like nothing was going on.
A minute after we left the area, everyone else came out - not all willingly, it seems. Fortunately, the fire turned out to be nothing (flare up in the kitchen, I heard) and we were let back into the club after a bit. I learned quite a bit about human nature that day.
A life time of fire drills teaches everybody that a fire alarm is just some box tickers way of pointlessly interrupting your day to confirm that nobody has forgotten how to walk out of a fire exit. You can pretty safely bet your life that nothing bad is happening.
It's really easy to offer advice like that on the internet, but having found myself in a couple of unexpectedly dangerous situations in real life... it just happens. You're not as rational as you think you are. I keep going back to these situations and thinking how I should have acted differently, but it's not how your brain works at the time - not unless you train for it beforehand.
Even on a conscious level, this advice just doesn't work. If you duck for cover because a nearby car misfires, you're gonna get mocked or worse. Modern life gives as far more opportunities to overreact than to underreact to risk, so to appear rational and function in a society, we learn not to be too jumpy.
This isn’t a car misfiring. This is a large eruption of tens of feet in front of you. Even primed to anticipate geysers, this needs be setting off alarm bells. The quicker you can assess danger and override your social instincts that minimize your response in a situation like this, the more likely you are to survive.
Yes it’s easy to armchair quarterback. I have no idea if I would perform any better than those in the video. But we should all aim to respond more accurately when in actual danger.
Unfortunately we have created a reward system that gives a huge number of "followers" to the one who records. Followers are capital that translate to money (cf. cougar guy, hawk tuah, etc.) Someone could be the next to monetize their following as the "yellowstone lava dude".
Can we somehow instead create an socioeconomic system that instead rewards those that turn and run?
Like if you can prove that you turned and ran, you don't have to pay taxes that year to the IRS.
The government in turn saves money on rescue efforts of sorts. It all works out.
What's unfortunate about that? Everyone else benefits from the recording.
They had to go that way to get back to the parking lot. The alternative would be walking on the ground, which is even more dangerous and why the boardwalk exists.
Every time I see posts like this admonishing people I am astonished by the apparent ego of the authors and the power of assumptions.
Nowhere in my post do I criticize the direction in which onlookers left the scene. My concern was the lack of urgency in their response.
If it erupted as per your hypothetical, then they wouldn’t have stood a chance anyways. Video wouldn’t exist because the headline would read as “Dozen of tourists died at Yellowstone due to sudden eruption”
I think we underestimate people’s reaction to dangerous events. Surprisingly, most people will appropriately respond.
Millions of years of evolution, right?
In a similar vein, I’ve heard an old priest say that if you start seeing a supernatural phenomenon, including the second coming of Jesus, don’t stick around.
The same could be said of how many people barely reacted to the shooting in the Trump assassination attempt. For god’s sake, if someone is firing, hit the deck!
I honestly can't tell which part you think wasn't normal. Other people have kind of poked back at what you are saying, but I feel without really questioning which part of this you don't like, as it kind of sounds as if you are just saying "don't hang around near geysers... and, thereby, don't go to visit Yellowstone".
If you saw this same video but without the black color, would you have run? Because that would feel a bit silly to me: these kinds of explosions are happening all around you the entire time you are there. Some are even larger than this one, and you don't just stay as they happen: you sit on a bench and wait for an hour or two hoping to see it while you are there, and there are giant clocks trying to estimate when the next eruption will be.
Now like, what if the color were grey and there was mud? Some of the geysers have mud. Most of these are not a concern. What was a concern here was the black color... but as someone who has spent a bunch of time filming these geysers I found the black color so confusing that it really took me a moment to go "oh shit those are rocks". I could easily see myself having that pause we see from the other people before they all start running.
But, again: I don't feel like you are saying "these people should know rocks are dangerous" or "this was obviously different and you should be informed and on your toes ready to run"... you seem to be saying that, if you were standing somewhere and the ground suddenly exploded that you'd of course run; and, maybe that would be the absolute safest thing you could do, but then... why are you even there in the first place, if not to see an explosion of superheated steam?
Also, remember that the entire region seriously smells like sulfur and other strange gases... this is an area of terrain that people have long ago artistically (maybe even mythologically) described as the doorway to hell, between the smells, the color, the explosions, and the regions of trees that are either scorched, petrified, or merely poisoned. It honestly does make sense to question why people visit such an area in the first place, but once you decide to be there... well, it seems strange to question why you don't see everyone panicking about the explosion.
Looks like it would be difficult to run in this scenario where you’re confined to a narrow wooden platform. You’d either have to start shoving people off or risk burning your feet in the ground below.
I've seen people at Yellowstone pet bison and surround grizzly moms walking with their cubs for a quick photo op. I don't think a lot of these people have a real concept of nature and the unlimited ways it can kill or permanently injure you.
We will all die. But if a historic event can be captured on film, the event can be studied in greater detail. I'm all for people choosing to place their very lives at risk in order to further our scientific understanding of the universe.
I felt the same way when watching the Trump Assn. attempt. The number of people in the stands who just remained standing and gawking with no self preservation instinct (duck!) was eerie.
You see all kinds of things splashing and shooting out of the ground at Yellowstone. It would be easy to initially assume this is just another splashy thing you normally see. From the videos it seems people figure out this isn't the norm in about the right amount of time.
Ever since I watched that documentary on the steam volcano eruption that killed all those tourist in New Zealand I would never go near anything steam related coming out of the ground.
Adding this to my copypasta collection
Or it wasn't that big. It's hard to tell the actual scale of the explosion from a phone video.