Eighty two gazillion people have shared articles with me over the last couple of days that suggest Yellowstone is about to erupt. One of the worst of them comes with an absolutely ridiculous “threat map.” I have no idea where they got this thing, but I suspect squatting was involved:

If you want to know what’s going on at Yellowstone, check with the experts. The foremost among them is Robert Smith at the University of Utah. He’s been one of the lead scientists on nearly every breakthrough in research on the Yellowstone volcano in recent years. Here’s what he had to say about the recent earthquake: “…the earthquakes are in a system that’s dominated by faults as opposed to a system that’s dominated by magmatic activity.” In other words, the quakes aren’t even in the same area as the volcano’s caldera. Plus,the recent level of earthquake activity is completely within historical norms for Yellowstone.

And the running bison? That happens every winter. The footage of running bison predates the recent quake by at least several weeks.

Why are you seeing all these scary articles? It’s simple. People can make money by scaring you into clicking on their article or YouTube video and viewing their ads. Heck, you could argue that I’m guilty of the same thing, profiting from a scary (but clearly labelled as fictional) book series imagining a super-eruption at Yellowstone.

Look, if you hear Robert Smith saying he’s worried–then it might be reasonable to worry, too. Or if you see the USGS’s alert level change from its current status of normal and green, then it would definitely be reasonable to worry. But the recent flurry of poorly researched internet articles are nothing but fear-mongering click-bait, and certainly not worth worrying about.