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That nine hundred years is an average—and a somewhat misleading one. According to Robert B. Smith and Lee J. Siegel in Windows into the Earth, a geological history of the region, the last major Teton quake was somewhere between about five and seven thousand years ago. The Tetons, in short, are about the most overdue earthquake zone on the planet.
900年是個平均數字——也是個會讓人產生錯覺的數字。羅伯特·B·史密斯和李·J·西格爾在《觀察地球內部之窗口》這一部本地區的地質史里寫道，蒂頓山脈地區的最后一次大地震發生在5000-7000年之前。總之，蒂頓山脈大概是這個星球上最該要發生地震的地方。
Hydrothermal explosions are also a significant risk. They can happen anytime, pretty much anywhere, and without any predictability. "You know, by design we funnel visitors into thermal basins," Doss told me after we had watched Old Faithful blow. "It's what they come to see. Did you know there are more geysers and hot springs at Yellowstone than in all the rest of the world combined?"
熱液噴發也是個很大的危險。它可以隨時隨地發生，而又完全無法預測。“你要知道，按照路線圖，我們要把游客帶進溫泉池，”我們看完老實泉噴水以后，多斯對我說，“人家就是來看這個地方的。你知不知道，黃石公園里的間歇泉和溫泉比世界其他地方的加起來還多？”
I didn't know that.
“這我倒不知道。”
He nodded. "Ten thousand of them, and nobody knows when a new vent might open."
他點了點頭：“有1萬處，誰也不知道什么時候會出現一個新的噴氣口。”
We drove to a place called Duck Lake, a body of water a couple of hundred yards across. "It looks completely innocuous," he said. "It's just a big pond. But this big hole didn't used to be here. At some time in the last fifteen thousand years this blew in a really big way. You'd have had several tens of millions of tons of earth and rock and superheated water blowing out at hypersonic speeds. You can imagine what it would be like if this happened under, say, the parking lot at Old Faithful or one of the visitors' centers." He made an unhappy face.
我們驅車來到一個名叫鴨湖的地方，那是一片200米寬的水面。“表面上看，湖面上平靜無事，”他說，“它不過是個大池塘。但是，這兒過去沒有這個大坑。15000年前的某個時候，這兒發生了一次大噴發。幾千萬噸泥土和巖石以及高熱的水以高超聲速炸開了。你可以想像，要是在老實泉的停車場下面，或哪個游客中心下面發生這種事，那會是個什么情景。”他臉上露出不快的神色。
