The island I live on is one of a group of islands that were formed in exactly the same way as the Hawaiian islands, in fact this island incresed in size about 300 years ago. I see plenty of future in owning my home here and see no sign of anything crumbling apart.

In a few thousand years there will be a new island SE of the big island. Any futures speculators out there? +4

I do not worry about such things. I would not have the money to build a house on the Hawaiian Islands to save my life. Good question, though. +5

The same can be said about many parts of the world. Historically Yellowstone National Park is overdue to open up. The bigger parts of the park is a gigantic crater. When it erupts, the entire world would be somehow in danger...... We take chances with nature almost everywhere we live. Nature does not care about us humans......

Nature doesn't give a rats ass about humanity, which is precisely why it is proceeding to whoop our asses with bigger hurricanes and rising sea water. Payback for upsetting the balance. . As far as the Hawaiian? islands go, they aren't likely to just fall into the sea in the next few years (2012 ;)) . In fact, worrying about living close to yellowstone is pointless too. The size of the eruption it will put out, odds are you won't even know what happened. You'll just be dead. . The safest places on the planet to live are Central landlocked areas where the only earthquakes you get are going to be so small you won't even know they happened. Those central landlocked zones also generally have elevations 5000+ feet, generally at the foot of mountain ranges, and the only floods happen with heavy snow/rain and they aren't going to destroy billions of dollars worth of property. IMO, the safest place to live is right where I am now. . . In fact, the only way the Hawaiian islands will dissapear is if we nuke the hell out of them, and even then, you'll still have thousands of feet below the ocean surface.

I don't know how old you are, but during yours (and your children's lifetimes....it is a safe investment!

Almost ALL LAND was made from lava,all of it,it took billions of years to become what we see as 'land',the islands are part of a chain of lands which are formed from the changes in oceanic plates and the hot spot under the ocean,,right now there is another island being formed off the last island as the plate moves and the lava flow is not moving with it. I would love to buy land there,there are some pluses,some negatives,but the life there would be wonderful.

we will be all long gone by that time.

Visit Capadoccia, Turkey, and you'll answer your own question. If not in person, make a net visit to that place.

i think i read somewhere that you cant own any of that unless you have Hawaiian ancestry anyway -

Well, in all honesty, it's all relative. The Big Island formed about a half million years ago, and more islands are forming there over time: http://www.instanthawaii.com/cgi-bin/hawaii?Hawaii It's not as if they are in danger of catastrophically disappearing without warning. There are MANY places which, geologically, aren't the best places to live either on, or near, when you are speaking of geological time scales. The Yellowstone Caldera, for example, is HUGE and when it blows several states in the U.S. are pretty much gonna be catastrophically wiped out as a consequence. And FEMA will not be able to do a thing about it, either, no matter how well organized it may be when it happens. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yellowstone_Caldera_map2.jpg http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/Yellowstone/description_yellowstone.html And then there are the tsunami's. Tsunami's can cause utter devistation of coastal regions, for hundreds of miles of coastal areas, and quite far inland, depending on the cause of the tsunami, it's location, and the specific geography of the affected areas. Alaska has had several such. http://www.usc.edu/dept/tsunamis/alaska/ Horrific tsunami's can occur from fault line shifts, of course. But they can, and have, also been caused by landslides. The Canarie Islands, for example, have a 2.5 km fissure which opened up during a 1949 volcanic eruption. The western half of the entire Cumbre Vieja dropped down about TWO METERS...and slipped about a meter westward toward the Atlantic Ocean. A future eruption(s) could cause the entire flank to slip into the ocean. This could cause waves up to 164 feet in the Caribbean and Eastern North American coastal areas in a little as 8 hours after the event. Consider the amount of damage a 164 foot high wave could cause along hundreds of miles of coastal area. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatsunami#British_Columbia And Apophis, an asteroid, is being tracked that is on course to pass EXTREMELY close to the Earth. It's orbit will brind it to within the orbits of geosynchronous communication satellites on Friday, April 13, 2029. That's about 22,000 miles above the planet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apophis Pretty cool, huh? :):):)