Where I go in Wyoming, like Snowy range....
I swear 50% of the pines are dead. Will they eventually kill all the trees? Even the scattered pines here in Nebraska are dying.

Well from what I’ve seen here at home they seem to take a huge chunk and then go away for quite some time. 10 yrs or so ago they were wiping out areas all over montana. It’s pretty devastating to see but it has slowed down a lot. Places I used to elk hunt were impenetrable for years with chest high deadfall now it’s just wide open. Sad thing is some of the private ranches hand their stuff sprayed by plane and had very little damage but the government wouldn’t do that for our land.

Yes, they will kill 100% of lodgepole pine, eventually. Life cycle of same tree is 60-90 years anyway. Young trees either have some resistance or produce enough pitch to overcome the beetle. When the tree reaches a certain age, and there are pine beetles in the area to infect them, they will get infected and die. In years past, fire would clear away the dead trees. I expect years of severe fires d/t the amount of dead pine in the forests.

The drier the climate the worse for the trees as they release stress pheromones into the air that attract the beetles. We've been in drought conditions over much of the the west for quite a few years.

The good news is pitch in marten declines by about 90 %. The bad news travel is bad when all those trees tip over.

"abdominal" when a prone trees whacks you across the midsection riding through anyway right?

You're probably seeing quite a few trees that have been dead for a good while already. From what I've seen in the satellite record, the largest (by total area) bug kill peaked about a dozen or more years ago. This was the outbreak that went from the southern Rockies all the way up into British Columbia. Full disclosure, my agency isn't the Forest Service so we don't specialize on just monitoring forests around the country. Then again, full blown bug kill shows up pretty easily in conifer trees using infrared leading bands. If a fire or big wind storm doesn't take down the dead trunks, killed trees can keep standing for longer than most people think.