As this is the ever-highly speculative Science board, I put to you a highly speculative scenario: Are you a bad enough dude/construction company/government agency/super villain to stop a volcano? Can you think of a way to take enough energy out of the equation to make a volcano sputter rather than explode?
I say this with the threat of Uturuncu popping its top sometime soon and potentially messing with the weather even worse than Pinatubo did. Also, I'm all about job creation...
Don't hold back! I want to hear crazy ideas.
>>24-25
Nice work. This seems like a worthwhile endeavor.
Do you think detonating 200,000 large-payload nuclear devices might have any side effects that would need to be managed?
I was thinking fallout, mainly, but I also wonder if there's a risk of the pressure waves triggering a secondary earthquake, since most volcanoes lie near fault lines.
Any ideas how to defuse an earthquake?
>>26
Ok, I lost track of this thread when /science/ got the ax, but take a look at this:
https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/can-nuclear-explosions-cause-earthquakes
I'm no earthquake pro, but it seems like the energy release by the nukes actually helps to reduce the risk of a quake. Remember that earthquakes are caused when stress builds up because rocks at the fault can't move with the rest of the plate. So, if the blast can shake the fault loose a little, it actually serves to reduce the energy stored in the fault line.
You got me thinking about fallout, and I realized a problem with this plan.
Check out the abstract and intro of this paper:
https://www.geothermalresourcegroup.com/site/assets/files/1263/2009_dacite_melt_at_the_puna_geothermal_venture_wellfield.pdf
It sounds like when a drill hits a magma body, the it flows up the borehole and then freezes, and then they drill through the new rock until they hit the magma again, and so on. This makes me think we are going to have a hard time actually getting in to the magma body itself. Originally, I had figured that if we can get the bombs sufficiently deep in to the magma body, the fallout will be contained due to the viscosity of the magma (this also gives us maximum heat transfer in to the magma). Now I am not too sure. Any thoughts? Perhaps there is a better way.