Natural disasters

Hmmmmm I don't think there would be many votes for the politicians who made the decision to drop a bomb myself...

So I can't see it happening, as to whether it would work, well..... that's a big risk to take don't you think?

John.

They say that when Yellowstone goes bang, we'll hear it on this side of the pond. I don't agree with the method, but maybe we should be looking at controlling these immense forces somehow.

Piss on the politicians,they dont care about anything but their positions anyway. Certainly not the people that put them where they are.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_Caldera

"within the past two million years, it has undergone three extremely large explosive eruptions, up to 2,500 times the size of the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption. The three eruptions happened 2.1 million years ago, 1.3 million years ago, and the most recent such eruption produced the Lava Creek Tuff 640,000 years ago"

The trouble is that "balloon" is already close to the point where it bursts itself: a bomb would be like sticking a pin in it. Now, if you stick a piece of sellotape on a balloon, you can stick a pin in and relieve the pressure: but I don't know what the geological equivalent of a piece of sticky tape is.

The sticking the pin in the balloon is exactly my point. It is not fully inflated yet so the time to deflate it is now, if it isn't to late already.

Let's see: 1.3 million - 640,000 = 660,000

I'd say it is already too late. But on the whole I agree with you: sitting back and doing nothing is not an option.

Well, how about this then (with tongue in cheek):

We build a huge thermal transfer system at the site, cover it under a mountain of dirt, and siphon away all the thermal energy to make electricty for the entire region.

Perhaps huge is not quite enough.

We could build two huge thermal ... uuh ... transfer ... uuh

Perhaps we should just start the evacuation. Within the next several hundred years at the latest.

One might even be tempted to call it Rekyavik...

Are you referring to Hekla, south of Reykjavik? Can you tell us more about it? I only can find where it erupted in 2002 a little.

What happens readily in the vicinity of Rekyavik is indicative of what is going on under Jellystone Park. Actually, "Jellystone" now seems more appropriate. Hmmm...

Jelly Stone! I get it. LOL

I found more info on Hekla. Quite the restless sleeper.

http://www.nat.is/travelguideeng/plofin_mt_hekla.htm

And you could end with something like what happened in Indonesia with the 'Mud Volcano', where irresponsible drilling opened up a hole in ground that the "engineers" can't plug. Don't mess with God's creation, the creator knows more about it than we do.

Amen.

We are just here for the ride when it comes to things of this magnitude. Best just ride it out.

The "just here for the ride" comment is invalid. Would you just ride out a car going over a thousand foot cliff or would you try to get out before the plunge? Something can and should be done by Geologists and engineers now, and keep the politicians out of it. They will only screw it up anyway then blame the disasterous results on the people that could have done something about it in the first place.

Right! Why let politicians (who know nothing) screw things up when the engineers and geoligist who know enough to be dangerous, but not enough to truly understand all the implications of their actions really screw things up. It isn't necessarily getting out of the car but when. If you don't know when you're in worse shape.

Job 38:4 Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding.
5 Who determined the measures thereof, if thou knowest? Or who stretched the line upon it?
6 Whereupon were the foundations thereof fastened? Or who laid the corner-stone thereof,

I started to look at the energy figures involved here, but no-one can be definitive. How much energy does it take to blow a mountain range into the sky? More than we are able to generate, let alone control. We are talking astronomically large numbers here. As to the bomb idea, adding to the existing energy might not be sensible.

Quite.

According to news reports, N. Korea let a big one go recently, and the mountain stayed put.

...and everyone got a crinkly mouth...

The biggest ever man made deliberate explosion was a 50M ton device expoloded by the Russians back in the sixties. It was the last big hydrogen bomb before they were stopped from testing these things. In theory a 200M ton or even bigger bomb could be made infact as big as it takes.

The whole idea is to release the energy that is building up beneath Yellowstone gradually and in a controlled manner.

Generally it is not the amount of energy that is the problem it is the rate that eh energy is released. Put simply high energies are not a problem in themselves its high power rates that give us trouble.

Getting back to Yellowstone and what could be done. If the area could be used as a humungous geothermal power station, generating electricity for the whole of North America, you could slowly and steadily reduce the amount of energy that is building up. It all depends on the rate that the energy is building up and how fast we can consume it in a controlled manner. We may not be able to prevent an uncontrolled release of energy but by using it to generate power it can only delay and or reduce the final catastrophic release of energy.

Letting loose with the equivalent of a hundred million tonnes of explosives in the vicinity of something that already has the equivalent of many hundreds of millions tones of explosives is not one of the sharpest ideas I have come across, it's more than likely you will just trigger the explosion and add to the devastation,

Well the Subject of the thread is Natural Disasters, so my comment about "ridding it out" when it comes to such awesome amounts of energy and power is referring to Tornados, Hurricanes, Earthquakes, Tsunamis, lightning strikes, droughts, floods... What I attempted to say is that we can manage to find ways to protect ourselves from them best we can. We adapt, and with increasing technology we improve our ability to adapt. We have even learned enough to begin to "predict" or at least detect when conditions are favorable for a even of nature. The line that >I< see is when we start to think that we can prevent these events from happening or manage them when they do. I haven't been around very long so maybe I'm just missing them, but I cannot think of any inventions that do more than protect us from these events; nothing stops the water from rising, lightning from striking or gigantic waves from destroying ocean fronts. We've built houses on stilts, put lighting rods on buildings and constructed mind boggling breakers and levees, but as big as we make them nature continues to make them look small. I think it is naive to think that we can stop or control natural events of huge magnitude.

The problem with your bomb idea is that anything that was large enough to release ANY volcanic pressure would likely release it all. In other words, the bomb would become the blasting cap for an even larger explosion. In other words, if it works a little it'll work some. If it works some it could work a lot!

I believe the hot spot in Yellowstone is under a rather large body of water (Yellowstone Lake), so I think the "pop the baloon" theory may a little more complex when you add all of that water into the mix.

They also say that Yellowstone erupts every so many years (I forget the actual number, but I think it is about 50,000 years or something along that line) but she is about 5,000 years behind schedule. The caldera (?)/Couldera (?)/spot of magma near the surface of the crust appears to be moving (southeast?) but in reality it is the plate moving (northwest?) over the magma spot that accounts for the shift in the apparent current location.

I still think relieveing the presure will be better than letting it blow on it's own.

Sods law state that for every good idea ther is always a bad consequence waiting to happen. I had thought on occasion about volcanoes we know are going to erupt but not as to exactly when. It would seem with the Yellow stone situation the site is so large that any intervention would do one of two things, nothing at all or provoke the very thing we want to prevent. No doubt a attempt may well be made to intervene and knowing how things go the eruption will happen just before the time we intend to go in and sort it. They were suprised by Mnt St.Hellens blowing its to and several were killed by the massive blast, these were experianced scientists who had the best of equipment to warn them of it happening; if they got it wrong what hope of anybody getting Yellow stone right? I design big bombs and would not be stupid enough to try myself. Perhaps a study could be done to see if a controlled earth quake would allow for enough pressure relief to be achieved.

You could be right, I just don't think we have the capability.

Thinking of the Earth as a 'control volume' (in chemical engineering terms), energy dissipated in that volume will do work on that volume, and eventually end up as heat radiated into space. What is being proposed is to regulate or otherwise influence the flow of that energy.

If it's going to get out to space anyway, what about using the pent-up energy to do something useful on its way, like substitute for other heating mediums in that part of the world? like a coal- or oil-substitute for a power station, for example?

As has been previously stated we could end up in big trouble with either mud or worse being forced up in an uncontrollable stream. The debacle in the Philippines. Perhaps sinking an enclosed loop of pipe into where a steam vent is naturally located would work, but deep drilling oh no I think not. Just imagine the global warming effect of trillions of cubic meters of lava rising from a sudden release of pressure.

Global warming, or nuclear winter when it goes bang?

What happened last time?

"What happened last time?"

I don't know but if it was less than 800,000 years ago they will have samples of the atmosphere before, during and after the eruption.

In Antarctica the snow has been steadily trapping bubbles of the atmosphere that are effectively samples of the atmosphere from the time the snow fell. So far they have managed to get samples from as far back as 800,000 years and are hoping to pus it back a further 200,000 years in the not too distant future.