Prime Base Location-Reprise

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by tsofian

Not sure a volcano is a good place to dig a really big hole. The area is also very far from a lot of things.

Also not a good place to be when nukes are flying. The odds of a nuke triggering a volcanic eruption are probably low but they aren't zero, either.

[mmartin798]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

Also not a good place to be when nukes are flying. The odds of a nuke triggering a volcanic eruption are probably low but they aren't zero, either.

The processes for a volcanic eruption are such that, unless it was already really close to erupting on its own, even a surface detonation would not trigger an eruption. If you were to drill down and do a subterranean detonation of the nuke, unless it was ready to erupt on its own, the worst you are likely to get is some released gas.

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by mmartin798

The processes for a volcanic eruption are such that, unless it was already really close to erupting on its own, even a surface detonation would not trigger an eruption. If you were to drill down and do a subterranean detonation of the nuke, unless it was ready to erupt on its own, the worst you are likely to get is some released gas.

Does that hold true even in the case of full-scale nuclear war? There were recently articles online indicating concerns that kT-class underground detonations in North Korea could trigger volcanic eruptions on the Korean-Chinese border. If 10kT can do that underground I am not so sure that a 2MT surface explosion, combined with multiple other detonations in the region, could not destabilize things even more. And setting up near a volcano just seems unnecessarily risky - when I do risk analysis for military designs, very-low probability / catastrophic consequence are still things we try at all costs to avoid.

[mmartin798]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

Does that hold true even in the case of full-scale nuclear war? There were recently articles online indicating concerns that kT-class underground detonations in North Korea could trigger volcanic eruptions on the Korean-Chinese border. If 10kT can do that underground I am not so sure that a 2MT surface explosion, combined with multiple other detonations in the region, could not destabilize things even more.

I would point to this article and its citations for a better picture of the possibility of North Korean nuclear tests triggering an eruption at Mt. Paektu:

http://www.38north.org/2017/05/fpabian050917/

I can give you an oversimplified thought experiment that illustrates the reasons you need a volcano on the verge of erupting to have a nuke trigger it. Assume we have two 2-liter bottles of soda, one freshly bottled and one that is almost flat. The liquid in both bottles represents the magma for the volcano. If we shake both vigorously and detonate the nuke by tear the cap off of them, what happens to the magma? In both cases, the dissolved gasses expand the volume of the magma. But the fresh one, which we can imagine dropping it and it popping on its own, does violently spew it's magma all over the place. The flat one give a good hiss, but no much more.

Like I said, grossly oversimplified, but still representative. The crust is thick and heavy, nuclear explosions are largely distributed and smallish on a planetary scale. Subterranean detonations only clear a chimney several hundred meters deep. A caldera is several km below the surface. The nuke can't cause a volcano to erupt. Trigger an eruption when and eruption is eminent, sure. But an known extinct volcano won't erupt.

[cosmicfish]

All right, fears assuaged. Drill away!

I think this casts a dark shadow on Final Watch, however...