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Science

Expert Warns Of Giant Tidal Wave 144

Posted by timothy from the risks-digest dept.
Kieckerjan writes "Forget about asteroids and start worrying about the unassuming Cumbre Vieja volcano. According to prof. Bill McGuire of the Benfield Grieg Hazard Research Centre, if this mountain erupts, it could cause a tidal wave that would wipe out America's east coast. Google news has the same story over and over again. (This makes you wonder: how much would it take to trigger an eruption for one bent on destruction?)"
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Expert Warns Of Giant Tidal Wave More

Expert Warns Of Giant Tidal Wave

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  • Clearly. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Ieshan ( 409693 ) <<ieshan> <at> <gmail.com>> on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @09:03AM (#9939048) Homepage Journal
    Yes, clearly. Americans need to be afraid of MORE things. Since cancer, terrorism, guns, murder, disease, nuclear (nuk-you-lar) war, security levels blue through hot pink, killer bees, and France aren't scary enough.

    • The professor has just read Scimitar SL-2 [amazon.co.uk] in which a terrorist tries to cause the eruption of the volcano with a nuclear cruise missile

    • Re:Clearly. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by gi-tux ( 309771 )
      I don't understand why you think we fear some of these things. There is no reason to fear guns, they can't do a thing to you. However, murder is possibly another issue. There is no reason to fear cancer or disease as there is nothing that you can do about them. Terrorism is similar, if you live in fear, then they have won (that is the reason for the root word terror in that). And I am not sure about fear of killer bees either, come on what the chance?

      But if it could be precisely redirected, it could
      • Clearly you live in the mid-South: you find an excuse to express your groundless hatred for France, which not only helped liberate your country from colonial England, but also sold your country the land, vast Louisiana, on which you live. You are also ignorant of more recent history, like the imported killer bees spreading from Texas to your hometown, that TV terror enablers found such a hot story for years in the 1970s. If you understood how environment and diet cause and encourage cancer, you'd be safer f

    • Re:Clearly. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Sepper ( 524857 ) on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @09:41AM (#9939380) Journal
      Yes, clearly. Americans need to be afraid of MORE things.

      I think they should be more affraid of the 'Wave' of Hollywood crappy movies this is gonna create...

    • Guns? (Score:2)

      by Wee ( 17189 )
      Why should I be afraid of guns? It's the people wielding them with ill intent that I should be wary of. And so I try not to put myself in positions where'd I'd be near that sort.

      The rest of that stuff I can't do much about, so worrying does little good there either.

      -B

      • Re:Guns? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by ElectricRook ( 264648 )
        I'm actually more afraid of politicians brandishing pens. As the quote goes "The pen is mightier than the sword".

        Consider who has killed more people.... Karl Marx, or Osama bin Laden. I'll choose to fight a hundred armed OBLs to one do-gooder politician.

        BTW, the followers of Karl have killed about ten thousand times more people than the followers of Osamma.

        • Re:Guns? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Martin Blank ( 154261 ) on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @01:11PM (#9941457) Homepage Journal
          Karl Marx, to my knowledge, never called for the imprisonment, execution, and/or disappearance of millions who chose not to toe the line. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and others chose those policies.
          • Exactly. Comparing Karl Marx with Osama Bin Laden is like comparing Salman Rushdie with Ayatollah Khomeini. Karl Marx outlined a new social structure and an economic theory to go with it.
        • Marx was an economist.
          • Here's one of my favorite quotes about Marx:


            Reading Marx gives the impression of an idiot-savant: in one paragraph he
            makes an incisive, novel comment about the inner-workings of capitalism,
            in the next he's unable to understand the concept of risk and the value
            that we attach to it, (an error that goes to the core of his entire theory
            of value)."
            --Alomex, Slashdot.com 12/04/2002

    • Don't forget obesity. That's big on the fear list these days, and has probably actually killed more people than bees, nuclear war, terrorism, or France.
      • Yeah, but it's politically incorrect to make fun of people who have died from bees, nuc-you-lar war, terrorism, or France, but it's okay to make fun of fat people. I'm still waiting for the media to inject that little bit of PC into mainstream ideals.

        What I'm talking about is how people joke about fat people like they're idiots who sit around eating cheese and french fries all day long.

        Yeah, I'm off topic, but I find it shitty to watch people on television condemn fat people as if they were the evil canc
    • Yes, clearly. Americans need to be afraid of MORE things. Since cancer, terrorism, guns, murder, disease, nuclear (nuk-you-lar) war, security levels blue through hot pink, killer bees, and France aren't scary enough.

      Don't forget phobophobia. That shit scares the bejesus out of me.

    • nuclear (nuk-you-lar) war

      Good lord, can't you f'rn'rs get it right?! It's pronounced, newk-ler or newk-ya-ler. Barbarians, the lot of ya! ;-)

  • Cliff (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Tomahawk ( 1343 ) * on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @09:04AM (#9939061) Homepage
    I remember seeing something about this (or something similar at least) in a documentary about tidal waves.

    Seemingly a particular cliff (which could very well be the volcano), if it were to fall into the sea, would cause a tidal wave large enough to take out New York (and would be in line with taking out New York).

    A few properly set explosives, and New Yorkers would have a few hours warning with no way to stop it.

    The particular documentary showed evidence of such tidal waves occuring where there had been rock slides of this sort. Volcano isn't actually necessary, but would give a large tidal wave (hence the east coast of the US would be affected).

    I think coming up with a method is dispersing such a tidal wave before it hits the coast would be the best way to counteract this. However, how, exactly, do you stop a large tidal wave in the middle of the Atlantic ocean?

    T.
    • Simple: you create an equal and opposite and perfectly timed wave which would cancel the oncoming wave at the precise location.

      • Re:Cliff (Score:3, Informative)

        by TheLink ( 130905 )
        Yeah, but once the waves pass each other they'll keep going on and now you have two huge waves causing trouble elsewhere at the not-so-precise locations...

        The energy in each wave isn't going to vanish so conveniently.
        • Must you complicate things?
      • I find the destruction that would caused by the huge ripple that you propose to create in the surface of the land and send eastwards to 'cancel' the tidal wave just as it reaches New York interesting. Please expound on your method for doing this so that I may take notes. _strokes white cat and gets out notepad_

    • Re:Cliff (Score:4, Funny)

      by denis-The-menace ( 471988 ) on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @09:11AM (#9939101)
      Couldn't they just send a bunch of missiles to break the wave before it hits?

      • Re:Cliff (Score:2, Funny)

        by PhuckH34D ( 743521 )
        If I remember correctly, such a wave is mostely under water. So it seems that it will be hard to hit.

      • You better take your high school physics again.

        What happens when two waves meet, and cross? When the peaks cross you get a wave with a height that is the sum of the waves. When the troughs cross you get a trough with a depth that is the sum. When the peak of one crosses the trough of the other they cancel out temporarily .

        But, once they have crossed, they go merrily on their way as if nothing had happened.

        So you explode a missile in the path of the big wave? All you have done is add a second big

        • Actually, if you could set off a bunch of other Tsunami so phased your major
          cities were all in the spots where the interference cancelled the wave, this might be kind of cool. Of course the "less-valuable" areas between the cities, would get two or three times the damage, but this could still be a win. I'm not sure we have enough explosives (and yes, I'm counting nukes) to create waves on the necessary scale, however.

          • ... set off a bunch of other Tsunami so phased your major cities were all in the spots where the interference cancelled the wave...

            How tall did the article say this superwave might be? Ah. Maybe 300 feet -- at the Canary Island. How tall will it be when it strikes New York, Boston, Charleston, Savanah, Miami? Let's say 90 feet -- 30 yards.

            Well, the wavelength of a wave is something like ten times its height. So, how large is the area where the natural superwave, and your artifical superwave ca

            • OK It was a silly idea.
              Say, how big is this slab, anyhow? And where did anyone get the idea it would make a 300 foot wave?
              It's "the size of the Isle of Wight" (about 20 miles by 15) and they go tthe wave height from theoretical models and scaled-down tank experiments. When the slab goes it displaces a lot of water, and the only place that can go, initially, is into the wave.
        • What happens when two waves meet, and cross? When the peaks cross you get a wave with a height that is the sum of the waves. When the troughs cross you get a trough with a depth that is the sum. When the peak of one crosses the trough of the other they cancel out temporarily .

          BUT IF THE WAVES ARE 180 DEGREES OUT OF PHASE IN THE SAME DIRECTION THEY CANCEL COMPLETELY FOR ALL ETERNITY.

          If you can create an opposite wave going in the SAME direction, the wave will essentially disappear.

          The point is that is
    • would be in line with taking out New York

      Well it's just going to have to take its turn. There are others who want to take out New York, and they've been waiting much longer.

    • Re:Cliff (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Fulkkari ( 603331 )

      It is possible that you could have seen a documentary about this. I read about this more than over a year a ago. This is definitely not news, just a reminder for the people! What worries me is that governments still haven't responded to the threat. Why? Because we consider some kind of a natural catastrophe often as a very unlikely and local phenomena. I have never seen, and don't know anyone who would have seen a natural catastrophe. Have you? The ever lasting problem remains; people won't believe you unti

    • > Seemingly a particular cliff (which could very
      > well be the volcano), if it were to fall into the
      > sea, would cause a tidal wave large enough to take
      > out New York (and would be in line with taking out New York).

      Did you know, that if all the people in China simultaneously jumped into the Pacific ocean, the resulting tidal wave would completely destroy the West coast? The Chinese government offers no comment except for hinting at dire consequences should we ever rescind its "most favored natio

  • Rock & Wave (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mchawi ( 468120 )
    If the problem is a large rock that could fall into the sea if the volcano erupted - wouldnt the obvious solution be to break up / get rid of / move / destroy said rock before such an event happens?

    We move mountains to build highways, so I don't see that this would be technologically unrealistic.
    • From the article:

      "If Cumbre Vieja volcano erupts, it may send a rock slab the size of a small island crashing into the sea, creating a huge tidal wave, or tsunami."

      Aside from it being a huge undertaking to move so many tons of rock, there's always the risk that removing sections of this slab will destabilize it, causing it to slide into the water below.

      It's just too risky unless someone comes up with a more foolproof method.

    • Re:Rock & Wave (Score:5, Informative)

      by Scarblac ( 122480 ) <slashdot@gerlich.nl> on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @09:30AM (#9939264) Homepage

      This rock is HUGE.

      The BBC article linked to gives the size as that of "a small island", this other BBC news article [bbc.co.uk] gives it as "the size of the Isle of Man". According to the CIA World Factbook, that is 572 sq m., or "three times the size of Washington, DC. It also metnions that the rock is already in motion.

      Actually, this PDF [ucsc.edu] (Google HTML version [66.102.11.104]) gives it as between 150 and 500 cubic km of rock. That is obviously far too large to get rid of. If it slides into the sea at 100 m/s (as in a volcanical eruption), it could cause waves of up to 25m high in the Americas (well, it's 10 to 25 for the biggest rock size).

      (Excuse me if some of the above links are actually in the story, I had read a bit about it already so didn't look closely at the given links)

    • We dig small holes into them. That is a bit different. And even when big amounts of earth is moved do you know how?

      By digging small holes into it and then putting explosives into it and BOOM, causing the whole big mountain to slide..... into the ocean. Mmmm, exactly the thing you were trying to avoid?

      Either you reinforce the rock (there was a similar bbc doc about a rock that could break of and slide into the ocean causing a huge wave), make sure that if it slides it slides slowly or you break it down pie

      • Yes, explosives are out. Of any side. What we need to do is start drilling holes in the front of it, trying to get small bits to fall off. Not only will this, obviously, reduce the total mass when it does fall, but hopefully these bits will slow the remaining mass's fall, be getting caught underneither. (I can't seem to find a diagram of this, so that could be crazy.)

        Also, it soulds like it would be a good idea if we could drill a hold into the volcano from the other side and start letting pressure out. Bu

  • This news is just what Hollywood needs. Now wee will se a new batch of natural disater movies based on Cumbre Vieja. Let me guess, Pierce Brosnan will reprise his roll in Dante's Peak and take the family to the Canary Islands, and end up saving the US eastern seaboard population. Or Hollywood Plan B would be to have Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler to pump out an Armageddon II with the world's best drilling team pulling a "Journey to the Center of the Earth" style operation on Cumbre Vieja (probably renamed Chal

  • Where's my board, damn it !

  • Large Explostion to set off volcano (Score:5, Insightful)

    by justanyone ( 308934 ) on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @09:27AM (#9939238) Homepage Journal
    I believe they thought of doing mining (as in for minerals, not data) in the 1950's and 1960's using nuclear explosives.

    While this was a great incomplete theory, it left out the crucial detail of environmental damage and subsequent release of radiation to the ore, the slag, and the mined-out areas. Of course, in that day-in-age it wasn't well known what the long term effects of radioactive byproducts of nuclear explosions were.

    There's also the crucial political perspective of Eisenhower's use of 'Atoms for Peace' to give political cover to the Atomic Energy Commission's mandate / goals of limiting proliferation. Basically, we promised the world that if they would NOT develop nuke bombs, we would give them reactors for free power. I am not "up" on the issue, I'd defer to some Ph.D.'s who do nonproliferation studies for a living. However, I'd wager there's a tradeoff between the lives saved by not having too many nukes out there vs. the lives lost in long term radiation exposure due to waste from 3rd world reactors.

    Regardless, this builds up to the idea that if you're a terrorist, and you're going to try to set off a volcano, you're going to need lots, and lots, and lots, and lots, and lots, and lots, and lots, and lots, and lots, and lots, and lots, and lots, and lots of conventional explosives, or one medium- to large-sized nuclear bomb. And, if you have a medium to large nuke, you're not going to use it on an off-the-wall gambit like an underwater or underground explosion.

    Geologists, please comment on any demonstrated effects of the use of explosives in the triggering of volcanic eruptions (if any) ?? I would suspect very few experiments, am I right?

  • Yellowstone Supervolcano (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Picass0 ( 147474 ) on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @09:32AM (#9939281) Homepage Journal
    Look those two keywords up on Google. You will find a new reason to be nervous.

    Yellowstone erupts on a 640,000 cycle, give or take a few ten thousand years.

    Last time Yellowstone blew it buried Nebraska under six feet of ash. Anyone within a 600 mile radius would die within minutes.

    It's about 20,000 years overdue to erupt.

    • Yellowstone erupts on a 640,000 cycle, give or take a few ten thousand years.

      It's about 20,000 years overdue to erupt.

      Meaning that it could be a few more tens of thousands of years before it blows up? I think I'll stick to worrying about other stuff rather than an explosion that might happen in the year 32,789 A.D.
      • Yellowstone is overdue. So it's not an idle concern.

        An eruption will probably not occur in our lifetimes, if you're playing the odds game. But an eruption is an eventuality. We're not talking about IF, we are talking about WHEN. Yellowstone's last eruption was larger than Kobe, and that one nearly wiped us out as a species.

        The damage that will happen to this hemisphere cannot even be calculated. Scientists talk about giant rocks in space, but there are plenty of boogymen right here.
        • Right but I doubt there's anything to be done about it besides move people away from it. I doubt it will come anywhere close to wiping out the species. The population is so large and far-reaching, it would take nothing less than the destruction of the planet to wipe us out.

          Asteroids however can be avoided with the proper technology.

          In any case, no government will spend money on opposing a threat that might be ten thousand years off.

        • Is it true that the next eruption of Yellowstone is overdue?

          No. The fact that two eruptive intervals (2.1 million to 1.3 million and 1.3 million to 640,000 years ago) are of similar length does not mean that the next eruption will necessarily occur after another similar interval. The physical mechanisms may have changed with time. Furthermore, any inferences based on these two intervals would take into account too few data to be statistically meaningful. To say that an eruption that might happen in ten's

        • Yellowstone is overdue.

          In the last 2.1 million years, Yellowstone erupted 3 times at intervals of between 600,000 and 800,000 years. Even allowing a statistical analysis of such a small sample size, the expected interval would be something more like 700,000 years plus/minus 100,000 years. Yes, Yellowstone may erupt again someday, but calling it overdue is listening too much to the tinfoil hat folks.

        • While it might be overdue, it is certainly something that can be planned for, and won't happen immediately.

          The short-term predictive capabilities for volcanologists is getting pretty good. Events such as the eruption of Mt. St. Helens or Mt. Penetubo in the Phillipenes were extreamely accurate, and gave several days notice before they erupted. I would imagine that the same could be said about Yellowstone... even more so because so much is done to study the region on a geological basis.

          The problem is tha
          • The biggest global effects outside the US would be the ash and sulfur emissions in the stratosphere that would block off sunlight. There might not be any crops produced in the northern hemisphere for several years, and the climate of the southern hemisphere would also be severely affected. It might throw us into an ice age.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @11:31AM (#9940468)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • (This makes you wonder: how much would it take to trigger an eruption for one bent on destruction?)"


    approximately 1,372.5 lbs of low grade explosive... but who's calculating?

    1. The story has been publicised again because there is still no monitoring on the faults involved. Might be worth funding the odd postgrad geologist?
    2. The actual event can only be predicted to within geological timescales, so very little cause to start heading for high ground now.
    3. The same tsunami would hit Africa first and harder, but in all the coverage I've heard on this the only mention made is of the east coast of the US. Just one more invisible catastrophe to hit the third world...

    • in all the coverage I've heard on this the only mention made is of the east coast of the US. Just one more invisible catastrophe to hit the third world...

      If you look at the diagrams, the vast majority of the energy released by the slide would travel westwards. The coast of Africa looks like it would be far less at risk in this scenario than the Eastern seaboard of the US. It's the Caribbean islands that are overlooked in a lot of the press coverage, as they are most at risk.

  • IANAG, but... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by incog8723 ( 579923 ) on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @09:44AM (#9939409)
    Wouldn't it be possible to plant (underwater) explosives on the rock, with velocity sensors on them, such that if the rock began moving at too fast a rate (say, greater than 5 mph), hundreds of underwater explosives start detonating it into shreds? I know demolitions is a very precise science these days. Cleverly mounted and directed explosions (of course, it would take several thousand tons)... But if you could split it such that it creates a somewhat negative movement of waves, seems as though it would work. I.E., split it in half north to south, then east to west, then the remaining pieces split in half and so on.

    Just an idea..

    • Whole or in pieces, same effect (Score:5, Informative)

      by Engineer-Poet ( 795260 ) on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @10:23AM (#9939792) Homepage Journal
      Aside from the wonderful time you'd have wiring up a few hundred cubic km of rock with explosives, there's the question of the good it would do. In this case, it would probably be zero.

      The problem here is that the rock goes down and displaces water, which comes up. The potential energy of the falling rock is partially converted into kinetic energy of the water, which becomes a tsunami when it hits the surface. You are not going to get rid of this energy by fragmenting the rock. Some tsunamis appear to have been caused by mudslides [omzg.sscc.ru], and it's hard to get any more fragmented than mud.

      • The problem here is that the rock goes down and displaces water, which comes up.

        I see what you're saying, and it makes sense.. but there's gotta be a way to cancel out the waves. It's no different than radio or sound waves. If you could create an equally powerful wave in front of the tsunami, wouldn't they cancel out? Keep in mind, I'm a moron :)

        • You may be right - a similar wave in the opposite direction will cancel it out.

          But where are you going to find an island-sized lump of rock that you can drop into the ocean at a few hour's notice to generate such a wave?

          (plus I'm ignoring the fact that both the original wave and the cancelling wave would actually have circular ripple patterns going in all directions, so the cancelling effect would only really work head on)
          • another wave going the other way will simply pass through the first one (Hollywood science notwithstanding), and then destroy whatever is on the western seaboard headed the other way; the original wave will continue unabated.

            tsunamis at sea are not very impressive in size, generally only a few meters high, but they do an enormous speed, and when they ramp up a coastal shelf at the other end, all of that wave gets compressed, mostly upwards.

            if you want impressive waves at sea, search for "rogue waves".
      • Not exactly true.

        The tsunami is created by the rolling motion caused by the material sliding down the slope of the Cumbre Vieja and the rest of the island.

        One big splash would dissipate and not create a tsunami, it's the fact that the oscillation is reinforced by the additional material, creating a several-period wave that can travel.

        I think the previous poster was right -- it would be possible to fragment or interfere with the waves in such a way to reduce their amplitude significantly. It would requir

        • Re:Whole or in pieces, same effect (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Engineer-Poet ( 795260 ) on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @12:18PM (#9940931) Homepage Journal
          The tsunami is created by the rolling motion caused by the material sliding down the slope of the Cumbre Vieja and the rest of the island.

          One big splash would dissipate and not create a tsunami...

          That's not what people who've studied the phenomenon [emsc-csem.org] say. I quote:
          The initial deformation is assumed to be
          fully and instantaneously transmitted to the sea surface, where, through restoring gravity forces, tsunami waves begin to propagate across the sea.
          The remnant of the historical landslide off California mapped here [appliedfluids.com] doesn't show any evidence of rolling motions required to create wave trains (that looks like one slump, like an avalanche in air); the water will do that by itself. All you have to do is drop a pebble in water and watch the ripples moving outward to prove to yourself that a sharp event will cause an oscillation - and if such events didn't cause waves, why are we concerned about asteroid impacts in the water?
  • Oh, but i'm sure our dearest president bush will come up with some sort of aeronautic tidal wave shield, which will automagically save us from that dreadful threat. (and as a small side-effect pump billions of dollars into the weapon-industry just for safety precautions).

    You never can be sure enough! right?

  • Motives? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by martyb ( 196687 ) on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @09:47AM (#9939441)

    Let's look at the source:

    On the front page of the Benfield Grieg Hazard Research Centre [benfieldhrc.org] web site is this interesting statement:

    BHRC is sponsored by Benfield, the world's leading independent reinsurance intermediary and risk advisory business. Benfield's customers include many of the world's major insurance and reinsurance companies as well as Government entities and global corporations. Benfield employs over 1,700 people based in over 30 locations worldwide.

    <sarcasm>Why would an insurance company post such an article?</sarcasm>

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Why would an insurance company post such an article?

      The insurance industry was actually the first industry to take global climate change seriously, partly because they literally have an interest in the future. I assume that this may be something along the same lines -- aside from the fact that much of the insurance industry is on the US east coast and would drown if this happens, it's in their corporate interest to get a handle on possible risks. Plus, it's good PR.

    • Why would an insurance company post such an article?

      Interesting point. Most home-owner's (and renter's) insurance policies, at least in the U.S., do not cover damage due to flooding. This makes sense, (even if it makes sense in a twisted way) since most places are either in an area that will definitly flood given a reasonable period of time, or will never flood, except for some disastor of cataclysmic proportions.

      Anyway, I doubt there is any negative motive here on the part of the insurance compani
  • Before the mysterious evildoer can collapse the rock formation, thus triggering the tsunami that will wipe out life as we know it, a slightly whiny hero and his band of friends will come to our rescue.

    I only hope they're at a high enough level by the time they reach the overlord. :(
  • Google has been buying up land on the east coast as land prices plummet after news of a volcano...
  • Dont forget, the Canarys are off the West of Africa and Europe, Although as the slippage seems to be comming off the west of the island, the wave may only travel westerly...?

    I wonder how long before some models might be available... even a simple concentric circle diagram taking into account the islands dampening effect on the tsunami. (I think they already know where the slippage will occur...)

  • If it can be taken down in pieces, like avalanches are, it won't be so destructive.

    Should not be too expensive to send some mining experts who'll blow it into small pieces which individually have not much effect.
  • So what we've got here is something that would create massive tidal waves and wipe out NY if it was released _all at once_. The only way to make sure this doesn't happens is to make sure it happens in small pieces. So I say drop it into the ocean in as big pieces as can possibly be done without any huge risk and as often as possible. Starting 50 years ago preferrably.

  • Surf's Up? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by swdunlop ( 103066 )
    From the article:

    Walls of water 300 feet high would travel to the US at the speed of a jet. Within three hours, the wave would swamp the east coast of Africa, within five hours it would reach southern England and within 12 it could hit America's east coast.

    First off, a disclaimer.. IANAG, IANAP, and IANAO. (I am not a geologist, physicist, or geologist.) But, unless something is dramatically different about rocks and water, F = ma, and the laws of conservation of energy still apply. How is an obje

    • Re:Surf's Up? (Score:5, Informative)

      by putzin ( 99318 ) on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @12:18PM (#9940921) Homepage

      The reason this would be big is because the wave, as it approaches the coast, would expand upward as the depth decreases. The energy dissipation follows wave form rules, but as in any system, the energy involved doesn't go away. So, as the water gets shallow, the wave would grow up. Interesting to note that there would be no 300 foot wave in deep water, but the wave form itself would still exist and be travelling at a high rate of speed despite being essentially invisible.

      As a side note, Dr. No, GoldFinger, and Dr. Evil all investigated this and decided it wasn't grand enough for a take over the world plot. Not reproducible, like a laser or nuclear weapon, and possibly defensible (blow up the rock before it slides?).

  • >(This makes you wonder: how much would it take to trigger an eruption for one bent on destruction?)

    No worries. Mr Gates is a software engineer and businessman, not a geo-tectonic thermonuclear engineer.

  • Solution (Score:4, Insightful)

    by j_w_d ( 114171 ) on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @01:44PM (#9941789)
    Go to volcanic island. Locate large slipping rock. Make gravel and dispose of gradually filling pot holes in Italian roads and New York's city streets.

  • Hoorah! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    if this mountain erupts, it could cause a tidal wave that would wipe out America's east coast.

    That would certainly restore my faith in God.

  • Can't believe I'm the only pedant here. (Score:3)

    by Myself ( 57572 ) on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @04:18PM (#9943021) Journal
    tidal wave
    n.
    The swell or crest of surface ocean water created by the tides.

    tsunami
    n.
    A very large ocean wave caused by an underwater earthquake or volcanic eruption.

    *ahem*
  • From my limited understanding of volcanic activity, when a volcano erupts, they either can be explosive eruptions (like Mt. St. Helens) or the lava flow kind (Hawaill), and the type depends largely on the geological structure of the volcanoe itself. Now, it is my understanding that an explosive eruption is caused principally by the build-up of pressure with no way of escape (like blowing up a tough leathery baloon until it pops). If I am right, then I am curious whether or not it would be possible to artifi
    • well.. I'm not a geologist but..

      Drilling ???
      You probably need to drill quite deep (rather far through the earths crust)..
      So a drill of a few miles long ? No way.
      If you would want to use something like the drills the Chunnel has been made with. Only problem, they don't work by remote control, humans need to be present. Drilling that deep in a vulcano (warmth/gasses) is probably not something you'll survive to tell your grand-children about.
      If the drill itself survives the heat too btw.

      So drilling is out. O
      • Well, and I take your comment seriously, I'm not sure how deeply you would have to drill, and second, we have and do drill quite deep into the earth- the question here are two, I think: 1)how deep would we need to drill, and where and 2)how deep can we drill, and at what cost. I don't have any answers to these questions. I know that when we drill down deep, we don't hit magma- that's way to deep... but presumably the problem in a volcanoe is much closer to the surface- and thus, possibly, reachable. However
  • It doesn't make *me* wonder about geotechnic sabotage, although it does scare the bejeezus out of Kieckerjan, the story submitter. Go ask mommy abain about the monster under the bed, K. She'll make the scary volcanoes go away, too.
  • Thanks for posting this. Well, as long as the secrets out, i am accepting donations with which to hire mercenaries with which to stage a coup on the island of la palma, and to purchase a moderatly sized nuclear device. With this i would be able to hold the east coast hostage in exchange for control of the US's Groom Lake facility as well as the HAARP array in Alaska. From there i would have the means to control the rest of the world. With your small donation you can get in on the ground floor of my glorious
  • ..Bruce Willis!

    Ive actually been to La Palma, its a beautiful and largely untouched island. Its interior has the 2nd largest volcano in the world, with utterly impossible and fantastic looking mountain peaks..

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