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Expert Warns Of Giant Tidal Wave
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?)"
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.
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.
The professor has just read Scimitar SL-2 in which a terrorist tries to cause the eruption of the volcano with a nuclear cruise missile
My guess is Boston.
What do you think?
...is another mans opportunity at new Pennsylvania beachfront real estate. The commute through New Jersey would be no big loss.
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.
Just crash an asteroid on top of the volcano, safely eliminating the threat.
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 Chalupa Verde).
Where's my board, damn it !
With that aggravating beauty, Lulu Walls.
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?
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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.
approximately 1,372.5 lbs of low grade explosive... but who's calculating?
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Take that, Jewish Accountant!
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..
You never can be sure enough! right?
- Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
http://www.es.ucsc.edu/~ward/papers/La_Palma_grl.p df
I am neither insensitive nor a clod!
Let's look at the source:
On the front page of the Benfield Grieg Hazard Research Centre web site is this interesting statement:
<sarcasm>Why would an insurance company post such an article?</sarcasm>
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...
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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...)
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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, and it's hard to get any more fragmented than mud.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
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.
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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.
The rest of that stuff I can't do much about, so worrying does little good there either.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
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 object of this mass, compared to the mass of the ocean, going to generate a swell 300 feet high that will maintain its height when it reaches the US shore? While I don't remember the formulas for predicting wave propagation, I'm pretty damn sure that attenuation over that distance would be pretty steep. A couple extra inches in a few swells isn't exactly going to overwhelm our shoreline.
I think Slashdot's been trolled by the Beeb, here..
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No worries. Mr Gates is a software engineer and businessman, not a geo-tectonic thermonuclear engineer.
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Most of what I can't stand about our society happens East of the Appalachian Mountains- so a tidal wave in this area would be a problem why?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
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 piece by piece.
Neither are easy or cheap or ever been done before.
It appears there is proof waves of this kind of hit before in history and even recent ones on a smaller scale, rock slide on one side of a bay, flood on the other side. It seems pretty sound science but that doesn't tell us how to solve it.
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> 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 nation" status.
Don't you see??? The volcano is a sleeper cell. We need to destroy all volcanoes before they destroy us. GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!!
-Paul
Don't forget that the Left, still in mourning for the Soviet Union, has latched onto radical Islamic fundamentalism as their new mythical source of all justice and purity on Earth.
As you point out, radical Islamofundies haven't racked up nearly as impressive a record of atrocities as institutional Communism did, but, faute de mieux, OBL will have to suffice. The attraction isn't just due to similar bloody-mindedness, though. OBL's plan for bringing about an Ideal World isn't very much different from Stalin's anyway. Communism is a xenophobic, intolerant, evangelical, expansionist political religion. Like all political religions, it holds that once you get the ideology right, everything a society actually needs will just sort of magically follow. Never works out in real life, of course, but when it doesn't, they just say it's your own fault, because -- by definition! -- you must've gotten the ideology wrong. So try again! As long as anybody's left alive, just keep trying!
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.
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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.
I bet every surfer out there is now on standby call, for the greatest ride ever! :)
Carbon based humanoid in training.
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 artificially relieve this pressure by drilling deep holes into the earth. Am I totally off-base?
Logic, macros, and more
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 wave to worry about. That doesn't sound like such a good idea to me.
Is there some way to break the big slab into smaller peices? Let them drop into the ocean one at a time?
How about building a coffer dam right under where we expect the slab to fall, and then pumping out all the water? No water, no big wave.
I think you need to brush up on your Marxs. He called for a violent overthrow of the current order. Generally violent overthrows involve imprisonment, execution, and/or disappearances.
Yes, Yes, I need to find that man now. He took my rainy day cash too.
Wow! Taking "no sense of humour" to a whole new level.
There's a fair swag of evidence which says that most if not all of it was ghost-written for him.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
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".
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
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.
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 cancel one another out? Do you think New Yorkers would thank you if you preserved the Battery, but the rest of New York got twice the damage?
Oh wait. A quarter of an hour later the battery is hit by the 20 yard wave you set off to protect Boston. And then it gets hits by the remains of the other big waves you set off.
Following World War 2 the USN experimented with the effects of an underwater explosions on fleets of Naval vessels. That was the fate of the Prinz Eugen, the consort to the Bismark. Clips of those explosions are public. You may have seen them. How tall would you say the wave created by those explosions were?
My estimate? Less than ten yards.
Those would have been Hiroshima scale bombs -- 10 kilotons. So, how big a blast would be required to make a wave just twice as tall? Remember, the volume of water in a wave is the cube of the dimensions. So, wouldn't a wave twice as tall require 16 times the blast energy? By my naive calculations your counter-waves would each require blasts of tens of megatons.
The radiation burden of this many explosions would rival that of a Nuclear War.
Say, how big is this slab, anyhow? And where did anyone get the idea it would make a 300 foot wave?
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.
--
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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 new world order.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
..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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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 not necessarily impossible to "destroy" the wave with a missle, provided you actually timed things right and fired in the right place. There would be issues with the wave created by a single missle being circular, but I'm sure the military has plenty of missles lying around so you can make a decent approximation of a line.
So you explode a missile in the path of the big wave? All you have done is add a second big wave to worry about. That doesn't sound like such a good idea to me.
Well, even under the method I describe there would end up being a counter-wave heading back towards the original source, but at this point it's worth noting that waves DO loose energy as they travel across the ocean. And the counter-wave is going to loose energy again.
So a 40' wave may end up being a 20' wave which when reversed may end up being a >10' wave by the time it hits a coast.
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