Help!

[kaitou]

I'm a little underwhelmed by the nanowrimo help forum this year. I'm looking for some ideas on how you could theoretically 'trigger' a volcano. It can be either actually scientifically based, or magically based as long as it has a solid theory behind it. From what I understand explosives wouldn't be at all helpful.

When I asked on the nano forum I got the scintillating information that volcanoes blow when the pressure is too high, and a link to the wikipedia site. Because, gee, I didn't think to look there already. I'm trying to come up with an idea on how to artificially increase pressure in a fairly short amount of time. (few months?)

So does anyone have any possible ideas, even silly ones that could help trigger an idea? That way I won't have to go back to my useless little thread that's been buried under threads like 'vile cheeses' and 'name my character!'

Thank you!

Comments

[stormgren.livejournal.com]

Well, there's always the cheesy nuclear standby.

Other than that, someone caps all the vents of an active volcano?

[thorne-scratch.livejournal.com]

Well, at my grade school science fair, I always just overloaded the baking soda and the vinegar...

I got nothin'. Uh. Maybe an earthquake? Earthquake triggers volcano by increasing pressure? Then you have to figure out how to manufacture the earthquake, I guess.

[tsaiko.livejournal.com]

GEOLOGIST TO THE RESCUE!

Since not many people ever want to trigger volcanic eruptions (outside James Bond movies), I'm going kind of out on a limb here. It's true that pressure built up in the magma chambers causes volcano to erupt. For some volcanoes this pressure comes from rising hot magma pushing up until the chamber can't hold it anymore. Then it comes oozing out. See Hawaiian volcanoes.

These volcanoes are very boring. Pretty, but boring.

Gases and water vapor either in the lava itself or in the rocks of the volcano cause explosive eruptions. You can't do anything with adding gases/water to the boiling lava. It comes premixed by nature. You can pipe water into the sides of the volcano. The water will percolate through cracks in the volcano and when it touches the hot magma, it will turn into steam. Steam expands and will crack the rocks further, creating even more places for magma and incoming water to go. Eventually, you'll get an eruption. Not only that, you'll get pyroclastic flows (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyroclastic_flow), which most times are more dangerous that the flowing lava.

Other ways of triggering a volcano include triggering earthquakes underneath or near the volcano. This would cause underground shifting of magma reservoirs and can "prime the pump" so to speak when it comes to getting magma moving. You can make this step one in the evil process and pumping water into the volcano step two.

If you need any more scientific reasoning or justification on this topic, let me know. I'm always happy when I can put my geologic knowledge to ridiculous uses. XD

[dogmatix-san.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm. Okay, brainstorm. The capping idea seems like a good way to build up pressure. So does adding water and triggering an earthquake. Maybe some combination of those?

Also, is this accidental or intentional?

If you had a volcano that was being tapped for heat energy, via magical or sientific means - drawing off the heat to fuel something or other, for instance - I mean that's what powerplants really are, isn't it? Producing energy through combustion? So, use the heat energy from the volcano. Now, if that draw got looped back to the volcano, or something like backlashed, if the spell broke, it could stuff a lot of energy back into the volcano in too short a time, causing a buildup of energy/heat, thus pressure, especially if the volcano is either capped, naturally closed, or becomes that way somehow.

Or, sci-fi here, if a large energy source (yes, nuclear type thing), like, say, an alien spacecraft, was to either end up in a volcano or have been there for a few thousand/million years and the shields finally failed or the hull got eaten through or whatever, and the power core got shorted out by the magma, that might again trigger pressure/energy increase.

Hmmm. The earth's surface is basically under a sea of air. Now, I don't know that this is possible, since I don't know how much pressure the air actually puts on the surface, but if you had something like a giant, non-physical(or maybe physical)... hickey machine. ^.^;;; That sucked all the air off the top of a volcano and broke the top off the now-active volcano to boot? It would also be a pressure differential then, like explosive decompression from a spaceship airlock. Uh, unless the gravity of the earth counteracted that. Yeah, I have no idea, just tossing out wild theories here. ^.^;;;;

So anyhow, that's my input. ^.^;

[edwired.livejournal.com]

What we need is a "Lube-Fairy"...

Now, where is Icka when you need her...