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

[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. ^.^;

[kaitou1412.livejournal.com]

hee! no your input is totally appreciated. So far everyone's been way more helpful than Wikipedia-lad on the nano forum.

It's an intentional trigger. It's a doomsday weapon, actually.

[dogmatix-san.livejournal.com]

*l* It's a pleasure ^_^ Glad to help!

[dogmatix-san.livejournal.com]

As for triggering earthquakes.... hmm. Some kind of super-grade magical lube slipped intbetween the continental plates? Setting off explosions on/in faults?

If a volcano close to a main city was linked to a dragon to keep it dormant, and the dragon put under a sleep spell, and then the culture kind of petered out and the dragon was forgotten, then some kind of idiot/righteous killer of dragons could show up a few centuries later, find the sleeping dragon, think 'ah, easy kill!', and get splatted under the exploding earthquake when the dragon's violent death made it go boom?

What's that one myth.. world serpent? Norse myth, I think. If someone were ignorant/powerful/stupid/lucky/just-plain-insane enough to kill said world serpent, then you'd get a looooot of earthquakes, and probably an exploding volcano or two would be the least of your worries (tidal waves, collapsed cities, etc etc), unless it was like the caldera that is Yellowstone National Park that'd wipe out a good part of the continent or something.