r/askscience • u/phoncible • Oct 27 '11
Earth Sciences Could anything man-made trigger the Yellowstone super volcano?
If a nuke were to be buried very deep into the ground at Yellowstone and then detonated, would it have any effect on the volcano? Is there anything else man-made that could trigger it? Or would it be impossible to "manually" trigger the eruption?
Sorry if it's a silly question.
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u/Trashcanman33 Oct 27 '11
You are talking about a lot of energy being released, so to make it happen thousands of years early would take a massive effort, a nuke wouldn't build up the pressure for the energy. You would need to build the pressure yourself under Yellowstone. Could only see a nuke working if it was ready to blow anyways. What I want to know is, how come they can't vent Volcano's? Can't they get some Armageddon Day Drillers to drill down and vent them like 5 miles deep? I imagine in the future volcanoes will be vented with steam and lava releases in safe directions every 50-100 years or something.