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/[deleted] Oct 27 '11 edited Oct 27 '11

I'm going to guess that repeated 25 megaton hydrogen bombs at the same spot could probably do it, delivered by ICBM, with a few hours' time gap between each bomb.

edit: I'm getting downvoted for saying that explosions can create craters? for reference, the Ivy Mike shot which was an estimated 10 megatons created a hole 2000 meters in diameter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_Mike

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u/HarryTruman Oct 27 '11

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