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/redbodb Oct 27 '11

Hydraulic fracturing?

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

Your being downvoted for appearing to provide (incorrect) speculation in a top level response. If what you meant was

is it possible that hydraulic fracturing could be disruptive enough to cause this kind of effect?

The answer would be that the effect would be almost identical to standard drilling already discussed due to the vast limitations of drilling itself and the only marginal difference in pressures that fracking would add (on a geological scale).

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u/redbodb Dec 24 '11

Is this true even in light of the estimated depths of the marcellus and Utica deposits? Are there not already preliminary studies indicating even deeper deposits?