This episode is brought to you by Skillshare.
The first 1,000 people to sign up using the link in the description will get their first
2 months free.
Volcanoes are nature's nuclear bombs.
The biggest was 10,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb blast, a terrifying
reminder of what can happen when Earth blows its top.
And then there are supervolcanoes that can cause eruptions of more than 600 cubic miles
of magma.
These are rare, with the last eruption happening at Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia, 74,000 years
ago.
Yellowstone National Park is actually situated over a supervolcano.
It has had three massive eruptions, the first of which occurred some 2.1 million years ago.
So what if we combined this force of nature with a man made destructive force?
That’s what we’ll find out, in this episode of The Infographics Show: What Would Happen
If We Detonated A Nuke in Yellowstone Volcano?
In 2015, A Russian geopolitical analyst, Konstantin Sivkov, who at the time was the president
of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems based in Moscow, was quoted in the Russian press
VPK News, as saying the best way to attack the United States is to detonate a nuclear
weapon and trigger a supervolcano at Yellowstone National Park or along the San Andreas fault
line on California's coast.
It sounds like a Hollywood movie style tactic, but would it actually work?
Yellowstone National Park sits right on top of a massive volcano.
It’s categorized as a supervolcano…but why?
Well for one, The Yellowstone Caldera is a crater measuring a huge 45 miles across.
If a nuclear bomb was detonated above the mouth of the volcano, then it might cause
a little damage to the edges of the crater, but it’s unlikely it would ignite an eruption,
because the blast radius of the bomb is too small to reach the pressurized chamber of
magma.
But the bomb would produce a fireball and incinerate everything in its near vicinity,
and with all the rubble produced, it’s possible that landslides would follow.
Onlookers would also witness the signature mushroom cloud, and there would be a high-pressure
air blast that would knock down trees and concrete buildings.
If the nuclear bomb was 1-megaton in size, the blast radius would be 5,700 feet across,
and the shock wave 3 miles beyond that.
At 50 seconds after the explosion, when the fireball is no longer visible, the blast wave
would have traveled about 12 miles at around 784 miles per hour.
And anyone who survived the blast would suffer a lethal dose of thermal radiation, resulting
in third degree burns to the skin.
Ok, that’s some destructive stuff…but what if a bomb was actually fired directly
in to the chamber?
Yellowstone has two magma chambers.
The shallower one stretches from 3 miles to about 10 miles beneath the surface, and is
about 55 miles long and 25 miles wide.
The chamber is mostly solid, with only about 5 to 15% melt.
The deeper chamber extends from 12 miles to 30 miles beneath the surface.
Even though the deeper chamber is about 4.5 times larger than the shallow chamber, it
contains only about 2% melt.
If a nuclear bomb was someone how transported and detonated in one of these chambers, it
could create enough heat to vaporize the magma and rock within the chamber, leading to an
eruption.
The magma is in a semi-solid, semi-liquid state, but the initial flash from the bomb
would boil this quickly.
Dr. Robin Andrews, a volcanologist from the University of Otago, New Zealand, explains,
"It would heat it up so quickly that it would turn into a vapor, so what you'd get is an
enormous vapor cavity.
Like when you shake up a bottle of Coke but it's just one massive bubble instead of loads
of little bubbles."
It’s hard to imagine a sensible volcanologist coming up with the idea of dropping a bomb
into a volcano.
However, in 1992, mount Etna erupted and it’s lava posed a serious threat to the nearby
buildings, one of which was the astronomical observatory, so scientists developed a plan
for diverting the flow.
They first used concrete blocks to stop the flow by diverting it around the town, but
because the bassins to store the lava were filled too quickly, they then used explosives
to make a new route for the lava.
The lava eventually ended up 4.5 miles away (7km) from the small town of Zafferana Etnea,
located on the slopes of the Sicilian giant, which was saved.
We did a bit more digging and surprisingly found an example a volcano that had been bombed.
Hawaii has several shield volcanoes capable of causing serious damage to the island’s
inhabitants.
The most dangerous is Mauna Loa, the world’s largest terrestrial volcano, which has also
been quite active in the twentieth century.
At one point its lava flows threatened to cause destruction in the town of Hilo, leaving
the population without water as well as wiping out the surrounding tropical forests that
grow on the volcano’s slopes.
The United States attempted to divert lava flows with explosions by dropping bombs in
1935 and 1942.
But neither of these attempts were successful.
Then in the 1970’s the U.S. air force worked with scientists at the Hawaiian volcano Observatory
to run some test bombings.
Bombs were dropped on an old inactive lava field but the experts concluded that though
bombing can destroy the top of the lava tube, it has no real effect against the deep magmatic
channels.
Ok, so it seems that it might be possible to trigger an eruption but only if a nuclear
bomb was somehow magically detonated inside the magma chamber, which is deep underground.
If Yellowstone did erupt, it’s not only the lava flow that would be a problem.
The ash that spills out for hundreds of miles around is also very dangerous.
It would destroy crops, and lead to health problems by reducing the amount of oxygen
in the atmosphere; it would even disrupt air traffic.
And we already mentioned the blast wave...well, in the case of a Yellowstone supervolcano,
it would kill and injure people at a distance of up to 100 miles from the epicenter.
Let’s just hope nothing like that ever happens.
What can happen though, is you creating videos like this!
If you are a complete beginner, we suggest taking a Skillshare class called ‘After
Effects for Beginners - Get Started with Motion Graphics!’
This is just one of the 20,000 classes offered by Skillshare, an online learning community
with classes in editing, graphic design, animation, and more.
The first 1,000 people to visit skillshare.com/infographics12 or to click the link in the description will
receive Premium Membership for 2 months completely free!
Premium Membership gives you unlimited access to all of the classes available on Skillshare!
Join the millions of other people who are already members, and support The Infographic
Show at the same time, by going to Skillshare.com/ infographics12 or clicking the link in the
description, and start learning today!
So, what do you think would happen if we detonated a nuke in a volcano?
Is it a terrible idea?
Or might there be some benefits?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Also, be sure to check out our other video called How Far Can North Korean Missiles Go!
Thanks for watching, and, as always, don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe.
See you next time!