[beerandt]

With volcanos, the more viscous the magma, the more energy gets stored before an eruption. Supervolcanos are the most viscous type, hence the massive explosion.

Think boiling water vs thick oatmeal vs boiling a pressure cooker until it explodes, but obviously worse.

So "relieve pressure" in this case isn't like a pressure release valve on a water heater.

You'd need to either cool the mass, remove the overburden, or create some sort of massive voids for expansion.

The US nuclear test done in Mississippi resulted in vaporizing the rock and soil and creating a large underground void, for whatever that's worth as a sort of proof of concept.

[coenhyde]

Yeah I don't see why we can't use nukes. We just need bigger nukes and more of them. How about we drill the largest borehole we can, then drop a chain of nukes down it. ie detonate a nuke every 100m. First few can be Tsar Bomba's.

[ethbr0]

Can I interest you in a pamphlet about careers in Strategic Air Command?

[MisterTea]

> The US nuclear test done in Mississippi resulted in vaporizing the rock and soil and creating a large underground void, for whatever that's worth as a sort of proof of concept.

Where did the vaporized rock and soil go?

[beerandt]

>Where did the vaporized rock and soil go?

"What are you, the rock police? I put'em up on my a**. How's that?"

[techdragon]

Forced into the surroundings making them more dense than the surrounding rock and soil.

[jdsully]

I imagine it escaped as a gas.

[caeril]

It escapes . . . as a gas . . . in an already highly pressurized environment . . . that is already containing a large amount of high-pressure hydrogen sulfide that cannot escape as it is?

I'm pressing X to doubt.

[ineedasername]

That just means you need a second nuke to blow a hole that allows the gas to escape & lave to flow in, and a 3rd nuke to collapse the hole before the lava gets too far. It's all there in my book, "How to nuke your way out of any problem"

[beerandt]

Big "if", but hypothetically, at least gas flows in a way that the pressure could be relieved.

The whole reason supervolcanoes are what they are is that the material can't sufficiently flow faster than pressure builds.

Converting that material to an escaping gas at scale would be an unbelievably successful technological achievement.

[daveac]

You could just create another bigger void and let the stuff vent into that

[echelon]

Do rocks and minerals even have a boiling point, or do they thermally decompose?

[iSnow]

Considering they are mostly anorganic substance, I'd guess you can make them boil - you'd get lava.

[syngrog66]

Alabama

[dmos62]

I like that you felt you needed to point out that a supervolcano explosion would be worse than oatmeal on the wall.

[beerandt]

Yea- the more pertinent take is that the magma involved "flows" more like room temp glass than liquid water.

It'd be like trying to suck a mix of layers of that boiling oatmeal and playdough through a straw.