[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