Could terrorists use explosives to start Mega-Tsunami?

BBC.co.uk ^

[reg45]

I got the Robinson book at the library and read it last Thursday night (until 3:30 am) and Friday morning. I agree 100% with your comments about Kennedy worship. The only reason Sen. Teddy would care about the tsunami is that it would wipe out Hyannis Port and most of Boston.

[ZULU]

Are you related to Tommy Thompson? (Just joking)

[kevkrom]

I'm sure our DoD has looked into the possibility of creating a tsunami in case we were to go to war with China.

That would probably have some serious negative side-effects on friendly/allied nations nearby...

[elephantlips]

Why don't we all get together and come up with a long list of all the things the terrorists could do to bring harm to our country. Who knows, maybe we could dream up some things that hadn't occurred to them. (Dripping with sarcasm) Isn't there enough going on to occupy journalists and bloggers so that this type of speculation could be avoided? No? Maybe, it's just me.

[ImaGraftedBranch]

I believe the tidal wave that crossed the Pacific was much higher

Actually, the water (as a tsunami wave) does not move -- it is simply energy transferrance, until the depth decreases in its path.

[bahblahbah]

" That would probably have some serious negative side-effects on friendly/allied nations nearby..."

That goes completely without saying, but the DoD would be interested in doing it anyway. They can research ways to direct the tsunami and setup a proper warning system with said allies.

Heck they've already talked about taking out Three Gorges Dam in case of an attack on Taiwan and just think of how many people that would kill.

For instance, a tsunami directed towards China with enough power to be lethal 1km inland would affect approximately

(14500km) *(1km) * ( 419people /km^2) = 6,075,500people

Then a lot of their industry would be destroyed and they wouldn't be able to mount an invasion force to take Taiwan.

I'm not saying its the right way to handle the situation, but it should be an option.

[Jackapoozee]

Just to clear something up...regarding the power of the Asia Earthquake, a 9.0 magnitude event.

The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were almost 20 kilotons (20,000) tons each.

A thousand times this would be equivalent to a 20 megaton bomb. The largest detonation of an nuclear device by the US was a 15 megaton bomb in the bikini atoll in March 1958. Although very large and destructive, it in NO WAY could compare to the energy required to displace the amount of water in the Indian Ocean Earthquake!

A previous post mentioned the power of the Indian Ocean Earthquake being a million atomic bombs. Yes...maybe a million "1-megaton bombs".

And...any explosion would have to displace a hole helluva alot of water vertically up or down. I'm not a scientist but to say that terrorists or anybody for that matter could cause a tsunami is pretty crazy.

[Justa]

Regarding the power required to split off the aforementioned section of La Palma: if the 1940s eruption lacked sufficient power to do it I doubt a few tons of explosives could it.

[SunkenCiv]

Nah. Unless the hunk of rock is just barely hanging on by a thread, in which case driving a heavy truck back and forth along it might do it. ;')

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[The Spirit Of Allegiance]

If this explosives idea is at all plausible maybe the US could "monitor" the volcano to ensure the safety of the east coast, and eliminate one more terrorist threat.

John Fn Kerry 'captured' the Statue of Liberty, FOUGHT IN VIETNAM and is a orange, two-faced military man (cough, gag). I think we should stake him out on that island to bait sharks abate this real threat to Liberty....

[Atlantic Friend]

I think it would be technically feasible : collapsing the Ross shelf in Antartica would probably cause a tsunami of an unseeen strength...Wasn't there a thriller about that, called "Icefire" or something ?

[bigeasy51]

I've been researching this for a few years. (The volcano not the terrorists).
IMHO - A couple of things everyone should be aware of. There have been two "slides" of monumental proportions in our lifetime,(actually 101 years).
One occured in 1958 in Lituya (or Letuya)Bay Alaska, when an earthquake caused a portion of a mountain side to slip into a fairly remote bay and speed out to sea. The immediate wave was over 1700 feet high and scoured the coastline of all vegetation and killed a few people fishing in the bay. That's over 5 1/2 football fields! And it moved down the bay and out into the ocean in less than 4 minutes.
The second was a rock slide that occurred at Turtle Mountain in Alberta Canada in April 1903. Now even though this was a rock slide and not a tsunami there are some things that we should all keep in mind. The Turtle Mountain slide took 100 seconds - during that two minutes 90 million tons of limestone plummeted down the mountain flank, across the nearly two mile wide valley floor, and climbed up the opposite slope to a height of 400 feet. It turned half of the mining town of Frank, Alberta into toothpicks and killed 70 people. All in under two minutes.
A mega-tsunami generated by the Cumbra Veija would take a little more than a day (8-9 hours)to hit the east coast of the U.S. with the first wave. (I don't know about you, but after seeing the traffic jams this year caused by Floridians fleeing hurricanes with 2 and 3 days notice - I'm not all that comfortable with our evacuation plans, or the way in which our citizenry respond to evac orders!) Boston would be first hit of the major east coast cities, then NYC, and then on down the coast. The tsunami would have spread out during it's Atlantic crossing and estimates are that the first pressure wave would ONLY be 50 meters high when it climbs the Atlantic shelf and sweeps ashore for a few miles. Say goodbye to the Caribbean Islands, the Florida Keys, Cuba, and the major coastal cities in South America. The east coast of the US would be scoured, just like Lituya Bay and Frank Canada.
As we have found out in California and Japan, saturated mountain terrain can let go with mudslides and land slides with terrifying and deadly effect. Tremors along fault lines, and certainly along already unstable volcanic faults could cause La Palma to become more unstable. Mother Nature has an unpleasant way of showing humans how costly our arrogance can be!
I would neither discount or scoff at any idea concerning terrorists using explosives at La Palma. There are so many porous Nuclear sites in the former Soviet Union, so many caches of poorly guarded or unguarded explosives around the world that it's not too far-fetched that terrorists might plot/plan/strategize such an attack. You might not always agree with the intellegence services but one thing they've said is absolutely true..."the terrorists only have to be right once - we have to be right every time." Does anyone want to face the consequences?
Now, couple a terrorist plot with Mother Nature's rainy season saturating the slopes of the Cumbra Veija....I don't want to think about the potential result. But I sure do hope the US and the Brits have some teams in place to keep an eye on things.
Don't ever get too cocky! To paraphrase the "Rule of 6 P's." Perfect - Preparation - Prevents - Piss - Poor - Performance.
And I hope I'm wrong.
BTW - Google "Lituya Bay tsunami" and "Cumbra Veija or La Palma" to see pictures and read other accounts.
Happy New Year!
Bigeasy

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic was posted back in 12/28/2004. Watch for Iranians purchasing "vacation property" in the Canary Islands, with the deal being signed just before Zero and his cadre put their imprimatur on the mullahs' nuclear weapons program. It would take a nuclear weapon, at least one, to cause a landslide this size.

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[BenLurkin]

Hey, I had a great tag line back then....

[SunkenCiv]

“Big government is still a big problem.” Your new one is still pretty good.

[gleeaikin]

I don’t know if someone at CSI Miami was reading Free Republic back in 2004, But that program did use a Canary caused tsunami in a story with a 20 or 30 foot wave several years ago.

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic is from 12/28/2004. Thanks crush-the-left.