Captain Davison
Malachi Keep Detachments
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Posted - 2014.09.01 20:05:00 -
[1] - Quote
Steve Ronuken wrote:A quick poke around the web isn't finding significant death tolls from volcanos in Iceland, unless you're going back 300 years ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laki ) One of the things is: The volcano going up is pretty much in the middle of the island. While yes, there's a potential for it to really explode, it's kinda low.
The big worry IS that the volcano is going Full Laki (never go full Laki). Even at the current rate, if it continues for several months it will have a disasterous effect on the world due to outgassing of SO2, Fluoride, and other bad stuff (the primary killers of Laki). In direct physical danger, it's fairly unlikely.
However, we have a good deal of geologic proof that this is most likely an eruption on the scale of the 1783 event, mostly in the form of lava analysis, and seismic evidence of mantle activity, along with historical analysis of previous eruption events. Right now, the hotspot underneath Iceland as well as the Mid Atlantic Ridge are both approaching their activity maximums, massively increasing the risk of such an event. While it is a relatively gentle eruption as of this moment, the danger is that it simply won't stop, or will uncork the terrific gas pressure in the underground magma to blow the rift wide open into a full rift eruption or flood basalt.
Even now, it's putting out somewhere around three times the cubic meters of lava per hour that the Katla event was producing. Conservative estimates put the eruptable volume at about 1 cubic kilometer of eruptable magma, with less conservative estimates based off of a set of simultanious deep earthquakes putting the rift at depth at a width of 1 kilometer across instead of 1 meter across as near the surface. Which would put the eruptable volume closer to 30 to 90 cubic kilometers.
But, as said, the danger is not the eruption itself and the lava output, which can be briskly walked away from, but instead the gas output. We're looking at about 1000 tons per second (or minute, I'm not entirely clear on the scale) of SO2, with unknown amounts of Fluorine and other volcanic gasses being emitted. These are bad. Do not breathe these, you will die like taking a rookie ship into W-Space.
And the longer this eruption continues (and potentially the more massive it gets), the more gas that is being put up. The Laki event was so deadly because it put millions to billions of tons of gas into the upper atmosphere and helped with particularly bad climate cycles to induce a massively cold winter (second-coldest on record) that caused mass crop failures and civil unrest. Additionally, europe suffered from having gas dropping down from the upper atmosphere in large quantities, causing breathing issues and large numbers of deaths from sulfur fogs and Skeletal Fluorosis. These are Bad. They Suck, and Skeletal Fluorosis is incurable and will lead to Painful Death.
But that's just the worst case scenario. The best case is that this thing calms down and shuts up, but the chances of that are smaller than it continuing or growing.
Addendum: As a further note, this will NOT mean no EU planes. The unpronouncable volcano had such an effect due to overly strict safety precautions that have since been relaxed, extra fine ash that stayed aloft much longer than normal, weather conditions, and several other factors of which none are in play here. We are more likely to see continual massive outgassing events which will do damage through the above outlined effects, planes should be fine. |