If I am not indefinitely detained in a federal facility following this article, I will cover my interrogation period in my next article. Yes, I beat you to it!
OK, so hands down I’ve been told again and again throughout my life to have a plan for everything. Apparently I’m the only one who took it as far as a plan to destroy the world. After all, aliens, the terrorist at a 0.00001 confidence interval might win, or the communist could rise. Who knows; but I have a plan if it all goes to hell.
Cool, I got this. All I would need to do is initiate a large nuclear fire near a fault line grid that connects to Yellowstone National Park. Too easy.
All that kit; well it really wouldn’t be too much. For the sake of argument in this no holds barred, steel cage, death match, worse case scenario and in an effort to avoid strenuous details. I’m tactically and technically competent enough to field acquisition the materials required to pull this off en route.
I developed this plan long ago, when the Yucca Mountain Program was active, and I was but a wee Sapper cutting my teeth during the early GWOT era. Yucca was developed in 1987, as a long-term, solution to hold the nation’s radioactive waste in a secure subterranean containment facility in the Nevada desert. Although the project was shut down in 2010, and a study by the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future was commissioned to find an alternative solution. The BRC released their findings in 2012, but no real direct actions have been taken to source any of the suggested recommendations in the BRC’s report.
The Yucca site would have been perfect for my plan thanks to the planned large amount of nuclear material which would have been on site to burn. Yucca’s location along the various fault lines in the Western United States also made it a prime location, which could have theoretically disrupted the adjacent fault lines to the necessary levels required to erupt the Yellowstone site.
This small setback leaves us with a few alternatives – plans on plans after all.
The most recent Government Accountability Office report estimates a total of 83,000 metric tons of nuclear waste, which is stored at 35 sites across the continental United States. This works out a little better for us in the long haul. In this scenario, it has gone down, the guards have locked down the storage sites, and gone home to defend their families. So we’re going on a convoy, and we will be nuclear waste shopping all the way to Yellowstone.
Obtaining this material will be much more simple than for instance, obtaining nuclear weapons . . . Well, you may be able to, but arming them is another matter. If you have unarmed nukes, you’re basically setting on material that is a little more potent and significantly more encased than the nuclear waste. Anyway, you’re rolling with me on this one, get on the bus or go home.
The nuclear waste we’ve set out to acquire comes in many varieties and we will be taking all of it. We are not seeking an exact science, all we require is the unique thermophysical properties offered by the waste. Meaning that every bit we can load onto the convoy will be just right for our purposes; it’s the end of the world, and large margins of error and risks are totally acceptable.
As a baseline for all of the waste, we will operate off of uranium oxide, yet we won’t be seeking the optimal disintegration temperature of 7,468 degrees Fahrenheit. We simply need to reach the melting point of uranium dioxide, which rests on the high end at 5,432 degrees Fahrenheit. The other materials present in our grab-bag of nuclear waste is predominantly copasetic to the intended terminal effect.
To obtain this effect, just as well as we are gaining entrance to the various facilities we will be deploying multiple variants of thermite charges. You know how to make thermite, right? No – too bad, but trust me, I’m an Engineer. Nonetheless, thermite is an exothermic reaction, and most typically produces temperatures at or around 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit. This temperature can be increased to a variance of up to 16,000 degrees Fahrenheit by simply flowing a steady stream of oxygen through the burning chemical within the active exothermic reaction.
Deploying such a methodology, of course, will swiftly expend the cutting material and reduce the time of contact of the charge to the target. Yet, with proper and strategic charge placement we will be fine. The first task is easy, gain access to the storage facilities – breach in.
Next, in Yellowstone, we’re going to place the nuclear waste around the rims a few select calderas and then prime key points on the material within the stacks to be ignited by termite charges. These final charges will be much more complex and need to be adjusted to the terrain for a single initiation for a multiplex detonation throughout the site for maximum effect. This blast will have to be offset at fractions of a second to correspond with directionalized shaped charges – placed adjacent to detonation point. The purpose of this offset is to channel the burning material directly into the target area. Optimally, we’re going to blast a slope into the caldera for the burning waste to tumble into. However, you will need to calculate for density, placement, and relative effectiveness in correspondence with the proposed cratering effect.
You won’t need to bother with your minimum safe distance, this is a going out mission. Ignite your charges and flip off the commie terrorist aliens – Earth wins!
Solid operation, right? Yet, I’m sure that some of you are wondering why I’m determined to pull this off at Yellowstone, and honestly, there is simply not a better site. Transportation access and material locations are of course a primary factor. Yellowstone, asides from a wonderful vacation spot, is also a supervolcano, the site of three of the Earth’s largest historical volcanic events, and the area remains tectonically active. There are seven large calderas buried under the basaltic rock and sediment along the Snake River Plain. Exploiting these calderas and Yellowstone’s fault line location with a burning, explosive, volatile force should engorge the magma flows under the calderas and effectively jumpstart a supervolcano for an extinction level event.
The amount of material and placement are up to your imagination. Bad guys could be reading this . . . and if they are – if you people ever take America, I’m taking you out.
The effects of this operation would end all life on Earth. At a minimum, we’re looking at an eruption at or around 620 cubic miles, centered around the point of eruption. When this super-massive caldera tears open, absolutely everything within the radius of the eruption will collapse into several miles of lava.
North America would be blanketed under approximately 15 feet +/- of toxic volcano ash. The ash is composed of microscopic splintered stone which is extremely lethal. This ash would rain across North America for several weeks, and travel into the stratosphere, spreading across the globe – terminating all air travel. The extent of the ash would be too great to dissipate, and would envelop the globe for around five years dropping global temperatures by around 50 degrees Fahrenheit devastating all animal and plant life in a nuclear winter.
That’s as far as I’m going with that, as that should all be common knowledge . . . If not, read a book sometime. Mark Twain even goes into some generalized detail on some similar topics. Go to your local library, and stay off the damned computer for a little bit.
I’m out!
Featured Image – Controlled detonation of an IED in Eastern Iraq – Buck Clay.
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