Where in Europe can I detonate 100 kt (non-nuclear) not to harm anyone?
Reality check:
Protagonists of my story have a scientific device of a peaceful purpose. Unfortunately, despite the peaceful purpose, activation of the device, as a side-effect releases about 100 kilotons equivalent of energy, mostly thermal. No radiation.
They don't want to cause any harm. Absolutely no casualties, minimizing damage to property and wildlife.
They are in Central Europe, specifically Poland. The time is spring of 2015. International travel with the device beyond borders of EU is problematic - while a rudimentary control by police or border guards between EU countries would reveal a neatly packed ton of bathroom tiles on a first glance, and a fancy artistic mosaic on the second glance, if they start poking e.g. scratching samples to test whether it doesn't contain drugs, they will damage it (and won't find anything illegal).
The device requires open sky above to operate, so unfortunately underground is not really an option.
They've recently obtained a lot of money (legally), but they have no influences, no friends in position of power, nothing of out of ordinary - other than access to the non-Earth knowledge. Knowledge, which allowed both gambling the markets in ways current economists can't dream of [AND proving validity of these methods to SEC, so the illegal insider trading charges were dropped], and construction of the device, using commonly available (if expensive) human technology. They operate secretly - if the scope of the knowledge became common, people would kill for it, either to get it or to bury it forever...
In my story their choice was to take it to the sea, in a barge pulled by a tugboat. The Baltic Sea is pretty crowded, but finding a 20-km diameter area without any vessel, off common routes is quite viable. Dropping off the barge there, moving the tugboat by 10 km, activating the device remotely.
Of course that would get them in trouble with the law, but after the device is activated that becomes a trivial issue. All they need is to survive several next days and their problems would solve themselves.
So, my questions:
- Is my sea option viable? Did I miss something that would make it not work?
- Did I miss any simpler, safer, easier solutions?
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/12536. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
A derelict oil rig is what you are looking for. At least one has burnt up and left something standing that may still be there. There may be sea forts in the north sea that are far enough away and if you put it higher you get less tidal wave.
The barge proposal is still most likely to succeed.
A new idea occurred to me. It might be a cool idea to tow it to the edge of the polar ice sheet in mid winter and retreat with the tugboat ahead of the ice formation. You could add some very noisy sonar systems (decoys) and announce you are doing underwater "sonar Doppler mapping and measurements" over winter and can people please stay away for 20km including subs that do not want to be detected. It might be the best way to have all civilians warned about the situation and the military desirous of staying away.
The ice sheet should dampen any tidal wave and you would have a way to watch out for the curious coming from the sea side as you fall back.
EDIT:
Saw this question on my profile and had a thought that perhaps someone has already researched the question. Sure enough there was a Wikipedia page about the least inhabited regions. This would be a good starting point and the source material might have good pointers. As mentioned in another answer Lapland seems like a good place to focus on.
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