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Comment by DavidPeiffer | Hacker News Reader

I have found geology professor Shawn Willsey's YouTube channel to have high value, no drama interpretations of the situation in Grindavik. He has been posting 1-2 videos per day for the past few days as new information arises.

https://youtu.be/xvlZOpZE2KE?si=c2_Ew7LDKHrEpoN9

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This is a much better introduction to what has happened this week; the original article gives absolutely no context about the related volcanic activity.

TLDR; Grindavík is located in Iceland, a country known for its volcanic activity. Earthquakes and land deformation have exploded in frequency in the area under and around the small town of 4,000 people and geologists expect a volcanic eruption is imminent. The town has been evacuated.

To add a note that while 4000 people is a small town almost anywhere, it is over 1% of Iceland's population. So the impact on the country is non negligible. My 2c.

It also sits about 5 miles from Iceland's only international airport, so could prove especially disruptive to the entire nation.

> Iceland's only international airport

That's not strictly the case. For example, Akureyri has some international flights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akureyri_Airport

Keflavík is obviously the only major international airport in Iceland though.

A while back I remember hearing a proposal about expanding the airport in Egilsstaðir to be capable of replacing Keflavík if (when?) it is disrupted by lava flow. I think it proved too expensive for much action to be taken though. It would be interesting logistically to see what would happen if Keflavík was knocked out of service.

I wonder how many airports in the world are at such significant risk of "lava flow" and other catastrophic natural disasters.

I actually see Tampa International this way. Its literally on the coast, and just barely missed near two near Cat-5 hurricanes in two years. And that risk is not shrinking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Mount_Nyiragongo_eruption

Lava flows came very close to Goma airport

> I wonder how many airports in the world are at such significant risk of "lava flow" and other catastrophic natural disasters

It looks like Kilauea lava flows in the 1880s came within a mile or two of the site of Hilo International Airport. Lava flows earlier this year were heading in that direction.

It also appears as though the airport was hit by tsunamis in the 1950s and 1960s.

> I think it proved too expensive for much action to be taken though.

Iceland beginning, let alone completing, a major infrastructure project in the 21st century? Impossible.

What’s the issue? Iceland seems pretty good at infrastructure.

REK can also handle most jets if necessary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reykjav%C3%ADk_Airport

Closer to 9 miles (15km). That's plenty (even though it doesn't sound like much), considering what kind of eruption this would be and how the fault lines lie.

Experts aren't worried about the airport. The main concern (besides the town) is the Svartsengi geothermal plant. If that is destroyed you will have 30.000 people without heating.

I actually watch Shawn Willsey's content for everything but this topic. I find his Grindavik coverage isn't that great. It's overlong, over-speculative, and sometimes missed more current or extended information available elsewhere. Some of this I think is due to his being a relatively newer YouTuber (in terms of gaining traction) and his personal interest in Iceland: to be clear, its not that he's disingenuous or unqualified... its more that he's not yet crafted a public presentation style which fits the medium better. However his roadcut geology series is interesting even if you're only getting his on the spot opinions of what he's observing.

By far, the best source about what's going on in Grindavik I've found is just the Icelandic Meteorological Office website: https://en.vedur.is/ (English version, which is quite good). That in combination with some residents of Iceland that post shorter updates the keeps close to the reported local news seems to be the best.

He starts off with saying that "there is a line of magma that is 15km long and 9 miles in length."

Do you know why he would mix metrics like that?

Edit: he's talking about a rectangle and his wording, to me, implied that he was using X/Y coordinates to talk about how big the rectangle is. Except that it sounded like he was mixing metrics. Other commenters suggest that he's just trying to help us dumb Americans. That could make sense too, but wasn't obvious in his wording to me. 15km ~= 9 miles, I should have done that math. =)

  > He starts off with saying that "there is a line of magma that is 15km long and 9 miles in length."

The real explanation is rather prosaic: bad transcription. He doesn't use the word "and."

An accurate transcription would be:

  > there is a line of magma that is 15 km long—about 9 miles in length.

He's just (parenthetically) converting the units.

That does read weird

"15km long, or 9miles"

Would be much better

The mixing of 'length' and 'long' was odd.

> 15km long and 9 miles in length

This is not mixing. He's just presenting the length in two different measurement systems.

Isn’t he just trying to explain it for a wide audience? He‘s just translating units here.

For the benefit of the American viewers, who might not immediately know what 15km are.

If he had said 15km long and 9 miles wide my head would've exploded

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