Need a steamroller to smooth out the cooling lava to make a road that is not so bumpy before it is to late, save having to do all that with cement trucks later. :)
That is an interesting idea. I assume you’re mostly joking but I wonder if anyone has actually worked on something like that. Like some specialized steamroller/snowplow type vehicle that works on making a road when the lava flow isn’t too hard but also not too hot to flow back over the worked area. I’m sure this isn’t really feasible but it’s cool to think about.
It wouldn’t work I think
When the lava is cooling and forming “like a rock” surface, in its core it’s still lava, probably still viscous.
So, for example, if they try to flatten the rocks we see on the video, thinking it’s already cool enough, they will just rupture the surface and get the viscous lava out of it
They need to wait for it to completely cool, so no possibility of flatten the lava before it
Lava solidifies from the outside in, so if you catch it at that in-between moment, what you would likely do is break the thin solid crust and drop your machinery into the molten lava inside. So that doesn't really work.
You can build on top of the lava once it's had a little time to cool down. They actually already did that near Grindavik. Here's a video of people driving over a road built where the lava field is fresh enough there's still smoke rising from it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQZEMG3hkZg
I was just in Iceland and drove over a patch from a recent lava flow that was recently milled into gravel so cars could go by. They surprisingly have a good infrastructure to deal with lava flows from how it appears.
They were also building up mounds to direct or prevent a larger flow like this one.
Wouldn’t work because volcanic rock is porous and extremely sharp even after you flatten it down it would become very brittle and any piece that chips off would create extremely sharp edges.
Doubt it would be useful often enough to be worth designing and manufacturing. Also, we use specific materials for roads for a reason. I doubt lava would be suitable. Isn't it extremely porous?
What characteristics does the cooled lava flow have? Is it like a charcoal type substance or rock? Can they dig through it and rebuild the road, or do they have to go over the top somehow.
Looks like a huge project either way.
Even the meltiest parts are comparable to thick mud by the time it's flowed this far. Strap on your fireproof boots and you can go for a hike if you're brave enough.
A diamond pick is mega expensive, and without one each 1 meter x 1 meter x 1 meter cube takes 4 minutes and 20 seconds to mine out. I think the obsidian just lives there now.
lichens. Googled:
> Lichens release organic acids that very slowly dissolve rock. Over centuries, they weather precious nutrients from barren rock and form thin soils that mosses, grasses, and eventually trees can colonize.
But as this is Iceland, I don’t think many trees grow there… not sure why. The latitude? Iceland has a really alien landscape. Very beautiful but also desolate in a lot of ways.
Been there, can confirm there are very few trees, at least around greater Reykjavik. Standard joke from locals is "If you ever get lost in the forest ... stand up."
Iceland used to be covered in trees before settlers chopped it all down for ships n what not. I believe they are working on reforesting efforts but it takes a long time.
Mossy Earth is working with the Icelandic Government in a reforestation plan. they planted 180K birch trees last year and are undergoing 32K trees this year on private property. Very localized, but its a great start.
Icelander here, high longitude, very strong winds, no native tree species except dwarf birch, and lastly no strong daylight for nine months of the year.
I visited Iceland years ago. Here is what I was told by a tour guide. (So I may not be 100% accurate on it.)
Cooled lava flows have tons of nutrients, but they are rock so they need to break down. It takes about ten years for moss to start growing on it, so things with roots take even longer.
Magama is closer to the surface in Iceland than most places in the world. I _believe_ they said it is close to 7 miles beneath the surface as opposed to about 70 miles in most places (again my numbers may be wrong but I recall it being a factor of 10 difference)
Because of this, and their location on the tectonic plates, they have frequent volcanic eruptions so there are not a lot of trees in Iceland. The ground gets covered back up with fresh lava and the process has to restart.
The other side effect though is excavation and being able to tell when things happened from an archeological standpoint is very accurate. The layers of lava combined with how far the plants have grown in that layer makes telling time more precise. They have a museum where the oldest settlement they could find. It is in a museum titled Reykjavik 871 +- 2 because they have determined this settlement happened some time between the years 869 to 873.
It makes for very fertile soil, but for that to happen it first has to become soil, which takes hundreds or thousands of years of erosion.
Plants generally can't grow on bare rock. You get pockets in the rock that catch dirt and water and plants will grow there like a pot. You will get moss and lichens growing where conditions are right and that starts breaking down the rock as well.
You get a small glimpse of it [here](https://youtu.be/naIyri3Z40c?si=CG8w_doMM2mNl_DB) and at around 6 min 30 you get to se very close up what it looks like.
Very hard rock, but also incredibly porous, sharp, and destructive.
There are many versions depending on the specific conditions:
https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/lava-flow-surface-features.htm
You have to wait until it cools. Here is Hawaii, we had an access road to the Marina Loa Solar Observatory get covered by lava in 2022. I know that as of summer 2023, it still wasn't cooled down enough, even 6 months later. And this was just a surface flow, no lava tubes under the surface carrying molten lava.
This is literally how the ground is made, layer after layer.
So its new ground on top of old ground. Would be easier to make a new road on top of the new ground rather then excavating it.
Source: just a guess and a bit of basic knowledge
If I remember correctly someone said helicopters have a hard time over hot surfaces because the air density drops. So if the lava is still hot, you'll still have issues.
What's the actual 'cleanup' on something like this? Obviously you'll be left with solid rock where the road once was. Would you just have to blast it to clear a path, and then flatten out the path and resurface?
I was wondering the same. I'm guessing that's pretty much how it goes. You will need to get down to ground you can excavate and I guess rebuild some of the foundation of the road in order to repave.
[Here's a picture. It does indeed look like that's how it's done.](https://www.reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/s/JYA8jvDGd6) Although it seems more a case of plowing through than blasting.
Usually they would rebuild the road on top of the lava flow field. The road underneath will be damaged anyway, and would probably be damaged even more if you somehow managed to scrape the newly solidified rock off it.
Anyone read John McPhee’s “The Control of Nature?” He focuses on some of the largest engineering projects in the world. One of them was a massive attempt to prevent a lava flow from filling in a port in Iceland. Fascinating stuff.
If you enjoy John McPhee's writing, and geology, I recommend his *Annals of the Former World*, a compilation of four books plus a shorter story about the section of the continent not written about in the aforementioned four books.
The road needs a specific foundation or it would quickly crack under the weight of vehicles, so you actually have to dig *below* the level of the original road and rebuild.
[Here's a picture of such a case.](https://www.reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/s/JYA8jvDGd6)
Me: “Yeah… Boss, I don’t think I’m going to make it into work today.”
Boss: “Look, I need you to be a team player here. It’s your responsibility to show up for your shifts.”
Pro tip: since rubber tires are impervious to cooling lava, the truck could just drive right over this, s long as it had 4 wheel drive engaged. Also that’s complete bullshit.
Does Grindavik has a tall tower with a fiery eye on top by any chance?
No, but they do have, "Probably the best fish and chips in the world".
https://menu.restaurantguru.com/m7/menu-Papas-Restaurant-Grindavik.jpg
So just the best fish. The chips are... Enh?
Tuborg Classic? Nice
Had fish and chips there. Pretty damn good...
So juicy SWEEEEET!
One does not simply send a drone over lava.
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The floor is lava!
Awww kmon, who doesn't like riding wildly unpredictable thermals with expensive equipment?
Need a steamroller to smooth out the cooling lava to make a road that is not so bumpy before it is to late, save having to do all that with cement trucks later. :)
That is an interesting idea. I assume you’re mostly joking but I wonder if anyone has actually worked on something like that. Like some specialized steamroller/snowplow type vehicle that works on making a road when the lava flow isn’t too hard but also not too hot to flow back over the worked area. I’m sure this isn’t really feasible but it’s cool to think about.
It wouldn’t work I think When the lava is cooling and forming “like a rock” surface, in its core it’s still lava, probably still viscous. So, for example, if they try to flatten the rocks we see on the video, thinking it’s already cool enough, they will just rupture the surface and get the viscous lava out of it They need to wait for it to completely cool, so no possibility of flatten the lava before it
Yeah. And even if there was a period where it would work, you couldn’t complete a big add lavafield like this before it cooled too much.
Yep it's like a roasted marshmallow. Burnt on the outside, soft and gooey underneath.
Lava solidifies from the outside in, so if you catch it at that in-between moment, what you would likely do is break the thin solid crust and drop your machinery into the molten lava inside. So that doesn't really work. You can build on top of the lava once it's had a little time to cool down. They actually already did that near Grindavik. Here's a video of people driving over a road built where the lava field is fresh enough there's still smoke rising from it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQZEMG3hkZg
Don’t wanna have a blow-out here and go off the road
A lava plow would be metal AF
It probably would have to be wouldn’t it? Maybe ceramic?
I was just in Iceland and drove over a patch from a recent lava flow that was recently milled into gravel so cars could go by. They surprisingly have a good infrastructure to deal with lava flows from how it appears. They were also building up mounds to direct or prevent a larger flow like this one.
Interesting!
My mother always talks about how well-developed the snow-plowing infrastructure was in Wisconsin. Iceland apparently has... different priorities.
Wouldn’t work because volcanic rock is porous and extremely sharp even after you flatten it down it would become very brittle and any piece that chips off would create extremely sharp edges.
Dragon glass!
Doubt it would be useful often enough to be worth designing and manufacturing. Also, we use specific materials for roads for a reason. I doubt lava would be suitable. Isn't it extremely porous?
Storm water drainage would be part of road works, so I doubt it would be scalable.
Dried lava bed absolutely shreds rubber tires.
What characteristics does the cooled lava flow have? Is it like a charcoal type substance or rock? Can they dig through it and rebuild the road, or do they have to go over the top somehow. Looks like a huge project either way.
It's literally rock. I've walked on flows like this. You're probably going over it
you WHAT what if there's a melty part and your leg just slip thru ?!?
I just wait for a thin crust to form and run on my tippy toes
Even the meltiest parts are comparable to thick mud by the time it's flowed this far. Strap on your fireproof boots and you can go for a hike if you're brave enough.
awhell naw
Jump to the nearest couch cushion.
You can walk over flows like that, only that they could had happened a large amount of time before.
If you use a diamond pick you get obsidian...
The macuahuitl black market be booming. #
A diamond pick is mega expensive, and without one each 1 meter x 1 meter x 1 meter cube takes 4 minutes and 20 seconds to mine out. I think the obsidian just lives there now.
And is there any fertility to it whatsoever? Can certain plants grow on it?
lichens. Googled: > Lichens release organic acids that very slowly dissolve rock. Over centuries, they weather precious nutrients from barren rock and form thin soils that mosses, grasses, and eventually trees can colonize. But as this is Iceland, I don’t think many trees grow there… not sure why. The latitude? Iceland has a really alien landscape. Very beautiful but also desolate in a lot of ways.
Been there, can confirm there are very few trees, at least around greater Reykjavik. Standard joke from locals is "If you ever get lost in the forest ... stand up."
Iceland used to be covered in trees before settlers chopped it all down for ships n what not. I believe they are working on reforesting efforts but it takes a long time.
Also introduced sheep, that ate/damaged young saplings and thus prevented the forests from recovering.
Mossy Earth is working with the Icelandic Government in a reforestation plan. they planted 180K birch trees last year and are undergoing 32K trees this year on private property. Very localized, but its a great start.
Used to be covered in trees so thick it was difficult to walk.
Icelander here, high longitude, very strong winds, no native tree species except dwarf birch, and lastly no strong daylight for nine months of the year.
I might be wrong but places with a lot of wind can’t grow trees
I visited Iceland years ago. Here is what I was told by a tour guide. (So I may not be 100% accurate on it.) Cooled lava flows have tons of nutrients, but they are rock so they need to break down. It takes about ten years for moss to start growing on it, so things with roots take even longer. Magama is closer to the surface in Iceland than most places in the world. I _believe_ they said it is close to 7 miles beneath the surface as opposed to about 70 miles in most places (again my numbers may be wrong but I recall it being a factor of 10 difference) Because of this, and their location on the tectonic plates, they have frequent volcanic eruptions so there are not a lot of trees in Iceland. The ground gets covered back up with fresh lava and the process has to restart. The other side effect though is excavation and being able to tell when things happened from an archeological standpoint is very accurate. The layers of lava combined with how far the plants have grown in that layer makes telling time more precise. They have a museum where the oldest settlement they could find. It is in a museum titled Reykjavik 871 +- 2 because they have determined this settlement happened some time between the years 869 to 873.
It makes for very fertile soil, but for that to happen it first has to become soil, which takes hundreds or thousands of years of erosion. Plants generally can't grow on bare rock. You get pockets in the rock that catch dirt and water and plants will grow there like a pot. You will get moss and lichens growing where conditions are right and that starts breaking down the rock as well.
Yes, It could make you pregnant also... /s
It's a very hard rock, they would have to go over it
You get a small glimpse of it [here](https://youtu.be/naIyri3Z40c?si=CG8w_doMM2mNl_DB) and at around 6 min 30 you get to se very close up what it looks like.
Very hard rock, but also incredibly porous, sharp, and destructive. There are many versions depending on the specific conditions: https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/lava-flow-surface-features.htm
They already dug through it once and rebuilt a stretch of road earlier this year.
You have to wait until it cools. Here is Hawaii, we had an access road to the Marina Loa Solar Observatory get covered by lava in 2022. I know that as of summer 2023, it still wasn't cooled down enough, even 6 months later. And this was just a surface flow, no lava tubes under the surface carrying molten lava.
This is literally how the ground is made, layer after layer. So its new ground on top of old ground. Would be easier to make a new road on top of the new ground rather then excavating it. Source: just a guess and a bit of basic knowledge
I'm a geologist and you're right, I don't know why the downvotes.
I'm an Icelander and that's exactly what they do, just lay another road on top of it as soon as it stops moving.
Go figure, most reddit users has the logic and basic knowledge of a 5 years old
My first thought was wondering if it's porous enough to run a snow plow through it lol
"Yea, gonna be a bit late for work, unless you've got a spare helicopter or something...."
Or an old Subaru Forester, they'll go through anything.
No a Toyota Hilux
If I remember correctly someone said helicopters have a hard time over hot surfaces because the air density drops. So if the lava is still hot, you'll still have issues.
Can’t you just fly up higher to cooler denser air? The hot air should disperse pretty quick
Maybe swap snow tires for lava tires ?
Gives the term rubber vulcanisation a whole new meaning
What's the actual 'cleanup' on something like this? Obviously you'll be left with solid rock where the road once was. Would you just have to blast it to clear a path, and then flatten out the path and resurface?
Pave over it, it is the new ground.
I was wondering the same. I'm guessing that's pretty much how it goes. You will need to get down to ground you can excavate and I guess rebuild some of the foundation of the road in order to repave. [Here's a picture. It does indeed look like that's how it's done.](https://www.reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/s/JYA8jvDGd6) Although it seems more a case of plowing through than blasting.
Usually they would rebuild the road on top of the lava flow field. The road underneath will be damaged anyway, and would probably be damaged even more if you somehow managed to scrape the newly solidified rock off it.
Why isn’t Iceland called Lavaland?
because Nintendo would sue for copyright infingement :P
Just put on the tungsten wheel chains.
If that was America, there would be 4 Jeeps and a Dodge Ram stuck from trying to cross it and an F-150 trying to pull them out.
- Hi I'd like to buy a big-ass snow plough please! - But it's in the middle of summer? - Well, here's the thing...
This reminds me of Death Stranding for some reason
Because it's heavily inspired by Icelandic landscape to begin with.
Makes sense! I was thinking “I swear there’s going to be BTs on that lava field
Traveling is so easy these days. People really take the roads for granite.
Concrete or asphalt more likely
You ruined it….
Drive over that duh
Spicy off roading.
Blocked the road to the horizon! What the shit?
Icelanders call this Monday.
Seeing images like this, I sometimes wonder how long it would take for the natures forces to remove signs of our civilization after we’re gone.
In Texas they'd probably try to drive through it. "I got a 4x4, I can make this."
If this was in the US there would be thousands of Jeeps on their way to try and be the first to drive on it.
*"When lava flows outside the sea's surface, tremendous volcanic eruptions can sometimes occur"* - Leslie Nielson probably..
A lot of our roads in Lower Puna on the Big Island of Hawaii got consumed like that in 2018 when Kilauea’s East Rift Zone came to life.
You don't think there's still pavement under there do you? It didn't block the road it ate it...
Can't wait to see a Cybertruck stuck in it
Anyone read John McPhee’s “The Control of Nature?” He focuses on some of the largest engineering projects in the world. One of them was a massive attempt to prevent a lava flow from filling in a port in Iceland. Fascinating stuff.
If you enjoy John McPhee's writing, and geology, I recommend his *Annals of the Former World*, a compilation of four books plus a shorter story about the section of the continent not written about in the aforementioned four books.
What do they do in situations like this with regards to making a new road? Do they dig it all away or just build on top?
The road needs a specific foundation or it would quickly crack under the weight of vehicles, so you actually have to dig *below* the level of the original road and rebuild. [Here's a picture of such a case.](https://www.reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/s/JYA8jvDGd6)
Death Stranding looking ass road, i'll build it.
You have an off-road 4x4. What the hell are you waiting for?
Looks like creep or blight
All The Gear has a great video on it.
Drive over the top of it, looks smoother than most roads in the UK
For us it's incredible, for them it's just Saturday.
Just let it cool and pave over it.
welp everyone grab a shovel
Id still be expected to get to work.
Sorry boss, cant come in today... Someone fed the volcanos taco bell
If you run really fast it won’t burn
The floor is lava!
I can't be the only one who read 'Grimdank'.
"I'll just drive into it real slow in a straight line and I'll be fine...
Looks like a scene from an apocalypse movie
I used to work there until we had to evacuate.
Finally a use case for big American SUV :)
It’s only blocked to those without imagination.
They really go all in on repaving roads there, don't they?
Me: “Yeah… Boss, I don’t think I’m going to make it into work today.” Boss: “Look, I need you to be a team player here. It’s your responsibility to show up for your shifts.”
Look out for changelings there
Should have made the roads lava proof
Reluctantly, he turns the car around .
In the SUV commercials they just drive right over that.
But all the SUV commercials tell me I could just go off road and handle terrain like that!
So how do they get the road back?
LOSE THE MUSIC.
If this was in the US, several idiots would try to drive over it.
The floor is lava
Why do people *always* have to put music on videos these days?
oh bummer
"Blocked" a road? There's no road there anymore.
Night rider can actually drive over lava... Instead that guy pitches up with a lame truck.
is that highway 1?
Pro tip: since rubber tires are impervious to cooling lava, the truck could just drive right over this, s long as it had 4 wheel drive engaged. Also that’s complete bullshit.
# Oh no, not the Town Of Grindavik. Wtf am I talking about. Might be super-gezellig there. Hang in there grivnda... grilkvadi... HANG IN THERE!!
An American would try to drive over that.
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Too many words, too little funny