Concrete evidence that volcanoes can be stopped

摘要

In your News story "Volcano gets choke chains to slow mud" (Nature 445,470; 2007), you cite some physicists who had not heard of using concrete balls and linked chain to attempt to plug a mud geyser. The US Navy (in which I was then a commander), the Italian Navy and the US Marine Corps used exactly this approach successfully in Sicily, in April-May 1992, to slow and eventually redirect lava flow from Mount Etna that was threatening the small village of Zafferana.