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stevebugge
USGS Mount Rainier Info Page

Since I sort of erupted about some of the wild inaccuracy of the Mount Rainier Eruption and it's results in the Canon SR universe I thought I'd put this link to the US Geologic Survey up. It's a good starting point for understanding Mount Rainier and just what an eruption might mean to the Seattle area. Whether or not you incorporate it in to your game is entirely up to you. Some ohter things to note about Cascade Range volcanos is that they tend to erupt explosively and usually vertically with a light colored gas laden high silica felsic magma/lava. These volcanos produce towering vertical columns of ash that collapse in to pyroclastic flows (basically a supersonic, scalding, sandstorm) that flow down the sides of the mountain, and in the case of Rainier would mix with immense amounts of glacial ice to form lahars. Cascade volcanos do not typically produce the rivers of flowing rock that the Hawaiian volcanos produce, the Hawaiian volcanos are a different type of volcano.
Shrike30
My housemate's father works at the UW as a geologist. One of the things he's gained from his profession is the knowledge that he never wants to own a house in Kent (a cancerous monstrosity of urban sprawl about 20 miles south of Seattle, that is rapidly swallowing up most of what remains unincorporated in South King County). Apparently, if/when Mt. Rainier really goes, the glacial melt will send devastating mudslides through that area.

I should ask him for more information on this... it'd be a pretty interesting situation for SR.
stevebugge
If nothing else it could really change descriptions of the puyallup barrens...

"You approach the two thirds buried remains of some of the old Puyallup urban sprawl. These were two and three story apartments and condos before the Ghost Dancers workde their mojo on Mount Rainier, now just the top floors poke above the latte colored mud that's hardened around them entombing the lower levels. RUmor has it some of the bottom floors are partially excevated, but who or what lives down there you'd rather not know"
hobgoblin
rember that magic fubared the weather patterns, its anyones guess what else it played around with (its allso a get out of jail free card for any writer that didnt bother to look up how something worked IRL)
Witness
Never quite bought into "Puyallup's stretches of black lava fields" [Seattle sourcebook p136], but the ash-covered barrens, with a moderately inhabitable Puyallup City on the northern edge, the racial tensions and poverty, the isolated ork communities like Carbonado-- I found plenty to work with there.

I even had an underground racing sport growing up around Carbonado- kind of like the game Rollcage: huge-wheeled home-built armed vehicles, racing out over the sulphuric rivers and burning slopes of Mount Rainier. Sometimes used as a sort of "underground railroad" in and out of Seattle. Grew very popular through the pirate trid networks. Corps trying to muscle in on the action and tame it.

Maybe not very realistic. Maybe not even very canon-friendly. But oh the fun.
Snow_Fox
The movie Dante's Peak is a good show about what will happen before an eruption. The build up and warning.

The only thing they said was not accurate was the pyroclastyic cloud at the end. Pierce Brosnan outraces it in a pickup truck. He said in real life it would be life an A bomb going off and they woud never have had a chance.
JesterX
Beware of the two-headed squirrels!!!
Tiralee
I just showed the map to my partner (who I game with) and said, "Ok, this is Tacoma, with said big-ass volcano Mt Ranier in the background. This is what you'd see when delivering drugs to the docks... but it'd be a lot smoggier, and people on fire, running from Dragons"

She ROFLed.


-Tir
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