Shhhh! Don't Tell Al Qaeda!

Sometimes I wish the Internet weren't such a deep well of information, especially when I read things like this:

La Palma is the largest of the Canary Islands, a territory of Spain located 700 miles off the west coast of Africa. It is a dormant volcano. In 1949 during its last eruption, a huge slab weighing an estimated 500 billion tons sheared loose, slid down a few feet towards the Atlantic Ocean below, and stopped. Today it hangs there precariously, effectively an arrow on a drawn-back bow aimed at the heart of America. A small nuclear detonation in just the right place could set it loose to slide the rest of the way into the Atlantic, with disastrous consequences. As noted by the British Broadcasting Corporation, "What will happen when the volcano on La Palma collapses? Scientists predict that it will generate a wave that will be almost inconceivably destructive, far bigger than anything ever witnessed in modern times. It will surge across the entire Atlantic in a matter of hours, engulfing the whole US east coast, sweeping away everything in its path up to 20km inland. Boston would be hit first, followed by New York, then all the way down the coast to Miami and the Caribbean." (source)

h/t Dale at Okie On The Lam, from his increasingly famous post on the effects of a small al Qaeda nuke on downtown LA.