ciphergoth | The Mega-Tsunami of Doctor Evil (Reply)

For those of you with digital TV or cable...

There's a rather fab Horizon about mega-tsunamis on BBC4 at 10pm, with more recent information on what's going on at 10:50. After watching it, I mailed one of the scientists on it asking:

I hope you'll forgive the intrusion of your time of this rather silly question that I'm sure you've been asked before.
Few can have watched the BBC Horizon programme about mega-tsunami (recently reshown on BBC Knowledge) without imagining a supervillan placing nuclear devices in the fissure at La Palma in order to hold the Eastern seaboard of the USA to ransom for, say, one beeleeon dollars. Has anyone ever considered whether this would be feasable?
This is an especial risk given that the inactive volcano to the north of the island could make very attractive housing for, say, an underground base filled with jumpsuited minions.
I would be grateful for any light you can shed...

He replied:

I guess if SPECTRE can build a space launcher base inside a Japanese volcano without anyone noticing they can do anything, but shifting La Palma would require multimegaton devices placed at least a kilometre below ground (to tamp the explosions) ---- note that the water tunnels are all in the north of the island, so Dr. Evil would have to start from scratch ---- and unless the villain concerned was particularly into unnecessarily complex plot devices ("you do this every time" to quote Scott Evil) there are more direct ways to hold the US to ransom with hydrogen bombs ......
On the other hand the number of paranoid Americans who e-mailed me asking if the A-Rabs could do it without anyone noticing until the bombs went off did give me cause to ponder the differences in collective psychoses between Europe and the US (I blame Admiral Yamamoto ......).
The ironic twist is that climate change due amongst other things to large Americans driving around in their large SUVs may cause increased rainfall over the summits and so raise the water table in the volcanoes, triggering collapse during their next eruptions: thus the Americans may do it to themselves (and us) ......