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DarkLord153
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Post Frodo's Quest in Mordor
on: January 29, 2017 04:13
So after doing some search,i found a great question nobody answered in the world.So,my question is,why didnt't Frodo destroy the Ring in one of Mt. Dooms ''lava rivers'',i mean the lava that flows down from the volcano.Unless it had to be cast down in the exact same place,it would be a great idea because Gollum would never hurt them,they would throw the Ring and probably go hide somewhere or go back to Shelob's lair and then get down.Nevertheless,i believe it's going to be a great Question and it might get some confusion in this topic.I will be watching for further replies

[Edited on 01/29/2017 by DarkLord153]

[Edited on 01/30/2017 by tarcolan]
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Gandolorin
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Post Frodo's Quest
on: January 29, 2017 05:25
DarkLord153 said:... Unless it had to be cast down in the exact same place ...

Yes, I would guess that this was meant quite literally, as Sauron forged the One Ring at the Cracks of Doom and not in some lava flow outside.

Besides, there were no hot lava flows to throw the Ring in when the Hobbits got there, the only molten lava was in the mountain in the Cracks of Doom, a pretty far way down, I would guess. The eruption and lava flow did not start until the Ring was destroyed. And last, all lava starts cooling off once it starts flowing down the outsides of a volcano, so one could guess that it needed to be the primal lave in the volcano's inside.
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tarcolan
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on: January 30, 2017 08:27
It's odd that the lava flows from the top of the volcano. Maybe it's a separate source to Sammath Naur. It goes in a straight line to Barad Dûr which is east, and it's the only one I can see, so I don't think the hobbits would have come across it.
DarkLord153
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on: February 02, 2017 10:55
I guessed so myself.I can't find any way of them escaping Mordor besides the eagles if they didn't destroy it in the Cracks of Mt.Doom.They threw away everything they had,so i don't think they would actually survive at all.Anyways,thanks for answering!
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Gandolorin
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on: February 04, 2017 02:30
I think we should not belabor Mount Doom with too much of what we now know about volcanoes. The bit about the clouds spreading west to darken the skies before the Battle of the Pelennor Fields would indicate that it was a so-called grey, explosive, ash-eruption volcano, including the deadly pyroclastic flow of the kind which buried Pompeii and Herculaneum in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. Problem is, access to Mount Doom would have been impossible after such a flow. And again, the clouds drifting west should have rained volcanic ash everywhere during their passage - with the regions in Mordor getting the heaviest "ash rain", but all other places along the path of the cloud also getting their diminishing share. Didn't happen, as per RoTK.

MD, by other descriptions, seems rather to be a shield volcano, as per Wikipedia "so named for their broad, shield-like profiles, are formed by the eruption of low-viscosity lava that can flow a great distance from a vent. They generally do not explode catastrophically." Now RoTK states that the winding road leading from the plain of Gorgoroth in a spiral to the Sammath Naur needed to be cleared of lava flow again and again - but never that the Sammath Naur tunnel needed clearing. So any lava flows (at least before the One Ring was cast into the lava) must have exited the side of Mount Doom on the side at an altitude below the Sammath Naur. Mauna Loa on the island of Hawaii may be an example of such a volcano. Lava flows do not necessarily exit at the cone.
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DarkLord153
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on: February 26, 2017 05:40
Just because you mentioned the volcanoes,Mt. Doom is truly the strangest volcano.It's active but it doesn't errupt until Gollum falls with the Ring? Also, Sauron could easily send a cloud of darkness,equal to the one he used to let his Orcs go to Minas Tirith without daylight,to kill them all from lack of oxygen? Sometimes,you find these little peaks that Sauron could easily win but didn't because Tolkien probably didn't of it or he just wanted The Free People to win!
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Gandolorin
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on: March 04, 2017 03:46
As I posted above:

"I think we should not belabor Mount Doom with too much of what we now know about volcanoes."

It boils down to what JRRT called, in what we would now call fantasy (or even including the larger category called the fantastic, including SF: warp speed is beyond the speed of light) the "suspension of disbelief". In this world, things like this can happen, which could not in our world.
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tarcolan
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on: March 06, 2017 07:26
Tolkien probably didn't of it or he just wanted The Free People to win!

Of course! But there were other powers at work in the world, as Gandalf says. If we run the story without the White Wizard, for example, Sauron wins hands down. Tolkien was describing the battle between good and evil, and Middle Earth was just the stage on which it was played out. The Ring did not end up in the lava by accident, even if PJ made it look like that. Tolkien agonised for ages as to how the Ring should be destroyed and in the end decided that evil could only be overcome with the help of Eru, the One.Not even Sauron could destroy the Ring.
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