Phantom Ocean in Night Vale?
(at the beginning - I did not read “It Devours” and I might have missed some information)
Okay, but how do you even get such an idea - that there might be a phantom ocean in the town? Like, speaking from the point of view of science? And yes, I know, that applying real science here is hard and probably pointless but let’s give it a try.
What we know about Night Vale’s seismic activity is that there are probably some kind of shallow seismic storms. It shows that the environment must have been already cracked before. I do not know much about the scale of the earthquakes happening under Night Valian ground but the scientists’ reports suggest that it is something you should be able to experience or notice being in the town, but the point is you do not. They also said that the ground should be going up and down, so yes, magnitude of these earthquakes is presumable pretty high.
But why do I even bother to explain seismic activity of fictional town when the point is the ocean? Well. Here we go - we are going to apply seismology to find out if there is a possibility Night Vale is situated at the bottom of the phantom one.
I know, I know, it is not the map of the town or anything close to that but I want you to take a look at that picture and try to understand what I try to explain by putting it in the post:
(it’s from wikipedia if you wanted to know the source of the picture)
It shows something called Mohorovičić discontinuity (we will call it Moho because it is scientific shortcut from the full name). Moho is the boundary between the Earth’s crust and its mantle. I will not bore you with further details but from the map you can read that the Moho discontinuity is on different depths, and - what is pretty important here - the Moho discontinuity is shallow at the bottom of oceanic crust while on the continental crust it is located from something like 25 and even up to 80 kilometers (but that happens rarely and only under really big mountains)! While at the bottom of the oceans it is located between 5-8 kilometers underneath the surface of the crust.
There is a difference in speed of seismic wave spreading in the Earth’s crust and mantle. It changes its “nature” when it hits the Moho discontinuity. So I think it is a method to test the thing out. If Night Vale had Moho discontinuity up to 8 kilometers underground, then we have a good reason to think it is located at the bottom of invisible ocean.
Again, I know that applying real science to Night Vale may be pretty pointless but I think it could help. So my hypothesis about Night Vale’s geological location is on the bottom of the ocean - which makes the town basically some kind of lost “Atlantis”. And yes, if the Moho is located up to 8 kilometers underground it is still pretty weird for continental crust (according to the map I posted above).
I would come up with even more ideas like: possible volcanic activity in Night Vale which could be the reason of earthquakes. Or maybe some kind of “oceanic hot spot” (yes, I look at the mountain we have in the town - still, there is only one, and the tectonic plates wander so there should be at least a chain of mountains here... but hey, it is Night Vale - what do I expect here?).
I think it is time for me to finish that post. I probably did not explain anything here. I just made a hypothesis about how deep the Moho is located under City of Night Vale. If you have any questions my ask box is opened. And I will post some more hypothesis on the environmental part of what is going on here. Because this is really interesting for me.