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I was recently reading some Lord of the Rings/Stargate SG-1 crossover fanfiction. It is a guilty pleasure, I admit :) In this story, it was suggested by Col. O'Neill to destroy the Ring using a nuclear device. Truth be told I stopped reading at this point, as it was getting to be a little much even for me.

Obviously, this is not canonical in either universe, but it made me wonder: When Elrond said that "only in the fires of Mt. Doom may it be unmade," was he speaking literally? Or was this merely the only known active volcano in Middle Earth? In other words, was whatever magic that protected the One Ring from damage location-based or did it just make it very resistant to destructive force, and Mt. Doom just happened to be hot enough to do this? I know there is (understandably) little information about such technicalities of how magic works in Middle Earth, but I'll accept any reasonable conjecture/consensus as an answer.

Frank Pierce
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    I've always held the uncanonical view that it merely put the Ring beyond reach without destroying it. – John O Feb 14 '13 at 22:59
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    I feel like the 'ka-woosh' from a stargate could probably destroy it... – NominSim Feb 14 '13 at 23:08
  • In the SG universe, the could send it to that black hole. – Zoredache Feb 16 '13 at 18:38
  • This might well be true of medievel tech and this low level of magic. In the twentieth century we had already many solutions and could indeed have hurled the ring into the sun itself. It is now the twenty-first. We would mount a decapitation attack against Sauron and all the vast armies would not matter. – Joshua Nov 10 '15 at 20:46
  • @Joshua citation needed on being able to hurl the ring into the sun. deorbiting takes way more delta-v than one would expect, you can't just aim at the sun and fire, you gotta reduce your orbital velocity enough that your orbit will intersect with the sun. take a look at the Parker Solar Probe mission, it was launched in 2018 and is still en route, it's only gonna get within 9 solar radii of the sun and it needs to do a gravity slingshot maneuver with jupiter to even get that close. – user371366 Jul 21 '22 at 05:44
  • @user371366: Parker Solar Probe used a gravity assist from Venus. If we merely wanted to throw something into the sun the cheapest way is to do a single gravity assist from Jupiter. The Earth-Jupiter transfer orbit has a gravity assist line that cancels all of the orbital velocity and drops straight into the sun. – Joshua Jul 21 '22 at 13:47

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It is established that Mount Doom is the only practical possibility. LOTR I.2 (when Gandalf verifies that Frodo's ring is the Ring and tells Frodo what that means):

But there is no smith's forge in this Shire that could change it at all. Not even the anvils and furnaces of the Dwarves could do that. It has been said that dragon-fire could melt and consume the Rings of Power, but there is not now any dragon left on earth in which the old fire is hot enough; nor was there ever any dragon, not even Ancalagon the Black, who could have harmed the One Ring, the Ruling Ring, for that was made by Sauron himself. There is only one way: to find the Cracks of Doom in the depths of Orodruin, the Fire-mountain, and cast the Ring in there.

(Several of the Seven were destroyed by dragons.)

Ways to destroy the Ring are discussed in Rivendell (LOTR II.3). When Tom Bombadil is suggested, Gandalf states

Say rather that the Ring has no power over him. He is his own master. But he cannot alter the Ring itself, nor break its power over others.

It is not said in this discussion whether the Valar, or other powers in Valinor, may be able to destroy the Ring. Quite possibly, they could, but will not.

‘But Gandalf has revealed to us that we cannot destroy it by any craft that we here possess,’ said Elrond. ‘And they who dwell beyond the Sea would not receive it: for good or ill it belongs to Middle-earth; it is for us who still dwell here to deal with it.’

My understanding is that there is no magic in Middle-earth that is strong enough to destroy the One Ring, and there is but one natural method to destroy it which is to melt it in a volcano. The fact that the Ring was made in Mount Doom is not directly relevant: Mount Doom is the only volcano mentioned in the story (not explicitly, but “Fire-mountain” is transparent). I don't have any hard in-story or out-of-story evidence to show, however.

willeM_ Van Onsem
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    It was maybe true for medieval technology, but today we can create fires much hotter than volcanoes. If this was the only requirement, I'm pretty sure the Ring could be destroyed today in an industrial furnace or by firing it into the Sun. Even if the later one didn't destroy it, it would make it inaccessible to Sauron. Failing that, you could fire it into a black hole, there is no way the Ring would survive that. – vsz Feb 15 '13 at 07:15
  • Good point about the Valar. They didn't bother helping directly in the War of Wrath in "The Silmarillion", so they certainly weren't going to trouble with the ring. – Matt Peterson Feb 15 '13 at 14:18
  • @vsz You'd think that dropping the ring in a river or keeping it in a remote cave in the depths of the Misty Mountains would also make it inaccessible to Sauron, but the ring has a will of its own and a way of getting what it wants eventually. Assuming that the sun wouldn't destroy it, maybe it could hitch a ride on a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronal_mass_ejection – Rag Jan 14 '14 at 00:02
  • @BrianGordon As far as I understood, the "will of its own and a way of getting what it wants" means it can mess with the minds of people in the vicinity, calling out for them to pick it up. – vsz Jan 14 '14 at 04:53
  • @vsz It purposely slipped off Isildur's finger though. And Gandalf says "A Ring of Power looks after itself, Frodo. It may slip off treacherously, but its keeper never abandons it. ... It was not Gollum, Frodo, but the Ring itself that decided things. The Ring left him." – Rag Jan 14 '14 at 17:36
  • Does it not mention the ring didn't expect to be found by a hobbit, that had more than a little resistance to its powers. Basically in the books the ring looks after itself until a hobbit gets it. – Iankill Jan 19 '15 at 19:41
  • In the LOTR movie Mt Doom is basically a volcano and they throw the ring into the lava. In the book it's a bit more vague. For all we know, the "fire" in the Cracks of Doom could be some sort of hellfire from the center of the earth. The particulars of this are not made clear. – Misha R Jan 20 '15 at 06:36
  • @MishaRosnach The book has the scientific perspective of a medieval legend. Call it “volcano” or “hellfire from the center of the earth”, it's a matter of naming, not of what it is. –  Jan 20 '15 at 08:34
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    Only if it really is just a normal volcano. By your logic, Smaug was probably a Komodo dragon and the balrog was a hippopotamus. Described with medieval scientific perspective. This isn't a medieval legend, it's a fantasy novel. – Misha R Jan 20 '15 at 12:57
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    @MishaRosnach No, from the perspective of European medieval legends, dragons are big flying beasts that breathe fire. They are not komodo dragons. A balrog is more specific to Tolkien but definitely not a hippopotamus or other actual animal, it's clearly a supernatural being. Volcanos, especially from a northern European background (i.e. from a region where there haven't been any active volcanos in historical times), are awe-inspiring enough on their own, they don't need to be made even more mystical. –  Jan 20 '15 at 13:16
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    I dunno, when the first stories about a hippo were brought back to Europe they referred to it as Behemoth. Pretty similar to a dragon, according to some interpretations of what Behemoth is. So I suppose some dragons were fire-breathing flying beasts, and some were hippos. That's the thing about fantasy though: all dragons are fire-breathing flying beasts. – Misha R Jan 20 '15 at 14:50
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    A note on medieval technology (re @vsz 's comment) : Magma is usually between 700~1300°C; coal coking fires and coal kilns can get as high as 2000°C. This probably wasn't in Tolkien's mind when he wrote that, but certainly it isn't merely an issue of temperature. – zxq9 Nov 10 '15 at 01:36
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Yes Tolkien wrote in one of his appendices that the Ring can only be destroyed from whence it came.

John O
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Neffer_23
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When you cross the fanfiction line involving different universes you almost always face paradoxes and contradictions, so it is hard to answer a question without knowing first which universe id dominating over the other one.

In other words, we can say that if you are "importing" the One Ring in the Stargate universe, maybe the technology rules of the new universe will change the rules bound to the ring, allowing it to be destroyed by different means other than Mount Doom. After all Elrond could not know about nuclear power, so its statement was based on its knowledge.

On the other side, if you are "importing" the Stargate guys in the Lord Of The Rings universe, well they can try how hard as they will, but the One Ring will be destroyed only in Mount Doom, because if you are in the Lord Of The Rings universe you cannot explain magic with physics, and so you cannot overwhelm magic with physics.

Supposing that you are just mixing universes together, I'll stick with the "specific beats general" rule, so being the rule on the Only Ring more specific than the generic destructive power of nuclear bombs, I'd say that the One Ring must still be taken to Mount Doom to be destroyed.

Anyway, with a spaceship it looks like a lot easier.

Frhay
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    What if you import both fictional universes in reality? – Junuxx Feb 15 '13 at 10:43
  • Again you have to choose if one of the universe (reality included) have priority over the other ones, and if not, you should again fall back to the "Specific beats General" rule... :) – Frhay Feb 15 '13 at 10:57
  • I would not want to put the One Ring on a SG-verse spaceship or any out-of-the-way planet. Imagine if a Go'auld System Lord or an Ori got their hand-equivalents on the Ring, and shudder in horror. – Codes with Hammer Sep 24 '14 at 14:49
  • A few works of fantasy that do try to involve modern tech sometimes give special status to nuclear weapons. The fire that burns both the Seen and Unseen worlds at once, or something. –  Dec 24 '14 at 02:11
  • @Leushenko If there is a specification of status to merge different tech levels (or in this case a tech level with a magic level) then again the most specific rule should win... :) – Frhay Jan 07 '15 at 13:57