Hacker News Reader

Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

One idea that rears its head almost every hurricane season recently is the notion of bombing a hurricane into submission.

...

Finally, whether the bomb would have a minor positive effect, a negative effect, or none at all on the storm's convection cycle, one thing is for sure: It would create a radioactive hurricane, which would be even worse than a normal one.

View on HN

Does this idea seriously raise its head almost every hurricane season? Is there any citation for that?

Who (other than Michael Bay) is talking about nuking hurricane?

edit: tried some google news searches, I can't find any discussion about bombing a hurricane other than this article.

That was my first reaction. I've never heard people about nuking hurricanes. This is a first.

Also, the guy's name was Landsea. It's always fun when someone's name seems relevant to what they do.

As a Florida resident, I can anecdotally confirm that the "What if we nuke it?" question circulates fairly often. Usually in years where a powerful or damaging storm appears, especially when places that don't usually get them are hit.

Yes, it does raise its head. NOAA even has it as part of its FAQ, at http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/C5c.html :

> During each hurricane season, there always appear suggestions that one should simply use nuclear weapons to try and destroy the storms. Apart from the fact that this might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems. Needless to say, this is not a good idea.

Here the question is asked in 2004: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=255086

Hmm, there's quite a lot out there actually. Try a regular search (not news) for "Nuclear bomb hurricane" and see what turns up. A good hour or two's reading at least.

Here's an authoritative discussion from the NOAA: http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/C5c.html

Some wacky ideas here, including using submarines to pump cold water from the ocean depths to the surface to disrupt convection currents: http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/meteorology/news-subver...

As to the origin of the idea, all I could find was that it was first proposed in the 1950s (but no source.) That makes sense given that it's an obvious thing to try with a new H-bomb toy. I couldn't find any evidence that the Ploughshares program* in the '60s ever considered it, so I expect the idea was shot down after the first back-of-the-envelope calculation.

*Ploughshares was an exploration of peaceful uses of nuclear explosives. Turns out they're only really good at digging really gigantic holes that you can't use for 50,000 years.

(Edit: ChuckMcM, commenting below, has actually been to a Ploughshares crater and since he didn't die I'll admit that "50,000 years" is poetic hyperbole, not scientific fact.)

> *Ploughshares was an exploration of peaceful uses of nuclear explosives. Turns out they're only really good at digging really gigantic holes that you can't use for 50,000 years.

Seems like it might be handy for moving asteroids around, too.

Having walked around the crater at the Nevada nuclear test site that was at least one of the 'ploughshares' tests I can assure you that the ground is safe to walk on in a lot less than 50,000 years. In fact it was 'safe' (as in walk around but probably not sleep there) about 3 days after the test. Unlike nuclear plants which vent fission by products as a function of a partially consumed fuel rod, nuclear explosives work really really hard to extract all of the energy out of the material as quickly as possible which leaves behind few by products, and what are left behind are so dispersed as to pose little to no threat to health.

Not so much. There's nothing out there in space for the explosion to push against. You could break them apart, maybe. You could pad the bomb with propellant mass but that won't really work in the case of an asteroid. (It's extremely difficult to direct the energy while capturing enough of it to be useful, so you need small bombs and lots of them. Then you have the ablation problem on the surface of the pushee - ie the asteroid.) Project Orion explored the concept of bomb propulsion at great length.

Two references for you:

Pale Blue Dot, by Carl Sagan, contains a thorough exploration of the technology required to divert earth-bound asteroids, and the consequences of possessing that technology.

Project Orion, by George Dyson, is the definitive history of the 1950's & '60s project to construct a nuclear bomb-powered spacecraft capable of crossing the solar system in months.

The basic idea is to ablate the asteroid to deflect it: https://e-reports-ext.llnl.gov/pdf/343984.pdf http://permalink.lanl.gov/object/tr?what=info:lanl-repo/lare...

The concept of using technology to change weather has been around since the '50s, at least, with the advent of cloud seeding. Shooting a-bombs at storms seems to fit the gee whiz nuclear-positive culture of the '50s.

"Explain to me how sheep's bladders can be used to prevent earthquakes."

"Certainly, my liege."

If something is going to cause $10 billion in damage, it's not nuts to consider nuking it to stop it.

Every year the first weekend of the Men's NCAA Basketball tournament is projected to cost billions of dollars in lost productivity to the US economy. Would you consider nuking all of the 8 first-round sites to prevent that loss?

Damage is a bit different than lost productivity.

I think that is a matter of perspective. If you phrase the damage done by a storm in terms of dollars (as opposed to, say, lives lost...), then I think that opens the door for comparisons to other things that destroy wealth.

Yeah, "radioactive hurricane" should be mentioned a lot earlier. Is anyone really that crazy to consider something like that? It sounds like the idea of a Bond villain.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com