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Can You Stop a Hurricane by Nuking It?

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Re: Can You Stop a Hurricane by Nuking It?

#31

Post by anewguy »

ck2 wrote: post #16

It's funny how even if you could do this (and thank goodness you cannot) people would be for it, but shutting down coal plants to possibly reduce frequency and energy level of hurricanes, nah that's too much inconvenience. Radioactive hurricane, much less hassle.

What is the evidence that this is true? How much would it cost? (Coal provides ~30% of US electric power. It's not a trivial inconvenience to shut that down)

As I recall, environmentalists went all doom-and-gloom after hurricane Katrina, and that was followed by many years of below average hurricane activity. How many hurricanes per year could we prevent by spending, say, 10% of our GDP on carbon reduction? How many more hurricanes occur today than 100 years ago?

Re: Can You Stop a Hurricane by Nuking It?

#33

Post by guylhem »

scrumper wrote: post #12

Human ingenuity is quite good at delivering enormous amounts of energy over a very short time. Nature deploys merely huge energies, but does so for very long periods. She wins, every single time.

Nature wins until we manage to get better models and find ways to leverage so that we won't even have to deliver an enormous amount of energy but just the right amount at the right moment in the right place.

We created dams, removed marshes, harnassed hydraulic power, etc - feats unbelievable hundreds of years before. And before us, Romans did also uncredible feats - such as the aqueducts. We keep on improving. Nature more or less remains the same. The end result seems quite clear to me.

The human race has something nature lacks : a mind, which comes with a will and the capacity to understand.

If we haven't bothered to fix something yet, maybe it's because the problem is not so important. But I'm sure that if it tilts in the other way, we can find solutions - or wait until we have the technology to achieve it.

Re: Can You Stop a Hurricane by Nuking It?

#34

Post by pavel_lishin »

scrumper wrote: post #19
engtech wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.environme…

> *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.

Re: Can You Stop a Hurricane by Nuking It?

#35

Post by dhugiaskmak »

danielweber wrote: post #24
engtech wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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?

Re: Can You Stop a Hurricane by Nuking It?

#37

Post by joevandyk »

dhugiaskmak wrote: post #35
danielweber wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Can You Stop a Hurricane by Nuking It?

#38

Post by ChuckMcM »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #34
scrumper wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.environme…

> *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.

Re: Can You Stop a Hurricane by Nuking It?

#39

Post by scrumper »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #34
scrumper wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.environme…

> *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.

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.

Re: Can You Stop a Hurricane by Nuking It?

#40

Post by TheCowboy »

kapuhy wrote: post #18

Hurricanes would not be a problem if you Americans really understood fairytale about three pigs and bad wolf and start to build your houses from bricks instead of paper. Then you would need to just ensure that you have full fridge of food and a lot of books to read, no need to evacuate.

A fridge full of food isn't that useful if it's flooded full of water.

I can also anecdotally verify that New York City is not built from paper, but I doubt a more scientific study is required to back up my experience.

(The tone of your post is also not in the spirit of Hacker News and its Guidelines.)

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