Leo
Well-known member
Trump latest: apparently he's suggested, on more than one occasion, that hurricanes headed towards the USA could be stopped by nuking them:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...lear-weapons-disrupt-storm-bomb-a9078796.html
I can't help but find this grimly humorous. It's just like something a war-obsessed ten-year-old boy would say.
yeah, it's nutty and yeah he's an idiot....BUT it's actually been debated in the past:
Trump didn't invent this idea. The notion that detonating a nuclear bomb over the eye of a hurricane could be used to counteract convection currents dates to the Eisenhower era, when it was floated by a government scientist.
The idea keeps resurfacing in the public even though scientists agree it won't work. The myth has been so persistent that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. government agency that predicts changes in weather and the oceans, published an online fact sheet for the public under the heading "Tropical Cyclone Myths Page."
The page states: "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."
About 3 weeks after Trump's 2016 election, National Geographic published an article titled, "Nuking Hurricanes: The Surprising History of a Really Bad Idea." It found, among other problems, that:
Dropping a nuclear bomb into a hurricane would be banned under the terms of the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union. So that could stave off any experiments, as long as the U.S. observes the terms of the treaty.
https://www.axios.com/trump-nuclear-bombs-hurricanes-97231f38-2394-4120-a3fa-8c9cf0e3f51c.html