
Can You Stop a Hurricane by Nuking It? - evo_9
http://www.livescience.com/24383-can-you-stop-a-hurricane-by-nuking-it.html
======
jballanc
When I taught Intro Chemistry at university, I had a fun bonus project for the
students when we got to the unit on thermodynamics. The assignment was to
assume that an ideal nuclear device was set off in the eye of a major
hurricane such that all of the thermodynamic energy of the explosion was
converted to expansion work (and to treat the eye as a closed container). The
question was to figure out by how much the diameter of the eye would increase
as a result.

The correct answer is: about 8 inches.

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tptacek
_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._

~~~
engtech
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.

~~~
scrumper
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...](http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/meteorology/news-subverting-
hurricane)

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.)

~~~
pavel_lishin
> *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.

~~~
scrumper
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.

~~~
mchouza
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...](http://permalink.lanl.gov/object/tr?what=info:lanl-
repo/lareport/LA-UR-09-05184)

------
scarmig
I don't think this is solid reasoning. The amount of energy in a system may
well dwarf a given input, but that doesn't mean that the system doesn't have
multiple equilibria that a sufficiently large delta could shift it to.

For example, the energy to fly a plane into the sky is small compared to
what's released in a rainfull, but that doesn't prevent cloud seeding from
being (somewhat) effective. The energy from a lit piece of magnesium is much
smaller than what results from touching it to a thermite block.

It is of course the responsibility of the pro-nuke-on-hurricane folks (do they
even exist?) to offer the mechanism that a nuke uses to shift the hurricane
system to a lower energy state in a controlled manner.

------
schoper
If they considered it in the 60s, my inclination is to think there was
something to it. It sounds like an idea of Teller's (not a dope). In fact, a
quick Google search just confirmed this to me.

The first approximation energy considerations quoted in the article and
elsewhere in the comments here are not the same as a model of what happens in
a physical system when you set off a bomb in a hurricane.

What a hydrogen bomb tends to do is to expel a cylinder of atmosphere straight
upwards. Why didn't they ever build bombs greater than a 100 megatons? Not
because it would have been too hard. It is easy to do. Instead, past 100
megatons, the extra energy just expels that cylinder of air into outer space
even faster. So there is no reason to build a larger bomb.

What happens to a hurricane when a chunk at its center is launched into outer
space? Or several chunks? Teller thought it was worth finding out. And there
are very few physicists fit to lace up that man's boots. So it might be worth
investigating.

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ck2
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.

~~~
anewguy
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?

~~~
noiv
> How many more hurricanes occur today than 100 years ago?

Rhetorical question. It's not about the amount of hurricanes, but their
strength and their path. Apparently Sandy was blocked by an anti-cyclone south
of Greenland and instead of turning right it turned sharply left and made
landfall. These highs are linked by latest research to the loss of ice in the
Arctic. And connecting higher ocean temperature with more powerful hurricanes
is trivial.

So, it is not about preventing hurricanes it is about preventing damage and
victims and keeping the infrastructure functional. In this context you can
easily justify closing fossil power plants.

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weego
_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_

If that isn't an awesome opening scene of a superhero film I don't know what
is.

~~~
krapp
Wow... an Aquaman movie that I might actually watch...

------
scrumper
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.

~~~
guylhem
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.

~~~
scrumper
And dams burst, reclaimed marshes flood, aqueducts collapse. We can carve out
a tenuous effect but it'll only last as long as we expend energy to maintain
it.

> If we haven't bothered to fix something yet, maybe it's because the problem
> is not so important.

This is rather callous. The catastrophic tsunami in Japan was a problem of
some importance, yet with all our art we could barely predict its arrival,
much less affect it.

Your first sentence makes a good point - the 'three rights.' So, can you name
an example where the directed application of energy has affected - in a
predictable fashion - some natural process of the scale of a hurricane?
Earthquakes, climate change, tsunami, storms... Not much of a track record as
far as I can see. (Cloud seeding, perhaps? Hardly predictable.)

I think your faith in humanity's power is premature at best, more likely
misplaced.

> Nature more or less remains the same. The end result seems quite clear to
> me.

> ...or wait until we have the technology to achieve it.

Nature might well remain the same, but it's still hardly within our
comprehension. The end result you're talking about, that mastery of nature,
would appear to be many thousands of years in the future if we ever achieve
it.

~~~
guylhem
"dams burst (...) it'll only last as long as we expend energy to maintain it"
- true

But as our construction techniques improve, maintainance cost are reduced (or
alternatively reconstruction costs are reduced - it's all a tradeoff)

Also, look at what happened as a consequence of the tsunamis - we are getting
better at monitoring them.

We will also certainly get a better understanding on how they behave, and
maybe how to mitigate them (IIRC wavefronts of opposing frequency cancel out-
maybe someday we'll be able to do something like that)

It all takes time- if only to develop understanding on what to do, what to
avoid, and technology on how to actually do something.

I'm not denying the fact that we are not able to fix the weather - yet. But in
the long run, we will.

It certainly is premature to put much faith in that, yet look at the ideas for
geoengineering- it's very inspiring.

I don't want to be overtly optimistic - humans are great - but we also have
flaws, mostly social. There are indeed very concerning in the short run -
especially in the west and in Europe, where something is going wrong (less
interest in science, less willpower, lesser will to live?). But the world is a
big place, and if the current powerhouses stop innovating, someone else will
take the lead. It doesn't really matters who does.

So in the long run, I'm sure the human race will win against nature (as in
total win - incluing whole brain emulation), if we just manage to not destroy
ourselves due to existential risks in the process.

These are IMHO the only real obstacles to acheiving that.

~~~
scrumper
Just to make this all portentous, you're basically saying that we can only win
against nature when we've won against ourselves? There's a religion in there
somewhere :)

One might argue that there's defeat inherent in the idea of conflict with
nature. We are a part of it, after all. Perhaps cooperation and understanding
are the real path? We don't bomb the tsunami into oblivion, but learn to watch
for it and get out of the way when it comes. There are many examples of this
philosophy of 'going with the grain': buildings which use ground-source heat
pumps, unforced convection and solar panels for HVAC & hot water; kite-driven
cargo ships, and so on. The tree that yields survives the storm.

I'm sorry to say that I don't find geoengineering inspiring at all. I find it
terrifying. We do not understand the mechanisms at work in global climate at
all, yet we're presuming to try and pull the levers to create an outcome years
hence. Have these people never heard about chaos, about sensitivity to initial
starting conditions? It's exceptionally dangerous.

Most of us look down on 'cargo cult' programmers, people who copy and paste
stuff from the web into an editor with no idea how it works, bashing away
until it compiles. That's what geoengineering is. To extend the metaphor, we
don't have the first clue about the world's API, even what language it's
written in, whether it's functional, object oriented or what have you[1].
We're trying to change the value of a few public ivars in the hope that
something will happen.

The consequences though! It's not just a compile error: we have some greedy,
pig-headed salesman dumping kilotonnes of heavy metal into a rich ocean
ecosystem so he can sell some phantom bits of paper to industrial polluters.

I'm coming across like some Sierra Club hardliner here. It's not right,
because I'm not, I'm a proper capitalist and I love a supercharged V8 more
than I like cigars and steak. I really do hate arrogance though, and I'm a big
fan of the precautionary principle.

[1](Everyone knows it's actually in Lisp.)

~~~
guylhem
I really do not agree with what you say afterwards, but you introduce it in a
really beautiful way - "we can only win against nature when we've won against
ourselves" is a great question.

I do not have an answer, just a gut feeling that both can be done at the same
time.

------
prakster
A less baity title: You cannot stop a hurricane by nuking it.

~~~
3JPLW
If the headline is a question, the answer is no.

~~~
manaskarekar
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_law_of_headlines>

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kapuhy
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.

~~~
jordanb
I've heard this sort of sentiment come from Europeans before. Apparently it's
part of the "stupid americans" myth in Europe that American construction is
"shoddy" and that's why weather is so destructive here.

Of course Europe receives very few hurricanes because they typically move from
east to west from the intertropical convergence zones and Europe has no east
coast exposed to an ITCZ. Some parts of Europe (such as Britain) receive many
tornado strikes but ones with the intensity of those in America are rare. The
USA is the only country that receives several F5 strikes per year, and the
British tornado scale starts classification of cyclones at much lower wind
speed, were we'd just describe it as an 'F0' or not even classify it as a
tornado.

An F2 on our scale (T4 on theirs) struck Birmingham in 2006 and caused forty
million pounds of damage to many brick buildings:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham_Tornado_%28UK%29>

Brick is actually a poor material to use against high wind loads because has
little tensile strength. When high loads are applied to a brick wall, the two
ends of it are supported by the adjoining walls, which cause bending stress on
the wall, and tension on the interior of the wall between supports. The wall
then buckles inward.

The only truly suitable building materials are ones with high tensile
strength: steel, reinforced concrete, and core-reinforced cinderblock.
Practically speaking, the odds of any one building in the midwest getting hit
by a tornado are very small and so people understandably don't want to live in
a concrete bunker on the very slim chance that they get hit. Florida, however,
does seem to have a great deal of concrete and masonry construction, even in
homes. Although it's worth keeping in mind that the majority of the damage
from a hurricane comes from flooding rather than wind.

------
jnadeau
Would have enjoyed this more if it were an xkcd "what if?"

~~~
danielweber
I'd like to see the answer of opening a portal from a normal- pressure area to
a low-pressure area applied to the eye of a hurricane.

<http://what-if.xkcd.com/14/>

------
Dove
Given that the answer is 'no', perhaps a better question would be "How _many_
nukes would you need to stop a hurricane?"

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allsop8184
"Unfortunately, this idea, which has been around in some form since the 1960s,
wouldn't work." :-(

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brownbat
Intellectual Ventures has an anti-hurricane project, deploying little rafts
that cool the surface of the ocean:
<http://intellectualventureslab.com/?p=321>

Freakonomics discussed it on marketplace, (I think it's in one of the books
too): [http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/09/06/the-hurricane-
vaccine...](http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/09/06/the-hurricane-vaccine/)

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padobson
I haven't read anything here about the environmental effects of stopping
hurricanes. Yes, it sucks that they show up and flood our cities and destory
our houses, but they are definitely a common part of the carribean ecosystem.

It seems imprudent to try and stop them without considering this. Who knows
what kinds of disasters we'd be trading for hurricanes - regardless of the
technology we use to stop them.

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Apocryphon
Why bring up nuclear weapons at all? Modern science has brought us the MOAB
and the ATBIP, which are non-nuclear.

~~~
phreeza
Because their yields are several orders of magnitude lower than modern nuclear
warheads.

------
tomjen3
If they are so energy dense, why nuke them?

Harvest them.

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anonymouz
Follow up story from the department of really utterly terrible ideas: Can you
cure headache by shooting yourself?

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laserDinosaur
tldr; no.

