Stop The Hurricane, I want to get off.

Hurricaines terrorize people. Lets NUKE IT!

Better yet, let's go bomb Fallujah. That works so well.

This has been talked about before. I highly doubt nukes aren't going to work.
Here's a quote from munch's link..

The National Hurricane Center notes that a hurricane releases heat energy at a rate of 50 trillion to 200 trillion watts. (trillion here is used in the U.S. and French sense: a number followed by 12 zeros) This is the equivalent of a 10-megaton nuclear bomb exploding about every 20 minutes.

Talk about killing the patient to cure the disease. As a kid I used to wonder if a large non nuke missile could somehow disapate a tornado, I'm old enough to remember the Xenia tornado well. It was only about an hour and a half from where I lived at the time. Anywho, may Francis take a hard turn to sea and stay there.

that of a 20-megaton bomb can do the same within a radius of 12 miles

This is the degree of the blast produced...(cloud flattening). So, it would take either a huge bomb, or multiples to even slow it down...

I havent bothered to read all the replies so if this has already been posted then its just confirming what would really happen.

A hurricane would just "swallow" the nuke without it having any affect on its strength and become radioactive, so where ever it hit would have to deal with the fallout and many ocean creatures would suffer.

The idea was that a shockwave would (first) destroy the eyewall, then it would have disrupted the airflow of convection enough that the hurricane could not sustain itself. It would evaporate much of the moisture in the nearby air, and that it could act as a wrench in the mechanism driving the storm itself.

And _wow_ old topic. This was made .. Pre june? May?

Oh well, yes, it was a purely hypothetical idea, I wouldn't actually dream of this being a practical solution to a hurricane, and it in no way is related to Frances, as I posted this months back

Wow, I�m surprised by how dumb some of the people are. If you have seen footage from all the nuke testing we did in the sixties you could easily be able to see the cloud mass a powerful nuke could move. Plus with all the tests they did back then I can't see how one nuke could be a radiation hazard for people on land if it was done over the middle of the ocean, considering agencies conducted more than 1,100 nuclear tests only 65 miles northwest of the City of Las Vegas. This idea would definitely work if it weren�t for the fact that we tell every other country in the world not to have nukes and we have enough to destroy the world many times over.

[edit on 3-9-2004 by GibsonM111]

Does a nuclear blast have a 10 mile radius? 25 mile radius in Frances' case? I'm not sure it does.

It depends on what the yield of the nuke is. The "Tsar Bomba" ("King of Bombs") was the world's largest bomb at 50 megatons. I read somewhere that it had a blast radius of 200 miles plus.

Funny I read the same thing in some sci-fi few years ago. The radiation would be aproblem, but if some kind of "clean" nuke is invented why not it could work.

Kinda' funny actually, Frances just went down to a Category 2 while traveling through the Bahamas. Bill Kamal (ha ha ha ha) says that the hurricane took in cold air from the high pressure in the Carribean and caused it's own demise.

Bringing the original topic back down to a more realistic level (and to quash the whole "Ooo Ooo...radiation!!!" excuse)...

What if you dropped a MOAB on an F2 or F3 tornado? Would that stop it? Would it be better to detonate in the top of the funnel at the cloud's ceiling or on the ground?

ENV

Q: Wouldn't a huge bomb weaken a hurricane? If they are worried about radioactivity, they could use powerful fuel-oil bombs.

A: A bomb or bombs would be a dead end since the amount of energy a hurricane is releasing and the size of its circulation would make any bomb, including the largest nuclear bomb, seem more futile than trying to stop a charging elephant by throwing a ping-pong ball at it. As noted above, hurricanes release tremendous amounts of heat energy. In fact, since hurricanes are "heat engines" that depend on the temperature contrast between warmth at the ocean surface and cold air aloft, we could wonder whether the heat from any kind of bomb would actually add to the storm's natural heat supply, making the storm stronger. Trying to heat the upper atmosphere with bombs, to lessen the heat contrast, would be like trying to heat the city of Minneapolis in January by opening the windows of a house.

Until recent years, many people suggested using nuclear bombs. But, doing that would create a hurricane with the danger of radioactivity as well as wind and storm surge.

Well... first: Shockwave doesn't move air to anywhere it's just sudden moving high pressure pulse which goes through matter. (like sound waves)

Originally posted by GibsonM111
It depends on what the yield of the nuke is. The "Tsar Bomba" ("King of Bombs") was the world's largest bomb at 50 megatons. I read somewhere that it had a blast radius of 200 miles plus.

Real blast range isn't so big... and with bigger bombs it's radiation pulse which causes destruction.
(remember that shockwave's power is in inverse ralation to distance's cube when for radiation it's only to distance's square)

With longer ranges calculating effect of shockwave isn't so simple.
nuclearweaponarchive.org...

There have been hundreds (if not thousands) of atmospheric nuclear tests. I don't think we'll grown any additional limbs if we drop one more. I'm sure someone out ther knows enough about the dynamics of a nuclear explosion to say whether one could disrupt or eliminate a hurricane. Anyway, it's an interesting question. Maybe a typhoon will make landfall on N. Korea and afford us an opportunity to test this theory. Peace!

Ocean creatures would be safe and as long as the nuke was detonated far enough where it would not be visible (so as to not blind anybody) it would probably dissipate the hurricane, if your wondering why ocean creatures would be unharmed, the radiation(free nuetrons moving at very high speeds) are slowed down by water to a point where they are harmless, this is how they protect nuclear reactors. as for the wind carrying the radiation not removed by the water, thats a different story, if there were to be research into this, it would have to be in that area. And if a nuke blew away the eye wall, it would severely slow the rotation by spreading out the low pressure over larger area, instead of having it contained within a few miles, well from a future nuclear engineering student, thats my input

Hello,

Yes, a nuclear bomb will destroy a hurricaine if dropped in the eye.

No, the bomb will not(!) create a nuclear hurricaine.

Yes, it will create everything that a nuclear bomb creates when one
is activated; radiation etc.

No, it is not necessary to use a nuclear bomb to stop a hurricaine. Conventional bombs can do quite nicely and actually would dissapate
a hurricaine completely. Instead of using bombs for war that would be
more useful!!

Why has no one seen or used this before? Good question.

P.S. - If you want a detailled explanation of how a hurricaine actually gets
created, I am willing to provide that. What I request first though is
that you create a mini-one for yourself; Go to a pond. Drop a large
rock in the water and, before the waves dissipate drop a small rock
in just in front of the wave-front from the big rock. Then, WATCH.

P.S.S. - Another reason why is that geniuses don't get recognized at times.