Trump Wanted To Nuke Hurricanes

[Cheerful Charlie]

https://www.axios.com/trump-nuclear-bombs-hurricanes-97231f38-2394-4120-a3fa-8c9cf0e3f51c.html

...
President Trump has suggested multiple timesto senior Homeland Security and national security officials that they explore using nuclear bombs to stop hurricanes from hitting the United States, according to sources who have heard the president's private remarks and been briefed on a National Security Council memorandum that recorded those comments.
Behind the scenes: During one hurricane briefing at the White House, Trump said, "I got it. I got it. Why don't we nuke them?" according to one source who was there. "They start forming off the coast of Africa, as they're moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it. Why can't we do that?" the source added, paraphrasing the president's remarks.
...

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OMFG


The Trump crazy never ends.

Explain again how sheep's bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes.”
- Monty Python and the Holg Grail.

 

[starwater]

The crazy just keeps coming.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Yeah, because nothing makes hurricane cleanup more fun than doing it in a HAZMAT suit.
Maybe Jimmy Carter could loan his yellow Three-Mile-Island booties to Trump to hand out the paper towels next time....

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Apparently, this was a bad idea from the fifties that will not completely die the death it deserves. One wonders if there are kooks in the administration feeding weird crap like this to Trump. The idea to buy Greenland was an old idea also.

 

[Ford]

Kinda makes the whole "buying Greenland" thing seem almost sane.

 

[hurtinbuckaroo]

I’d love to be the one to tell him nukes only work on sharknadoes.

 

[bilby]

A nuke dropped in the eye of a hurricane would tend to intensify it, but not by much.

A hurricane takes around ten seconds to transfer as much energy as a one megaton nuclear bomb. And it is driven by rising (warm, damp) air in the eye, so adding more heat to the eye in the form of a nuke would probably cause the system to get a tiny bit more powerful.

A nuke dropped off-centre (just outside the eye-wall) might disrupt the circulation briefly, but it's unlikely to do lasting damage to the system.

The whole idea is nuts.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

From Axios:

The big picture: 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."

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

hurtinbuckaroo: Nukes only work on sharknadoes.
Trump: *eyes bug wide open* Those exist?!

 

[James Brown]

"Some guy on Youtube said you could stop a hurricane with a nuke, so..."

 

[Keith&Co.]

A nuke dropped off-centre (just outside the eye-wall) might disrupt the circulation briefly, but it's unlikely to do lasting damage to the system.

Yeah, and targeting a moving object with a decent sized nuke makes my head hurt...
I suppose we could do a pattern...? A MIRV missile spreading warheads around the probable location of an eye... Hopefully one of them will be in the sweetspot, and hope none hits the eye...

We'd have to build a target package of all the possible places the storm might be at the time we're finally authorized to released; National Command Authority and the Naval Observatory doing a joint impression of the weatherman trying to predict the best likeliest fingers crossed location, not right now, but in the future by the minimum time necessary to send the release message, launch the appropriate missile, warhead flight, impact...

"Okay, shoot Footprint Trump1. No! Trump2! NO, wait,TRUMP5! DEFINITELY Trump5! Unless it's Trump7..."

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

A nuke dropped off-centre (just outside the eye-wall) might disrupt the circulation briefly, but it's unlikely to do lasting damage to the system.

Yeah, and targeting a moving object with a decent sized nuke makes my head hurt...

I think that'd be the easy part. Detonating a device in a large rotating mass that would be great at spreading out radioactive contamination over a massive area would probably be the larger issue. But this is why we have the 25th Amendment... right? Because people that'd ask this type of question would be fired by Congress and the Cabinet... right?!

 

[ideologyhunter]

Well, we could fund a protective dome over Mar-a-Lago before trying the first nuke. And Trump could have a hand-held Geiger counter to check his chocolate cake.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/08/th...-denying-report-he-wanted-to-nuke-hurricanes/
...
“The story by Axios that President Trump wanted to blow up large hurricanes with nuclear weapons prior to reaching shore is ridiculous. I never said this. Just more FAKE NEWS!” Trump tweeted very early Monday morning.
...

More madness with our morning coffee.

"I didn’t believe it until he denied it."
- Betty Bowers

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Nuke? Why not just a B-52 bomb bay sized roll of Bounty?

 

[Keith&Co.]

Nuke? Why not just a B-52 bomb bay sized roll of Bounty?

Because then you hit Miami with a spit-wad the size of an Abrams Tank.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/08/th...-denying-report-he-wanted-to-nuke-hurricanes/
...
“The story by Axios that President Trump wanted to blow up large hurricanes with nuclear weapons prior to reaching shore is ridiculous. I never said this. Just more FAKE NEWS!” Trump tweeted very early Monday morning.
...

More madness with our morning coffee.

"I didn’t believe it until he denied it."
- Betty Bowers

I'm willing to believe the story is fake. He didn't tweet the statement, so I give it 50-50.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Well, we can test it.
Tell Iran to announce that they've begun research to build hurricane-stopping nuclear bombs. See how Trump reacts.

 

[blastula]

I’d love to be the one to tell him nukes only work on sharknadoes.

It may be where he got the idea. Donald Trump Almost Played the President in Sharknado 3 | Vanity Fair

 

[Derec]

I think that'd be the easy part. Detonating a device in a large rotating mass that would be great at spreading out radioactive contamination over a massive area would probably be the larger issue.

Solution to pollution is dilution. And thermonuclear devices with no tamper have surprisingly little fallout.