US President Donald Trump’s suggestion that dropping nuclear bombs on hurricanes before they made landfall in the United States has sparked outrage and shock on Twitter.
During a hurricane briefing, the Axios news platform reported that Trump asked if it were possible to disrupt hurricanes forming off the coast of Africa by dropping a nuclear bomb in the eye of the storm, the news site wrote.
According to an anonymous source, the news website said that meeting attendees left the briefing thinking, “What do we do with this?” Axios did not say when this conversation took place.
But the report has set Twitter on fire with many commenters to Trump’s suggestion, appearing shocked.
“Not ‘The Onion,’” one user wrote, referring to the satirical news publication known for outlandish headlines.
“What could possibly go wrong?” asked another.
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Many tweets also included the hashtag #ThatsHowTheApocalypseStarted.
Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris weighed in as well, tweeting, “Dude’s gotta go.”
According to AFP, it is not the first time the president made such a suggestion. In 2017, Trump asked a senior official whether the administration should bomb hurricanes to prevent them making landfall.
Trump did not specify in this conversation that nuclear bombs be used.
The White House declined to comment, but Axios quoted a senior administration official as saying Trump’s “objective is not bad.”
Trump’s idea is not new. The suggestion was originally made by a government scientist in the 1950s, under President Dwight Eisenhower.
The idea continues to pop up, even though scientists agree it would not work. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has a page dedicated to the concept.
“During each hurricane season, there always appear suggestions that one should simply use nuclear weapons to try and destroy the storms,” the NOAA said.
Not only would a bomb not alter a storm, the winds would quickly spread radioactive fallout over nearby land, NOAA added.
“Needless to say, this is not a good idea,” said NOAA.
In a 2011 article, published in Mother Jones, meteorologist Christopher Landsea was quoted detailing two major problems with the bomb-a-storm theory.
First: The main difficulty with using explosives to modify hurricanes is the amount of energy required. A fully developed hurricane can release heat energy at a rate of 5 to 20×1013 watts and converts less than 10% of the heat into the mechanical energy of the wind. The heat release is equivalent to a 10-megaton nuclear bomb exploding every 20 minutes. According to the 1993 World Almanac, the entire human race used energy at a rate of 1013 watts in 1990, a rate less than 20% of the power of a hurricane.
In other words, not even a multiple-megaton A-bomb—a civilization killer—could effect much change in the weather. “Brute force interference with hurricanes doesn’t seem promising,” Landsea concludes.
“Then there’s the other problem, which you probably intuited already: 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”.
The US is regularly pummelled by hurricanes. In 2017 one named Harvey became the strongest hurricane to make landfall in 12 years.
Read Axios full report
