Do you believe nuking hurricanes is an efficacious and safe way to halt them?

[neeksgeek]

26. Oh my, what a great idea! Not really...

A typical hurricane expends more energy per second than the Little Boy (Hirosima) bomb’s total output. The energy in a hurricane is immense. I’m sure that a given storm could be scattered by a big enough explosion (or series of smaller ones), but the energy is still there in the warm water. A hurricane isn’t some external object like an asteroid about to hit earth, it’s part of the climate’s equilibrium.

In short, we’d never be able to stop them all without more nuclear explosions than all the tests we’ve done!

Editing to add: worst case scenario, a nuke doesn’t do anything but make a radioactive hurricane. Doesn’t that sound like fun???

Back in the early atomic age, all sorts of uses for nuclear power were explored. Using atomic weapons to blast paths through mountains for new highways; launching spacecraft on a pillar of atomic explosions (a “nuclear pulse rocket” - AKA Project Orion). Et cetera. These outlandish ideas have seen some use in science fiction, for example in Dune, Paul Atreides uses atomics to blast through a mountain range named the Shield Wall; even in this far-flung futuristic work of fiction, it’s considered a horrible idea.