Hurricane Rita

[dino4]

Like i said great idea(NOT)

[doctorsmith]

any one know what would happen if we.....nuked a hurrican....? o.O

 

A not altogether unexpected question. Considering how much energy a hurricane packs, stopping one would require a substantial application of force.

 

Or a way to alter the state of physics local to the hurricane (not breaking the laws of physics, but changing the conditions). In the Sixties the US tried seeding hurricanes with silver iodide crystals. Never could prove it was doing any damn good, though, so those efforts have since stopped.

 

Nuke a hurricane?!?... oh' date=' THAT's smart... just let that tropical storm spread the fallout over half the bloody world ;p...[/quote']

 

Technically speaking, anytime you detonate a nuclear device aboveground there is fallout that spreads across the world, as any leftover non-fissioned material from the warhead is vaporized. The blast wave pushes these fine particles into the stratosphere where atmospheric winds give the particles a fine "Around the World in 80 Days." Give or take. Sometimes it takes years for the particles to land.

 

The other type of fallout, which is considered far more dangerous in the aftermath of a nuclear detonation, is resultant from any dust thrown up into the air after the detonation. The dust bonds with fissioned particles, becoming radioactive. As the dust gathers into heavier clumps and falls back to the ground, THEN you should begin holding your breath.

 

Now if the hurricane were in the middle of the ocean during this hypothetical nuclear strike there would be far fewer dust particles for such a bonding than if the bomb were detonated against or over dry land. Obviously. And what you would have is the first stated type of fallout, the non-fissioned radioactive leftovers, which would then be dispersed around the world by the hurricane. Ultimately to the same result, but using a different vehicle.

 

Still, and hopefully not too late for everyone to believe I’ve gone all Doctor Strangelove, I would hardly recommend applying nuclear energies to a hurricane. I consider this an exercise in “facetious spit-balling.†Though the concept of “nuclear hurricane†sounds very much like something the Sci-Fi Channel would make into a movie. There’s already a working title from those two words.

 

Anyway, thermobaric weapons might prove more effective. That is, fuel air bombs. Similar punch to a tactical nuke without the worries of leftover radiation. Perhaps detonating a few of these in areas where the hurricane’s swirl formation is the weakest it may be possible to redirect the winds. Maybe trying to redirect the winds across the hurricane’s eye might do some good to cripple the storm, or hopefully at least change the storm’s direction. Though obviously it would be far more effective to “attack†growing tropical storms. Why wait until you have to deal with a category five hurricane, after all? But who would care to draft the guildlines for a preemptive strike against possible hurricane forming tropical storms, I ask you? Karl Rove?

 

Needless to say even a fuel air bomb would cause damage to the ocean. But then hurricanes damage the oceans. Earthquakes, too. Hell, I’m sure the number of beach goers a year who take a piss in the ocean damage it, somewhere on the relative scale. It all depends on how much “human contribution†we’re willing to put up with.

[Foil]

I'm willing to bet the number of nukes you would need to even make a huricane hicup would be more than we immagine. Look at the scale of the huricame in that picture posted above.

 

After a little research I came up with

 

"The Total energy (per day) in an "average" hurricane released by rain and cloud formation is ~5.2*10^19 Joules per day, or a power of 600 trillion Watts... Lets call this per-day precipitation energy Eprecipitation

 

The energy that goes, per day, into sustaining a mature hurricane's winds is estimated in the above link as being 1.3*10^17 Joules per day or 1.5 trillion watts. Lets call this per-day wind energy Ewind

 

 

I do not vouch for the above numbers, but I am willing to assume that the NOAA can do their math in these matters

 

The energy released in a 1 MEGATON TNT explosion is ~4.18*10^15 joules.

 

Eprecipitation is more than 10,000 Megatons of TNT....

 

 

Ewind is ~30 Megatons of TNT (This seems low to me, take this with a grain of salt)

 

so the total energy of a hurricane dwarfs our nuclear and thermonuclear bombs... of course the time period over which this energy is released matters..."

 

closer than I thought.

[doctorsmith]

I'm willing to bet the number of nukes you would need to even make a huricane hicup would be more than we immagine. Look at the scale of the huricame in that picture posted above.

 

Although the quote you've provided takes into account time (seemingly used by the writer to doubt him/herself), it makes the mistake of neglecting the hurricane's spatial component. Hurricane Rita was, at the height of her power, over four hundred miles long. That is quite a diffusion of energy.

 

And, at any rate, if you are talking about using a weapon (or series of weapons) to try to COUNTERACT every spare iota of energy within a hurricane . . . what would be the point? That is like the petulant schoolyard bully that kicks over another child's construction of building blocks, then proceeds to smash said blocks with a rock in the vain attempt to obliterate the offending things from the very face of reality.

 

The more practical consideration would be to try to disrupt the storm. Hurricanes, after all, require very specific atmospheric conditions to form, and once one gets going it is sustained largely by the sheer force of its spin. Disrupt that, and you could possibly cripple the storm.

 

This was the driving notion behind the US efforts to seed hurricanes with silver iodide crystals. The crystals bond with supercooled water to form new clouds, in the attempt to form a new eye. The hope was that this would create a new storm that was weaker than the previous. Unfortunately the natural ebb and flow of a hurricane’s strength made it impossible to prove the effort was doing any good, so the idea was abandoned.

 

Now if you really wanted to obliterate the hurricane from the face of the Earth, why not have the Pentagon use their HAARP electromagnetic WMD to create a new hurricane (check the web and you’ll find people who actually claim this was done to create Katrina), one equal in power but with the winds spinning in the opposite direction. Then they’ll just cancel each other out!

 

Sure, why not? I mean, screw the Coriolis effect! We’ll kick it in the nads too, while we’re at it!

 

American God Squad, away!

 

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Yeah, I couldn't resist. Sorry.

[Relentless]

May your basements be with you Americans :)

 

Or may it have been with you....

 

I'm in Canada so...

[GeneralLee]

I don't think I'd want to be in a basement during a hurricane, especially if I lived anywhere near the shoreline it is heading towards. Too much water and storm surge flooding. A tornado, now that's another subject.

 

Very interesteding posts, doctorsmith, I enjoyed reading them.

[kyran]

any one know what would happen if we.....nuked a hurrican....? o.O

 

I for one think that we should find out if these hurricanes dont stop... :rolleyes:

 

well the thought is there :)

but maybe a clean large explosion would rarefy the air, which in theory would cause the hurricane to collaspe in on it'sself

 

[GhostShadow]

any one know what would happen if we.....nuked a hurrican....? o.O

 

I for one think that we should find out if these hurricanes dont stop... :rolleyes:

 

well the thought is there :)

but maybe a clean large explosion would rarefy the air, which in theory would cause the hurricane to collaspe in on it'sself

 

Thats what i hoped. ;)

 

 

and i wouldn't want to even be near my home if a hurrican came, i would drive to the safest place, but i live in colorado so i dont need to worry about hurricans, just Russian nukes, then i would go to Norad in colorado springs and be safe from the nuke!! lol

[Beawulf]

isnt the spin of hurricanes/cyclones/typhoons determined by which hemisphere it is in?

 

 

I find the nuke idea very amusing, just the other day I saw a movie about stopping an earthquake with a nuke, then before that it was a movie about saving the earth using nukes in the core, then there was the one where they stop the aliens with a nuke, and how about stopping the asteroid with the nuke, and a nuke saved the day in stargate... I could go on for ages

 

I hear NASA is busy working to fix their tank foam problem, maybe a nuke would help ;)

 

 

[doctorsmith]

I hear NASA is busy working to fix their tank foam problem' date=' maybe a nuke would help ;)[/quote']

 

During the 1950's the general notion of atomic energy was a strange one. People still largely believed that the Nuclear Genie was everybody's friend. They knew about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, certainly, but like most technological advances that stem from military assets, there was the hope of taming the atomic beast for all manner of benefits (see Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace initiative).

 

They first turned to constructive purposes for The Bomb. Literally. They wanted to use atomic blasts for construction projects. The Russians tried this in Siberia to, if I remember correctly, divert a river . . . and they're still dealing with radioactive contaminants. Not to unfairly pick on the Russians, of course, because the U.S. was similarly drawing up plans for the construction of the Panama Canal II, using underground nuclear blasts. Thankfully the project was never attempted.

 

From atoms, such tiny components in the physical world, we can give access to tremendous energies – this is surely an incredible achievement that should not be underestimated. Yet it should not be applied lightly. It has its obvious costs. I don’t think anyone would contemplate using one against a hurricane. Though if it is true that between Amerian and Russia alone there are enough weapons to boil off the surface of the Earth, even a hurricane would succumb to our might. But it surely wouldn’t be a victory.

 

If you want some interesting stories dealing with atomic weapons, you should listen to some old radio sci-fi dramas. Though many are basically cheaper productions of The Day the Earth Stood Still, these programs have their moments. Unfortunately, none have ever had a scene where the humans interact with the aliens in this way:

 

Human: So you think we should give up atomic energy? Fair enough. By the way, these ships you guys are using to travel the vast galactic distances to destroy us, what are they powered by?

Alien: Our benevolent intergalactic empire uses ships fueled by the gravitic pulses of a thousand dying suns.

Humans: Sun-utilizing vehicles? Ohhhh! SUVs. Gotcha.

 

(The point being that any attempt to cross between stars would require vast amounts of power, be it nuclear or whatever, and any great source of energy could potentially be used as a weapon. But then explaining it pretty much kills the joke.)

 

Or:

 

Human: You’re worried about any species eventually rising as a galactic threat with nuclear weapons . . . so you’re stepping in now with your superior technology to snuff out what, in comparison, are vastly inferior races?

Alien: Yeah. We’re dicks.

 

Anyway, for information on NASA initiatives with nuclear energy, see the JPL’s Prometheus (note: it looks nothing like the one they have on Stargate SG-1). Slightly better use than . . . searing cracks in foam back together with a thermonuclear blast?

 

isnt the spin of hurricanes/cyclones/typhoons determined by which hemisphere it is in?

 

That would be the Coriolis effect, though it is more commonly referenced to which direction the water spins in your toilet when you flush.

 

Very interesteding posts' date=' doctorsmith, I enjoyed reading them.[/quote']

 

The most interesting was the one I refused to post. As you can guess, it was the kind that would have villagers with pitchforks knocking on my door . . . Probably.