Storms can 'explode' like 666 atomic bombs every 20 minutes, nothing can stop them

According to BI, even the Tsar Bomba (50 megaton yield) - the world's largest nuclear bomb ever detonated by Russia - could not stop the storm.

According to Business Insider (BI), in the past, the US has recorded some "crazy" ideas to prevent hurricanes. However, the level of energy that a mature hurricane can release is "extremely terrifying", almost nothing can stop it.

Specifically, in 2019, US media reported that Mr. Donald Trump - then US President - had repeatedly asked national security officials to consider using nuclear bombs to prevent hurricanes from hitting the US.

Former US President Donald Trump once proposed using nuclear weapons to prevent hurricanes from hitting the US. (Photo: RAMMB)

'Why don't we drop nuclear bombs on hurricanes?', Mr. Trump asked during a White House meeting on hurricane preparedness.

According to Axios, at that time, Mr. Trump was supporting the option of using nuclear weapons to prevent tropical storms from attacking the southeastern United States.

Axios sources said that Mr. Trump mentioned to senior US officials the following content: 'The storm has started to form off the coast of Africa. While it moves across the Atlantic, let's throw a bomb into the eye of the storm and destroy it. Why can't we do that?'.

According to Business Insider, the idea that Mr. Trump proposed has been mentioned before. In the late 1950s, a scientist came up with the idea of ​​using nuclear explosions to 'change the direction and intensity of hurricanes'.

However, a 2014 report by hurricane researchers at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) dismissed the idea. According to NOAA, the idea of ​​dissipating a superstorm with a nuclear bomb is 'unfeasible' , because the US does not have a bomb powerful enough to do so. In addition, the explosions would not be able to change the surrounding air pressure in a split second.

How are hurricanes formed?

Business Insider said that hurricanes are large low-pressure vortexes with wind speeds of up to 119km/h.

Tropical storms that threaten to hit the United States form over the warm waters of the mid-Atlantic. As moisture increases, the area releases energy, forming thunderstorms. As more thunderstorms form, the winds spiral upward and begin to turn outward, creating a tornado.

At the same time, as the winds pick up, an area of ​​low pressure forms over the ocean, helping to feed the storm's cyclonic shape. If any part of this weather cycle breaks down, the storm loses strength and disintegrates.

Perhaps that is why in 1959, Jack Reed - a meteorologist at Sandia National Laboratories - mentioned the possibility of disrupting hurricane formation conditions with nuclear weapons.

Mr. Reed proposed using submarines to fire nuclear weapons into the eye of the storm. (Photo: YT).

Mr. Reed hypothesized that nuclear explosions could stop hurricanes by pushing warm air up and out of the eye of the storm, thereby allowing cooler air to take its place.

That would cause the low pressure that fuels the storm to dissipate, and eventually weaken the storm, Reed said.

To realize the idea of ​​putting nuclear weapons into the eye of the storm, Mr. Reed proposed two options: Dropping from the air or launching from a submarine. Of these, the submarine launch option was considered the most feasible.

'A submarine could penetrate the underwater eye of a hurricane and launch its missile carrier before diving to a safe depth,' said Mr Reed.

However, according to NOAA, Mr. Reed's idea has at least two problems.

Storms release terrifying energy

Business Insider quoted a NOAA report saying that every 20 minutes, a mature hurricane can release between 5x1013 and 20x1013 watts of thermal energy , and only less than 10% of this heat is converted into mechanical wind energy.

The heat released by the storm would be equivalent to a 10-megaton nuclear bomb exploding every 20 minutes. That's equal to the 666 'Little Boys' bombs (15 kilotons) the US dropped on Hiroshima, Japan in 1945.

To counter the tremendous energy of a hurricane, every hour until the storm weakens, the US will need to drop nearly 2,000 'Little Boys' bombs into the eye of the storm.

Notably, even the Tsar Bomba (50 megaton yield) - the world's largest nuclear bomb, detonated by Russia over the Arctic Ocean in 1961 - was not enough to stop the storm.

Even the Tsar Bomba was not powerful enough to stop the storm. (Photo: Wiki).

Furthermore, as the high-pressure wave from the nuclear explosion begins to move outward, the air pressure around the storm will quickly return to its previous low-pressure state, while the shock wave created by the nuclear weapon travels faster than the speed of sound.

So if we can't detonate nukes in the eye of a hurricane continuously, we can't dissipate the low-pressure air current that helps sustain the hurricane.

Simply put, if we want to reduce the size of a Category 5 hurricane like Katrina (175 mph winds) to a Category 2 (100 mph winds), we need to add more than half a billion air masses to the storm (assuming an eye diameter of 25 miles). A single nuclear bomb is not enough to do that.

Radioactive dust will spread

The NOAA report also warned that if the United States used nuclear weapons, radioactive fallout would spread beyond the storm's range.

'This approach fails to take into account the issue of radioactive fallout that would be released. The fallout would move rapidly with the wind, affecting land areas and causing a range of devastating environmental consequences,' the NOAA authors wrote.

In humans, exposure to too much radioactive dust in a short period of time can destroy cells in the body.

Land contaminated with radioactive dust is also unusable, even for living. After the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded in 1986 and released toxic radioactive dust into the air, the area's residents were forced to leave.

If the US tried to destroy the hurricane with nuclear weapons, the radioactive fallout could even spread to Caribbean island nations or states bordering the Gulf of Mexico.

'This is definitely not a good idea,' NOAA concluded.