Bomb 'em!!!

[pavelbure224]

Vero engineer's hurricane cure: Bomb 'em!!!

By Terry Galvin
TCPalm
Posted July 18 2005, 11:48 AM EDT


Although college football season hasn't arrived yet, cries abound along the Treasure Coast and state of Florida to "Stop the Hurricanes."

Not the University of Miami Hurricanes, of course. But storms with names such as Charley, Frances, Ivan, Jeanne and their cohorts, who hopefully shall remain nameless the rest of this summer.











One Vero Beach winter resident, however, recalls coming up with an idea on hurricane modification a few years ago that went, presumably, into "File 13" at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Henry Payne III, head of Payne Engineering, which has plants in Palm Bay and Scott Depot, W.Va., proposed the use of a thermonuclear attack on hurricanes back in 1999.

But Dr. Hugh Willoughby, then director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Meteorological Lab in Miami, quickly nixed the idea.

Payne, in a telephone conversation from West Virginia last week, said he firmly believes his idea still at least merits an experiment.

"The problem is the same, to get the bureaucracy to do the testing," said Payne, who has a Ph.D. in aeronautical engineering from Yale University. "I called them innumerable times (in 1999) and they basically didn't want to know about it. I think the director at that time (Willoughby, who is no longer there) was petrified by the word 'nuclear.'"

Payne, now 70, said there would be a number of steps involved before testing whether a thermonuclear approach to hurricanes might be effective.

"The first issue is the approval of international bodies, of course," Payne said, "and the second issue is then getting the testing done."

"Vero (Beach) got really slammed last year and it seems nobody knows just how bad they (hurricanes) are unless they've been in one. What bothers me most is the (government's) head-in-the-sand approach. It's time to do something. The damage (from hurricanes) is so great, so costly, it's crazy not to at least test it."

Payne's proposal in September 1999 after the Treasure Coast escaped the brunt of Hurricane Floyd's wrath was to use thermonuclear bombs or missiles that would act as a pulse of outward pressure to disrupt the circular movement of a hurricane.

Last week, Payne said the federal government does have zero fallout nuclear pressure pulses that might work. But, he said, without testing, the public likely will never know.

Then, too, Frank Lepore, NOAA public affairs officer at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, said weather modification experiments have been tried dating back into the 1960s during what was then called "Project Stormfury."

"Even then, you could never tell whether the experiment was causing the change or was it a natural fluctuation," Lepore said.

Apprised of Payne's idea, Lepore said, "Who would write the (international) environmental impact statement? People don't realize a hurricane produces energy in such vast quantities."

Citing a study Willoughby conducted in the 1990s, Lepore said the former director of NOAA's Research Lab basically concluded using brute force to combat hurricanes doesn't seem promising.

However, whether it would -- or could -- we may never know because Payne's idea has never been tested.

-- terry.galvin@scripps.com

[Mattie]

What was that movie that was released a "million" years ago, with the boy and hacking into a computer? Was it "War Games"?

"Do you Want To Play a Game" ??????

Can you only see it! I say LEAVE MOTHER NATURE ALONE!!!)

[Hurricaneman]

Theres another bad idea, you need hurricanes to dissipate heat from the warm water regions

[Mathias]

Instead of a dervish of destruction, we would have an irradiated dervish of destruction if we set off a nuclear blast in a hurricane. A hurricane generates the power of multiple nuclear blasts in its lifetime; I do not think it would phase the hurricane in the slightest. And even if it did the winds of the hurricane would disperse the fallout by a great distance before the hurricane was disrupted.

[Swimdude]

Hahahaha thermonuclear attack on hurricanes... Wow.

[HurryKane]

Hahahaha thermonuclear attack on hurricanes... Wow.

Yeah, nothing like making sure nuclear radiation gets spread by a giant whirling tasmanian devil. Glowy bits for ever'body!

[Steve]

Put that guy out to pasture unless they want to nuke a storm heading for Vero. Let him handle the liability issues

Steve

[The Big Dog]

[EDR1222]

Here we go again with people trying to come up with ways to upset the natural balance of nature.

Maybe if Mr. Payne is so bothered by hurricanes, then he probably shouldn't reside on the coast of Florida.

[mike18xx]

Hahahaha thermonuclear attack on hurricanes...ow.

If a hurricane could play with 8,500C water vapor, would it reach Category 55?

[curtinnc]

Oh come on now... I'd like to have my fish irradiated AFTER I catch than before...

Yeah really mike may have hit on it... might just make it into a super cane... Complete with glow in the dark cloud tops at 100,000 feet! NO IR SATELLITE NEEDED...

[Matt-hurricanewatcher]

What on earth do these people come from? Hurricanes are important for the Atmosphere. Every thing that forms/develops or mixes with the Atmosphere is why we are here. Thats right! Why on earth do we went to distory everything...What will be left when we are done??? The sicking mines of some of these people make me sick! These are the people that would clone humans. Bring back T rex. God has killed off the Dinosaurse for a reason fool!

In these people went to blow off nukes??? It would take thousands of nukes in that might even do just the other way around. We would be a living an a soup of poison for a million years.

Why on earth doe's this make it into the news? I don't understand....

[mike18xx]

Hurricanes are important for the Atmosphere.

"Importance" is an arbitrary concept that only sentient beings are capable of recognizing. The atmosphere, otoh, is as it is regardless of cognizant observers.

<shrug>

IMO, closed-eye tropical systems do not occur frequently enough to represent anything remotely meeting "necessary for life as we know it" criteria.

[SouthernWx]

Why on earth doe's this make it into the news? I don't understand....

Because many media types today (tv/ radio/ newsprint reporters) don't have the intelligence or knowledge of hurricanes/ atmospheric science to be able to know just how dangerous and insane nuking a major hurricane would be. The effects of nuclear radiation carried by hurricane force winds and "hot rain" could kill far more people than the hurricane. Also, under the right circumstances, the heat energy from a nuclear device could cause a hurricane to "go crazy" (anyone ready for a 500 mph "supercane" that won't weaken over land

This "nuke a hurricane" idea is among the craziest I've ever heard.....it makes wacko ideas such as spreading peanut oil on the ocean or positioning icebergs ahead of an approaching hurricane sound sane by comparism.

PW

[Matt31388]

Also, let's hope terrorists never attempt a stunt like this.

[Owen]

This idea is ridiculous, for one simple reason: a typical organized hurricane produces as much energy equivalent to four hundred 20-megaton hydrogen bombs in 1 day! So.......any human nuclear attack on the hurricane would do nothing to it. It'll be a little tap on its shoulder, and the hurricane would just shrug it off, or perhaps ingest the radiation, spread it out through its cirrus outflow, warm it adiabatically through its subsident periphery, and bam! all civilization irradiated around the hurricane. For example, outflow from Emily is being felt in Florida. If Emily were nuked, Florida would be getting the radiation impacts from so far away.

As far as why hurricanes are important....
They are a way for nature to maintain its thermodynamic balance! They transfer immense amounts of heat from the tropics (even if they occur infrequently), and without them, the heat budget of the earth would not be kept in check. 1 major hurricane produces enough energy to power the ENTIRE United States electric supply for 1 month. Without them, who knows what nature will do to balance itself out. It will do it no matter what! We could have extremely intense Nor'Easters, more nighttime MCS's in the Midwest feeding in Gulf moisture and causing flash flooding and severe weather, more convection in the Caribbean causing flooding and mudslides in Haiti, etc. etc. the possibilities are endless.

[Big-Iguana]

Yeah that's the ticket, they ocean is not hot enough so let's nuke it some more.

Wonder how many like there seafood with radiation too?

This all reminds me of curing cancer thru decapitation.

[mike18xx]

Also, let's hope terrorists never attempt a stunt like this.

Let's hope they do, because then they'd be wasting a perfectly good nuke they could have trashed a city with. (And a hurricane will dilute particulate fall-out thoroughly, with most of it ending up as condensation-nuclei.)

[Matt-hurricanewatcher]

Also, let's hope terrorists never attempt a stunt like this.

Let's hope they do, because then they'd be wasting a perfectly good nuke they could have trashed a city with. (And a hurricane will dilute particulate fall-out thoroughly, with most of it ending up as condensation-nuclei.)

That means we will have to deal with a cat10

[ktulu909]

I got an idea,anyone have 5 million tons of dry ice and ALOT of empty 2 liters?