He said, 'Maybe we should drop a nuclear weapon on them. (including inside apartments). Hurricanes are some of the scariest, deadliest, most costly weather events on Earth. If our Twitter timelines (tweets by the people we follow) actually extended off the screen in both directions, how tall would they be? What if you were flashing your BIOS during a thunderstorm and you got hit by lightning? The finger holes would collapse and then not much would happen. Enough soda to cover Earth with ten layers of cans. Gasoline: 46 This is clear from his response to the question of what would happen if everybody on Earth stood together and jumped at the same time. They would not be able to pay off the debt, even if they forced humanity to work as slaves. What if there was a robot apocalypse? The report also claimed that Trump had raised the possibility of bombing hurricanes with another senior administration official, as detailed in a 2017 NSC memo. The third two weeks Christmas break, the seventh break in total. However, Riechelderfer understood the gravity of the idea, saying they'd wait to start nuking storms "until we know what we're doing." much less catastrophic than a direct nuclear attack. Using nuclear weapons to destroy hurricanes is not a good idea, a US scientific agency has said, following reports that President . It turns out, you'd need a lot of nukes and a lot of power. This somehow turns back time [ ] How much energy would someone flying around the Earth have to exert in order to reverse the Earth's rotation? We could possibly spend a ton of money and resources to get a probe to Voyager. How fast would you have to go in your car to run a red light claiming that it appeared green to you due to the Doppler Effect? What if everyone actually had only one soul mate, a random person somewhere in the world? }}, xkcd.com is best viewed with Netscape Navigator 4.0 or below on a Pentium 31 emulated in Javascript on an Apple IIGS, https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/log_scale.png, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. Obviously, the answer is to nuke them when they are still small and not an issue. What is the point of stopping a hurricane from doing terrible damage to a relatively small area, if to do so, you spread radioactive material around the globe, affecting unimaginable numbers of people for years to come? I know that stirring does help to cool down the tea, but what if I were to stir it faster? Second and longest break so far of two long breaks in a row, the 12th break in total. How much would the sea level fall if every ship were removed all at once from the Earth's waters? When I was about 8 years old, shoveling snow on a freezing day in Colorado, I wished that I could be instantly transported to the surface of the Sun, just for a nanosecond, then instantly transported back. But just maybe as a teaser some (one) of the new from the book, might get released Only 17 days under four years after the release of #157, we finally have #158: See more details for breaks in the releases in the table with a list of all the. How much damage would a hail storm with size 5 soccer ball sized hail do? I've been told that if the Earth were shrunk down to the size of a bowling ball, it would be smoother than said bowling ball. Sanvu could whip up a spray containing fallout from the blast, and It found that every 10 years for the past four decades, "the likelihood of a hurricane developing into a major one of Category 3 or higher, with sustained winds greater than 110 miles an hour, [increased] by about 8% a decade." into the atmosphere, they heat to a glowlike meteorsigniting global What if a spacecraft slowed down on re-entry to just a few miles per hour using rocket boosters like the Mars-sky-crane? water. The Mariana Trench is gone, and with it Guam and the Mariana Islands. The report, published in 1996, Business, Economics, and Finance. The bill had no co-sponsors, never received a hearing and never became law. If there was enough water, and if the model held up, thisblast would a result of such a deep-water closed bubble creation and dissipation, I'm curious, though, what would happen if one person had all of the world's money? Fast enough so you would need a speedometer in scientific notation. petrified wood mixed with sand buried beneath the Louisiana and Texas But because there are 7800 million $100 bills in circulation and about a billion are produced each year, your bills won't make much of a dent in the US economy, let alone the global economy. The ninth break in total. Would I need to dive to actually experience a fatal amount of radiation? "He made it up. As gravity slows you and brings you to a halt, you reach the top of the skyscraper, where you reach out and pull yourself to safety. 0 618: Asteroid 696: Strip Games 786: Exoplanets 809: Los Alamos Could a person walk the entire city of NY in their lifetime? I heard that bananas are radioactive. He said, 'Maybe we should drop a nuclear weapon on them.'" The what if? What if I took a swim in a typical spent nuclear fuel pool? This memo has been declassified, but was never published. What would happen to the Earth if the Sun suddenly switched off? It would be too bright to watch and it would turn into rock quickly. Granted, the Sun is much bigger, but it is also much further away, and as I learned in high school physics, the gravitational force is proportional to the square of the distance. But that doesn't mean serious scientists haven't thought about the possibility. This new release is probably due to the upcoming release of the What If? Then from August 2014 there came several two week breaks, one in August, one in September and two in November, the last lasting three weeks into December, and on top of that the normal two weeks Christmas break. Surprisingly littleespecially compared to what would happen if you put The heat release is equivalent to a 10-megaton nuclear bomb exploding every 20 minutes. 40000 people and some magic. It should be noted that Trump denied the original report (by tweet, calling it "FAKE NEWS") and reiterated his denial when Biden mentioned it. I just moved into a new apartment. How would the Earth change as the water is being drained? story by using. no wave of any consequence will be generated.. No matter how big the bomb, humans simply cannot make something with enough power to even dent a hurricane. At what voltage would you have have to set the e-fisher? Later he released a different countdown with comic 2636: What If? HIDDEN FEATURE: The inside of this book has words and pictures, plus a special UK foreword. If you went outside and lay down on your back with your mouth open, how long would you have to wait until a bird pooped in it? Regardless of the context, Randall tends to take the questions extremely literally and responds seriously to them, even if they are whimsical (such as the Yoda question). The area is now marked by a 100-kilometer-wide scar of magma sizzling It's very unpromising. (We have an idea for selling bottled Europa water.). like with most of the other scenarios, everyone dies. Other than being a really bad idea, what effect would it have? If you drop a 7kg bowling ball over the side, how long would it take to hit the bottom? Since then there was no new posts for almost four years. improbable typhoon interaction, the overall effect of the bomb isnt The comet either burns up in the atmosphere or speeds up global warming. What would the world be like if the land masses were spread out the same way as now - only rotated by an angle of 90 degrees? Earths crust dozens of miles across, leaving a hole through which During a segment on climate change in the first presidential debate, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden claimed that Republican President Donald Trump's plan for managing hurricanes once included dropping a nuclear weapon in one. We still need to complete some explanations like this one: 1608: Hoverboard. before disintegrating into, in the words of the 1996 report, a mass of How long of a fall would I need in order for the balloon to slow me enough that I could land safely? What a great splish-splash that would be! By Luke Darby. convulsions. And the best part is, it's all humanity's fault. And we could make it not deadly, somehow? No underwater test has involved bombs anywhere near that size, nor depths anywhere near that deep. How long would humanity last? Liquid gallium? It wasn't: "To everyone's horror, [Hurricane King] then pivoted taking an impossible 135-degree turn and began racing into Savannah, Georgia, causing $3 million in damage ($32 million today) and killing one person.". With today's technology, would it be possible to launch an unmanned mission to retrieve Voyager I? How fast would I have to bike for my skin to warm up the way a spacecraft heats up during reentry? While the idea of hurricane police is awesome (and not any crazier than having a Space Force, really), it doesn't seem like you could get humanity on board with dropping 80 nuclear bombs every year to prevent a couple big hurricanes. underwater. "People were astonished. Did WWII last longer than the total length of movies about WWII? I was absentmindedly stirring a cup of hot tea, when I got to thinking, "aren't I actually adding kinetic energy into this cup?" A normal person would not get buried. What if you shined a flashlight (or a laser) into a sphere made of one-way mirror glass? At 53 megatons, the Tsar Bomba was the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated, and at 11 kilometers, the Mariana (s) Trench is the deepest part of the ocean. My son (5y) asked me today: If there were a kind of a fireman's pole from the Moon down to the Earth, how long would it take to slide all the way from the Moon to the Earth? The first of two longer shifts in release day two weeks in a row which resulted in only two releases over three weeks, resulting in the eight break in total. Fat: 39 How much cornstarch can I rinse down the drain before unpleasant things start to happen? What about bromine? So being a person on a budget what's the best way to use my free faucet to generate electricity? What a great sea that would be! "By the way," he continued, gesturing to Trump, "he has an answer for hurricanes. A bizarre 60-year-old idea to fight hurricanes using nuclear weapons resurfaced this week after Axios reported that President Trump raised the possibility with his national security advisors.. She has learned enough about the rules of the road to know never to drive into the ocean; however, she jokingly suggested that given a sufficient quantity of rental cars, she could eventually get to Europe by driving east repeatedly. "The short answer is 'no,'" Hugh Willoughby, a professor and hurricane researcher at Florida International University and total buzzkill, told Florida Today. How close could I stand to watch it? What would happen if one tried to funnel Niagara Falls through a straw? Not much. And if so, what kind of bird would it take? The problem, though, is that hurricanes emit a mind-boggling level of energy. the coast, the waves would be no worse than those from a bad storm. book, articles were posted weekly. When completed, six small reactors to be built in Idaho could be powering homes in Southern Utah by 2030. How many unique English tweets are possible? "People were astonished. That's. Problem solved, right? the last is devastating. My 4 year old son and I were wondering about soccer ball sized hail today. you would not be warmed if you went to the surface. After that there were five more two weeks break, one three week break (before December 11, 2014) and two releases in a row (133-134 towards the end of this period of 136 articles), where the release dates where shifted so the two came out over three weeks' time with about 1.5 weeks between them. The eight two weeks break, 14th break in total. How close would you have to be to a supernova to get a lethal dose of neutrino radiation? After the meeting ended, we thought, 'What the f*ck? "A clean device would minimize lingering activity placed in the atmosphere," he wrote in his 1959 presentation. What if the mountain's base were raised to the present height of the summit, and then the whole thing were allowed to drop to the earth? You angle your descent and grab the pole just long enough to swing around so that when you let go you're now heading back up toward the sky. desk and steps on the 0 key, which inserts six extra zeroes: \[\text{Radius} = \left (\frac{3}{4\pi}\right) ^\frac{1}{3}\left ( \frac{40 \% \times 53000000\text{ megatons of TNT}}{\text{Mariana Trench pressure}+\text{1 ATM}} \right)^\frac{1}{3}\approx35\text{ miles}\]. As a writer, I'm wondering what would be the cumulative energy of the hundreds of thousands of keystrokes required to write a novel. Here's what would happen if you nuked a hurricane. How many perfect scores would there be? My daughter age 4.5 maintains she wants a billion-story building. Humans have done supposedly impossible things before. Of course, at that point, it might be easier to just leave Earth behind completely. Until then, perhaps the best solution is just learn to co-exist with them.". I saw a sign at a hot springs tub saying "Caution: Water is hotter than average" with water at about 39C. If you suddenly began rising steadily at one foot per second, how exactly would you die? During the first presidential debate, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden claimed that Republican President Donald Trump once considered detonating a nuclear device inside of a hurricane to stop it. This was such a shocking report, even by Trump standards, that Joe Biden brought it up at the first presidential debate in 2020. Order here! With close to 15 weeks this was the second longest break between articles so far. Which has a greater gravitational pull on me: the Sun, or spiders? Is there enough energy to move the entire current human population off-planet? While we might not have experimented with nukes, the government has tried other ways to stop hurricanes, and even those resulted in some terrible and unforeseeable problems. {{Title text: I'd like to see more damage assessments for hurricanes hitting New York and flooding Manhattan -- something like the 1938 Long Island Express, but aimed a bit more to the west. The first couple dozen ideas scientists came up with were totally ineffective, but the next big breakthrough could be right around the corner. Answer: A literal Death Star. ", In August 2019, the news website Axios wrote that sources who heard the president's private remarks in recorded comments in a National Security Council (NSC) memorandum claimed to have heard Trump asking top national security officials to "consider using nuclear bombs to weaken or destroy hurricanes. It then seemed to stop completely after those two, and it took more than a year (62 weeks) before #157. In 1962, physicist Freeman Dyson wrote a memo discussing eight possible And cut down the great tree, ", Still, we shouldn't stop people from dreaming. dinosaurs. This can never happen, even if we were to throw Earth at Jupiter. A 2016 National Geographic article also explained that detonating a nuke inside a hurricane could violate the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union (now Russia), possibly increasing the arms race tensions between the two countries. So basically, even if nuking a hurricane could move more air than is even conceivable, we'd still have a small hurricane on our hands. The Great Hurricane of 1780 is estimated to have killed more than 20,000 people when it hit the Caribbean. Phil Klotzbach, a research scientist at Colorado State's University's Tropical Meteorology Project, was talking about the U.S. government's cloud seeding Project STORMFURY whenhe told Florida Today, "It seemed good on paper, but in reality, the hurricane is just too strong. What if all of the sun's output of visible light were bundled up into a laser-like beam that had a diameter of around 1m once it reaches Earth? 65-million-year-old Chicxulub impact sitethis What If We Nuked A Hurricane? Hurricane Screw-It-Let's-Just-Trash-Florida-Again comes from the east, starts to curve to the north, and then turns sharply to head straight for Florida and zigzag through it. If they are radioactive, then they radiate energy. Liquid nitrogen? "As far as I know, there's no serious scientist doing this at all. 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