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to help with hurricane disaster relief across the United States and elsewhere.
Hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons are some of the most
destructive natural disasters that occur on our planet.
Hurricane Katrina in 2005 caused over 105 billion dollars in damages
and hurricane Sandy in 2012 caused over 74 billion dollars in damages.
The amount of damage caused in North America and the Carribean by this most recent
hurricane season in 2017 will likely be unprecedented.
But what if there is a way to destroy a hurricane
before it could actually make landfall and cause any damage?
Various theories have been proposed throughout history
of ways to do this but perhaps the most outlandish idea
is to fire nuclear weapons into a hurricane.
So would this actually work?
And what would actually happen if we ever decided to try it out?
This idea has actually been around for quite some time.
A meteorologist named Jack W. Reed suggested nuking hurricanes to destroy them as early as 1959.
Reed noted that every time a hydrogen bomb exploded
they would lift an enormous column of air
up to 20miles high into the sky afterwards.
With this in mind, he speculated that a submarine
armed with nuclear weapons could travel underwater
through a hurricane and into the eye of the storm.
Once inside the eye the submarine would launch would multiple nuclear missiles that would detonate
at the surface.
The idea was that most of the warm air inside of the eye
would be blasted out above the storm
while cold and dense air would fill in and replace it.