Trump wanted to bomb the hurricanes with atomics. Congressmen want to ban this just in case

On June 1, the US House of Representatives received a bill that would prohibit the President of the United States and any federal agency ... from hurricane bombing.

The project is the answer to the question that a year ago Donald Trump asked his advisors during a hurricane briefing.

Why don't we just bomb them, he asked.

According to Trump, the problem of tropical storms that haunt the southeastern coast of the United States can be resolved by nuclear bombs.

Hurricanes are starting to form off the coast of Africa and could be attacked over the Atlantic by throwing nuclear bombs in the center of a hurricane, which could disrupt them. It can't be done? Trump asked.

Of course, Donald Trump reacted to these revelations with his flagship slogan "fake news". Still, Sylvia Garcia, a representative of the Texas Democratic Party, said it was better not to risk, hence the proposal for a new law. Garcia calls for a ban on the use of nuclear weapons to attempt to change weather patterns or combat climate change.

Normally no one would need such a law, but given our president's ideas, we clearly need it now. The use of nuclear weapons in this way would cause radioactive fallout and severe damage to both the environment and public health, Sylvia Garcia wrote in a statement.

Already in 2014, hurricane researchers from the NOAA agency wrote that if the nuclear bomb was detonated over the Atlantic, radioactive fallout would reach the Caribbean and the countries bordering the Gulf of Mexico. What's more, even apart from radioactive fallout, currently no country has sufficient nuclear weapons strong enough to disrupt a hurricane, or the ability to build enough of them to eliminate at least one hurricane.

Where did this idea come from?

In the late 1950s, meteorologist Jack Reed suggested using nuclear charges to disrupt hurricane-driven processes. The problem is that hurricanes release huge amounts of energy. Some hurricanes release as much energy in 20 minutes as a 10 megaton nuclear charge is 666 times more than the "Little Boy" bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Hence, to match the strength of a hurricane, we would need almost 2,000 such bombs hour.

If we look at the dimensions, Hurricane Katrina had a diameter of over 600 km, which is almost 300 times the diameter of the explosion of the bomb "Little Boy". Although the explosion would create a high pressure area in the eye of the cyclone, expanding over an ever larger area, it would cause a rapid return of low pressure that drives hurricanes. Therefore, in order to permanently stop and "extinguish" a hurricane, it would be necessary to constantly put new missiles in the center of the hurricane.

What about attacking them before they are too big?

It doesn't work either. Hurricanes arise in areas of low pressure, around which there are storms and circular winds. However, few of them develop into a major hurricane, and there is no way to determine in advance which of these areas will develop into a large storm system and which will not.

In the end, money always counts

It is worth mentioning this issue, which always turns out to be the most important at the end. The cost of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima per 2020 would be $ 8.18 billion. The entire US Department of Defense budget in 2018 was $ 576 billion.

To match the strength of a hurricane for 20 minutes, you need 666 "Little Boy" bombs, so the cost would be $ 5.4 trillion.

Trump wanted to bomb the hurricanes with atomics. Congressmen want to ban this just in case