The Ten Most Bizarre Ideas For Using Nuclear Weapons

io9 ^ | 5-20-14 | Mark Strauss

[WayneS]

I was wondering about that myself.

[DCBryan1]

Is “reducing the worldwide Muslim threat” one of them?

When I was in the S-2 Shop on a slow day, the BDE CO came in and we were engaged with geopolitical solutions when the COL asked me how I could solve "the muslim terrorist problem".

I replied that we use all of our nukes to eradicate the muslims, we would acheieve our goals all the while making the Lieberals very happy due to us 1) Getting rid of our nukes, 2) Solving global warming (due to nuclear winter), and 3) 1 Billion person population reduction as the UN wants.

He signed my promotion paperwork soon after and we all had a bunch of laughs.

[MrB]

“We no longer possess a rocket with sufficient umph to get out far enough. “

Add more solar panels!

[logi_cal869]

(self-censored comment)

[DCBryan1]

12) Activate Operation Smoking Turban.

ROTFLMAO! Love it! Follow up Operation Burnt Camel!?

[TigersEye]

Niceruagua ... Holy guacamole! Nicaragua

Sure, change it back after I figure out how to pronounce it...

Nee-say-roo-ah-goo-ah

[mbarker12474]

Cold Heat, you are the man!

[elcid1970]

Nuking Mecca would do a good thing for the world. I’m serious.

[muir_redwoods]

I’ve wondered about that explanation. If you compare one large asteroid vs. a million small ones it seems to me that the small ones would be preferable. As an example, throw a two inch cube of pine into a fireplace and it’ll bounce off the burning logs. Throw a similar weight of pine sawdust into a fireplace and a good bit of it will burn before hitting anything very hard. I think moving the asteroid would obviously be preferable but, failing that, turning it into a million pebbles, each with its own, slightly unique trajectory, might be a decent fallback

[Zathras]

This was done for real 200 miles over Johnston Island.
It effected power grids in Hawaii.
It would probably take out Hawaiian cell phones for sure if done today.

[NTHockey]

The scary part that this is what our government thinks up (in their spare time, when they aren’t playing computer games).

[mountainlion]

The sun can take out cell phones also.

[Gen.Blather]

I won’t argue with you. But imagine we’re talking about a small moon. No matter how small the smaller pieces are, they’re still the size of mountains. But, you may be right about really small rocks, say, the size of aircraft carriers or Mt. Everest.

Fortunately, the universe is a mercifully big place. The planets seemed to have vacuumed up the bigger rocks long, long ago. But there will be the odd rogue along about every 65,000,000 years or so. Say, when was the last really big rock?

[Zathras]

It is funny how few of the USSR tests ever get talked about.
I was surprised the that the only LIVE ICBM test was an SS18 and a +1MT warhead.
We launched a live sub missile but the warhead and range was much less.

[Tupelo]

One un-bizarre idea might be to use up just enough of them to level Washington D.C.
How would we know just how many to use? Simple, fire one a week until the only thing left is ...........................nothing.

[eldoradude]

We had a plan for using 50 or so 200kt nukes to create a larger, longer "new" Panama Canal through the lakes of Niceruagua IIRC. The studies concluded that there would be minimal radation effects because of the depths of the explosion and the impermiable sediment. Basically, they were going bottom dredge using nukes.

The Plowshares program...

I believe I recall the old Soviet Union actually experimenting with some nuclear civil engineering...that would have been an interesting degree.

Maybe somebody could renew the idea and use surplus H-bombs to dredge canals throughout the middle east so the desert could be irrigated and more trees could grow to capture carbon and thereby save the earth from global warming.

[spel_grammer_an_punct_polise]

“I have a not-so-bizarre idea for how to use about six of them. See if you can guess what it is.”

01. ) Washington, D.C.
02. ) San Francisco
03. ) Hollyweird
04. ) Chicago
05. ) New York City
06. ) New Orelans

How did I do? ;-)

[cynwoody]

It was a the Soviets, to seal a well gone wild, if I recall correctly...

It was a three year old natural gas leak in 1963. Here's RT in 2010 discussing whether the method could be used to stop the BP leak.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ojCbqfRRr8

[cynwoody]

I was surprised the that the only LIVE ICBM test was an SS18 and a +1MT warhead.
We launched a live sub missile but the warhead and range was much less.

In 1962, we conducted a rather famous live missile test, Starfish Prime. It was a 1.4mt W49 warhead carried to an altitude of 250 miles over the Pacific by a Thor missile.

As seen from Honolulu
841 miles from ground zero

What was interesting about the blast was its unexpectedly large electromagnetic pulse. According to the Wikipedia,

The EMP observed at the Apia Observatory at Samoa was four times more powerful than any created by solar storms, while in July 1962 the Starfish Prime test damaged electronics in Honolulu and New Zealand (approximately 1,300 kilometers away), fused 300 street lights on Oahu (Hawaii), set off about 100 burglar alarms, and caused the failure of a microwave repeating station on Kauai, which cut off the sturdy telephone system from the other Hawaiian islands.

Radiation belts it left behind in space also knocked out several early communications satellites.

Back in those days, electronic gear was mostly vacuum tubes and discrete semiconductors. These are more resistant to EMP than today's microelectronics.

[The Great RJ]

I remember a Project Plowshares idea to use nuclear weapons to excavate a new sea level Panama canal.