So I checked out the earthquake report. Indeed on October 8th there was a 4.5 quake of the coast of South Carolina. But it was at a depth of 10km. That is approximately six miles down in the earth?
To a layman, my thinking is that a nuke going off in the water would not produce an earthquake that registered as originating six miles down.
A good story, but I still call this B.S. unless other information is forthcoming. If I am wrong on the registered effects of under water nuclear detonations, than please correct me.
Several factors to consider.
1) What is the shape of the continental shelf offshore of South Carolina? How deep does the ocean go there?
2) What is the crush depth of the nuclear device? (If the implosion of the core is not handled “just right” you’re going to get a fizzle not an “Earth-shattering kaboom”)
3) Presumably one could adapt or use the seismic wave-propagation software from oil companies to predict the ground-vibrational signature from a massive offshore explosion propagating from water to the North American landmass. Be interesting to do this and see if any combination of factors registers as “six miles deep”...
(think refraction, partial reflection of the pressure wave off of some underground structural feature of the crust...but even then it likely wouldn’t resemble the propagation from a point source)