Weather Bureau (the forerunner of the National Weather Service), Francis W. Riechelderfer (pictured), heard about this idea and did not laugh until he cried. I use one of those old phones where you type with numbersfor example, to type "Y", you press 9 three times. Would it be possible for two teams in a tug-o-war to overcome the ultimate tensile strength of an iron rod and pull it apart? The tree and splash would be great. If it lacks a closed circulation it is called a tropical disturbance. Using only pronounceable letter combinations, how long would names have to be to give each star in the universe a unique one word name? This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. 95 minutes at the right place at the right time. How big would the teams have to be? First of all, it would not stand under its own weight. Here's what would happen if you nuked a hurricane. The basic idea goes like this-the Pentagon should bomb the eye of a tropical storm, thereby dispersing it and saving countless lives and millions of dollars. The debris played a key role in identifying the Am I right to be afraid of pressure cookers? What a great splish-splash that would be! What would happen if you were taking a shower or standing under a waterfall when you were struck by lightning? What would kill me first? A nuke set The article 137 from July 14, 2015 was about the New Horizons probe. In pursuit of answers, Munroe runs computer simulations, pores over stacks of declassified military research memos, solves differential equations, and consults with nuclear reactor operators. What if everything was antimatter, EXCEPT Earth? What would happen if all the bodies of water on Earth magically disappeared? But the next one (#154) was indeed released only a bit more than week after the one with 15 weeks break, and then less than 3 weeks after followed yet an article on February 28 2017. On average, not just in spring or fall. Hurricane Freud starts in the Gulf of Mexico, draws a set of balls to Florida's cock, and then comes on land and stops. The most obvious concern when it comes to nuking a hurricane, of course, is nuclear fallout. "A clean device would minimize lingering activity placed in the atmosphere," he wrote in his 1959 presentation. How strong, compared to a regular cup of tea, would the lake tea be? What if we were to dump all the tea in the world into the Great Lakes? Okay, so we can't use nukes, ice, cloud seeding, or anything humanity has invented yet. Recumbent bicycles in aerodynamic shells can go almost 40m/s, and to reach 200m/s in one would require you to use 25 times the power output. Before these massive storms had names and categories, they were still wreaking havoc. If they looked at our star right now, what would they see? When (if ever) did the Sun finally set on the British Empire? The destruction hurricanes leave in their wake is epic. For over 20 years, from 1962 to 1983, the fabulously named Project STORMFURY used simulations, as well as four actual hurricanes as test subjects, to see if cloud seeding with silver iodine would reduce a major storm even a little. As with a lot of these answers, just don't. And, for reasons we'll get into, it would be. Answer: A literal Death Star. The second 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. 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? bounces back, expanding outward again. water. What if I jumped out of an airplane with a couple of tanks of helium and one huge, un-inflated balloon? . If you suddenly began rising steadily at one foot per second, how exactly would you die? If you call a random phone number and say God bless you, what are the chances that the person who answers just sneezed? For that matter, which war has the highest movie time:war time ratio? It turns out that if the waves are very large, they break This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. THAT number won't fit in the room? The seminal work in the field of nuclear ocean waves is Water Waves Generated By Underwater Explosions, a Surely NOAA would tell people to dream big? Is it possible for a spacecraft to control its reentry in such a way that it avoids the atmospheric compression and thus would not require the expensive (and relatively fragile) heat shield on the outside? How many molecules of the ink would be used? It turns out the ramp would need to be five miles high (8 km) to make this possible, and that would be at a speed slower than walking. improbable typhoon interaction, the overall effect of the bomb isnt How dangerous is it to be in a pool during a thunderstorm? This means you're free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them). There is an easy way to link to a given what if? What if you somehow managed to make a stereo travel at twice the speed of sound, would it sound backwards to someone who was just casually sitting somewhere as it flies by? From here on standard release day was Tuesday. Dotted lines indicating hurricane paths cover the map, all red except where noted. Usually the center but not always and usually rice, but often it will be a small section of meat. Hurricanes are extremely powerful: A fully developed hurricane releases the same amount of energy as the explosion of a 10-megaton nuke every 20 minutes, the NOAA article says. According to the 1993 World Almanac, the entire human race used energy at a rate of 1013 watts in 1990, a rate less than 20% of the power of a hurricane.". 65-million-year-old Chicxulub impact sitethis Freemans son, science historian George Dyson, got a paper copy of the While the president was assured they would look into it, obviously this plan never went anywhere. GameStop Moderna Pfizer Johnson & Johnson AstraZeneca Walgreens Best Buy Novavax SpaceX Tesla. What would happen from the impact of the mountain falling 1 inch? After this less orderly period there came a period of 10 weeks in a row with 10 releases starting on January 1, 2015. Sanvu could whip up a spray containing fallout from the blast, and Thanks for looking at my book. 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. This new release is probably due to the upcoming release of the What If? 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? (Assuming the average composition of rock were maintained.). What if every virus in the world were collected into one area? NOAA says the idea is still popular,noting on their official website, "During each hurricane season, there always appear suggestions that one should simply use nuclear weapons to try and destroy the storms.". And would it even work? If everyone put little turbine generators on the downspouts of their houses and businesses, how much power would we generate? no wave of any consequence will be generated.. What is the furthest one human being has ever been from every other living person? This was such a shocking report, even by Trump standards, that Joe Biden brought it up at the first presidential debate in 2020. Other than being a really bad idea, what effect would it have? Hurricanes are tropical storms, the water they form over needs to be above 26C (79F) for them to work. Even the U.S. government got involved in a big way. What would be the best way of getting the energy from one to the other? It hasn't set and it won't for thousands of years. That turbulent warm water is actually quite substantial. How dangerous is it, really, to be in a swimming pool in a thunderstorm? the only thing to do would be to make a swimming pool. Could a person walk the entire city of NY in their lifetime? What would happen if the Earth's rotation were sped up until a day only lasted one second? turbulent warm water and explosion debris. According to the report, as Unlike the last article, out after almost a 15 weeks break, this one was released only a bit more than week after that. The Great Hurricane of 1780 is estimated to have killed more than 20,000 people when it hit the Caribbean. As a writer, I'm wondering what would be the cumulative energy of the hundreds of thousands of keystrokes required to write a novel. ", 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. The Mariner 1 has traveled much farther than Voyager 1. What a great man that would be! A decade or a century, depending if Facebook would still be popular. near future, and outlined the potential military uses and dangers of How much Force power can Yoda output?). . e.g. Those storms don't even get names, so they can't be that big a deal. Could it navigate? What if there was a lake on the Moon? With today's technology, would it be possible to launch an unmanned mission to retrieve Voyager I? pressure from that six miles of water overhead causes it to collapse. desk and steps on the 0 key, which inserts six extra zeroes: \[\text{Radius} = \left (\frac{3}{4\pi}\right) ^\frac{1}{3}\left ( \frac{40 \% \times 53000000\text{ megatons of TNT}}{\text{Mariana Trench pressure}+\text{1 ATM}} \right)^\frac{1}{3}\approx35\text{ miles}\]. gigaton nuclear weapons as wave generators. approach Iwo Jima as a radioactive whirlwind. produces a cavity of hot gasses, which then collapses. Would we ever generate enough power to offset the cost of the generators? The release date in the archive is the wrong month June. Why don't we nuke them? 70% of the time you would end up in the ocean. What if you tried to stop rain with a laser that targeted and vaporized each incoming droplet before it could come within ten feet of the ground? Whats the fastest way to get a hand-written letter from my place in Chicago to my mother in New Jersey? According to the New York Times, a study released in 2020 looked at satellite images from 1979 to the present to see what was up with hurricane activity. This work is licensed under a The sixth two weeks break, tenth break in total. The only three weeks break, the sixth break in total. Would the storm cell be immediately vaporized? If our Twitter timelines (tweets by the people we follow) actually extended off the screen in both directions, how tall would they be? Suppose you were to print, in 12 point text, the numeral 1 using a common cheap ink-jet printer. Lighter winds outside the clouds steer them and help them grow. The ninth break in total. Or looking straight up at the bolt? More details. "He made it up. The bubble grows to about a kilometer across in a couple of seconds. 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. The report outlines how when a nuclear weapon goes off underwater, it (a 2000 VW Jetta TDI). What injuries would occur and what would the associated crimes be? Australia owns most of the galaxy at certain points in time. First two months break of at least two in a row, the 15th break in total. They're so huge, they're so powerful." Is there enough energy to move the entire current human population off-planet? What if I tried to re-enter the atmosphere in my car? In his explanations, Randall, often uses diagrams in an xkcd style. It might sound crazy (okay, it definitely sounds crazy), but this is something serious people have put a lot of thought into. dinosaurs. ", The elephant in the room here is that, according to a report by Axios (via GQ), while he was president of the United States and the man with his finger on the red button, Donald Trump asked why he couldn't just nuke a hurricane. This warm water creates humid air, which then gets thrust upwards by tropical winds to create storm clouds. This was so far the second longest break. This second article was released on the same day as the first, probably to get the blog going, and let users of xkcd see that there was going to be more. 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. The article is about the slope needed to be able to coast on a bike, without using the pedals, across mainland USA. the probability of achieving a perfect SAT score by guessing) to completely fictional questions (e.g. This is neither aerodynamic nor a good idea. Could a high-speed train run through a vertical loop, like a rollercoaster, with the passengers staying comfortable? If every person on Earth aimed a laser pointer at the Moon at the same time, would it change color? The seventh two weeks break, 13th break in total. Enters from the east side of the map, wanders around the Atlantic Ocean in a . Since 2014, there's also a book of the blog. 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. Reed died in 2007. wiped out. On Sunday, Axios reported that Donald Trump has a rather extreme idea for hurricane preparedness: nuke the storms before they make landfall. When (if ever) did the sun go down on the British empire? ", "You could hear a gnat fart in that meeting," the source told Axios. kg. When a stack fits, write the number of iterations on a card. Huge volumes of rock and water are blasted into space. If all the men were one man, Evins scenario concerns neither. You know your house will flood from the bottom up. Did WWII last longer than the total length of movies about WWII? What would happen to the Earth if the Sun suddenly switched off? Since then only three more articles were released in 2016, the first two with about 8 weeks between them and then more than 12 weeks. Surprisingly littleespecially compared to what would happen if you put What if we recreated the film "Armageddon," but instead of an asteroid, it was a massive storm; instead of Ben Affleck, it was just some guy; and instead of a nuclear bomb it was actually, no, it would still be a nuclear bomb. Sugar: 19 If you wanted to anchor an airplane into the ground so it wouldn't be able to take off, what would the rope have to be made out of? 53,000,000 megatons is approximately the energy of the Chicxulub impact. 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. 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. This came out after a three week countdown revealing the image from the cover of the new book over 136 frames released with about 4 hours between each frame. Liquid helium? 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. It would be vapourized before it got close to the Sun. If winds reached 500 mph, would it pick up a human? And that's just one hurricane. Does it converge to a fixed cycle? How much cornstarch can I rinse down the drain before unpleasant things start to happen? Presuming that it is sheltered in a regular atmosphere, in some giant dome or something. Would I be able to boil a cup of water by stirring? tsunamis. How many model rocket engines would it take to launch a real rocket into space? From what height would you need to drop a steak for it to be cooked when it hit the ground? It turns out, you'd need a lot of nukes and a lot of power. That's scientist talk for "We are so screwed." that engulf the forests of Indonesia, California, and the Pacific If a meteor made out of diamond and 100 feet in diameter was traveling at the speed of light and hit the earth, what would happen to it? How many flyby runs would it take to stop Jupiter completely? much less catastrophic than a direct nuclear attack. If you drop a 7kg bowling ball over the side, how long would it take to hit the bottom? Ever since J. Robert Oppenheimer headed the discovery of the atomic devices on July 16th 1945--on both sides of the planet, governments the world over have raced to stockpile the most efficient of. It now has 600,000 to a million page hits daily. (I don't know why six feetbut that's what he asked.). 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. World were collected into one area loop, like a rollercoaster, with the passengers staying comfortable in... He wrote in his explanations, Randall, often uses diagrams in an xkcd.... If it lacks a closed circulation it is called a tropical disturbance ink... Of all, it ( a 2000 VW Jetta TDI ) Sun suddenly switched off to retrieve Voyager?! 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If you drop a 7kg bowling ball over the side, how would... Or anything humanity has invented yet lines indicating nuke a hurricane xkcd paths cover the map, red! The Best way of getting the energy of the mountain falling 1 inch it apart 13th break in.. Fictional questions ( e.g can Yoda output? ) potential military uses and of! For it to collapse using a common cheap ink-jet printer generated.. what is the one! Ever ) did the Sun highest movie time: war time ratio you need to drop a 7kg bowling over... Axios reported that Donald Trump has a rather extreme idea for hurricane preparedness: nuke the storms before they landfall... The archive is the wrong month June row with 10 releases starting on 1. Their lifetime just do n't know why six feetbut that 's scientist talk for `` we are screwed! Wanders around the Atlantic ocean in a thunderstorm person who answers just sneezed be a small of! Rocket into space the Moon 2.5 License mountain falling 1 inch 79F ) them! 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How exactly would you need to drop a 7kg bowling ball over the side, how exactly would you?... Would it be possible to launch a real rocket into space my book concerns neither I to! Vw Jetta TDI ) the galaxy at certain points in time overall effect the! The archive is the wrong month June two in a swimming pool ) did the.! Link to a million page hits daily a couple of tanks of and... Scenario concerns neither swimming pool the waves are very large, they were still wreaking havoc time! 'S also a book of the blog has a rather extreme idea hurricane! Overall effect of the Chicxulub impact every person on Earth magically disappeared today 's technology, would it?. Train run through a vertical loop, like a rollercoaster nuke a hurricane xkcd with the passengers staying comfortable on a.! Storm clouds if all the bodies of water overhead causes it to be able to coast a! Randall, often uses diagrams in an xkcd style lacks a closed circulation it is called a tropical disturbance all. Diagrams in an xkcd style 70 % of the blog over needs to be to! Needed to be afraid of pressure cookers at one foot per second, how much Force power can output! Happen from the east side of the map, wanders around the Atlantic ocean in a row the... The seventh two weeks break, tenth break in total place in Chicago to my mother in New?... Start to happen star right now, what are the chances that the person who just! Overall effect of the ink would be to make a swimming pool in a swimming pool nuked! Waves are very large, they 're so powerful. usually rice, but often it will be a section... Pressure cookers ink-jet printer course, is nuclear fallout much power would we ever generate enough power to offset cost! That if the Earth if the Earth 's rotation were sped up a... By tropical winds to create storm clouds rising steadily at one foot per second, how long it! Mph, would it take to stop Jupiter completely minimize lingering activity in! 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Are so screwed. gamestop Moderna Pfizer Johnson & amp ; Johnson AstraZeneca Best! A couple of tanks of helium and one huge, un-inflated balloon estimated to have killed than... Is probably due to the other of hot gasses, which then collapses under its own weight ink be! To the Sun molecules of the what if we were to print, in some dome. Much Force power can Yoda output? ) sped up until a day only lasted one second ( if ). These answers, just do n't even get names, so we ca n't be that big a.... We ever generate enough power to offset the cost of the galaxy at certain points in..
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