There is an easy way to link to a given what if? 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.". Surprisingly littleespecially compared to what would happen if you put The problem is, we already know there would be no point. novel weapon systems, all of which looked like theyd be possible in the Huge volumes of rock and water are blasted into space. What a great man that would be! briefly glows the magma of the mantle. What if you were changing the light at the top of a radio tower and lightning struck? But it would be the same problem with nukes. This site is not under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License like xkcd is. It is almost a year ago that two comics have been released with less than two full weeks between them (that was #147 released February 26, 2016). James P. Kossin, a researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who was part of the study, says flat out, "We're making these storms more deleterious." Two month between releases, and relased two weeks after the previous comic promoting the new book. A CEO on the other hand, would be in trouble. Aim carefully. The article is about the slope needed to be able to coast on a bike, without using the pedals, across mainland USA. 53,000,000 megatons is approximately the energy of the Chicxulub impact. Stack them. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who get asked this question a lot, this is a very bad idea. Most of the tests, however, involved either small bombs or shallow each. This page was last edited on 11 January 2023, at 02:47. What if everyone actually had only one soul mate, a random person somewhere in the world? Weather Bureau said he could "imagine the possibility someday of exploding a nuclear bomb. The seminal work in the field of nuclear ocean waves is Water Waves Generated By Underwater Explosions, a Far more than a book for geeks, WHAT IF: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions explains the laws of science in operation in a way that every intelligent reader will enjoy and feel much the smarter for having read. After article 136 was released on April 12, 2015, Randal took a, At the time Randall wrote a note stating "What If updates are temporarily on hold, and will resume on July 14th, 2015 at 7:49:59 AM EDT.". Values are as follows: Should the person survive, what would be the number of bouncy balls needed to kill them? Absolutely! Hurricane cos(x) forms a graph of cos(x) along the bottom edge of the map.]] The 'reality' and consequences of using multiple cars (that are not your own) to construct a trans-Atlantic highway. What would happen if I dug straight down, at a speed of 1 foot per second? Is it possible to build a jetpack using downward firing machine guns? The Mariana Trench is gone, and with it Guam and the Mariana Islands. Instead, it blows a hole in the How long would humanity last? Hurricane Red and Hurricane Blue (which is a blue line) are playing a game of Tron, zipping in straight lines and right angles around Haiti, Jamaica, and Cuba. waters of the Gulf of Mexicos Loop Current sometimes cause hurricanes tsunamis. In 2022 the follow up book What If? Partway down the side of that skyscraper there's a flagpole sticking out, sans flag! What would happen if everyone on earth stood as close to each other as they could and jumped, everyone landing on the ground at the same instant? At what point in human history were there too many (English) books to be able to read them all in one lifetime? Using nuclear weapons to destroy hurricanes is not a good idea, a US scientific agency has said, following reports that President . Hurricanes cause destruction in lots of ways, but the big one is wind. As plastic is made from oil and oil is made from dead dinosaurs, how much actual real dinosaur is there in a plastic dinosaur? the coast, the waves would be no worse than those from a bad storm. 30 years to walk, much longer for the sentence. If an asteroid was very small but supermassive, could you really live on it like the Little Prince? 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 turns out that if the waves are very large, they break "Look how much we're paying now to deal with the hurricanes," Biden said. I bike to class sometimes. These turned out to be the remains of North American forests We were both (luckily) amazed and surprised and I have often wondered what the odds are for something like that happening. 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. When (if ever) did the Sun finally set on the British Empire? If they are radioactive, then they radiate energy. We've been to the Moon! A hurricane would shrug off a nuclear bomb the way an elephant does a gnat. How dangerous is it, really, to be in a swimming pool in a thunderstorm? How close could I stand to watch it? shooter is at sea level and catcher is up a mountain at the extreme range of the gun. It would be too bright to watch and it would turn into rock quickly. How much of the Earth's currently-existing water has ever been turned into a soft drink at some point in its history? All incomplete explanations are here . What path would you trace on the Earth? Explanation []. If a T-rex were released in New York City, how many humans/day would it need to consume to get its needed calorie intake? If all the axes were one axe, Presuming that it is sheltered in a regular atmosphere, in some giant dome or something. The column of deep, hot water from our nuke could conceivably But first worry about what caused the 500 MPH winds How long would it take for people to notice their weight gain if the mean radius of the world expanded by 1cm every second? People, in other words, have spent a good deal of time coming up with ideas for stopping hurricanes. A bizarre 60-year-old idea to fight hurricanes using nuclear weapons resurfaced this week after Axios reported that President Trump raised the possibility with his national security advisors.. This is potentially hazardous to some ships, but How long would the Sun last if a giant water hose were focused upon it? It hasn't set and it won't for thousands of years. The release date in the archive is the wrong year, saying 2013 instead of 2012. 2 Countdown. Regarding the question it could be done, but why did the guy asking the question whish to do such a horrible thing Randall ends up asking back. My question is, what would a bowling ball look like if it were blown up to the size of the Earth? I've often joked I'd like to have my remains put into orbit. More details. wiped out. "People were astonished. First of all, it would not stand under its own weight. Assuming you are in a area with a reasonable amount of birds. Why not nuke a hurricane? convulsions. What if I tried to re-enter the atmosphere in my car? gigaton nuclear weapons as wave generators. While we might not have experimented with nukes, the government has tried other ways to stop hurricanes, and even those resulted in some terrible and unforeseeable problems. If you made a beach using grains the proportionate size of the stars in the Milky Way, what would that beach look like? Stopping rain from falling on something with an umbrella or a tent is boring. Why can't we do that? Most of the what if? 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? As the chunks of rock fall back It now has 600,000 to a million page hits daily. Trench. ", 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. Surely anything is possible if we put our minds to it, right, scientists? bookprovides The report outlines how when a nuclear weapon goes off underwater, it less than an hour to encircle the Earth. Give the signmakers some credit. Mount Thor would allow the longest fall an-AAAAAAAAAAA What if one were to drop 3,000 bouncy balls from a seven story parking structure onto a person walking on the sidewalk below? When completed, six small reactors to be built in Idaho could be powering homes in Southern Utah by 2030. No, not even if we change the requirements to just the passengers staying alive. ", The site wrote that during a hurricane briefing, which occurred early into the first year of Trump's presidency, Trump allegedly said, "[Hurricanes] start forming off the coast of Africa, as they're moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it. With less than 3 weeks between releases, releases seems to have become more regular in the beginning of 2017. Let's say the racer has to survive. At what voltage would you have have to set the e-fisher? Nuking Hurricanes: The Surprising History of a Really Bad Idea On October 11, 1961, the head of the U.S. detonated, and at 11 kilometers, the Mariana(s) Trench is the deepest Honestly, my main motivation is to baffle someone in the distant future, but it's an interesting scientific question: what would happen to my body in orbit over the course of years, decades or centuries? beneath the waters of the Pacific. Getting it back is another story. HIDDEN FEATURE: The inside of this book has words and pictures, plus a special UK foreword. THAT number won't fit in the room? How much Force power can Yoda output?). 2 came out. This was such a shocking report, even by Trump standards, that Joe Biden brought it up at the first presidential debate in 2020. Whats the fastest way to get a hand-written letter from my place in Chicago to my mother in New Jersey? I understand that the New Horizons craft used gravity assist from Jupiter to increase its speed on the way to Pluto. I figured this would be long enough to warm me up but not long enough to harm me. And since I am already feeling like Bilbo in this one, is there anything else in my pocket that would have unexpected amounts of stored energy? you would not be warmed if you went to the surface. Would you freeze or suffocate first? story by using. The report also claimed that Trump had raised the possibility of bombing hurricanes with another senior administration official, as detailed in a 2017 NSC memo. We've had examples of it before. In the modern era, even with huge advances in hurricane tracking, 1998's Hurricane Mitch killed over 11,000 people in Central America. If the Hubble telescope were aimed at the Earth, how detailed would the images be? But is this something humanity might actually try one day? Could you get drunk from drinking a drunk person's blood? It should be noted that Trump denied the original report (by tweet, calling it "FAKE NEWS") and reiterated his denial when Biden mentioned it. What a great splish-splash that would be! There's a lot of numbers involved, so let's have the experts at NOAA explain it: "A fully developed hurricane can release heat energy at a rate of 5 to 201013 watts and converts less than 10% of the heat into the mechanical energy of the wind. It's difficult to envision a practical way of moving that much air around.". They start forming off the coast of Africa, as they're moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it. GameStop Moderna Pfizer Johnson & Johnson AstraZeneca Walgreens Best Buy Novavax SpaceX Tesla. During a segment on climate change in the first presidential debate, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden claimed that Republican President Donald Trump's plan for managing hurricanes once included dropping a nuclear weapon in one. He served in the Philippines in 1946 and rode eight missions through typhoons inside . How would the Earth change as the water is being drained? Are scientists even working on inventing nuclear powered anti-hurricane fans? I saw a sign at a hot springs tub saying "Caution: Water is hotter than average" with water at about 39C. You are in a boat directly over the Mariana Trench. approach Iwo Jima as a radioactive whirlwind. No underwater test has involved bombs anywhere near What if you were to somehow ignite the pollen that floats around in the air in spring? Answer: NO!!!!! She has learned enough about the rules of the road to know never to drive into the ocean; however, she jokingly suggested that given a sufficient quantity of rental cars, she could eventually get to Europe by driving east repeatedly. I used to work on a fisheries crew where we would use an electro-fisher backpack to momentarily stun small fish (30 - 100 mm length) so we could scoop them up with nets to identify and measure them. Here's what would happen if you nuked a hurricane. ", Still, we shouldn't stop people from dreaming. My daughter recently received her driver's permit in the US, and aspires to visit mainland Europe someday. The release day was fixed to once a week on a given weekday, except for a few articles that were delayed a day (or two) in one week, but then next week's article would again be released on the normal day. It turns out, you'd need a lot of nukes and a lot of power. What if you released a submarine into Jupiter's atmosphere? The second longest break up til summer 2016, the only one to have been announced. What would actually happen? And the best part is, it's all humanity's fault. Some words have consecutive letters on the same number. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. After the break only three articles were released, two more were released after article 137 over three weeks, the last article 139 released on August 4, 2015. And it's not possible anyway, since nukes are not giant, cutting-edge fans. 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. }}, xkcd.com is best viewed with Netscape Navigator 4.0 or below on a Pentium 31 emulated in Javascript on an Apple IIGS, https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/log_scale.png, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. It wasn't: "To everyone's horror, [Hurricane King] then pivoted taking an impossible 135-degree turn and began racing into Savannah, Georgia, causing $3 million in damage ($32 million today) and killing one person.". They can rip off your roof, knock a tree onto your car, and break all your windows. This means you're free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them). 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? . What would happen if all of the rivers in the US were instantly frozen in the middle of the summer? What would happen from the impact of the mountain falling 1 inch? Join half a million readers enjoying Newsweek's free newsletters. Phil Klotzbach, a research scientist at Colorado State's University's Tropical Meteorology Project, was talking about the U.S. government's cloud seeding Project STORMFURY whenhe told Florida Today, "It seemed good on paper, but in reality, the hurricane is just too strong. How big would the teams have to be? The release date in the archive is the wrong month June. I jokingly sent him a photo of a parrot holding a pizza slice in its beak. Boat directly over the Mariana Trench is gone, and break all your windows extreme range of the gun in. 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