Scoop: Trump suggested nuking hurricanes to stop them from hitting U.S.

[brooklynite]

Source: Axios

President Trump has suggested multiple times to senior Homeland Security and national security officials that they explore using nuclear bombs to stop hurricanes from hitting the United States, according to sources who have heard the president's private remarks and been briefed on a National Security Council memorandum that recorded those comments.

Behind the scenes: During one hurricane briefing at the White House, Trump said, "I got it. I got it. Why don't we nuke them?" according to one source who was there. "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. Why can't we do that?" the source added, paraphrasing the president's remarks.

Asked how the briefer reacted, the source recalled he said something to the effect of, "Sir, we'll look into that."

Trump replied by asking incredulously how many hurricanes the U.S. could handle and reiterating his suggestion that the government intervene before they make landfall.

Read more: https://www.axios.com/trump-nuclear-bombs-hurricanes-97231f38-2394-4120-a3fa-8c9cf0e3f51c.html

[vercetti2021]

1. You can't make this shit up

This man is borderline on the edge of changing the dictionary meaning of stupidity

[jberryhill]

2. It works on sharknados

[tclambert]

32. Did they play that movie on Fox recently?

Or did Trump sit on the remote and his TV switched to Syfy for a few minutes and he thought it was a documentary?

[Botany]

3. A hurricane filled with highly toxic radioactive particles and or killing millions of different ...

.... sea creatures with radioactive fallout what could go wrong? He really is nuttier than
a squirrel turd and dumber than a bag of hammers.

Please tell me this is from the Onion.

[KY_EnviroGuy]

4. And the fallout will keep us all warm in the winter.

I suggest taking tRump out on a ship and let him do a rally speech against the early hurricane's wind. That would stop it instantly and save us pain in many ways.

KY.......

[Jedi Guy]

5. This guy's idiocy is absolutely terrifying.

It's difficult to believe that anyone could be this monumentally stupid. And just like all his other imbecilic statements, he'll try to laugh this off as a joke.

Every day with Dolt 45 in office is more unsettling and frightening than the last. When he leaves office in 2021, the headlines had better be "our long national nightmare is finally over."

[ancianita]

6. And his followers used to go in for shooting shotguns at tornadoes, IIRC.

[JohnnyRingo]

7. Nuclear Hurricanes. ...Good thinking.

Throw in a couple Sharknados and a Rainforest Fire and we'll be doing just fine on disasters.

He's going to get a full chapter in the history books one way or another.

[Iliyah]

8. I don't know if it was the guy who

initially wrote the article but he was defending t-rump for asking "tough" questions and said that the first impression people would get from the article would be that t-rump was "a little off" and the host on CNN said ya think (not quite the exact wording for both) . . .

What idiot would ask a question like that?

Yours truly - shithole.

[NastyRiffraff]

9. Please tell me this is parody

I know it's not The Onion or Borowitz, but it can't actually be true, can it? I mean even Trump...well, okay. :sigh:

Of course, White House Press Sec will say he was joking, like she did about Chosen One. But this is the guy who talked about raking forests, windmills that cause cancer, etc. I guess nuking hurricanes isn't unusual by Trumpian standards.

[cstanleytech]

11. Well in Trumps defense I thought they should use nukes to do that as well.

Of course I was all of 7 or 8 at the time so atleast I have a valid excuse for wondering why they did not consider doing that.

[Bradical79]

22. Well, they didn't try to spin it as him joking...

A different senior administration official, who has been briefed on the president's hurricane bombing suggestion, defended Trump's idea and said it was no cause for alarm. "His goal — to keep a catastrophic hurricane from hitting the mainland — is not bad," the official said. "His objective is not bad."

"What people near the president do is they say 'I love a president who asks questions like that, who’s willing to ask tough questions.' ... It takes strong people to respond to him in the right way when stuff like this comes up. For me, alarm bells weren't going off when I heard about it, but I did think somebody is going to use this to feed into 'the president is crazy' narrative."

Basically the defense is "He meant well."

[happybird]

30. There's a big difference

between "tough questions" and downright stupid questions. I don't know how or why it still happens, but his utter stupidity can still take me by surprise every now and then. Like today. Ugh.

How did he manage to survive to adulthood? I seriously wonder about that sometimes.

[icymist]

10. What Happens If You Drop a Nuclear Bomb Into a Hurricane?

[Haggis for Breakfast]

20. At about four minutes, this video is just short enough

that we could e-mail it to trumpie and he could finally understand why this is the stupidest fucking idea he ever had.

[Talitha]

12. First, let's nuke the vortex under his nose...

If it stops that whirlwind of hot air, it just might work on a hurricane.

[Blue Owl]

13. He's got some great ideas on how to fuck things up even worse

Maybe even the best ideas, when it comes to that...

[47of74]

14. God he is such a fucking idiot

[Sugar Smack]

15. He needs to be institutionalized.

It's just really hard to have a sense of humor about this. Which is why at 1st glance I thought it belonged in GD. Like the Onion. Borrowitz. What a horribly exhausting week.

[WhoWoodaKnew]

16. We should be verbally attacking every Trump voter

They put him in charge.

And all because one black dude got elected.

[LudwigPastorius]

17. ...

[groundloop]

18. And I bet he thinks hurricane hunters use AR-15s (and has no clue what a C-130 is).

[Danmel]

19. This sycophantic response is as scary as trumps fucknuttery

"What people near the president do is they say 'I love a president who asks questions like that, who’s willing to ask tough questions.' ... It takes strong people to respond to him in the right way when stuff like this comes up. For me, alarm bells weren't going off when I heard about it, but I did think somebody is going to use this to feed into 'the president is crazy' narrative."

[George II]

24. That has to have been either Ivanka or Jared.

[Grins]

21. What could go wrong, amiright? NM

[George II]

23. Sure, drop radioactive material in the middle of 100+ MPH winds. What an idiot!!!!

[Mrs. Overall]

25. OMFG

I thought this was satire when I glanced at the headline.

[Ponietz]

26. Isn't that best since using windmills to blow them back will cause cancer?

[procon]

27. It's the sort of thing a 4 year old would think of.

Trump knows nothing about:

Weather
Nuclear fallout
Radioactive contamination

Trump really wants to use a nuclear bomb on something so he can claim to be the only president daring enough to use it. If he's thinking about nuking storms off the coast of Africa, then what's to stop him from bombing the unworthy people who live in those "shit hole" countries?

[Lock him up.]

33. Nuking a hurricane would only heat up the water...

It would make the storm more destructive, maybe enough to invent a new category for it. It could wipe out an entire continent! Not to forget the spreading of radio-active particles...


Putin would not be happier to see it strike the US...

[Yavin4]

28. The Onion needs to close up shop.

On their best day, they could not come up with better material. It's over for them. They are done.

[PatSeg]

29. Just imagine what he says

that isn't being leaked. He is terrifyingly stupid.

[tclambert]

31. I can just see the SyFy channel movie they're going to make of this.

They try nuking a hurricane because nobody listens to the scientists anymore . . . and it makes the hurricane stronger . . . and radioactive. Plus the sharks sucked up by the hurricane become radioactive and grow to enormous size. We're almost into a Godzilla movie at this point.

Fortunately, a chaotician, possibly played by Jeff Goldblum, designs a simulation on a supercomputer that gives him the answer and he flies to Australia with a butterfly he has trained to flap its wings in just the right way to cause a ripple effect that disrupts the hurricane. However, at the end of the movie, we see that the giant radioactive sharks still threaten the shipping lanes. Sequel time!

[Lock him up.]

34. Gives me an idea... if only it could be done...

Get "still sane" guys at the Pentagon to make a fake nuke launching pad with fake launching codes, then create a 3D-animation on an OLED screen of a nuke detonating in the eye of the hurricane drumph would want to nuke: then after it wouldn't have worked (since it'd be all fake), just tell him it didn't work...

[tulipsandroses]

35. I'm wondering who fed him this idea-

Something he heard in passing on some stupid talk radio show or on his twitter feed or one of his favorite right wing conspiracy sites?

He's been using the internet long enough to discern valid information. But noooo, he's like your old great grandpa just learning to use the internet and thinks he really is getting millions of dollars from a prince. He just digests everything and spits it back out. He has all the intelligence at his fingertips, yet he still relies on random internet information from random places. Incredible!

[Baclava]

36. Science - "During its life cycle a hurricane can expend as much energy as 10,000 nuclear bombs"

A fully developed hurricane can release heat energy at a rate of 5 to 20 x10 to the 13th watts and converts less than 10% of the heat into the mechanical energy of the wind. The heat release is equivalent to a 10-megaton nuclear bomb exploding every 20 minutes.

https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/energy/energy-hurricane-volcano-earthquake1.htm

[usaf-vet]

38. Don't confuse the "stable genius" with scientific fact. The biggest brain is already full with BS.

[usaf-vet]

37. Seriously I think he watches way to much TV.

https://www.thewrap.com/trump-floats-idea-of-bombs-to-weaken-hurricanes-like-in-sharknado/

[Locrian]

39. it's monstrously stupid all right ...

but is it any stupider that a lot of the "action" or "superhero" type movies out there? (yeah, I know - it's just fantasy, etc, bla bla bla).
We're anti-science - living in escapist fantasy and value stupidity in this country. Idiocity is here.

[lark]

40. Drumpf is a partner with a South Korean guy who develops nuclear plants.

That's why he is always, always, wanting to use nukes and for SK to go nuclear, along with any other country from which he would wring a profit. It's always about him and his personal money or power, and now the fucking ass wants to nuke a hurricane? His stupidity is actually almost beyond belief. He has 2 golf courses in FL which is home central for hurricanes and he is so stupid he wants to risk destroying them from nuke fallout?? This is just unbelievable but so sadly true and a constant refrain from him even before the election.

[Democrats_win]

41. Scientists once legitimately considered it

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/11/hurricanes-weather-history-nuclear-weapons/

" there was a time when scientists and government agencies were themselves seriously considering the nuclear option. In a speech delivered at the National Press Club on October 11, 1961, Francis W. Riechelderfer, the head of the U.S. Weather Bureau, said he could “imagine the possibility someday of exploding a nuclear bomb on a hurricane far at sea.” (Although, comfortingly, Riechelderfer added that the Weather Bureau would not begin acquiring its own nuclear arsenal “until we know what we’re doing.”) there was a time when scientists and government agencies were themselves seriously considering the nuclear option. In a speech delivered at the National Press Club on October 11, 1961, Francis W. Riechelderfer, the head of the U.S. Weather Bureau, said he could “imagine the possibility someday of exploding a nuclear bomb on a hurricane far at sea.” (Although, comfortingly, Riechelderfer added that the Weather Bureau would not begin acquiring its own nuclear arsenal “until we know what we’re doing.”)

“Needless to say, this is not a good idea,” says the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in what is, arguably, one of the most succinct understatements on record.

Yet because the “nuke a hurricane” myth won’t die, NOAA maintains a web page exclusively devoted to debunking this proposal. (Similarly, the U.S. Geological Survey has an online report debunking divining rods and water dowsing. It’s not always easy being a government scientist.)
--
It's sad that Trump continues to bring up old ideas that are now known to be very BAD ideas.

Note,the Harper's Magazine article January 2006, "Owning the Weather, the ugly Politics of the Pathetic Fallacy" describes one scientist, Jon Von Neumann, who thought of the idea too. His team made "the world's first numerical weather forecasts." (Computer models are widely used in forecasting today!) They saw it as a weapon to change the weather. Of course they didn't totally appreciate the problem of fallout at that time. This Harper's article was a brilliant essay and is sadly behind their paywall. It even inspired a movie, Owning the Weather. Of course the idea of weather modification ranges from complete fraud to legitimate/dangerous cloud seeding and areas of military research.

[Mc Mike]

42. He's been openly itching to drop some nukes since he was a candidate.

He probably wanted to drop nukes when he was a kid.