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Re: the first paragraph's reference to nuking the Deepwater horizon's oil leak, Soviet engineers demonstrated that this was a viable technique back in the 60's.

Re: the first paragraph's reference to nuking the Deepwater horizon's oil leak, Soviet engineers demonstrated that this was a viable technique back in the 60's. Plenty of wild non-war applications have been proposed for nuclear bombs over the years, but this is the only one I can think of that is actually somewhat of a good idea. Any fallout is minor and contained under 1km+ of bedrock, and the harm prevented is worth the cost. I am surprised that the author dismisses it so rapidly. https://interestingengineering.com/soviet-engineers-detonated-a-nuke-miles-underground-to-put-out-a-gas-well-fire https://interestingengineering.com/soviet-engineers-detonate... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S57Xq03njsc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S57Xq03njsc

jjk166 5y ago
The author's logic is that only things comparable in scale to a volcano can cancel out the volcano by brute force, and nuclear detonations are thousands to millions of times smaller than volcanic eruptions. Proposals for things like this involve using nuclear detonations to make small but critical disruptions to systems, so the logic doesn't apply, but without actually digging into it you generally wouldn't know that's what the plan entails. Admittedly, it's unintuitive to think of nuclear detonations as a precise scalpel instead of a blunt cudgel. It also doesn't help that the well thought out proposals often get crudely parroted, so "collapse the well 1 km down to choke off the flow of oil" becomes "blow up the well".
- Brian_K_White 5y ago
  I would think the biggest point about collapsing a well is that the well IS a human-made, human-scale object. It IS a blunt instrument not a pin prick in that case.
ryanmercer 5y ago
>Plenty of wild non-war applications have been proposed for nuclear bombs over the years Yup, Project Plowshare (US) and Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy (USSR) looked a lot of interesting/crazy ideas for non-military applications for nuclear weapons. Some of the ideas were just nuts for use on earth (like making bays) but if we ever do start setting up shop on another planet, like Mars, nuclear detonations could probably be used for construction efforts early on to get some serious work done quickly - Project Orion, especially if done with materials mined from the asteroid belt, could be an extremely viable option for interstellar travel even if just for probes. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Project_Plowshare https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Project_Plowshare https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_National_Economy https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_Natio... https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion) https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsio...
- upwardbound 5y ago
  Relatedly: apparently it would be a good idea to destroy the Martian moon Phobos before settling the planet. It's a fascinating proposal and makes sense; you can read about it here: https://marspedia.org/Bringing_down_Phobos https://marspedia.org/Bringing_down_Phobos
  - ortusdux 5y ago
    If we are going down that rabbit hole, I love the plan to create an artificial Martian magnetosphere by placing a magnetic field generating satellite between mars and the solar winds. Generating an atmosphere on mars is all well and good, but it will just blow away again without some protection. The generator would only require roughly 583.9 exajoules, or roughly the world's total energy consumption in 2020. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2111.06887.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2111.06887.pdf
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      A superconducting tape girdling the planet's equator would suffice, and require after startup only the power needed to keep it chilled at all times below 70K.
      - upwardbound 5y ago
        That sounds actually quite practical and like an amazing option! Are there papers about this you could please share the links to?
        ncmncm 5y ago
        Just a youtube video. 21340 km of superconducting tape could take rather some time to fabricate. Then, of course you need to get it there, and lay it out, and construct 20k refrigeration plants. Then, extract enough nitrogen from the atmosphere (1.89% concentration) for refrigerant; you'll need about 4M tons of it. You also need 21340 km of cryo-safe piping bonded to the tape, which probably weighs another 4M tons. Plus heat insulation. Leakage from 21340 km of tubing, even if just migration of single molecules through the walls of the tube, would require continuous injection of fresh nitrogen. And, I guess, you had better protect it from meteorite strikes. A planet-sized magnetic field suddenly imploding would seem to release enough energy to vaporize your whole tape. Maybe you should have two of them, parallel, 100km apart so they are unlikely to both be taken out by the same meteorite.
mLuby 5y ago
They tried that in the excellent documentary The Core (2003) but as I recall they didn't all survive.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  However a separate documentary (Armageddon, 1998) illustrated the successful use of nuclear devices on objects of a seemingly intractable scale with extremely few casualties. The makers of the documentary also chose an excellent score to accompany their organic capture of a moving love story along with the antics of a plucky group of misfits that came together in a crisis. It's the sort of thing you can only shake your head at and say, "Only in reality!" because if you saw it in a movie you'd just think "Nah, that could never happen".
  - test6554 5y ago
    You just can't make this stuff up!
  - KineticLensman 5y ago
    > a plucky group of misfits that came together in a crisis. The related 2000 documentary 'Space Cowboys' also provides excellent insights into how generation-Boomer skills can be invaluable when modern computer systems fail catastrophically.
DonHopkins 5y ago
Nuking BP's corporate headquarters could have prevented another disaster like Deepwater Horizon in the future. Maybe they should have nuked Exxon's corporate headquarters in response the the Valdez disaster, which might have prevented the Deepwater Horizon disaster by teaching all the remaining oil companies a lesson.

jjk166 5y ago

The author's logic is that only things comparable in scale to a volcano can cancel out the volcano by brute force, and nuclear detonations are thousands to millions of times smaller than volcanic eruptions. Proposals for things like this involve using nuclear detonations to make small but critical disruptions to systems, so the logic doesn't apply, but without actually digging into it you generally wouldn't know that's what the plan entails. Admittedly, it's unintuitive to think of nuclear detonations as a precise scalpel instead of a blunt cudgel. It also doesn't help that the well thought out proposals often get crudely parroted, so "collapse the well 1 km down to choke off the flow of oil" becomes "blow up the well".

Brian_K_White 5y ago
I would think the biggest point about collapsing a well is that the well IS a human-made, human-scale object. It IS a blunt instrument not a pin prick in that case.

ryanmercer 5y ago

>Plenty of wild non-war applications have been proposed for nuclear bombs over the years Yup, Project Plowshare (US) and Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy (USSR) looked a lot of interesting/crazy ideas for non-military applications for nuclear weapons. Some of the ideas were just nuts for use on earth (like making bays) but if we ever do start setting up shop on another planet, like Mars, nuclear detonations could probably be used for construction efforts early on to get some serious work done quickly - Project Orion, especially if done with materials mined from the asteroid belt, could be an extremely viable option for interstellar travel even if just for probes. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Project_Plowshare https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Project_Plowshare https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_National_Economy https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_Natio... https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion) https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsio...

upwardbound 5y ago
Relatedly: apparently it would be a good idea to destroy the Martian moon Phobos before settling the planet. It's a fascinating proposal and makes sense; you can read about it here: https://marspedia.org/Bringing_down_Phobos https://marspedia.org/Bringing_down_Phobos
- ortusdux 5y ago
  If we are going down that rabbit hole, I love the plan to create an artificial Martian magnetosphere by placing a magnetic field generating satellite between mars and the solar winds. Generating an atmosphere on mars is all well and good, but it will just blow away again without some protection. The generator would only require roughly 583.9 exajoules, or roughly the world's total energy consumption in 2020. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2111.06887.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2111.06887.pdf
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    A superconducting tape girdling the planet's equator would suffice, and require after startup only the power needed to keep it chilled at all times below 70K.
    - upwardbound 5y ago
      That sounds actually quite practical and like an amazing option! Are there papers about this you could please share the links to?
      - ncmncm 5y ago
        Just a youtube video. 21340 km of superconducting tape could take rather some time to fabricate. Then, of course you need to get it there, and lay it out, and construct 20k refrigeration plants. Then, extract enough nitrogen from the atmosphere (1.89% concentration) for refrigerant; you'll need about 4M tons of it. You also need 21340 km of cryo-safe piping bonded to the tape, which probably weighs another 4M tons. Plus heat insulation. Leakage from 21340 km of tubing, even if just migration of single molecules through the walls of the tube, would require continuous injection of fresh nitrogen. And, I guess, you had better protect it from meteorite strikes. A planet-sized magnetic field suddenly imploding would seem to release enough energy to vaporize your whole tape. Maybe you should have two of them, parallel, 100km apart so they are unlikely to both be taken out by the same meteorite.

mLuby 5y ago

They tried that in the excellent documentary The Core (2003) but as I recall they didn't all survive.

ineedasername 5y ago
However a separate documentary (Armageddon, 1998) illustrated the successful use of nuclear devices on objects of a seemingly intractable scale with extremely few casualties. The makers of the documentary also chose an excellent score to accompany their organic capture of a moving love story along with the antics of a plucky group of misfits that came together in a crisis. It's the sort of thing you can only shake your head at and say, "Only in reality!" because if you saw it in a movie you'd just think "Nah, that could never happen".
- test6554 5y ago
  You just can't make this stuff up!
- KineticLensman 5y ago
  > a plucky group of misfits that came together in a crisis. The related 2000 documentary 'Space Cowboys' also provides excellent insights into how generation-Boomer skills can be invaluable when modern computer systems fail catastrophically.

DonHopkins 5y ago

Nuking BP's corporate headquarters could have prevented another disaster like Deepwater Horizon in the future. Maybe they should have nuked Exxon's corporate headquarters in response the the Valdez disaster, which might have prevented the Deepwater Horizon disaster by teaching all the remaining oil companies a lesson.