3 ms·

I'm curious how such a wave could be....intentionally created.

msisk6 4y ago
That's actually a minor plot point in Neal Stephenson's latest novel "Termination Shock."
bee_rider 4y ago
There were attempts to create tsunamis with nukes. But I’m not sure how effective this sort of thing would be against a carrier. A single wave could I guess be spotted from pretty far away, and is just a problem for a plane that wants to land or takeoff at that very moment. Creating general chop in excess of what the carrier can handle might be annoying, but it seems much more difficult (lots of energy involved in creating a bunch of waves, and I guess this rules out using a single huge explosion). Plus, I bet somebody would work out who did it if a country used a nuke to create a wave, there are only a couple candidates for who could do this sort of thing, after all. I bet it would have pretty significant diplomatic ramifications to… inconvenience a carrier group for a couple minutes.
- Majromax 4y ago
  > There were attempts to create tsunamis with nukes. But I’m not sure how effective this sort of thing would be against a carrier. Not very effective. Tsunami waves move huge volumes of water, but in the open ocean they are also very long waves. Their travel speed is about the same as the "linear long wave speed", or about sqrt(g*D) where D is the depth of the water. As these waves approach the shore, however, the ocean becomes more shallow. Waves slow down. The tsunami effectively "piles up" on itself, and a wave that was a little high and a lot long becomes a wave that's a lot high and a little long. A carrier operating away from shore would see the tsunami in its more benign state. Coastal cities, however, would be in trouble.
- worik 4y ago
  There was an experimental, and secret, programme in WWII to attempt to generate tsunami as weapons In New Zealand I know very little more than that, but it was in the news here some years ago. I do know it was a failure, quite a comprehensive failure
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

That's actually a minor plot point in Neal Stephenson's latest novel "Termination Shock."

There were attempts to create tsunamis with nukes. But I’m not sure how effective this sort of thing would be against a carrier. A single wave could I guess be spotted from pretty far away, and is just a problem for a plane that wants to land or takeoff at that very moment. Creating general chop in excess of what the carrier can handle might be annoying, but it seems much more difficult (lots of energy involved in creating a bunch of waves, and I guess this rules out using a single huge explosion). Plus, I bet somebody would work out who did it if a country used a nuke to create a wave, there are only a couple candidates for who could do this sort of thing, after all. I bet it would have pretty significant diplomatic ramifications to… inconvenience a carrier group for a couple minutes.

Majromax 4y ago
> There were attempts to create tsunamis with nukes. But I’m not sure how effective this sort of thing would be against a carrier. Not very effective. Tsunami waves move huge volumes of water, but in the open ocean they are also very long waves. Their travel speed is about the same as the "linear long wave speed", or about sqrt(g*D) where D is the depth of the water. As these waves approach the shore, however, the ocean becomes more shallow. Waves slow down. The tsunami effectively "piles up" on itself, and a wave that was a little high and a lot long becomes a wave that's a lot high and a little long. A carrier operating away from shore would see the tsunami in its more benign state. Coastal cities, however, would be in trouble.
worik 4y ago
There was an experimental, and secret, programme in WWII to attempt to generate tsunami as weapons In New Zealand I know very little more than that, but it was in the news here some years ago. I do know it was a failure, quite a comprehensive failure

deleted 4y ago

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