Posted on 05/20/2013 2:45:28 PM PDT by GeorgeWashingtonsGhost
Why hasn't a tornado buster missile or bomb been developed or at least tried? I realize that tornadoes are large and quick moving, but if there's enough time to prepare for one there should be enough time to attempt to stop one.
Could a shock wave or some sort of electrical pulse wave from a strategically placed missile/bomb launched from a fighter jet stop a tornado, or perhaps disrupt its balance successfully enough to stop it's devastation on the ground?
A nuclear bomb just might be big enough.
I have not seen any numbers for the energy of a tornado, but a good sized thunderstorm has the energy of a large nuclear weapon.
The “cure” would be worse than the “disease”.
I think the fact that they can’t be predicted with enough accuracy would make preventing them pretty tough.
Better shelters are probably the way to go.
Most tornadoes last only minutes. Very few touch the ground or cause serious damage. I would think that the kind of explosive that you are imagining would be more dangerous than the tornado.
I’m serious! Can a strictly horizontal shock wave be created?
A nuclear bomb just might be big enough.
Fuel Ari bomb and the only thing stopping the use would be the liability of it in advertantly killing someone....
If you wear tinfoil, then HAARP might be able to kill tornadoes...
Always wondered about that myself.
My idea is to drop tons of ice into it, to cool the temps and rob it of energy. /s
Better shelters are probably the way to go.
Agreed, more people in the midwest need to build their houses more like “Hobbit Holes”, on the plus side you can graze animals on the roof, on the minuis you have to deal with animal poop on your roof and you have to mow your roof and would need a stronger roof supports...
The think stopping this would be the inability to mass produce such a house like current houses, if one were to make a decent framework for partially buried houses they may ctach on...
Supposing the warhead yield was large enough to disrupt the vortex, it would only last for a few seconds. The funnel would likely resume again. You’re fighting against atmospheric currents... There’s a reason no one has developed anything to dissipate one yet.
Berm or underground homes have a lot of advantages like natural thermal insulation. Lighting is an issue but LED lighting is very efficient.
I saw a waterspout come apart when it hit a mountain. The problem with a shock wave or something to destroy a tornado is that you would not want to use something like that in a populated area as you would cause as much damage as the tornado. If you destroy it in an unpopulated area you have not gained much.
Hover above the planet and look down. Below is Kansas. Imagine a huge oval which is a low pressure zone. Around it is a high pressure zone. The two zones equalize. That equalization process is a giant set of swirls, rather like stirring cream into coffee. The wall of the swirls is what we see as a tornado. If you disrupt the wall, you will not disrupt the event which causes the swirl, which is the huge pressure difference between the zones. If you manage to disrupt one wall, another will form. This formation continues until the pressures equalize.
On the other hand, you might just go down to Brazil and kill the damned butterflies whose wing flapping causes all these storms.
You might only have seconds to try and stop a tornado, but you do usually have a few hours to stop the atmospheric conditions that create tornadoes.
It’s unfortunate nobody has figured out how to tap into the energy that is created when two differing atmospheric pressure areas collide and form these thunderstorm patterns.
It really depends on the source of rotation. Tornadoes have been know to “skip” over buildings and rivers. Disrupting a tornadoe at ground level may merely cause it to form somewhere else. One theory has the rotaion begining high up, near the jet stream, making the it difficult to turn off a tornado.
No, because angular momentum must be conserved. A nuke would make things worth, drawing things upwards and inwards (which concentrates angular momentum like a whirlpool).
The bomb itself would have to be so powerful that it would cause devastation.
Here are a few numbers - still looking for Tornado info.
“This is equivalent to about 200 times the total electrical generating capacity on the planet! NASA says that “during its life cycle a hurricane can expend as much energy as 10,000 nuclear bombs!” And we’re just talking about average hurricanes here, not Katrina.”
“In all, Mount St. Helens released 24 megatons of thermal energy, 7 of which was a direct result of the blast. This is equivalent to 1,600 times the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima”
The quantities of ice necessary would be huge. You probably would only have to disable it and not kill it all together. Still, it is a lot of energy to suck out of something that massive.
Another way to dissapate the energy is to drop something or somethings into it and steal it of rotational inertia. Thousands of projectiles swirling within the cloud chopping up everything. Doesn’t sound good.
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