What’s the best way to deal with an environmental disaster? If you’re a National Review Online writer in June 2010 or, say, the Soviet Union three or four decades ago, the answer is simple: Drop a nuclear bomb on the leaking wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico. If the Rooskies used to do it, it must be a great market-driven solution, right? Besides, you could maybe “trap virtually all of the radioactive fallout within the sub-oceanic bedrock.”
Typing person at NRO types:
Of course, the risks of an atomic blast — not just of catastrophic malfunction or ineffectiveness, but of post-blast “venting” or “seeping” of radioactive gases from cracks in the ocean floor — have to be measured against those of the alternatives. But it seems a reasonable conjecture that the dissipation of a limited amount of radioactive material across the vast Gulf is preferable to the blanketing of thousands of miles of American coastline in ribbons of tar.
Indeed. The “catastrophic malfunction” of a radioactive explosion on the Gulf sea floor with who knows what kind of long term fallout and a potential giant dead zone of nuclear devastation along the entire southern coastline of America is far superior to …. well, to anything, really.
Is anyone in the non-wingnut-website world actually considering dropping nuclear bombs on a bleeding oil well? Maybe! Bloomberg reported on May 14 that Energy Secretary Stephen Chu sent a team of America’s Top Scientists to come up with wacky ideas just in case BP’s next twenty solutions also fail to work. And to this NRO person, that means we are literally hours away from nuking our own seawaters! Just like the Soviet Russians, who kick ass! So as soon as our Mighty War President 4 Life Barack Obama starts cold bombing New Orleans or whatever, then the wingnuts will finally love him for finally being as hardcore as the Soviet Communist Russians, who are the great heroes of every American Wingnut:
The Soviets repeated the trick four times between 1966 and 1979, using payloads as large as 60 kilotons to choke hydrocarbon leaks. Now, as the Obama administration stares into the abyss of the Deepwater Horizon spill, and a slicker of sweet, medium crude blankets the Gulf of Mexico, slouching its way toward American beaches and wetlands, Russia’s newspaper of record is calling on the president to consider this literal “nuclear option.”
As well he should.
{ 117 comments }
When tricky technology like a saw fails, a cute little (basically harmless, really) nuke is just the tool you’re looking for. Simple, reliable, classic. I have a very positive feeling about this.
For some reason, in 1979, they decided to stop doing it.
Jesus H. Tap Dancing Christ On A Soda Cracker.
First off, nuking the well involves DRILLING A F***ING HOLE IN THE SEA FLOOR.
Secondly, we still haven’t tried my preferred option, which is stuffing BP Oil executives and Faux News commentaters into the pipe until the leak stops.
I guess I’ll have to be the first to say “Nuke ‘em from orbit”.
Not only did they do 3-4 times, it worked, each time. Just like their space station worked.
Actually, one could do the same thing with enough some other “conventional” explosive, but would it work?
What could go wrong tho? I mean it’s not like the oil well is just the top of a huge fucking molotov cocktail or anything. Fuckit let’s roll!
You know, for being a bunch of rump chumps from the south, they sure seem to hate it. Hurricane it, poke holes in it, pollute it, tar it up good, and nuke it.
I think we should nuke it. We’re talking about hardcore Red States anyway. So let them lose their souls. They’re all animals anyway.
Get Pat Robertson to HEAL it! Or Benny Hinn! Or both of them together!
We’ve used this same technique to deflect inbound meteors in space*, so why would it not work under water?
*(caveat: in the movies only, though.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpPNQoTlacU
Um I hate to shit on anyone’s nuke parade, but it looks like you have to drill a fucking well to do the nuke anyway, so how is that different from a relief well? No nuking?
[re=590088]Enslave the Whales[/re]: As I should have pointed out before, by “‘em” I of course mean “NRO”.
Was the NRO piece signed “The Board of Directors of British Petroleum” or did their lawyers come up with this idea?
The one thing it would definitely accomplish is end any litigation over damages from the spill because, fuck it, that shit got burned up in the thermonuclear holocaust, right?
Case closed.
Nuke the Wells
[re=590094]Serolf Divad[/re]: Movies are *exactly the same as life* for National Review Online writers. Okay, not exactly … not quite as realistic as Hobbit books.
[re=590097]Crank Tango[/re]: [re=590087]memzilla[/re]: Shhh! Nukes are magic. MAGIC.
Has there been anything that NRO did not suggest using a nuke on? I’m pretty sure their answer to Health Care was 45 kiloton warhead.
Still, given BP’s track record, what could go wrong?
And just to be clear, this is further proof that NRO is in fact a Socialist Collective? It would explain why mediocrity reigns supreme there.
Can we put Slim Pickens on the nuke? Can we, can we???
Did someone neglect to tell Mr. Foster that Pravda is Russia’s paper of record in the same way that the Oakland Raiders are the badasses of the NFL? If these things happened at all, they probably didn’t happen the way Pravda described it. Good lord, they might as well be going to the local palm reader for a reliable account.
Actually there’s no way this can be serious. If I cared to read the rest of the article it would say that the whole thing was a joke and for Christ’s sake let’s let the grownups think for a spell rather than beating at their windows in the middle of the night with every cockeyed suggestion that crosses our mind.
But it’s probably a contest to see which damn neocon can come up with the most fucked-up idea that they can carry a torch for into the next administration of Republican thinkers and optimists who desperately need a new way to beat the shit out of a world that’s caught on to most of their crap — and most importantly, realized there’s no earth-changing scheme so stupid that even the GOP is gonna let it die in the free market of ideas. And this one might just grow some legs.
[re=590107]Lionel Hutz Esq.[/re]: I prefer to think of them as an anarcho-syndicalist commune…
My understanding of the geology that Deepwater Horzon sits over is that it is geologically shaky, and an atomic device of a size effective enough to “seal” the oil well would probably collapse the dome of the oil reservoir. This will have the wonderful side effect of releasing an unknown (read “frighteningly humongous”) amount of “hydrates” (methane), a greenhouse gas which is on the order of 20x worse than CO2.
oh Wow. this thing is so absolutely last measure Iron Curtain gonzo I actually want them to try it. eeehh,. .. what the hell.
If nothing else it’ll be a hoot when 12 minutes later the well starts spewing again. I dont know; that clean energy super-grid sorta sounded like a forward thinking idea. Maybe we should start working on that bad boy a little bit. .. that might be fun
NUKE THE OCEANS! What could go wrong?
[re=590112]Beanball[/re]: PS: Not to mention the tsunami. The retired folks in Tampa will really love that.
[re=590104]Ken Layne[/re]: i fear that k-lo, jonah goldberg and CNN Important Pundit are writing an atlas shrugged reboot screenplay as we speak. kelsey grammer will play howard roark, dominique francon will be played by… angie harmon? whatever. i hope john milius is still alive to serve as script doctor. vincent gallo will direct.
In fairness, they’re also searching back episodes of “24″ to figure out what Jack Bauer would do.
the dissipation of a limited amount of radioactive material across the vast Gulf is preferable to the blanketing of thousands of miles of American coastline in ribbons of tar.
We have to choose? How did we get to this place?
Let’s hold off on all these End Times solutions until 2012, shall we?
I really don’t get the science behind the idea. Nuclear explosions destroy matter, right? So, how is it going to plug the hole? I’m not being snarky, or deliberately obtuse. I just don’t get it. Can somebody explain this to me like I was 4 years old?
[re=590090]Crank Tango[/re]: The molotov cocktail needs air to burn/explode.
[re=590125]gurukalehuru[/re]: Here.
Send a GOP congressional delegation from Florida out to the well and see if they can suck it dry.
I heard about this earlier and thought, “well, fine, but we don’t have nuclear weapons that are designed to operate a mile under the ocean”. Imagine my surprise when I found out our very own paranoid government did deep water nuclear denotations in the late 50s! (According to Wikipedia, it was part of Operation Hardtack, a 9 kT warhead denotated at 3200 ft.)
This reminds me of the time in my wasted youth when my good buddy and I both got nasty headaches from smoking this awful weed we’d somehow acquired, so, hoping to mellow that shit out, we killed off a fifth of seized-by-customs Chinese vodka, and, somehow, still conscious, we tried to kill that additional pain with a couple bottles of warm champagne we found in the basement…
This is something I actually know something about, so I’ll hold off the snapping, spitting snarkasaurus for a minute to explain that the Soviet oil ministry used nuclear explosions to fracture geologic formations, in order to increase yield, not to “choke hydrocarbon leaks.” This resulted in highly radioactive gas and oil coming up through nearby wellheads. So radioactive, there was no way to use the stuff for, like, forever. On the other hand, if Bill Kristol was to be riding the bomb when went it went off, a la Slim Pickens in “Dr. Srangelove,” I could even go for a surface burst of a mere 60 kilotons or so, especially if it was over South Carolina.
[re=590125]gurukalehuru[/re]: The details aren’t important — let’s just call it a pre-emptive strike on the Mole People. They’re ruled by an out-of-touch oligarchy with no understanding of their own basis of law. And I have it on good authority that they’re planning an environmental catastrophe. I mean, we can wait if you want — maybe talk about it, discuss the pros and cons. Neville Chamberlain would probably want to do that. It’s up to you, is all I’m saying.
[re=590126]zhubajie[/re]: What happens when you nuke water? I remember watching (on the tv) a thermite grenade blow the shit out of a block of ice cuz it had done some craziness to the H and the O of the water.
[re=590136]Crank Tango[/re]: It depends on the depth of the water. Near the surface a lot of the energy escapes to the air as a shockwave. This also tends to be dirty. If the detonation is deep, then most of the energy stays in the water. This is cleaner since most of the radioactive material remains in the deep sea. The effect on the sea is similar to an earthquake — a large enough detonation could produce a tsunami. In either case the detonation produces a bubble of evaporated water (and whatever else was nearby) that toasts whatever is near “surface zero”.
[re=590140]KnaveOfDiamonds[/re]: aw jeeze I was hoping for a huge explosion big enough to break texas and florida clean off. Metaphorically speaking of course.
[re=590140]KnaveOfDiamonds[/re]: if the detonation is deep, is that deep sea area “dirty” after the blast?
[re=590094]Serolf Divad[/re]: Pat claimed his prayers made a hurricane skip old Virginny. (It ravished S. Carolina instead, but they’re a bunch of sinners, he’d say, I guess!)
[re=590114]Koch Fembot[/re]: Godzilla and friends would then attack the South! Sounds good to me!!
[re=590133]Lascauxcaveman[/re]: Oh G-d! Baijiu!
[re=590109]Pat Pending[/re]: How about playing Slim Whitman music at the spill instead? It worked wonders in “Mars Attacks”.
cant wait till GOD comes to call home the few rightous pple in this world cuz u racist all going to hell,I rebuke these Demons,I rebuke there devilish soul,there devilish ways,but GOD I just pray u forgive them,for they are no more than baby infants,they know no better,brought up and mislead by your words in everyway
along with obama whos gonna laugh at u all as he taunts u
[re=590148]GODprotectsTherightoues[/re]: wut?
Tie the entire BP board of directors AND entire editorial staff of NRO to the nuke! Then set if off! Whatever, happens, the nation and the world is better off!
[re=590136]Crank Tango[/re]: I don’t know. But thermite is just aluminum powder and iron filings. It burns hot but it isn’t explosive. Secret electronics on US warplanes all have thermite bombs in them, in case the planes are captured and the enemies haven’t been reading _Aviation & Space Technology_.
[re=590125]gurukalehuru[/re]: “In theory, the nuclear option seems attractive because the extreme heat might create a tough seal. An exploding atom bomb generates temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun and, detonated underground, can turn acres of porous rock into a glassy plug, much like a huge stopper in a leaky bottle.” –NYT
Safe, environmentally friendly, and glows in the dark.
[re=590148]GODprotectsTherightoues[/re]: go on….. !
[re=590154]Aurelio[/re]: the nro readership would like to know more about this “glassy plug” you’re referring to…
[re=590150]Beanball[/re]: A wingtard troll.
[re=590142]obfuscator[/re]: It would have to be, but it might not be as bad as an atmospheric detonation. The reasons are that the hard radiation (x-rays and gamma rays) and neutrons are much more likely to encounter water molecules near the blast and be (relatively) harmlessly absorbed. This still leaves the remains of the fissile material, but since water is essentially an incompressible fluid, it can’t get very far. This is the case in a deep detonation, anyway. In a shallow one the blast just jets the irradiated water into the air and makes a big mess out of everything nearby. This is actually what happened in the Baker test. It was, I think, the fifth nuclear detonation. It was performed in shallow water with several naval ships nearby. It was a disaster.
[re=590158]KnaveOfDiamonds[/re]: so the deeper the detonation, the smaller the… damage radius? i think i get it. i asked only because the national public radios told me that the oil on the sea floor is just as bad as the water surface oil when it comes to bottom-feeding marine life.
[re=590159]obfuscator[/re]: Well, this is all theory. I don’t think anything like this has ever been studied (with a real bomb). For example, if the bomb were a dud and most of the fissile material failed to react, then you’d have a lot of poisonous/radioactive material that could get propelled into the Gulf Stream or Loop Current or whatever (I’m not an oceanographer.).
[re=590148]GODprotectsTherightoues[/re]: go to bed Jim honey it’s late
[re=590119]WadISay[/re]: He would torture the well until it screams “No more! I’ll stop flowing into the Gulf, just make it stop!”
[re=590150]Beanball[/re]: [re=590155]obfuscator[/re]: Authentic Frontier Gibberish!
[re=590148]GODprotectsTherightoues[/re]: Your ideas are interesting and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
[re=590169]Bearbloke[/re]: Thank you for tagging my 2nd favorite cinematic triumph.
[re=590170]imissopus[/re]: The Texas English Massacre.
The truth has been revealed. The National Review is standing athart reason, yelling “STOP”. They are all poop-monsters.
[re=590111]Pat Pending[/re]: NRO is very good at stacking mud…..
[re=590135]SayItWithWookies[/re]: Come to think of it, the Mole People have been very cagey about their stock piles of WMDs…. Is there a chance that NRO might be correct for once?
I used to have a shitty car with a shitty radio. When the radio would suddenly mess up and start playing static or something that wasn’t the station I was listening to, I’d hit it with a shoe. By coincidence, sometimes it would work. This is essentially what NRO is suggesting, but with nuclear bombs.
[re=590148]GODprotectsTherightoues[/re]: Whoooot!!
GODprotectsTherightIOUs.
Figgers.
[re=590086]Sharkey[/re]: REAGAN MOTHERFUCKER! USA USA!
Wouldn’t it take just as long to drill the hole this nuke needs to go in as it would to drill the relief well? No one is talking about exploding a nuke on the seafloor (except perhaps NRO) The geologists where I work (gov agency) that know this area say they have no idea what would happen if this was done; an underground nuke test creates a large amount of unstable rock.
Not to mention I believe there are several treaties we are signatory to that would prohibit this.
It’s not nice to hurt Mother Earth. Now she can’t stop bleeding. Haven’t they done enough?
With those guys, it’s anything to get nuclear power. When people foolishly insisted on oil, the solution was simple: radioactive oil!
(Oh, and, uh, it’s perhaps, you know, possible that the geology of the Gulf is different from the unspecified places where “the Soviets” “used” teh bombs. If “it seems like a reasonable conjecture,” one’s “seem” machine needs to be nuked.)
Wait…British Petroleum has nukes?
I’ll support this on the condition that Jonah Goldberg rides the bomb to well head Major Kong style.
BTW NRO, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
So basically, NRO would have been perfectly fine with the commie socialist healthcare reform package if it had involved nuking stuff?
I am full of questions this morning!
[re=590089]zhubajie[/re]: Octanitrocubane, arguably the most powerful conventional explosive, might work. However I can find no data on how it might be affected by the extreme pressure and cold a mile beneath the sea.
[re=590097]Crank Tango[/re]: If you are going to nuke the relief well only needs to get reasonably close to the primary well. More conventional techniques require an actual intersection which is quite hard to do.
NRO is the new Onion.
[re=590148]GODprotectsTherightoues[/re]: Ginger, you’re back! My eyes are leaking with joy.
Yeah, that will put the icing on the cake, radioactive WD-40 for all of the east coast, simply brilliant! I think cramming Rush Limbaugh’s fat ass into the riser would work better.
This would require the approval of President Obomba, right?
Wait a dern second… are these the same Soviet Russians that sent a thousand or so unwitting workers, firefighters and rescue personnel to a tediously slow, painful, radiologically inspired death in order to cap a poorly regulated nuclear power plant that cracked in half?
Oh, those were different Soviet Russians you say?
Well then golly, Kick the tires and light the fires bitches!!!
[re=590149]GODprotectsTherightoues[/re]: GODDAM un-righteoues sea turtles. Killthem.
Nuking the Gulf of Mexico would make a terrific reality show for the Discovery Channel.
[re=590092]Dolmance[/re]:So we are agreed. We will nuke the well. But I don’t want it dropped near schools.
[re=590214]mardam422[/re]: Does that include schools of fish?
smoking some primo tea over at NRO. i’m envious. for my job, i actually have to be able to think straight.
[re=590209]upstateNY[/re]: those were different Soviet Russians you say?
I suppose that would depend on when they actually did this oil well nuking. I haven’t seen any sort of timeline.
[re=590216]widget09[/re]: Do they have a good union?
Wait … we already have miles and miles of tar and oily goo in the Gulf. If we drop a nuke, then we have radioactive water, oil, air _and_ miles and miles of tar and oily goo.
This sounds like something Dick Cheney would do.
[re=590101]dijetlo[/re]: Actually, BP only wrote the article out in pencil. NRO committed the whole thing to ink.
(God, I hate when I think of comments hours after everyone stops paying attention to the thread.)
Bomb the wells or get bombed with Dawn Wells. Either works.
Nuke it until it glows then shoot it in the dark.
[re=590110]SayItWithWookies[/re]: May I point out the fact that their “windows” isn’t the only thing they beat in the middle of the night. Just sayin’.
If they drop Jughead down there it will prevent the incident. OR MAYBE IT WILL CAUSE THE INCIDENT!
[re=590134]Zorg[/re]: A ‘Sixth Element’ avatar and suggestion to destroy South Carolina. You are a God.
Nuke the Gulf? Hey, I see bigger jumbo shimp in our future. Win!
[re=590289]Libbygirl[/re]: FIFTH ELEMENT Good gawd, NOT ENOUGH COFFEE.
Also.
Now if the suggestion was to Nuke The Shit out of Texas & Arizona…
[re=590207]widget09[/re]: ‘zactly so. Rush is the consummate butt plug. It is why he was put on this earth, his penultimate calling.
To be fair, the Russkies’ answer for just about every problem was nuclear bombs. Need to build a train tunnel or mind shaft? Use nukes. Need to divert a river? Use nukes.
Seriously, I think it’s fair to chalk Soviet Russia’s fascination with using nuclear weapons to solve every terrain-related concern they had up to that old saying, “When you have a nuclear-powered hammer, everything starts to look like an irradiated nail that’s been rendered unlivable for generations”
It’s not just the NRO — on the FRONT PAGE today, the NY Times decided to give this insanity some legitimacy…
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/us/03nuke.html?hp
Thanks…
Oh come on please, please…I want us to blow something up.
I am now looking forward to the press conference when Obama says “Fuck no I’m not gonna nuke the oil spill, what is wrong with you?”
The author responds! http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZWRkOThjZGU0ZGMxZjY4OTE1NDAyN2RkYTJmMjA2MmI=
This quote wins the next few mornings: “I know Wonkette exists to make fun of everything, but how historically uncoupled is the Left when it can un-ironically condemn the Right for its Soviet nostalgia?”
All I’m asking for is radioactive sharks with frikkin’ lasers on their heads…
and ONE MILLION DOLLARS…
At this rate, I’m tempted to suggest that we plug the well with autistic children and see who actually considers it
[re=590149]GODprotectsTherightoues[/re]: I like the cut of your jib. Where can I send my credit card information so I can receive your newsletter?
[re=590140]KnaveOfDiamonds[/re]:…and by evaporated water you mean superheated steam.
But on the plus side – Instant Gumbo!
[re=590190]lochnessmonster[/re]: Treaties-Smeaties. Were talking about America’s Interests(TM) in our enegry spply here. Besides, what could posiibly go wrong when you crack the rock over a pocket of crude so under presure that is is already creating a undersea gusher with a little 4 inch hole.
[re=590289]Libbygirl[/re]: Thank you! Have you ever considered the benefits of having the love child of an interplanetary evil genius criminal mastermind? Just curious.
[re=590114]Koch Fembot[/re]: They do it in TV movies every couple of months. Seals things right up when the earth’s core starts leaking. Should be fine. We’ll need to gather a whole bunch of TV-movie actors to stare at computer monitors and type a lot and tell us what time it is. It’s risky, but it just may work.
Maybe we could sacrifice some oxen. Or do a dance.
I don’t think that it is practically possible. what do you say?
Advanced Colon Max
Right because no one would misconstrue this as Obama being an angry black man.
OMG so much illiteracy on one page!
1. Conventional explosives are used to alter the face of the earth in a million places around the world already. Heard of something called ‘dynamite’? Well, IT’S USED TO BLOW APART ROCK.
2. Crude oil does not combust like gasoline. In fact crude oil is heated to insanely high temperaures to get gasoline in the first place. So IT’S NOT A GIANT MOLOTOV.
3. Methane gas is released in massive amounts around the world every day. Every time you turn up the heat in your house, every time you drive your giant fucking Suburban to a giant fucking Wal-Mart, hell, every time you eat a fucking hamburger, you collectively contribute to methane accumulation in levels that dwarfs the reserves in an oil well. A LITTLE EXTRA METHANE IS PREFERABLE TO A POISONED OCEAN.
maybe they should tie all of you to the bomb, it’ll make the national IQ average shoot up 20 points.
I think the different federal deparments are doing as much as they can, but thats different than Obama. His role is the executive role. He should be taking responsability for the federal response (support or whatever it is) directly, or he should have an oil czar to control the federal response, but he hasn’t. There is no direct executive “face” of the oil spill for the federal government. This was a huge mistake, and we can only question who is running the show there because of it…
Ultra Maxx
Please google “nuke the BP well”
The scientific community AND the leaders are talking about parts of MY solution back in April on http://oilspillsolution.wordpress.com – THIS IS THE TIME TO GET IN TOUCH WITH THE GOVERNMENT OR BP/DEEP HORIZON TEAM, I CAN HELP THEM MAKE IT HAPPEN.
What do you guys say, if you see my solutions they are HOLISTIC then just “nuking” the undersea well?
Imran Owais Kazmi
Chief Thinking Officer, Strategy2Action
Blog http://imranokazmi.wordpress.com
Dubai +971 55 8094119 Uk +44 750 9184690
Comments on this entry are closed.