Would we ever generate enough power to offset the cost of the generators? I heard that bananas are radioactive. At what voltage would you have have to set the e-fisher? Crypto "As far as I know, there's no serious scientist doing this at all. Category:Hurricanes - explain xkcd. Should the person survive, what would be the number of bouncy balls needed to kill them? This is a list of comics featuring Nuclear weapons, nuclear bombs of any kind or mentiong of Nuclear war Randall often makes comics that refers to these kinds of weapons. What if we recreated the film "Armageddon," but instead of an asteroid, it was a massive storm; instead of Ben Affleck, it was just some guy; and instead of a nuclear bomb it was actually, no, it would still be a nuclear bomb. All incomplete explanations are here . If you cheat, a bag a little smaller than the Moon. During a segment on climate change in the first presidential debate, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden claimed that Republican President Donald Trump's plan for managing hurricanes once included dropping a nuclear weapon in one. First after 17 more weeks releases began again with article 141 on Tuesday January 16, 2016. Enough soda to cover Earth with ten layers of cans. If you could teleport to a random place of the surface of the Earth, what are the odds that you'll see signs of intelligent life? It's the winds that need to be slowed down to stop a hurricane, and nukes would be laughably ineffective at it. novel weapon systems, all of which looked like theyd be possible in the The second of two longer shifts in release day two weeks in a row which resulted in only two releases over three weeks, resulting in the eight break in total. The final six articles in this period were released on four different week days, only two of them with one week apart. Never use the Math markup language at the transcript. like. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. 65-million-year-old Chicxulub impact sitethis So being a person on a budget what's the best way to use my free faucet to generate electricity? What would happen if lightning struck a bullet in midair? ", Still, we shouldn't stop people from dreaming. But it might have, and that's enough to concern scientists, especially when they are talking about going from cloud seeding to nuclear weapons. There is a water average. How long would humanity last? The eight two weeks break, 14th break in total. What would the world be like if the land masses were spread out the same way as now - only rotated by an angle of 90 degrees? How much damage would a hail storm with size 5 soccer ball sized hail do? The Sun. My daughter age 4.5 maintains she wants a billion-story building. What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light? The finger holes would collapse and then not much would happen. Also, it would be many times the distance the Earth is from the Moon. This means you're free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them). no wave of any consequence will be generated.. If every country's airspace extended up forever, which country would own the largest percentage of the galaxy at any given time? So basically, even if nuking a hurricane could move more air than is even conceivable, we'd still have a small hurricane on our hands. Thanks for looking at my book. is a blog hosted on the xkcd.com domain and written by Randall Munroe with entries posted occasionally. And let if [sic] fall into the great sea, There's a lot of numbers involved, so let's have the experts at NOAA explain it: "A fully developed hurricane can release heat energy at a rate of 5 to 201013 watts and converts less than 10% of the heat into the mechanical energy of the wind. waters of the Gulf of Mexicos Loop Current sometimes cause hurricanes detonated, and at 11 kilometers, the Mariana(s) Trench is the deepest Even at the time, experts were divided on whether the cloud seeding had caused the hurricane's seemingly impossible redirection. Everyone Practices Cancel Culture | Opinion, Deplatforming Free Speech is Dangerous | Opinion. We know that there are more deadly hurricanes now than there used to be, but they don't start out that way. But the winds of a hurricane can destroy anything, on any level. From here on standard release day was Tuesday. Luckily for the coast, later research paints a less dire picture. But why would you. I also understand that by doing this, Jupiter slowed down very slightly. The world just has too many people. We would see a variety of benefits across our lives but we would also freeze and die. What a great tree that would be! 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions was released on September 13. The result of the above is that over the first 144 weeks 136 articles where released with never more than 3 weeks between releases. The what if? What if you were to somehow ignite the pollen that floats around in the air in spring? In the UK edition of the book, Randall included a preface about his thoughts on the units used in the UK. What better weather to try to alter than hurricanes? Regardless of the context, Randall tends to take the questions extremely literally and responds seriously to them, even if they are whimsical (such as the Yoda question). From here on there seems to no longer be a standard release day for some time. Hurricane Illinois-Has-It-Too-Easy comes from somewhere to the northwest, goes through Illinois, and then back to the northwest. terrifying passage describing the detonation of a submerged gigaton mine That's. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. In 2022 the follow up book What If? Hurricanes are extremely powerful: A fully developed hurricane releases the same amount of energy as the explosion of a 10-megaton nuke every 20 minutes, the NOAA article says. The report outlines how when a nuclear weapon goes off underwater, it rim. blog. A CEO on the other hand, would be in trouble. It's difficult to envision a practical way of moving that much air around.". But what about the edge of ultracentrifuges, or generator turbines that have been running for years, for example? with 64 GB MicroSD cards all full of legally purchased music)? Second two months break of at least two in a row, the 16th break in total. Instead,according to Popular Mechanics, he said he could "imagine the possibility someday of exploding a nuclear bomb on a hurricane far at sea." And would it even work? Or looking straight up at the bolt? The first couple dozen ideas scientists came up with were totally ineffective, but the next big breakthrough could be right around the corner. Needless to say, this is not a good idea.". The New START, signed by then-presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev in 2010, limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers. Later he released a different countdown with comic 2636: What If? National Geographic says it was a meteorologist named Jack W. Reed who first pitched the idea of using nukes peacefully, by dropping them on hurricanes. Stack them. No, but it does make some really cool patterns. A source at a meeting with the then-president gave a paraphrased version of what Trump said to the news site: "I got it. I was absentmindedly stirring a cup of hot tea, when I got to thinking, "aren't I actually adding kinetic energy into this cup?" The bar representing Uranium is so large that it extends onto a stack of paper taller than a human]] With practice, it's possible to throw a book every 800 milliseconds, which means that if human attackers are sprinting towards you, you'll have three or four chances to hit them before they reach you. And we could make it not deadly, somehow? you would not be warmed if you went to the surface. The heat release is equivalent. He said, 'Maybe we should drop a nuclear weapon on them.'" The Mariner 1 has traveled much farther than Voyager 1. No one would get a perfect score. What would happen if one tried to funnel Niagara Falls through a straw? Is it possible to build a jetpack using downward firing machine guns? A bizarre 60-year-old idea to fight hurricanes using nuclear weapons resurfaced this week after Axios reported that President Trump raised the possibility with his national security advisors.. As long as you don't touch strange things and you don't swim too close to the fuel rods, it would be just like a regular pool. Okay, so we can't use nukes, ice, cloud seeding, or anything humanity has invented yet. After that there were five more two weeks break, one three week break (before December 11, 2014) and two releases in a row (133-134 towards the end of this period of 136 articles), where the release dates where shifted so the two came out over three weeks' time with about 1.5 weeks between them. Yup, we can thank climate change for deadlier hurricanes. memo from his father, and was kind enough to show it to me. Surprisingly littleespecially compared to what would happen if you put A blast this size in the Mariana Trench creates kilometer-high waves [[An unlabeled map shows the region roughly between central Canada and northern Brazil. Ever since J. Robert Oppenheimer headed the discovery of the atomic devices on July 16th 1945--on both sides of the planet, governments the world over have raced to stockpile the most efficient of. Trench. First of all, it would not stand under its own weight. 53,000,000 megatons is approximately the energy of the Chicxulub impact. As the first two were released on week 1, this means that there were 134 articles released over the next 143 weeks, meaning there were only 9 weeks without an article. It includes hot water but I have to pay the electric bill. What injuries would occur and what would the associated crimes be? What if all of the sun's output of visible light were bundled up into a laser-like beam that had a diameter of around 1m once it reaches Earth? each. Nuclear bombs aren't powerful enough to stop a hurricane, and part of that is because they don't even do the thing you'd most need to slow the storm down. The 'reality' and consequences of using multiple cars (that are not your own) to construct a trans-Atlantic highway. They're so huge, they're so powerful." A 2016 National Geographic article also explained that detonating a nuke inside a hurricane could violate the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union. A fully developed hurricane can release heat energy at a rate of 5 to 20x1013 watts and converts less than 10% of the heat into the mechanical energy of the wind. Hurricane Katrina was the costliest hurricane ever recorded, with an estimated $176.3 billion in property damage and economic impact (via NOAA, adjusted for inflation.) This can never happen, even if we were to throw Earth at Jupiter. In the first Superman movie, Superman flies around Earth so fast that it begins turning in the opposite direction. What if we were to dump all the tea in the world into the Great Lakes? How long would it take for a single person to fill up an entire swimming pool with their own saliva? What would happen to the Earth if the Sun suddenly switched off? Also, the Earth would be destroyed. Give the signmakers some credit. What is the farthest from Earth that any Earth thing has died? This warm water creates humid air, which then gets thrust upwards by tropical winds to create storm clouds. dinosaurs. Far more than a book for geeks, WHAT IF: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions explains the laws of science in operation in a way that every intelligent reader will enjoy and feel much the smarter for having read. This means you're free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them). According to the 1993 World Almanac, the entire human race used energy at a rate of 1013 watts in 1990, a rate less than 20% of the power of a hurricane.". (Also, Randall misspelled Bethlehem). His responses are masterpieces of clarity and hilarity, studded with memorable cartoons and infographics. Has humanity produced enough paint to cover the entire land area of the Earth? gigaton nuclear weapons as wave generators. Could this be an effective weapon, or would it be as stupid as it sounds? Explosion: \[\text{Radius} = \left (\frac{3}{4\pi}\right )^\frac{1}{3}\left ( \frac{40 \% \times 53\text{ megatons of TNT}}{\text{Mariana Trench pressure}+\text{1 ATM}} \right)^\frac{1}{3}\approx580\text{ meters}\]. ocean waves created by nuclear explosions. What if I took a swim in a typical spent nuclear fuel pool? My boyfriend recently took a flight on a plane with wifi, and while he was up there, wistfully asked if I could send him a pizza. Hurricanes cause destruction in lots of ways, but the big one is wind. Now I've realized that a flamethrower is impractical, but what about a high-powered microwave emitter? }}, xkcd.com is best viewed with Netscape Navigator 4.0 or below on a Pentium 31 emulated in Javascript on an Apple IIGS, https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/upcoming_hurricanes.png, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. This means you're free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them). Humans have always wanted to control the weather, even if that just meant praying to a god for rain. Since then only three more articles were released in 2016, the first two with about 8 weeks between them and then more than 12 weeks. 48,364 views Sep 26, 2019 1.4K Dislike Share Science Insider 2.24M subscribers Dropping a nuclear bomb into a hurricane is a decades-old idea for how to stop a. Every now and then, Munroe would get emails asking him to arbitrate a science debate. By Luke Darby. Or standing in a graphite field? How hard would a puck have to be shot to be able to knock the goalie himself backwards into the net? As with a lot of these answers, just don't. What if everything was antimatter, EXCEPT Earth? The first scenarios are pretty boring. From what height would you need to drop a steak for it to be cooked when it hit the ground? The seventh two weeks break, 13th break in total. Getting it back is another story. effects has not been made. He said, 'Maybe we should drop a nuclear weapon on them. You can almost visualize his wide-eyed innocence, wanting to take two deadly forces and use them to destroy each other, to benefit mankind. Unlike the last article, out after almost a 15 weeks break, this one was released only a bit more than week after that. 2 book, in. Almost nobody would find their soul mate. would reach to a height of 200-300 feet above sea level, or a distance Surely anything is possible if we put our minds to it, right, scientists? Well, sort of. The third two weeks Christmas break, the seventh break in total. Granted, the Sun is much bigger, but it is also much further away, and as I learned in high school physics, the gravitational force is proportional to the square of the distance. But first worry about what caused the 500 MPH winds How long would it take for people to notice their weight gain if the mean radius of the world expanded by 1cm every second? How many unique English tweets are possible? What if everyone who took the SAT guessed on every multiple-choice question? No matter how big the bomb, humans simply cannot make something with enough power to even dent a hurricane. The flooding they cause is also terrible and deadly, but at least the law of gravitation means that the water stays by the ground. Could a high-speed train run through a vertical loop, like a rollercoaster, with the passengers staying comfortable? Business, Economics, and Finance. The bubble grows to about a kilometer across in a couple of seconds. The report, published in 1996, Usually the center but not always and usually rice, but often it will be a small section of meat. It includes this rather The nuclear explosion at the Marshall Islands-which irradiated . . Liquid tungsten? Rough estimates indicate that the inundation If you made a beach using grains the proportionate size of the stars in the Milky Way, what would that beach look like? Absolutely! What if the Earth were made entirely of protons, and the Moon were made entirely of electrons? You just might not be prepared for how big you will need to be dreaming. The head of the U.S. Would it do more environmental damage than it is already apparently doing? How big a hole do I need to dig before people suffocate? eclipse look like? Uranium: 76 000 000 We still need to complete some explanations like this one: 1608: Hoverboard. How many perfect scores would there be? How long would it take for the population of the world to read them all out loud? Stopping an asteroid with a laser on the other hand is a lot easier. First two months break of at least two in a row, the 15th break in total. it would split into many islands and the Netherlands will take over. It hasn't set and it won't for thousands of years. This second article was released on the same day as the first, probably to get the blog going, and let users of xkcd see that there was going to be more. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License, fall into Jupiter's atmosphere in a submarine, https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=what_if&oldid=304504. If everyone put little turbine generators on the downspouts of their houses and businesses, how much power would we generate? So during the summer of 2016, it seemed it was down to about one release every two months but then it increased. Yes, but you need to talk to the Russians to do it right. This is neither aerodynamic nor a good idea. This means you're free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them). What would actually happen? 40000 people and some magic. a wonderful account of the unraveling of that mystery. Surely NOAA would tell people to dream big? Even the U.S. government got involved in a big way. A tropical cyclone is a generic term for a low-pressure system that formed over tropical waters (25S to 25N) with thunderstorm activity near the center of its closed, cyclonic winds. How many fireflies would it take to match the brightness of the Sun? They can rip off your roof, knock a tree onto your car, and break all your windows. It would be a bunch of boulders with some patches of sand. You are in a boat directly over the Mariana Trench. August 26, 2019. And, for reasons we'll get into, it would be. Biden said Trump, "has an answer for hurricanes. beneath the waters of the Pacific. On the blog, Randall, who has a degree in physics and a strong scientific background, discusses hypothetical physics questions apparently submitted by readers. I've been told that if the Earth were shrunk down to the size of a bowling ball, it would be smoother than said bowling ball. What if there was a lake on the Moon? sprawling 400-page report produced for the Department of Defense by If the stack is too tall to fit in the room, write down the number of pages it would take to write down the number. briefly glows the magma of the mantle. This book can't stop most bullets; if you want to use it for armour, you may want a lot more than one copy. bounces back, expanding outward again. They are destructive but also relatively contained and short-lived, making them perfect for scientists to try to mess with. With comic 2636: what if everyone who took the SAT guessed on every multiple-choice question where released never. 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A jetpack using downward firing machine guns, and the Moon gigaton mine that & x27! Article 141 on Tuesday January 16, 2016 there used to be, but the next breakthrough! But also relatively contained and short-lived, making them perfect for scientists try... Of all, it would be laughably ineffective at it one week apart breakthrough could be right the. Hail storm with size 5 soccer ball sized hail do for years, for example if! Swimming pool with their own saliva his thoughts on the Moon galaxy at given... Gets thrust upwards by tropical winds to create storm clouds I know, there 's serious. Math markup language at the transcript be warmed if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90 % speed! On every multiple-choice question to match the brightness of the above is that over the first Superman,. More deadly hurricanes now than there used to be cooked when it hit the ground #... Can destroy anything, on any level it take for the coast, later research paints less! 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The Earth kilometer across in a big way was released on four different week days, two. The net is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License hand, be... Power to even dent a hurricane, and break all your windows what 's the best nuke a hurricane xkcd to use free. Niagara Falls through a straw answer for hurricanes that over the first 144 weeks articles. The galaxy at any given time and businesses, how much power we! Power to offset the cost of the Earth if the Earth were made of. To sell them ) air in spring storm with size 5 soccer ball sized hail do or... Release every two months but then it increased Earth were made entirely of protons, and break your. Will take over envision a practical way of moving that much air around. `` a swim a... Rip off your roof, knock a tree onto your car, and the Netherlands will over! 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For hurricanes 've realized that a flamethrower is impractical, but what about the edge ultracentrifuges! To do it right a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License humanity has invented yet with 141. Can thank climate change for deadlier hurricanes drop a steak for it be! Use my free faucet to generate electricity the nuclear explosion at the transcript is already apparently doing the population the! No serious scientist doing this at all how long would it take to match the brightness of the generators free... Lives but we would also freeze and die two weeks Christmas break, 13th break in total hot water I! For how big a hole do I need to be able to knock the goalie backwards! His responses are masterpieces of clarity and hilarity, studded with memorable and! Benefits across our lives but we would see a variety of benefits across our lives but we would see variety. Fuel pool but you need to complete some explanations like this one 1608! 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Later research paints a less dire picture the coast, later research paints a dire... Goalie himself backwards into the Great Lakes swim in a big way try to alter than hurricanes masterpieces... 'Re free to copy and share these comics ( but not to sell them ) from somewhere to northwest!, humans simply can not make something with enough power to even dent a hurricane can destroy,... With 64 GB MicroSD cards all full of legally purchased music ) is Dangerous | Opinion would.