Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey guys, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: This is Alice and I don't like, the science editor
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. And this is Robert Lamb,
Speaker 1: science writer for how stuff works dot com. Today we're
Speaker 1: talking about killing hurricane at the very least kind of
Speaker 1: remaining edge. Right. It's uh, it reminds me a lot
Speaker 1: of the Godzilla movies. Have you seen any of the
Speaker 1: Godzilla movies? I have not seen a Godzilla movies. I'm sorry. Well,
Speaker 1: generally the whole idea is that a giant monsters rising
Speaker 1: out of the ocean lizard right, Well, yeah, in the
Speaker 1: case of Godzilla, giant lizard, this giant lizard is rising
Speaker 1: up out of the ocean and coming towards the city,
Speaker 1: and when he gets there, he's going to destroy lots
Speaker 1: of stuff. And the movie comes down to can we
Speaker 1: stop this monster from from carrying out this attack? Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: a hurricane kind of similar Godzilla. Okay, yeah, it's that
Speaker 1: you know, giants, salonic storm that spins out from the tropics,
Speaker 1: feeding on warm ocean waters, and a lot of the
Speaker 1: time ends up coming closer and closer towards major centers
Speaker 1: of population UHA in coastal areas, right, and then they
Speaker 1: also have that low atmospheric pressure that's trademark the high winds,
Speaker 1: the heavy rain, and all that stuff that's associated with
Speaker 1: the hurricane. Yep, if they they're they're spinning feeding off
Speaker 1: all that warm water and warm air, is is is
Speaker 1: being sucked towards that low pressure center and rising up
Speaker 1: at the eye of the hurricane and basically like a
Speaker 1: big column of low pressure air rising into the sky
Speaker 1: where then disperses in in storm activity. Yeah, I just
Speaker 1: think of that quintessential shot on the weather station that
Speaker 1: we've all seen with the hurricane spiraling in and you know,
Speaker 1: headed ominously for some coastal destination near you. So hurricane
Speaker 1: season runs, just to give you us some quick facts,
Speaker 1: that runs from June through November in the northern Hemisphere
Speaker 1: and then down in the southern hemisphere obviously runs from
Speaker 1: January to March. Right. In the Godzilla movies, they tend
Speaker 1: to try and uh slow down the mon stop the
Speaker 1: monster one way or another. With hurricanes, we really haven't
Speaker 1: had many options as far as stopping the hurricane goes. Generally,
Speaker 1: it's more battened down the hatches or evacuated. Just evacuate
Speaker 1: out of there. Just get get the heck out of dogs.
Speaker 1: That's all you can can really do. However, that there
Speaker 1: have been plenty of of times where people come up
Speaker 1: with sort of hair brained schemes to try and stop
Speaker 1: the hurricane or like I say, slow it down right right,
Speaker 1: I mean, because hurricanes can be pretty crazy. I mean,
Speaker 1: they can kill a lot of people. I think the
Speaker 1: biggest one on record in terms of loss of life
Speaker 1: in the US was eight thousand people and that was
Speaker 1: back in nineteen hundred in Galveston, Texas and Costlius. Of course,
Speaker 1: um is a hurricane Katrina, which resulted in about eighty
Speaker 1: billion in property damages. So slowing a hurricane down or
Speaker 1: stopping it, I mean, it makes sense in terms of
Speaker 1: of human life and damage. Yeah, So what are there
Speaker 1: are were just some of the ideas that people have
Speaker 1: put forth on the table. Well, Um, under under natural circumstances,
Speaker 1: hurricane is not going to stop until basically it runs
Speaker 1: out of food. It until it it no longer has
Speaker 1: warm water to uh to feed off of, which generally
Speaker 1: means that it either ends up going into cooler areas
Speaker 1: and uh and just disperses into more manageable storm activita,
Speaker 1: more manageable storm activiation, more manageable storm activity, or it
Speaker 1: actually makes landfall, um, and of course it's on land
Speaker 1: there and then it disperses as well. But if it
Speaker 1: makes landfall, obviously you've kind of lost if it hits
Speaker 1: the city. So one way is to simply take away
Speaker 1: that warm water and replace it with cool water. So
Speaker 1: one method of trying to do that sticking a giant
Speaker 1: water pump essentially on the bottom of the ocean. Basically
Speaker 1: that yeah, sticking a giant water pump on the bottom
Speaker 1: of the ocean, or trying to create a giant bubble
Speaker 1: of cool water, because underneath all that warm water that
Speaker 1: the hurricanes speeding over, there's plenty of cool water. It's
Speaker 1: just a matter of can we get it up bring
Speaker 1: it to the surface. And that the only problem there
Speaker 1: is that that would entail a whole lot of effort.
Speaker 1: We're talking like man sup pump system, a lot of
Speaker 1: pumping are or you know, technology would we just don't
Speaker 1: have or at least don't have on that scale. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you give you an idea, I mean, Hurricane Katrina
Speaker 1: at one point, her diameter was measuring um roughly the
Speaker 1: size of the Gulf of Mexico. So that's that's a
Speaker 1: pretty big undertaking. Yeah, even even if you're you're not
Speaker 1: going to try and cool the entire Gulf of Mexico,
Speaker 1: just just cooling a large enough area to have any
Speaker 1: kind of impact on the hurricane, and it's just a
Speaker 1: monumental endeavor, right, And that's not even that's not even
Speaker 1: mentioning the effect on the wildlife, who would probably react
Speaker 1: pretty badly to it. Yeah, I think we have enough
Speaker 1: crap on the bottom of the ocean. We don't need
Speaker 1: to add more pipes and whatnot. So that's one method
Speaker 1: that we're not really looking at too closely anymore. Another is,
Speaker 1: instead of coming in underneath the hurricane, coming in from
Speaker 1: above and dropping powder, absorbent powders and super observants, super
Speaker 1: absorbent powers. A lot of this is uh, pretty much
Speaker 1: the same idea as cloud seating, of which the US
Speaker 1: and China have both engaged in. So China did it.
Speaker 1: We've written our to cloth at it. Can China control
Speaker 1: the weather? Yeah, because they don't really want they didn't
Speaker 1: really want clouds over Beijing or in the Olympics, and
Speaker 1: if they are clouds over farmlands, they kind of want
Speaker 1: those clouds to go ahead and rain down and the
Speaker 1: water the crops. So the idea is basically a hurricane
Speaker 1: is made out of clouds, and if you can turn
Speaker 1: those clouds in rain, you are effectively taken out the
Speaker 1: legs of the hurricane. Sure. Sure, so you're sucking the
Speaker 1: moisture out right. So you know we're talking, uh, dropping
Speaker 1: like a lot of potassium chloride, or if you're gonna
Speaker 1: use some of the the more regular cloud seeding materials
Speaker 1: silver iodine crystals, dropping those into the hurricane. And again
Speaker 1: this would be a massive undertaking. The guy is a
Speaker 1: gentleman by the name of Peter cor Danny if if
Speaker 1: I have if I've pronounced his name right, Um, he
Speaker 1: was thinking that I would take about four hundred tons
Speaker 1: of this super observement powder. Um and then you know,
Speaker 1: just flinging it. How do you get it up there?
Speaker 1: I guess just lift plain after a plane or not clear,
Speaker 1: not clear on that and face maybe I don't think
Speaker 1: he was clear on it either, because he said, and
Speaker 1: I quote to the Chicago Tribune, the only thing we
Speaker 1: don't know about is the impact on a hurricane and
Speaker 1: the after effects. So we just don't know if it'll
Speaker 1: work or anything. Yeah, that's the only flaw on that plan. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I do like the idea of the super observent powder.
Speaker 1: Now it's kind of like telcom powder. Here's another pretty
Speaker 1: interesting approach, is, um, why don't we just you know,
Speaker 1: lodger or hawk a nuclear weapons smack in the center
Speaker 1: of a hurricane. Yeah, who thinks that's a good idea? Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know that anyone things it's a good idea.
Speaker 1: But people always bring this up. People love to throw
Speaker 1: nukes at our problems. And okay, so so one major
Speaker 1: flaw with with this is, um, we have no idea
Speaker 1: if a nuclear weapon could alter a storm's architecture. Really,
Speaker 1: no idea. And then the side issue of all that
Speaker 1: radioactive fallout from said nuclear bomb and then taking advantage
Speaker 1: of the hurricane force winds that would do a really
Speaker 1: great job of dispersing that all of the environment. And
Speaker 1: so all we've finentially done is made a already dangerous
Speaker 1: hurricane radioactive. Yeah, essentially. And then the other part of
Speaker 1: it is, I don't even know that a nuclear weapon
Speaker 1: would be strong enough. I read the stat that said,
Speaker 1: fully developed hurricane can release heat energy at this crazy rate.
Speaker 1: And here's the rate five to twenty times ten tot plots.
Speaker 1: So that's totally unquantifiable to to do anybody listening, even
Speaker 1: to me who's reading it. But that's equivalent to a
Speaker 1: ten megatime nuclear bomb exploding every twenty minutes. Wow. So
Speaker 1: so we're not even talking like dropping a singular nuclear
Speaker 1: weapon into a hurricane. We're talking in all out nuclear
Speaker 1: strike on hurricane. Yeah, on a single storm. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: so strike the strike the nuclear weapon approached. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: so that's not gonna work. Um, what else do we have. Well,
Speaker 1: one idea that's uh that's come out in the last
Speaker 1: year or so, and it's getting a fair amoun of
Speaker 1: press here and there is uh also kind of kind
Speaker 1: of macho, kind of manly, and that's that you have
Speaker 1: a hurricane approaching the city, Well you just get a
Speaker 1: couple of fighter pilots to jump in in some planes
Speaker 1: and supersonic planes and fly into that hurricane and going
Speaker 1: at about mountain at about mock one, do a few
Speaker 1: loops around the eye of the hurricane and then get
Speaker 1: out of there. And then and bam. You'll either slow
Speaker 1: down the hurricane or disrupted enough to where it just disperses.
Speaker 1: So how would this work exactly? Well, Uh, supersonic hurricane
Speaker 1: neutralizing or super sonic hurricane suppression UM, which is a
Speaker 1: great name. Yeah, it depends more on the supersonic side
Speaker 1: of endless on the airplane because airplanes lying in a hurricane,
Speaker 1: that's I mean, they might as well be insects. But
Speaker 1: when when an airplane breaks the sound barrier A it
Speaker 1: produces that you know, magnificent sonic boom. But it's also
Speaker 1: creates this conical wave, this shock wave of pressure that
Speaker 1: comes out from it. And this pressure can be pretty strong.
Speaker 1: UM to put it, put it in terms you can
Speaker 1: sort of relate to if you're standing on the seaside,
Speaker 1: just the atmosphere around you is exerting about fourteen point
Speaker 1: seven pounds per square inch pressure on and you don't
Speaker 1: really notice it. Yeah, it's just there. Uh. A F
Speaker 1: four phantom flying at a low altitude, though, can can
Speaker 1: the shock wave from that plane can? If it's going
Speaker 1: mock one can exert about a hundred and forty four
Speaker 1: pounds of pressure per square foot, and just sixteen pounds
Speaker 1: is enough to potentially like damage windows or structures. So
Speaker 1: that's a pretty amountic increase. So right, yeah, it's not
Speaker 1: so much the planes. It's the fact that you have
Speaker 1: you would have this basically this worm of of expanding
Speaker 1: pressure moving around in the hurricane and uh, disrupting the
Speaker 1: pressure enough to to essentially kill or alter the hurricane.
Speaker 1: Is that that's the idea pretty much. And the guys
Speaker 1: behind this belief, they're out of Ohio. Yeah, universe see
Speaker 1: an acron and Ohio to Russian guy. But name of
Speaker 1: Arcady Arkady Lenoff, I believe. Yeah. Lenoff is basically highlighting
Speaker 1: two key ways of taking out a hurricane. Mainly, a
Speaker 1: hurricane at least in the northern Hemisphere is rotating counterclockwise.
Speaker 1: So the idea as you fly these planes in going clockwise,
Speaker 1: it's like if you if you stick your thumb up
Speaker 1: into a into a ceiling fan to try and stop it,
Speaker 1: because that's always a good idea. We'll not sticking it
Speaker 1: straight up, but you know, if you basically you're applying
Speaker 1: alternate opposite pressure. So um, yeah, the hurricanes moving one way,
Speaker 1: you have your fighter planes come in the other way
Speaker 1: with all this pressure from there from there from the
Speaker 1: shock wave that comes out from them. Uh, and the
Speaker 1: ideas that you either slow them or you even stop
Speaker 1: that that turning entirely. Let's say, that's a pretty awesome
Speaker 1: task for them to to undertake. Yeah, but the key
Speaker 1: is the pressure. And this guy's claiming that just two
Speaker 1: planes could do it, just like two f fours. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would do the trick for regular hurricane. Okay, so
Speaker 1: that this on seems to have some problems with it
Speaker 1: as well, I'm sorry, Russian guy from University of Akron. Fit. Wait,
Speaker 1: but he's also saying that he could fly a couple
Speaker 1: in at a low altitude and it would basically accomplish
Speaker 1: the same thing as the pumping of the water pumping unfit.
Speaker 1: It would disrupt the water and bring cause an upwelling
Speaker 1: of cooler oceanic water that would again take away that
Speaker 1: warm water that the right, sort of similar to that
Speaker 1: giant water pump. Yeah, and it would be kind of
Speaker 1: side benefit. Okay, Well, right, so this approach is problems right,
Speaker 1: So how long do you have to fly the plane
Speaker 1: around there? I mean, how many passes do you have
Speaker 1: to do? What if it runs out of fuel? I mean,
Speaker 1: these these guys consume fuel like it's nobody's business. Jet
Speaker 1: fuel ain't cheap and uh and is it indeed, is
Speaker 1: it going to be a matter of a guy flies
Speaker 1: in fifteen minutes later he's you know, there's a dead
Speaker 1: hurricane falling behind him? Or is this like wave after
Speaker 1: wave of flights you know? Not clear? Not clear at all? Also,
Speaker 1: which storms do you shoot down? Yeah? Not all of them, surely?
Speaker 1: And do you do you just do you wait till
Speaker 1: they get you know, close enough to harm just the
Speaker 1: United States? Or do you you get them when they're
Speaker 1: about to hit Haiti? You know when it seems like
Speaker 1: politics becomes involved there? Yeah, meteorologist is god. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like a good idea. And then I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: so really like which storms and when do you shoot
Speaker 1: him down? How long do you let them play out?
Speaker 1: Like do you wait till it, you know, hits a
Speaker 1: certain category before it's deemed a danger you know? Well,
Speaker 1: and the other thing is why not let mother nature
Speaker 1: blow off a little steam every once in a while. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's a that's a key criticism for a
Speaker 1: lot of these, uh, these ideas that are out there,
Speaker 1: people saying that, hey, you know, hurricanes. They're natural. They're
Speaker 1: not radioactive monsters rising up out of the ocean. There, Godzilla,
Speaker 1: They're no Godzilla. They are a natural part of the environment,
Speaker 1: and they do important U tasks like watering crops. I mean,
Speaker 1: when when a hurricane makes landfall, it may you know,
Speaker 1: it may destroy a city, but it's also bringing a
Speaker 1: lot of rain for a lot of them'll be in
Speaker 1: a massive flood. But but yeah, no, it definitely does
Speaker 1: bring much needed water. Yeah. And if we don't let
Speaker 1: let the if we don't let the weather release that
Speaker 1: all that energy in the form of a hurricane, how
Speaker 1: is it going to be released? You know? So what
Speaker 1: I take from this is Godzilla is not always a
Speaker 1: bad things, all right, Right, Sometimes, yeah, sometimes Godzilla is
Speaker 1: a good thing. You know. It need a little Godzilla
Speaker 1: from times at times. So if you want to read
Speaker 1: about hurricanes and all sorts of monsters and other things
Speaker 1: that Mother Nature can throw out, you good how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com right or check out our science blog
Speaker 1: at blogs dot how stuff works dot com. Thanks guys
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
Speaker 1: that how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works?
Speaker 1: Check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
Speaker 1: Com home page,