Does anybody know if blowing this deepwater geyser up will

help to stop the flow or make it worse. Also, if that would be a good idea, what are the advantages of a nuclear bomb as opposed to regular big ass regular bombs?

They'd simply drill a small well next to the gusher and drop in a nuke. The explosion would compress the rock around the gusher, and it would cut off the channel the oil uses to escape to the surface. It has to be noted that the USSR didn't give two shits about the death and destruction the oil spill caused or the amount of radiation in the water left behind by the nuke. All they were concerned about was whether the well was dead or not.

But, If it would work better than conventional weapons to stop the leak, I think we have to start thinking this way. I mean, another few months and the Gulf will be dead anyway. Is the radiation going to make that much difference? Does it have some sort of advantage of conventional bombs.

At any rate, it's in my backyard. I live on the Mississippi coast, and the fishing industry here is already destroyed, just five years after Katrina nearly destroyed the fishing industry. NOAA issued advisories that all harbors around here dealing with fishing be shut down for safety's sake. Would you eat catfish that has crude oil for blood and catches on fire when near an open flame? If it got to the point where all the fish and birds are dead, using a nuke would be little more than a fait accompli. Not like there was anything left to save anyway. I'm hoping it doesn't get to that point.

I lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis. Some of my freaking neighbors were having bomb shelters built in their back yards.

Don

desks in grade school for protection from a nuclear blast, going into the hallways and standing along the corridors for protection, air raid sirens each Saturday being tested, being told not to look at the flash of light from a nuclear bomb blast, like what a fucken joke. And a Nike base down the road. My grade school was near a chemical plant one way and DOD the other. Like hiding under the desk was any help. And the little pamphlets on how to survive a nuclear blast. What a bunch of propaganda.

Even as little kids my friends and I used to wonder WTF. And I recall well bomb shelters built in back yards and the stuff on TV about home made shelters later on... In fact my entire life has been filled with one thing or another about war being born during WWII, black outs at night, special lens caps on car headlights, blankets over windows at night during WWII.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nike_missile_locations

We would get the guard dogs all riled up until the soldiers in their Jeeps would have to come out and threaten us with arrest if we didn't cut the shit. The next weekend we would do it all over again.

It was a different time thats for sure.

Don

on the surface and on fire. And the last time they tried was in 1981-- that was the one that didn't work.

Absolutely nothing even hints this would work on an oil well a mile under water.

The important aspect is the nuke's effect on the surrounding bedrock. Would such an explosion compress the bedrock and squeeze off the flow?

At any rate, I don't see it as a realistic option as much as a fatalistic one. If the ocean were already dead, I wouldn't care if Obama did order the navy to drop a nuke down there, but as it stands, I am not yet writing off the entire region south of my home as a gigantic dead zone.

they suspect the time it didn't work was because they didn't position it properly.

They also designed a special bomb for the purpose.

Special bomb... precise positioning of special bomb... Russians gave up on the idea...

Doesn't look promising.

I was using "drop" as short-hand for what the Russians did.

I think with a bomb the oil would still come out.