Slashdot Mirror
Oil Leak Could Be Stopped With a Nuke
An anonymous reader writes "The oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico could be stopped with an underground nuclear blast, a Russian newspaper reports. Komsomoloskaya Pravda, the best-selling Russian daily, reports that in Soviet times such leaks were plugged with controlled nuclear blasts underground. The idea is simple, KP writes: 'The underground explosion moves the rock, presses on it, and, in essence, squeezes the well's channel.' It's so simple, in fact, that the Soviet Union used this method five times to deal with petrocalamities, and it only didn't work once."
What could possibly go wrong?
Life starts at the end of your comfort zone.
It's so simple, in fact, that the Soviet Union used this method five times to deal with petrocalamities, and it only didn't work once.
Success rate does not illustrate simplicity, especially not with that small of a sample set. That could be the equivalent of saying, "Putting a man on the moon is so simple, in fact, that the United States has used their method once and it has never failed."
My work here is dung.
I don't think we have any orbital nukes. We would have to nuke it from orbit, as it's the only way to be sure.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
What problems can't a nuclear explosion solve?
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
...it's that any and all natural disasters can be stopped by the liberal use of nuclear weapons.
But could a large conventional blast do the same thing?
If they were trying to seal the well I don't have much doubt that they could do it... and quickly. They tried (and failed) to secure an "oil collection device" that they sold to the news agencies as a "cap" but it is a "cap" designed to let them recover 85% of the oil that is spewing out. THEY DO NOT WANT TO CAP THE WELL. To permanently seal it off would mean they have to drill another one before they could start to profit off of this deposit again. Horrible ecological disaster, and we are still letting them try to profit off of it instead of capping it.
I'm trying to figure out which part of this story is the scariest.
... that someone has suggested setting off an underground nuke to close an oil well?
... finding out that the Soviets did this all the time?
... finding out that the USSR was so careless they had six "petrocalamities" worth trying this trick on?
... finding out that there's an actual word for an oil accident of this size?
Duct tape can solve almost anything. I think they need to look into this a bit ... plus its very inexpensive
Back in the late eighties, when the world was turned upside down by the fall of the iron curtain. my friends and I speculated that the fact that Reagan had survived assassination* had torn a hole in reality, thrusting us into a Bizarro Universe.
Now we have Russians suggesting something that only would make sense in a really bad TV movie or potboiler eco-disaster novel.
Like the man uptopic says, what could possibly go wrong?
We're there, man.
Stefan
* Schoolyard mythology: presidents elected in years ending in 0 always died in office.
For some reason I see many people in boats waiting to pick up all the dead fish that float up from the nuke blast. Sort of a super sized red neck fishing lure.
On a serious note, as others have said, there is a lot of methane down there. I remember seeing a deep sea sub video of the methane bubbling up in the Gulf of Mexico. They captured it in a tube and the methane formed methane crystals due to the cold and pressure down there. Unless the plan is to cap the entire Gulf of Mexico to capture this methane, I would like to see a bit more informed planning.
The Gulf of Mexican? Honestly? I mean come on...
a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
As a pyromaniac extraordinaire I fully endorse this under one condition:
That a TON of high speed camera footage is available at no charge to me later. Outside of that I'm sold.
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
Was if they had used Chuck Norris to punch the well dry it would have caused massive earthquakes all over the world making what was shown in the movie 2012 looks like a grabage truck passing by.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
What was their alternative?
They didn't have firepower or mechanized armor that could match what the Germans had. But they did have many, many people.
Regardless, their technique worked. In fact, it worked so well that they alone were responsible for much of the damage that Germany sustained.
So in the US, controlled underground nuclear blasts would be plugged with oil leaks?
Nukes are small, cheap and very efficient.
Here is a conventional underwater explosion - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_Rock
"Between November 1955, and April 1958, a three-shift operation involving an average of 75 men worked to build a 174 meter vertical shaft from Maud Island, a 762 meter horizontal shaft to the base of Ripple Rock, and two main 91 meter vertical shafts into the twin peaks, from which "coyote" shafts were drilled for the explosives. 1,270 metric tons of Nitramex 2H explosives were placed in these shafts, estimated at ten times the amount needed for a similar explosion above water."
A nuclear underwater explosion - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wigwam
The difference, with a nuke you just put it down where you want it with a cable, or more likely, a ROV, stand back and detonate it.
What was their alternative?
Well, they were about to try the concrete dome aproach, but the germans refused to get under it. Aparently the cheese piece wasn't big enough or something.
This is just an excuse to Nuke the Whales.
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
Can be viewed here.
Synopsis: If the oil leak is in a desert where nothing of value is living anyway and it has been going on for several years and it shows no sign of stopping and you've tried just about everything else, then a nuclear blast could work. However, in the gulf of mexico it makes no sense because we haven't tried all that many things and the leak hasn't been gong on for several years and there's lots of things around of value, including people and marine wildlife.
Drill, baby, drill.
The stories and info posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood.
Only fools would take it as fact.
Know your history.
The Stalinist purges had decimated the upper ranks of the military leaving the entire military structure in shambles. Furthermore, Stalin himself chose to ignore critical intelligence about the timing of the German invasion.
So if it were not for the insane dictatorial policies of the Communists, the Russian army would have been in a much better condition to fend off the German attack.
Hey, if Pravda says it, it must be completely true!
I am officially gone from
But they did have many, many people.
And a capital located inland quite far from Germany. And atrocious winters. And a willingness to use scorched-earth tactics that resulted in a lack of food for the German army.
And an enemy that apparently never studied the Napoleonic Wars. ;)
A little copy/paste work allowed me to run it through google translate:
Science
Petroleum leak in the Gulf of Mexico can be eliminated nuclear explosion
Only one nuclear bomb could save the U.S. from ecological disaster
In the USSR, and not as fountains and stopped using the peaceful atom
Vladimir Lagowski - 03/05/2010
It is possible that unsuccessful attempts to stop the leakage of oil from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico through the underwater robots compel professionals to take extreme measures. Namely - to blow up next to the damaged wells nuclear warhead.
It sounds terribly and incredibly - the idiotic joke. But in fact there were several cases where catastrophes in the fields of fighting in this way. In the former USSR - five times. When nothing else has not helped. It's now in the Gulf of Mexico, where oil oozes out of the way from three places.
First underground nuclear explosion was used to extinguish burning gas wells in "Urt-Bulak (80 km from Bukhara) 30 September 1966. Power charge was 30 kilotons. For comparison, the Hiroshima bomb exploded about 20 kilotons. But at a height of 600 meters. A near Bukhara - at a depth of six kilometers.
The idea of the method is simple: an underground explosion pushes the rock, presses it and actually squeezes the channel well.
Powerful nuclear "plugs" - sometimes 3 Hiroshima - we have enjoyed until 1979. And only once failed. In 1972 in Kharkov region failed to block the emergency gas blowout. The explosion was mysteriously left on the surface, forming a mushroom cloud. Although the charge was minimal - just a 4 kiloton. And laid deep - for more than two kilometers.
Total probability of failure in the Gulf of Mexico - 20 percent. Americans could take a chance. The chance of dying during the flight to the moon they were even higher.
Of course, we used a civilian nuclear program on the ground, the Americans as to the sea - under water where the ocean depth reaches 1500 meters.
But in principle there is no difference - you still need to drill a well at a distance from leaking. And it lowered the bomb. As in the movie "Armageddon" with Bruce Willis in the role of a driller. It is desirable that the calculations were done correctly. Such hope is: the U.S. is full of smart scientists and powerful computers. And Russia could have contributed. We still live peaceful nuclear demolition.
Nuclear war in the peaceful
USSR organized underground nuclear explosions for peaceful purposes in the period from 1966 to 1988. In total, the former Soviet Union tore more than a hundred atomic bombs. According to some data - 124, on the other 169. And that - not counting the military testing of nuclear weapons.
According to the official wording of the explosions were carried out in the interests of the national economy. Among them - the majority - for seismic minerals and for probing the depths. Explosions create underground reservoirs for gas storage, chemical waste, digging canals, building dams, increased the oil recovery. And did not think something harmful. Although, if the estimate, there are hundreds of atomic bombs, perhaps not in every nuclear war to explode.
Peaceful nuclear energy "fooling" and in the U.S.. And they began earlier - in 1962. But in the end produced a much smaller explosions in the interests of the capitalist economy. Although plans were grandiose.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
That's what first comes to your mind when you hear about nuclear explosions on the bottom of the ocean? Waves?
What about wakin' the motherfuckin' Cthulhu man? YEAH!
I guess you feel really silly right about now.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Well, the Russians could have done what the rest of continental Europe did: briefly offer token resistance and then capitulate to save lives at the cost of their freedom. But the joke was on the Germans, USSR didn't have any freedom to lose!
This whole revisionism that swings the pendulum of near-complete responsibility for toppling Germany from the US to the USSR is just as wrong-headed as the original assumption. Do you really think the USSR could have survived a German military undivided by multiple fronts powered by an industry undisturbed by coordinated day and night bombing by the US and Britain? You might try telling the families of the crews of the 18,418 US aircraft lost over German-held territory how it was the Russians alone that did much of the damage. Lord knows that the nearly 1.7 million missions flown by the USAAF alone were just larks to go have tea on B-17s. Nevermind also that the US provided a significant amount of material support including wholly assembled aircraft and trucks to the USSR during WWII to supplement its initially crippled industry. The list goes on.
Neither the US *nor* the USSR 'single-handedly' won WWII, nor did one or the other do 'most of the damage'.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Misread that as "Russian Chinese [food]".
Had some Russian Thai food near Ocean City, MD, (Russians comprise most of the seasonal labor force there for some reason). Very confused and weak.
To quote from 'I Robot' (to put on my nerd hat), "That, is the right question. There is too much of a knee jerk reaction to this proposition. Meanwhile many here see no problem with nuclear power. A nuclear detonation would be underground and away from the actual leak. The intent is to shift rock layers not break through and create a mushroom cloud. After many, many years of test detonations there is a lot of knowledge on how to detonate a device and keep it underground. In fact, given that we aren't currently glowing due to all the underground (and even above ground) nuclear tests that have happened around the globe over sixty years, I doubt there would even be a lot of radiation released.
If they could do this quickly, they could save tens of thousands of people's jobs (fishing, tourism, etc.) and millions, or even billions of dollars of clean up costs and lost wages. They could do this much faster than drilling a relief well as they wouldn't have to do significant side drilling. Before discarding the notion completely, it would be worth considering based on cost benefit analysis and not GW Bush type gut feeling. It might not be practical, but it worth asking the question in a rational manner before discarding it. This is a bad and extreme situation.
On a side note, California DOT once considered using a nuclear bomb to blast part of mountain to make it easier to put Highway 40 through. The U.S. did examine using nuclear blasts as a way to help extract natural gas but dismissed it since it irradiated the gas too much. However in this current case, they aren't trying to form reservoirs or extract the gas. They are trying to stop it from escaping by pushing on the rock (which doesn't seem to me to necessarily have to be extremely close to the out of control well, or even the reserves).
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
The mistake was using cheese for bait. They should have used beer and brats.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
How do we know it won't make the hole bigger?
What was their alternative?
Well, the Russian soldiers alternatives were -
Get shot for certain by your commanding officer if you didn't fight
Or, probably get shot by the Germans if you did.
That kind of motivation beats a draft any day!
"But this one goes to 11!"
We all know the real party responsible for Germany's defeat is Italy. If they had held the front in North Africa, Germany wouldn't have had to divert troops to North Africa. Had that front held, Sicily wouldn't have been invaded. Had Sicily not been invaded, Germany wouldn't have had to divert troops to Sicily. Had Italy not screwed up in the Balkans, Germany wouldn't have had to divert troops to Macedonia and Greece, and Operation Barbarossa would have gone ahead as scheduled, before Winter would have caught them off guard. In fact, Italian incompetence causing Germany to have to split forces and support multiple fronts over and over again is really what did them in. There wouldn't have been an Eastern Front by the time Overlord happened had Mussolini not tried to be Caesar but only managed being Sulla. Hell, Claudius even conquered Britain, and he was inbred and possibly retarded.
OK, there's not a lot of life down there to be affected, and the radiation isn't going to propagate without a lot of dissipation. Got it. OK with it. It's an environmental catastrophe, but nowhere NEAR the scale of the one we are currently experiencing, and you gotta go with the lesser evil even if it is an evil.
But that still leaves me with a big, possibly unfounded, concern.
I'm not a civil engineer, but how much do we really know about the seabed at those depths? I mean, are we placing these wells where they are because we know the thicknesses with a decent level of confidence, or only because we know the crust we have to drill through is thinner there and therefore easier to drill through?
If the crust is thinner, how do we know that the area we are placing the nukes is thick enough to withstand the explosion? I mean, the idea is to shift a crapload of rock, right? What happens if the crust underneath is thin enough that it ruptures, or there are cracks or fissures we expose in the process? Can we guarantee that won't happen to a relatively high level of confidence? What are the odds that we might cap this hole, but make one ten or a hundred times larger - large enough that it's uncappable even employing the same dramatic technique, and spews out oil at rates that make the current spill look pathetic?
This is a bad and extreme situation, agreed, but what is the risk that this plan would make it far, far worse?
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Their enemy also had Mussolini as an ally. The guy fancied himself the next Roman emperor and a military genius, and Germany routinely had to divert resources to bail him out. When Italian forces invaded Greece in 1941 it was rapidly pushed out, even losing territory it controlled prior to the attack; the German Twelfth Army had to be sent down to rescue it, depriving Germany of more than 150,000 men that could have made a difference in Operation Barbarossa.
Of course, the fact that Mussolini's senior officers were also incompetent (based on the perceptions of Erwin Rommel, among others) didn't help. Hitler wasn't the military genius he thought himself to be, either, but he had good officers that knew how to work around him until they were relieved of their commands.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Agh!
you know nothing of trapping a German..
Sauerbraten, a huge glass of Weizenbock, and a Kuchen.
Even Diter would be tempted....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
...Who solved the East front issue throwing at it 20 million human lives.
Dear god... you DISAGREE with that?
While it should be noted however that a lot of the Soviet's armies were cannon fodder conscripted from satellite nations and Soviet prisons, both the Soviets and the French deserve our thanks for throwing bodies at the German war machine, and at huge cost.
The French took the noble step of drawing a line in the sand and *choosing* war with Nazi Germany. The French didn't have as many bodies as the Soviets did, and the French made the mistake of not fortifying their non-German borders (discounting a German attack through Belgium).
The Soviets were less noble, having made deals to support and supply the Nazi regime... up to the day before Hitler attacked them.
I'm assuming you were not rooting for Hitler here, which is one way to view your statement/ Learn your history before making such wild statements, PLEASE.
No one is saying Western efforts were easy. But they simply do not match the scale of the Russian war machine. And while American material contributions were desperately needed and gratefully received, I recently read(*) that they amounted to no more than 7% of Russian industrial output.
(*) The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War by Andrew Roberts
Wow...after having JUST witnessed a discussion that pretty well demonstrates how NO SINGLE ENTITY decided the outcome of the war...you chime in with an equally absurd stubborn insistence that it was the fault of a particular singular entity. Have you learnt nothing?!?!?! All contributing forces decided the outcome...all the effects are dovetailed!!!!!!!
We got lucky back then, let's keep pushing our luck.
Until he fukin' WAKES UP!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
What was their alternative?
They didn't have firepower or mechanized armor that could match what the Germans had. But they did have many, many people.
Regardless, their technique worked. In fact, it worked so well that they alone were responsible for much of the damage that Germany sustained.
Very true. One of the most pants-wettingly terrifying statistics I've heard in relation to it was that for every two Russians the Germans shot, another eleven appeared on the front. That sounds like something out of a zombie movie.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
The party responsible for Germany's defeat is Hitler. His failure to land troops in Britain and to start a (two front) war with the Soviets was what did him in in the end. Good fortune for the rest of the world.
If the Allies could not have a staging area so close in Britain, and there was no Eastern front, the Germans could have taken all of Africa.
That's a 20% fail rate. Pretty bad odds if you ask me...
Your point is actually a good one - although entertaining to dismiss this idea out of hand, it has been used before and there is a lot of engineering data available. But, and a large one - You don't just get Bruce Willis and friends to ride out to the site, put on some surplus space suits and drop the thing into a six foot hole. The engineering analysis for this could take months to years. Who knows? Maybe a couple of engineers in Houston are sitting in an air conditioned hellhole^Hoffice discussing this very issue with guys with very short hair and no sense of humor at this very moment.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I think WWII is the most fertile half-decades in history for what-if scenarios. I agree that Italy was a major cause of upsetting German timelines. However I think that the primary mistake was backing off of Sea Lion. If the majority of forces organized in France could have been moved to take down the UK, Africa would have fallen into place as a natural consequence, and support for British operations would have also been significantly curtailed in the Pacific Theater, easing pressure for Japan. Great Britain was very much a snake coiled around the whole world in the 40s, and cutting off the head would have robbed those many coils of their strength.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Well, I guess Hitler thought that he had classic blunder #1 canceled out by #2. If I remember right, he thought that he had essentially gotten the Russians to go against a Sicilian (not directly, but they were allies) when death was on the line... Too bad Benito was northern Italian...
But Africa was Italy's spoils, as per the Tripartide pact -- Italy wanting to move into former Roman territory, and Africa being sort of completely worthless to Germany. But, perhaps if the US/UK/France/etc hadn't remained mostly neutral during the Spanish Civil War and come in on the side of the Republic, then it wouldn't have been an issue. Or, if, you know... the Treaty of Versailles not been a total screw job, pissing off all of Germany and giving the NSDAP something legitimate to gripe about as a foot up on their regular agenda. But, who's counting?
What was their alternative?
I don't know, maybe not purging the leadership of your Army? Maybe letting Generals make the decisions instead of political commissars?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
For some reason reading this article made me think about the SNL commercial parody for Bad Idea Jeans.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/10310/saturday-night-live-bad-idea-jeans
"Seven years of college down the drain. Might as well join the f-ing Peace Corps." - John 'Bluto' Blutarsky
Using nukes to for mining purposes (and that's what this is, more or less) is nothing new.
The article mentions that the USSR used nukes some 169 times to create canals or underground chambers. Within the US there was Operation Plowshare, where Edward Teller (inventor of the hydrogen bomb) got the idea to use nukes to create large deep water harbors, open up mines, level pesky mountains, or even carve a straight and level road across the Panamanian isthmus. It was never tried other than some proof-of-concept blasts. Some folks thought it might not be such a good idea to set of nuclear weapons like demolition charges. Wimps - no sense of adventure.
The article itself does not cite any source.
Here is what the article says:
- such bombs were indeed used, 5 times throughout the history of the USSR
- the first time it happened in September 1966
- it was a 30 kiloton payload, which was detonated 1.5 km underneath the surface
- after that there were 3 other successful explosions of such kind
- it once failed in 1972. The problem was that they "failed to cover an alternative gas fountain". I am not sure I know how to interpret that correctly, but from my understanding, there was an "escape tunnel" that lead to the surface of the planet, which they did not or could not block/cover. The result was that a "mushroom cloud" formed on the surface.
The article says the explosion compresses rocks (and all the stuff in the higher layers of the lithosphere), which block the channels from which the gas flows. Water could displace the rocks/matter underneath it - and achieve the same effect. That's a rough translation.
EOF
The difference between their case and this case is that the explosions happened underground, at a depth of 1.5 .. 2 km, those were NOT underwater explosions.
Another difference is that the Soviets used the method to deal with gas leaks, not oil leaks.
Maybe they should try using regular expressions instead?
The saddest poem
Stalingrad and Kursk were both over by the time the massive USAAF bombing campaign geared up. And there is no way in hell D-Day and the subsequent operations by the Western Allies could have succeeded if two-thirds of the Wehrmacht hadn't already been lying face-down on Russian soil. This is the reality: Russians did more and sacrificed more, by far, than any other people to stop Nazi Germany, and the numbers of troops and amount of materiel involved in the Eastern Front dwarf the entire rest of the European war combined. While it is literally true that "Neither the US *nor* the USSR 'single-handedly' won WWII," your follow-on assertion that "nor did one or the other do 'most of the damage'" is an absurd denial of history.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Now this is the way to go fishing in the south.
Just line up the fish trawlers on one side of the Gulf and start scooping them off of the surface.
Fishing industry gets a bonanza and we seal a leak.
Oh, heck. Just drop a 48 tons of Creole seasoning in before the blast with a few hundred tons of corn and potatoes and we're done. We can just skip all the fisheries and just wait for dinner to come ashore.
But, I'll have to remember this next time we go fishing.
"No, sir mister warden. We weren't fishing with dynamite, we were just trying to plug an oil leak in the bottom of the pond"
Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
However I think that the primary mistake was backing off of Sea Lion
Except that Sea Lion wasn't achievable. How do you land troops across a body of water without air and naval supremacy? Landing operations are hard enough when you have both of those things. They are next to impossible without them.
Sandhurst ran Sea Lion through a few wargames in the 70s. Not once was the German side able to win. The best they could manage was to use mines and submarines to delay the Royal Navy. Mines and submarines could slow down the British response to a landing but they could not stop it. Eventually the Royal Navy would have reached the English Channel and at that point all bets are off.
Sea Lion was a fantasy.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
This whole revisionism that swings the pendulum of near-complete responsibility for toppling Germany from the US to the USSR is just as wrong-headed as the original assumption. Do you really think the USSR could have survived a German military undivided by multiple fronts powered by an industry undisturbed by coordinated day and night bombing by the US and Britain?
The USSR DID survive a German military undivided by multiple fronts powered by an industry undisturbed by coordinated day and night bombing by the US and Britain.
Combined US and British strategic bombing started in March of 1943. The vast majority of the German forces in the Stalingrad pocket surrendered in February of 1943. Operation Husky (the invasion of Sicily) was in mid 1943.
Could the USSR have beaten the Germans without the Allies, probably not, but they certainly could have survived. Even if the major early Soviet victories had gone to the Germans (Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad) there still would have been A LOT of people/equipment/industry/will left to fight the Germans.
I also have to point out that the "wholly assembled aircraft" the allies provided to the Russians were for the most part shit, and the myth that the Soviet industry was "crippled" at the start of the war is just that, a myth. That is unless you consider US industry "crippled" (For example the USSR produced just about the same number of tanks in 41/42 as the US did, and while lagging behind the US in aircraft production still managed to outproduce the Germans)
No, and nor does anyone else have a warhead that could be detonated at that depth and pressure. Assuming that that weapon currently in stock would be crushed we would have to design a special nuke for it. Probably take more than 90 days.
What was their alternative?
They didn't have firepower or mechanized armor that could match what the Germans had. But they did have many, many people.
Regardless, their technique worked. In fact, it worked so well that they alone were responsible for much of the damage that Germany sustained.
Umh.. didn't have the firepower or mechanized armor? Ok, granted T34's were few and far between, as were KVs when the germans attacked. I'll even grant you that the BT models they had were inferior to the better german armor. However, the problem didn't really lie with not having enough mechanization. The russians had enough heavy tanks (KV) and good mediums (early T34) to give the german Mk.IIIs and Mk.IVs a run for their money. While BTs were clearly superior to older german armor, such as Mk.IIs or captured Czech stuff. The armor just was never used in a concentrated manner, allowing germans to destroy them piecemeal.
The problem the russians had on the tactical level was lack of/poor quality training for personnel and lack of experienced leadership due to Stalin's purges. Plus initiate of the officers was heavily curtailed by the dual command system, in which the Politruk had to approve all command decisions.
On the strategic level they suffered from Stalin's "Not one step back" type policies, which led to encirclements, which led to suicidal breakout attempts of mass surrenders (which led to mass deaths by starvation, etc). This in the beginning of the war.
Later on in the war the russians had a clear quantative lead and only a minor technical handicap in both airplanes and tanks, also with less restrictions from the political apparatus. Plus throughout the war they enjoyed massive amounts of artillery firepower, which has always been the unsung hero of the Red Army. Why did they still suffer huge casualties when they clearly had an edge in mechanization (not just in numbers, but in available ammo/fuel) compared to the germans and more experienced crews? Because the leadership simply didn't care about the human casualties as long as they gained the results Stalin was expecting of them. Men were simply thrown away in futile assaults, which then later had to be done "properly", just to see if they could break through without bothering to stop to build up.
Why the rush? Berlin.. Stalin wanted it for himself and feared the allies would get there first, despite promises that they wouldn't even try.
It's a long rant.. but the gist of it is: The Soviets had many chances to save lives during the war, they just chose not to.
It worked though, I agree with you there.
Stalingrad battle ended in Feb 1943, which was before the Allied Invasion of Italy in Sept of 43. It was the turning point of the European theater.
Yes, it is revisionism to argue that the US had nothing to do with the victory of the Allies in WW2. However, it is revisionism of an equal scale to argue that the Eastern Front wasn't the beginning of the End for the Germans, and that the Russians didn't do the bulk of the work to stop the Germans. By the time the US landed in Europe - heck, by the time they landed in North Africa, the bulk of the work had been done, and what was left was mopping up operations.
Could Russia have won the War by itself? Possible, though not knowable. Could the US have won the War by itself? Unlikely, though not knowable. But Russia certainly was the place where Germany was stopped.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
The French took the noble step of drawing a line in the sand and *choosing* war with Nazi Germany.
They didn't draw a line in the sand. They stood by and did nothing while the Germans raped Poland. Germany had only a handful of divisions guarding the French frontier when they marched into Poland but the French sat behind their lines and declined to launch the offensive that was required by the treaty with Poland.
If the French wanted to draw a line in the sand they should have done it when Hitler re-militarized the Rhineland in 1936. In Hitler's own words, "The forty-eight hours after the march into the Rhineland were the most nerve-racking in my life. If the French had then marched into the Rhineland we would have had to withdraw with our tails between our legs, for the military resources at our disposal would have been wholly inadequate for even a moderate resistance."
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
An underground nuke explosion could severely change the pattern of fractures in the surrounding oil fields. This could cause either an amazing boost of production, or the end of production for most of them. Unfortunately there is no way to predict which outcome is the more likely.
Furthermore, if 1 ton of TNT caused this, can you imagine the effect of a nuke ?!?
... and Greece stopped them with only 300 men.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
Try beautiful girls with big boobs. That should work not only with Germans, but any army.
There were 27 so-called peaceful nuclear explosions in the US. one of the last in 1973 was supposed to fracture the ground in Colorado methane field to increase production. It has the contrary effect of melting a layer of glass underground and sealing off the methane. Russia used 115 bombs in similar tests . The seismic data they obtained is considered the best ever collected.
"So Jamie, there's a myth in a Russian newspaper that says you can plug an oil well with a nuclear bomb"
"We've got that pile of U235 left over from the radiation myth episode, let's skip the mock-up and go straight to full-scale."
Even the Greek army? I think not.
Italy took a large part in the trench warfare of WWI. Who do you think fought Austria-Hungary? Pixies? I highly doubt that the 5 million Italian soldiers (of which more than half a million were killed) just evaporated with the morning dew after it was over.
You imply that Italy lacked hardware, as though Fiat didn't exist or any other vehicle manufacturers, as though Italy didn't have more battleships than you've had hot dinners, etc. You further imply that because Germany came up with the autobahn that makes them more special than the people who basically invented paved roads in the first place.
No experience in desert warfare? Italians had been fighting in the Horn of Africa since the 1880s.
I'm afraid you are insufficiently informed to make a cogent argument. Italy was a failure primarily for being unable to motivate its military and use its forces decisively and effectively. In terms of supply and experience they were on par.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
I'm pretty sure sausage and beer would work for the vast majority of stereotype Germans, and those are the ones we want to kill right?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
I clicked on the "Read More ..." link expecting to find a discussion of the pros and cons of using nukes as engineering tools. And all I find so far is a discussion that should have been Godwinned out of existence long before it reached its current state.
Over the past half century, there have been some interesting proposals for engineering uses of nukes. One of my favorites was only a short distance south of the current record-setting oil spill: The proposed sea-level canal across Central America.
There have been several analyses of the possibility of such a canal. It could be much wider, deeper and cheaper than the current Panama canal, which is too small for many of the largest ships these days. Most of the proposed sites go across southern Nicaragua, where the passes through the mountains are lowest and widest. Several of the proposals amounted to burying a chain of nukes in a line through the area, and setting them off. The result would be a chain of interlocking craters with bottoms below sea level. A bit more work with large bulldozers to even out the shore line, and we'd have a canal.
There were various reasons why funding for these projects (through the US Congress, of course) was eventually rejected. One of the funnier ones came from research biologists. They pointed out that the Caribbean is a few meters higher than the east Pacific, so there would be a slow but significant east-to-west current in the canal. This would carry not just water, but lots of biological material, from the Caribbean to the Pacific. (The other direction would also happen, but would be limited to a few good swimmers).
The biologists thought this was too good a scientific opportunity to pass up, and started submitting grant proposals to do the Pacific-wide baseline population studies that would be needed to understand the ecological catastrophe that would follow. They argued that we missed a good opportunity by not doing the studies before the Saint Lawrence Seaway was built, so we were unable to track in detail the catastrophe that exterminated the Great Lakes' fishing industry, as the sea lamprey ate up all the fish in the lakes. They didn't want to lose out on all the valuable biological data that would follow the much larger catastrophe after the seal-level canal in Central America pumped thousands of new species into the tropical Pacific.
After enough of these grant proposals were submitted and Congress learned about them, the funding proposals for the canal were quietly "misplaced" and no longer discussed. Some of the biologists followed up by talking about their great disappointment that they would not be able to study such a large-scale biological "experiment". They didn't much lament the loss to engineers by the loss of a project to do large-scale nuclear construction, though I suppose in private a lot of civil engineers must have also been shedding crocodile tears over this loss to their profession.
Using a nuke on the BP well wouldn't do anything so biologically spectacular, of course. But I can see biologists hurriedly asking for funding to study the effects on the Gulf ecology. If it could be done right, we could get a lot of useful information out of the experiment.
Anyway, I'm still hoping to read lots of comments about nuclear construction ...
(Lessee; do I need a smiley to deflect the moderators who lack the humor gene? ;-)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
"the Soviet Union used this method five times to deal with petrocalamities, and it only didn't work once."
I think the lesson that can be learned here is that you need to use 5 nukes all at the same time to guarantee success.
You know, just to be sure.
You see, Killbots have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them, until they reached their limit and shut down. - Zapp Brannigan
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The battle at Stalingrad killed 1,130,000 Russians. This is almost equal to the number of lives America has lost in all the wars it has ever fought.
1/10th that were lost at Normandy. (In a shorter time of course).
And unless you are saying that they did precisely the same amount of damage obviously one side did more, it is just hard to tell.
Somewhat off-topic but for people that don't really know world history:
Germany is like a 2 mob boss fight. Poland noob pulled by being too close. Got one shot. Belgium was a mage that got too much threat before the tank came in and pulled agro. France was likely the healer, tried to cast a heal on Belgium but it didn't help, belgium goes down, agro shifted to france which got wiped out. This whole time of course Russia was solo tanking the second boss mob (called the eastern front). Then England (a druid) started tanking and dpsing western front. And the US (warlock) and Canada (hunter) came in and started putting some heavy dps on the western front. Somehow they pull through and the western front goes down, and they all go over and help out the tank with the eastern front. Raid over. I call all the epics. Sadly since everyone wants the same epic they end up getting into a fight over it (this is called the Cold War).
Oh and the warlock (US) used soulfire on japan (random additional mob) got a massive crit and one shot it.
... and Greece stopped them with only 300 men.
That's....just........brilliant.
Somebody better mod parent "informative" and send me a new coffee/keyboard combo.
"And it only didn't work once."
I have a method that's much more effective.
Stuff the hole with former Soviet government officials.
You know, the ones who think an 80% success rate at stanching calamities is par.
Man, this entire story was godwined in 1 post.
I was hoping to see some insightful comments about using nukes to stop the leak, but no, instead it apparently is WWII historical scenario day on /.
BTW: I wonder if one of our bunker busters could be deployed to the spill site on the ocean floor. Those suckers are pretty big bombs and might just do the trick without all that radioactivity.
Actually from the beginning I've been thinking that a big explosion down there might just be what's necessary.
I wonder if BP just doesn't want the bill for that sort of thing. Lord knows the price they'd have to pay for the US to set off a Nuke would probably be a little steep.
It probably wouldn't have been like Britain, at least not for a while - Nicholas II was definitely "old school" as far as monarchs went and had zero desire to share power with anyone. The German Empire was closer to a constitutional monarchy than Russia was going into World War 1 and, thanks to Wilhelm II's idolization of the military, was basically a military dictatorship with a "representative" rubber-stamping committee in the Reichstag.
That said, Russia's military probably would've been in better shape going into '39 under Tsarist rule than it was under Stalin. Russia's military was undergoing a modernization program (increased mechanization, greater operational staff independence, etc.) going into World War 1 that was a few years from completion. If World War 1 started in 1917 instead of 1914, Germany wouldn't have had a poorly organized, slowly mobilizing, poorly equipped army of peasants on its eastern frontier - it would've had an impossibly large, well-equipped professional army backed by a relatively modern infrastructure (Russia was working on getting their railroads up to international spec, among other things) bearing down on it instead and Germany knew it. That's part of the reason Moltke and the rest of the German General Staff were in such a hurry to start World War 1; their window of opportunity, rather small to begin with, was closing fast. Instead of completing the modernization program, though, Russia's military was quickly chewed to shreds by the Germans (note that the Russian military, poorly run as it was, easily handled the Austro-Hungarians without serious issue), devoured what was left of itself during the October Revolution and its aftermath, then re-adopted the grand Russian tradition of promoting officers based on political considerations instead of tactical merit under Stalin; granted, Nicholas II wasn't much better than Stalin on that front, but at least he didn't make a regular habit of killing large portions of his General Staff whenever he came down with a case of the "vapors". Similarly, Tsarist Russia's economy wouldn't have had to suffer through the pre-NEP "War Communism" economy, nor through Stalin's abandonment of the NEP and the Holomodor. Of course, some of the resulting gains would've undoubtedly been lost in the Great Depression, but millions of displaced Ukrainian peasants probably wouldn't have starved.
Long story short, Nicholas II's "divine" leadership would almost certainly have been no worse for Russia and its military than Stalin's leadership ultimately proved to be.
Also, the "tanks on horseback" bit is actually a magnificent bit of Nazi propaganda - like most militaries of the time, horses were used for reconnaissance and scouting. Don't forget that small, inexpensive, reliable all-terrain vehicles were a rather recent development; full scale production of the Kübelwagen didn't begin until 1940 and the Jeep didn't enter production until 1941.
Germany is like a 2 mob boss fight. Poland noob pulled by being too close. Got one shot. Belgium was a mage that got too much threat before the tank came in and pulled agro. France was likely the healer, tried to cast a heal on Belgium but it didn't help, belgium goes down, agro shifted to france which got wiped out. This whole time of course Russia was solo tanking the second boss mob (called the eastern front).
Huh? Soviet Union entered the war on Allied side on June 21, 1945. France and Belgium (and Netherlands and Luxembourg) were invaded on May 10, 1940, and occupation already in place by mid-1940. Up until the German invasion of its soil, the USSR was itself busy invading other countries (Finland, Poland, Baltic states), so it definitely wasn't "solo tanking" the Germans.
Oh, and Poland was Eastern Front, too, you know? Soviets actually helped the Germans there.
This whole time of course Russia was solo tanking the second boss mob (called the eastern front). Then England (a druid) started tanking and dpsing western front. And the US (warlock) and Canada (hunter) came in and started putting some heavy dps on the western front. Somehow they pull through and the western front goes down, and they all go over and help out the tank with the eastern front.
Again, huh? Western and Eastern fronts first met when the Battle of Berlin was going for more than a week - indeed, Soviet forces were already in the city at that point. What "help"?
The party responsible for Germany's defeat is Hitler. His failure to land troops in Britain and to start a (two front) war with the Soviets was what did him in in the end.
More than that, his misreading of the British people. He could have destroyed the British army at Dunkirk, but he allowed a retreat because he thought Nazi Germany and Britain could coexist peacefully. If he'd attacked before the evacuation could be organised, and kept the peace with Russia for a few more years, Germany might well still be in control of most of Europe, and possible a big chunk of Asia too. Without Britain as a staging ground, the USA wouldn't have been able to launch an effective force, and without Churchill probably wouldn't have cared about Germany after defeating the Japanese (which would have happened a bit later, without an influx of German scientists to help the Manhattan Project - Germany would probably have become a nuclear power at a about the same time as the USA if they hadn't faced the UK, USA and Russia).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
How about putting an existing warhead into a pressure vessel?
The Russians aren't even the first to suggest this. It's brought up at Pure Energy Systems. Considering the source, the views there should be taken with a grain of salt; it seems that they're probably overstating things a bit. Then again, maybe not so much, since the well does seem to have blown-up a platform and somehow foiled a "foolproof" blowout preventer.
So it seems that a large explosion to collapse a good bit of the well shaft suddenly would be a great way to stop the leak, rather than the half-assed methods tried so far. Does anyone seriously believe that dumping junk on the wellhead will accomplish anything meaningful, other than depositing even more waste into the ocean?
^ This, +1000. KP is Russian yellow press. When it comes to science and technology, they routinely spew complete bullshit.
That's KP, they are tabloid morons who don't know what they're writing.
There wasn't any "mysterious mushroom cloud there" - it was a fountain of gas mixed up with dust which blew out of the drilled hole (which didn't collapse). Because of extreme pressure and narrow outlet, it went up as high as 1km. In case of an underwater explosion near ocean floor, though, at worst you'd get a water burst on top.
Also, you severely overestimate the amount of radioactive contamination produced by a relatively small-scale (we're talking kilotons here, not hundreds of kilotons or megatons) nuclear explosions, as well as its ability to spread through water.
That's what she said!
In order to motivate his men to fight the Aztecs Hernando Cortes burned his ships. History is as much about the right leadership as it is purely logistical concerns.
Conquistadors had a much better opportunity to live off the land than a WWII army that requires fuel for tanks, shells for artillery, lots of ammo for guns, food for soldiers, and effectively no animals to hunt for food. 500 men vs 500,000 (minimum).
When Napoleon said an army marches on its stomach, he wasn't just blowing smoke.