US President Donald Trump has suggested dropping nuclear bombs on hurricanes before they made landfall in the US, Axios reported on Sunday.
During a hurricane briefing, Trump asked if it were possible to disrupt hurricanes forming off the coast of Africa by dropping a nuclear bomb in the eye of the storm, the news site wrote.
Meeting attendees left the briefing thinking: “What do we do with this?” the news site said, citing an anonymous source.
Axios did not say when the conversation took place.
It is reportedly not the first time the US president made such a suggestion.
In 2017, Trump asked a senior official whether the administration should bomb hurricanes to prevent them making landfall.
Trump did not specify in this conversation that nuclear bombs be used.
The White House declined to comment, but Axios quoted a senior administration official as saying Trump’s “objective is not bad.”
Trump’s idea is not new. The suggestion was originally made by a government scientist in the 1950s, under then-US president Dwight Eisenhower.
The idea continues to pop up, even though scientists agree it would not work.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Web site has a page dedicated to the concept.
“During each hurricane season, there always appear suggestions that one should simply use nuclear weapons to try and destroy the storms,” the agency said.
Not only would a bomb not alter a storm, the winds would quickly spread radioactive fallout over nearby land, it said.
“Needless to say, this is not a good idea,” it added.
The US is regularly pummeled by hurricanes. In 2017, Hurricane Harvey became the strongest hurricane to make landfall in 12 years.
Twitter lit up with reactions to Trump’s suggestion, with many users appearing shocked.
“Not ‘The Onion,’” one user wrote, referring to the satirical news publication known for outlandish headlines.
Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris weighed in as well, writing on Twitter: “Dude’s gotta go.”
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