Using atom bombs to dig ditches: The 1965 comic-strip proposal

I assume that it’s about exposure. Workers would, after their stint, have used up the allowable amount of radioactivity.

Kinda like astronauts.

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Did it look like this?

Well one of the aims of operation Plowshare was to find a way to use nukes without the radioactive fallout. The other aim was to promote nuclear research in the public consciousness, in a similar way to TNT; change the term from Nuclear Weapons, to Nuclear Tools (some of which being tested near you, don’t worry though, they’re just digging a new canal). Meanwhile, another line of research looked at ways to detonate nuclear devices and only get the fallout (preserve infrastructure for later and such). Only problem was that the fallout tended to last longer than any infrastructure that the bomb left behind.

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it’s the ??? that worries me

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There was also project gas buggy if I remember right. My geology professor talked about it because back then they didn’t consider that a nuclear explosion entailed concentrated heat enough to turn the rock into basically glass which defeated the project’s purpose to open up deep oil and gas deposits for extraction (basically nuclear fracking).

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That’s just it. “Monkey see, monkey do” applies not only to kids’ toys and games.

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Evidently someone in the US govt read the comic strip. Check out this 1966 USGS technical report:

Navigation channel improvement of the Alto Paraná River, Argentina and Paraguay

A worker would be breathing in a lot of dust and other material from near the center of the detonation. Also, if this became a common method for ditch-digging you have to assume a lot of workers would go from one radioactive site to the next over a career that could easily span many years.

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Have a father named Edward and a mother named Ecgwynn. Isn’t the net wonderful?

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It certainly is.

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Why waste nukes on Earth when you can use them for interstellar propulsion!


This is Project Orion, it spits nukes out of the back (the left), and surfs the shockwave on a giant shock absorber.
Ok, using it in, or near, an atmosphere would be bad, but space is already unpleasantly radioactive, so no harm there.

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Another WH plan leaked?

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