US President Donald Trump has refuted a "ridiculous" report from the news portal Axios, claiming that he had on several occasions discussed with national security officials the possibility of using nuclear bombs to prevent devastating hurricanes from reaching the US.
The publication's source cited the US president as saying:
"Why don't we nuke them? They start forming off the coast of Africa, as they're moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it. Why can't we do that?".
While the story has immediately gone viral, Twitter reactions were more than forthcoming, with some users taking the idea quite seriously, and responding with either disbelief or grave concern:
Others quickly picked up on the idea Trump was playing the media again:
Others just had a load of fun toying with the idea:
Using nuclear weapons to stop the approach of deadly hurricanes has been suggested before. However, according to a US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fact sheet the plan would most likely do more harm than good:
"Apart from the fact that this might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems", the sheet reads.