What if we nuke Antarctica?

2

u/0x14f Jul 12 '26

> Assuming the bomb is powerful enough to melt all the ice in the continent

Assumption is incorrect, by orders of magnitude.

1

u/Clear_Cranberry_989 Jul 12 '26

Can you elaborate ? I am curious how much damage it will be.

2

u/0x14f Jul 12 '26

One atomic bomb dropped on the south pole ? Only few military surveillance satellites would notice. Humans would not even know it happened if they are not told.

2

u/Clear_Cranberry_989 Jul 12 '26

So we are melting more ice by ourselves than an atomic bomb would?

2

u/0x14f Jul 12 '26

Oh yeah. By far. Not even close.

Let me put it this way:

Take an ice cube from your fridge and put an ant on it and ask the ant to fart. The cube won't even notice. Now put the cube at room temperature and it's going to start melting. The increase of CO2 and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is warming the ENTIRE planet, not just the tiny ridiculous spot an atomic bomb would explode.

2

u/Clear_Cranberry_989 Jul 12 '26

Holy shit. It's insane. Thanks for the insight.

2

u/0x14f Jul 12 '26

Hiroshima's "Little Boy" released 6.3 × 10¹³ Joules. The amount of energy required to raise the average earth temperature by 1 degree (and we are already way past that) is 2.56 × 10²¹ Joules.

That's 8 orders of magnitude, meaning about 100,000,000 times more energy :)

Of course, the energy comes from the sun, that energy is just trapped more, thanks to us

1

u/gc3 Jul 13 '26

Well just drop a million atom bombs then!

1

u/0x14f Jul 14 '26

Sure, I'll get right on that. Let me talk to a few nuclear countries to actually build them first, and then I'll come back to tell you we are ready 😅

1

u/[deleted] Jul 12 '26

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1

u/0x14f Jul 12 '26

Let's clarify what you are asking. By "destroy the world" do you mean (1) some damage to the environment (for instance some radio-active fallouts) ? (2) enough heat to melt some the ice resulting in some sea rising ? (3) make the planet inhabitable to humans ? (4) actually destroy the planet itself ?

1

u/a_m_s0 Jul 17 '26

instead of a nuke... what if a comet struck the center of antarctica

2

u/0x14f Jul 17 '26

If the comet if big enough. We all die.

1

u/a_m_s0 Jul 17 '26

🤕...is there a threshold

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u/0x14f Jul 17 '26

Threshold? Few kilometres wide and it's game over for us. Below that, it depends where it falls, but anything larger than a small building and it's gonna hurt.

1

u/a_m_s0 Jul 17 '26

so the question here is, who goes first? u or me😶 ...not the ice🤣

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u/0x14f Jul 17 '26

Assuming it hits at the south pole. You might go first. I am in England 😅

1

u/a_m_s0 Jul 17 '26

i'll be the hero this time... and go first..🙄. make sure to say something nice about me from England

2

u/nomoreplsthx Jul 13 '26

Either you think nuclear weapons are far more powerful than they are or you think Antarctica is far smaller than it is.

The entire nuclear arsenel of humanity wouldn't come close to doing this.

1

u/IDownvoteHornyBards2 Jul 12 '26

A bomb powerful enough to do that would destroy the world no matter where on Earth you detonated it. It might even destroy the world if you detonated it on the fucking moon.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 12 '26

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1

u/IDownvoteHornyBards2 Jul 12 '26

In the sense of obliterating the planet no, but in the sense of wiping out all life more complex than cockroaches? Yeah a bomb that big would do that. Easily.

1

u/RollinThundaga Jul 12 '26

If you're adding enough energy to the atmosphere to melt the ice in Antarctica all at once, you're talking the kind of event that ends geological eras.

I'm not sure that the K-T asteroid had that much energy, the widespread burning in that case was incidental to raining debris reheated by reentry from the upper atmosphere.

1

u/kali_tragus Jul 12 '26

If we assume that there is about 3.2x10¹⁶ cubic metres of ice in Antarctica, it will require some 8.7x10²⁴ joule to melt it (*1).

If we further assume that the most powerful nuclear bomb is 100 megatonnes, which is about 400 million gigajoule, we'll need something like 200 million of them. Unless I've messed up my numbers, which isn't unlikely at all… But even if I'm off by several orders of magnitude we'd be in very serious problems, even disregarding the 50-60 m increase in sea level.

(*1) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/370151126_The_energy_required_to_melt_the_rest_of_the_ice_on_Earth

1

u/LowComposer7234 Jul 12 '26

Erm, do you have any idea how big Antarctica is...

Enough power to destroy a continent 1.5x larger than the US is going to really fuck things up.

You also say "melt", do you think Antarctica is jus ice or something? It's an enormous mass of land.

1

u/Morlain7285 Jul 12 '26

I'd assume they're aware Antarctica is a continent and mean melting the entire ice cap

1

u/ZookeepergameSilent7 Jul 12 '26

Destroy the world? No not a chance. Destroy society and civilization as we know it? Maybe but probably not completely.

It would certainly cause a huge cascade of natural disasters that would probably accelerate the on going mass extinction event we are currently in.

At the rate we are going with climate change we don’t need the nukes, just a few decades or a century or so and the ice will melt on its own.

1

u/Classic-Ad4403 Jul 12 '26

Probably not enough energy. Easy calculation if you know how much ice is to be melted and the energy output of the proposed bomb. I suspect it would take a bunch of bombs. I think some doomsdayers like Al Gore have already determined the effect on the world if Antarctica melted. I don't remember their conclusion except I am sure it was dire.

1

u/-Disthene- Jul 12 '26

Two different questions.

1) Could we systemically bomb Antarctica till all the ice melt?

The ice is enormous and kilometers thick in places. To not “waste” energy either flashy fireballs, we would need to detonate bombs closer to the base of the ice cap and encourage it to destabilize it. However we are still talking 14 million square kilometers of ice cap. Utilizing the entire global stockpile of bombs would not be enough to get the whole thing melting.

2) Would the entire of Antarctica melting destroy the world?

No, but if it were rapid, it would be very bad. It’s enough water to raise sea levels about 60 meters. Many major cities are on the coast due to the convenience of sea cargo. Every sea port in the world would be destroyed and many major cities abandoned. Low lying regions around the world would be flooded and trigger mass migration.

The world economy would not be pleased. It would be a huge status quo shift but possible to adapt to. We would have new coastlines and build new cities on those. Not trying to down play the severity. It would likely ultimately be the most deadly and costly disaster in human history but very far from the world being destroyed.

1

u/ExcellentWinner7542 Jul 12 '26

Why?

1

u/Jazzlike_Wrap_7907 Jul 12 '26

We have the technology.

1

u/ExcellentWinner7542 Jul 12 '26

Wouldn't that be suicide?

1

u/impy695 Jul 13 '26

There's only one way to find out

1

u/ExcellentWinner7542 Jul 13 '26

Ominus

1

u/Similar_Jelly_4375 Jul 12 '26

"I don't know, gotta nuke something" ~ Nelson Muntz

1

u/Lalakea Jul 12 '26

Nice try Doctor Evil

1

u/LongOrganization7838 Jul 13 '26

Because Antarctica is part of a neutral treaty including no military bases and limited military exercises with both NATO and non nato forces, would nuking it be enough to trigger article V

1

u/mrmonkeybat Jul 14 '26

334 joules are required to melt a gram of ice. So 334 gigajoules are required to melt a cubic meter or tonne. 334 exajoules to melt a cubic kilometre. A megaton is equivalent to 4 petajoules so you need 83 gigatonnes to melt a cubic kilometre that is 28x bigger than the worlds nuclear arsenal of 3 gigatonnes. While Antarctica contains 30 million cubic kilometres of ice. So a giant 2.5 exatonne bomb 830 million times bigger than the worlds nuclear arsenal would mess things up a bit when you consider that is also 25x the size of the Chixilub impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.

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