Did you know that Russia has already wanted to melt the Arctic?
What would you do if you were in charge of the largest country in the world and had some nuclear weapons in store during the Cold War? While the US was designing the creation of the Plowshare Project, which aimed to use nuclear explosives to make tunnels and excavations, the then Soviet Union wanted to dare a little more.
Researcher Derek Mead, director of Motherboard magazine, decided to turn the history of the Soviet Union into the Cold War and came up with a more than bizarre plan: it seems that the Soviets had intended to use their nuclear weapons to melt the Arctic region in order to make the cold a little less cruel on Russian territory.
Difficulties
According to Mead, despite having the largest territory on the planet, Russia found it difficult to take advantage of it. In addition, the country was already spending a huge amount of money to deal with ice-related problems. One way to improve the economic activity of vodka land was to exploit the many sources of oil in the Arctic and Siberia, which was very difficult due to extreme cold and glaciers.
The idea was to exploit oil, overtake the US economy and of course melt Siberia. The plan was naive in its ambitions, but extremely dangerous considering that the tool used would be nuclear. The idea was to build a huge dam that would start in Russia and end in Alaska (!).
USA
In their dangerously innocent heads, the Russians believed that in this way they would be able to redirect the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic Ocean, which would bring the warm waters of Florida to Europe. These waters, because they are salty, would end the cold in the Arctic.
The big question of the plan was not even its probable unfeasibility, but the lack of control that such an attitude would cause on our entire planet. Most surprisingly, the US almost adhered to the idea. John F. Kennedy himself, then US Senator, stated that it would be worth exploring the idea of the barrier between Siberia and Alaska.
* Posted on 5/5/2013
