[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_Nat...

Seems unlikely, the weapons used were pretty well understood. There was a real hype about the idea of non-military use of nukes as explosives back then, as it offered explosive energy in scales simply unfeasible with conventional explosives.

For reference, Minor Scale (the largest non-nuclear explosion in history, as far as I know) was 4kT, the average NEftNE explosion was 12.5, and they went as high as 140. Plowshare ranged from 0.3 to 104, but most tests were in the range of Minor Scale.

Sounds like lots of effort. And would still leave me wondering at every rock I encounter, of whether I should avoid this one, because it was overlooked.

The entire Soviet system only released information through a strong propaganda filter. There was simply no room for any action of the government to be reflected poorly. These tests by and large ended up radiating populations and not telling them.

Proof? It was an underground explosion in a very sparsely populated location. How exactly and whom it ended up radiating?

Another test - a nuclear blast in the vicinity of Moscow, which caused small contaminated area (100x150 m) as well as risk of polluting the Volga basin.

Of course, we don't actually know the details about any of it. But there were plenty of underground nuclear explosions, and people are usually quite good at controlling them.

Man, that was a fun paragraph to write.

Not everyone in the sowjets was forced to be there. Idealism is a strong driving force, otherwise the sowjet empire would not have sustained itself for so long on propaganda alone.

This was an active natural gas well and drilling area. No one was living near it--it would have been a nightmare of potential deadly gas exposure to do so, even ignoring the nuclear blast. The blast was 1000+ meters underground so no cloud or fallout was thrown into the air. The really dangerous radioisotopes from most bombs have a half life less than a decade so everything underground is likely pretty benign now. But again, no one is going to be digging a hole 1000 meters down into a former natural gas well to go live there.

did he claim that?

I keep wondering if it was deliberate or just a “happy little accident”.

Turn on CC if you don’t know russian.

Russian narrator: Radiatsy..... nyet.

English closed captions: Radiation levels are within natural background limits.

How the Soviets Put Out Oil Well Fires by Using Nuclear Bombs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26756899 - April 2021 (2 comments)

The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8397750 - Oct 2014 (124 comments)

Should it become a small feature to add to HN? Perhaps a sticky comment on top of the others?

I think maybe coming up with an initial list mechanically and then having a way for community members to curate it may be the sweet spot.

So, the bot looks for the URL and title matches, then looks for tuples within those sets (2--3 word chains seems to be a sweet spot), and which of those seem to cluster on those aprticular articles and comments, but not a tremendous number of others.

"Operation Trojan Shield" would be a good match for the An0m sting being discussed elsewhere. "The FBI" or "First Amendment", though not highly prevalent, are still sufficiently used elsewhere that they probably would not be.

Someone would have to keep tally of the tuples, though.

(Tiptoe Through the Tuples...)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fires_of_Kuwait

"underground coal-seam fires are the most persistent fires on Earth and can burn for thousands of years, like Burning Mountain in Australia"

"The oldest coal fire in China is in Baijigou (白芨沟, in Dawukou District of Shizuishan City, Ningxia) and is said to have been burning since the Qing Dynasty (before 1912)."

"The Centralia mine fire is a coal-seam fire that has been burning underneath the borough of Centralia, Pennsylvania, United States, since at least May 27, 1962"

"In 1979, locals became aware of the scale of the problem when a gas-station owner, then-mayor John Coddington, inserted a dipstick into one of his underground tanks to check the fuel level. When he withdrew it, it seemed hot. He lowered a thermometer into the tank on a string and was shocked to discover that the temperature of the gasoline in the tank was 172 °F"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-seam_fire

"The Górniczy Agregat Gaśniczy (GAG) is a jet engine inertisation unit developed for use in mines, controlling and suppressing coal seam fires and neutralising firedamp situations. The unit was designed in Poland in the 1970s, its name roughly translates as "Mine Fire Suppression Apparatus""

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorniczy_Agregat_Gasniczy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aM-ZpC0luvA

The older thread recommended Lessons of Darkness (I haven't watched it yet):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lessons_of_Darkness

Saw bits of it, will watch more later - it does look beautiful and well done.

However, the thing that struck me the most is that no one is wearing gas masks. It must have been stinking and pretty harmful, but I guess that is the oil and gas industry..

Thanks so much for sharing it.

I suspect that it also doubled as a test of a low-yield warhead.