It was September of 1966, and gas was gushing uncontrollably from the wells in the Bukhara province of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. But the Reds, at the height of their industrial might, had a novel solution. They drilled nearly four miles into the sand and rock of the Kyzyl Kum Desert, and lowered a 30-kiloton nuclear warhead — more than half-again as large as “Little Boy,” the crude uranium bomb dropped over Hiroshima — to the depths beneath the wellhead. With the pull of a lever, a fistful of plutonium was introduced to itself under enormous pressure, setting off the chain reaction that starts with E = MC2 and ends in Kaboom! The ensuing blast collapsed the drill channel in on itself, sealing off the well.
The Soviets used this method a number of times, apparently.
Before you rule this out, remember that our president did bomb the moon--and got the Nobel Peace Prize the same day. Is nuking the ocean really that much more aggressive than that?
Seriously, though, wouldn't our agreements to halt nuclear tests prohibit this? Otherwise, couldn't everyone who wants to test a nuclear warhead claim they were trying to stop a toilet leak, or something?
