Nuking the North Sea

November 20, 2017 7:47 AM

Over on the blue, this thread is discussing wartime experiments in undersea tsunami-creating bombs. A while ago, I found a reference to cold war Soviet plans to nuke the North Sea, wiping out the oil field infrastructure and causing a massive tsunami that would devastate the north-eastern UK coast. This was before the Russian revelations mentioned in the thread. I've been unable to re-find my original reference or anything else related. Fantasy? Fiction? Real plan? Any atomheads know more?
posted by Devonian to Technology (2 answers total)

Martin Caidin (Marooned; Cyborg, the latter the basis for The Six Million Dollar Man TV show) wrote a novel in the late 1960's called "The Last Fathom, which sounds similar to the Status-6 system mentioned in the thread. Basic plot is the Soviets are attempting to put a gigaton-sized thermonuclear device in the Cayman Trench, the bomb itself is merely a trigger for massive earthquakes/tsunamis that would wipe out most countries ringing the Atlantic Ocean for several hundred miles inland, plot foiled by a US experimental heavier-than-water submarine. Sorry, can't find any reviews or plot summaries online. openlibrary.org seems to have a copy for borrowing (see bottom of list), can't speak to how well their system is, so treat with the usual shaker of salt.
posted by a person of few words at 11:52 AM on November 20, 2017

Response by poster: Thanks - good to know, but doesn't match the specificity of the reference I first came across. I'm beginning to suspect I dreamed it...
posted by Devonian at 8:00 AM on November 21, 2017