Weather: A War Tactic?

Author’s Disclaimer:

I begin to write this very hesitantly because the American public has shown a very dangerous ability to take a shred of seemingly possible, not necessarily plausible, piece of information and cite it as fact/truth/opinion/etc. and then regurgitate it to every soul within a social media circle until it is a deep theological basis for any number of conspiracy sects. So, I will write this, very clearly, and in no way, a scientific fact, a proof, nor even an educated opinion. This is merely a thought, and as a person who is scientifically literate and scientifically curious, a curious thought I will share as nothing more. I am not an expert; I do not have scientific basis to this curious road of inquiry. I am merely sharing a thought on which I have no expertise as a form of curious entertainment. You may find it bizarre to be reading this disclaimer as a forward, rather than somewhere trailing behind some obscure asterisk. That is a heavily intentional move on my part to ensure you read this PRIOR to reading what is to follow. Now, heed my advice and read it according to this author’s intent, you glorious idiots.

It would surprise many people that there is a whole band of randy stallions who are low-key weather savants as an unexpected professional necessity. These people, better known to the public as wildland firefighters, carry with them an unprecedented amount of training, knowledge, firsthand experience and good old fashioned on the job expertise in the field of weather and meteorological patterns and the ability to predict such. This is because, wild fires, are first and foremost, a natural disaster, created primarily by weather. They are also hugely influenced by weather conditions, which is why there are entire arms of the National Weather Service dedicated to fire weather predictions and forecasts.

Due to this, I found myself in a truly thought provoking conversation with a former coworker with whom I fought wildland fire more than a decade ago. As we were catching up on where life has gone in the past few years and giving each other the obligatory amount of shit-talking and cajoling, we somehow ended up discussing what was at the time, everyone’s favorite media obsession: Chinese balloons over Canadian and American airspace. I found myself merely posing a rhetorical question of “why would they need balloons to spy on us when they have multimillion-dollar satellites than can read the pregnancy warning on a Coors Original?”

In response, he posited, one of the most thought-provoking insights I’ve heard to date, none of which I have seen any military, legal, political or any other expert of any kind mention since ole Balloongate began. He said, “Well you know, I heard about a lot of these new startups and tech companies getting into what they are calling geoengineering and cloud seeding to try and effect climate change and weather patterns. God knows, China is way ahead of us in a lot of research fields. I can’t imagine they aren’t ahead of us in this.” I was intrigued but also didn’t want to waste time catching up with an old friend talking about fucking Chinese and American geopolitics, so that was the end of that.

However, I’m insatiably curious, particularly about weather, and particularly when I feel I’ve stumbled on a topic I am completely naïve to, so this conversation has been festering in my subconscious for a few weeks now. Just enough that I found myself during a particularly slow day at work, doing what all people nowadays do for hard and fast “research.” I “popped a Goog” as the kids call it. To my credit, I at least went a step further than the average bear and sent my inquiry into the subject line of Google Scholar.

What I’ve now poured over for a few hours of my life has been enlightening and thought-provoking. The primary question I now find myself wondering, is “could weather be manipulated by opposing nations as a tactic of warfare?” Apparently, here in the U.S. alone, projects related to cloud seeding and weather manipulation have been ongoing for over 50 years. Research is pretty hit-or-miss about whether these types of technologies are actually capable of manipulating weather patterns or precipitation, but it also appears there is a growing body of very intelligent, and very concerned scientists who are working to heavily regulate and mandate ethical utilization of this type of research and development over fears of its possible misuse.

Grand and honorable ideas and intentions seem to be fueling the research in these areas primarily toward utilization to one day decrease our carbon emissions or increase precipitation in drought-riddled ecosystems. Fears of misuse seem abound regarding unintended consequences. For example, say you’re trying to effect increased precipitation in some parts of California that have been impacted by recent droughts, but a weather pattern happens to send your cloud seeding/weather manipulation technology astray to areas prone to mudslides or to areas unprepared with infrastructure to appropriately handle possible flooding, obviously, there could be disastrous consequences.

And here people, is where I, dove headfirst down the conspiracist’s rabbit hole. With a background in natural disaster response, some dabbling in disaster management, and far too many FEMA classes, my mind went straight to Imperial China cloud seeding the greater North American continent as an act of meteorological and economic warfare. I found myself deep in contemplation of exactly how much damage you could impose on an adversary and its economy with very little effort in contrast to classic militaristic tactics. Unmanned weather balloon or a tank platoon: take your pick. Take those honorable intentions to decrease drought and instead replace them with nefarious ideals of conquest and control over a countering nation and boom: cloud seeding, geoengineering, and weather manipulation become, POSSIBLY, a huge player in future theaters of war.

One fact I do know is that natural disasters are expensive to us as a nation. Whether it be hurricanes, floods, wildfires, tornados, etc. These disasters leave huge swaths of devastation in their wakes that often take years, if not decades to fully recover from. It takes about 28 seconds of even basic Googling to see how many billions of dollars in funds our national and state governments spend each year in trying to prevent, respond to, and rebuild after weather events. If you take that expenditure of both resources and finances and put it into a game of military strategy, well, that’s an incredibly powerful tool/weapon, IF (note the IF) the technology is plausibly advanced enough to do so.

Other “shit I’ve found on the internet” seems to also point to China being a leading practitioner of weather manipulation on a world stage in comparison to other nations. There seems to be less hesitancy, regulation, or ethical dilemmas regarding this type of technology when reviewing studies and projects based in China and Asia as a whole. Huge strides have been made in countries like Thailand for drought management, with its Royal Rainmaking programs to bolster agricultural yields in drought stricken areas. They happen to use technology developed in the U.S. but, obviously, we haven’t seen this used in American agriculture on a large scale. China reportedly houses the world’s largest cloudseeding system, advertising success stories such as cloudseeding over Beijing during the 2008 Olympic Games to ensure a dry Olympic season and also once creating a three-day snowstorm over Beijing after a reported four month drought in 2009, which caused a massive road closure that impacted the city.

Again, it’s pretty clear this technology exists, however, murkier whether it’s actually causing changes in weather and meteorological patterns, or if these are correlations with other factors. But by God, if I was a fiction writer looking for a warfare tactic of the future to lay in for effect in my next apocalyptic thriller, this is an avenue I would explore.

For today, again, this is just a scientific curiosity to me now – one I will keep in mind and periodically investigate. I don’t think the American public should be cementing their minds behind some halfcocked idea that China could be sending balloons to America to manipulate our weather to cause natural disasters to bankrupt us until we hear something of a factual report about what has been found in these balloons. What is worth consideration, is that China reporting “weather balloons” might not be so innocuous as they may seem at first glance. All of which I’m certain some genius who has dedicated a lifetime working for the Air Force or National Weather Service has considered, investigated, and prepared for, and likely contradicts the recent musings of some nurse from fucking Idaho. Vet your sources accordingly.