“We have a Navy. Why don’t the Navy come and drop ice in the warm weather so it can’t get going as fast as it’s going?”
—Florida man on solutions to combatting Hurricane Dorian
Blizzards
Hairdryers. A lot of people in the US own a hairdryer. Plus there are millions for sale and even more in production. Before the next blizzard, have the Coast Guard point all the hairdryers at the sky to heat the atmosphere. Then the warm air has no cold air to rise above and all the water vapor will be dried up. Plus, it’ll finally give the Coast Guard something to do.
Earthquakes
We have NASA. Attach some strong rope to all of NASA’s rockets and place a rocket launcher at different points all around the US. Set off the rockets at the same time so they lift the top layer of the US and disconnects it from the shifting tectonic plates below. If NASA can’t get us back to the moon, the least they can do is work on this.
Floods
What’s the one thing the world is obsessed with getting rid of? Plastic bags. Let’s collect them all and combine them into one giant, country-crossing, water-catching, plastic bag. Boats can drag it across flooded communities and pull the water back out to sea. Or cover their whole neighborhood with it and stop the water from rushing in, to begin with. We have plenty of boats and most of them are never put to work.
Tsunamis
Another great use for the giant plastic bag. Get two Navy boats to stretch the bag across the coast while the Air Force planes pull it up from the sand. When that tsunami comes charging in, it’ll have no idea what it’s hitting. Also provides another chance for the Navy and the Air Force to start pulling their weight.
Wildfires
Our country’s parks departments will host an enormous birthday party in California. And also Brazil. A chorus of children—whose entire future rests on our ability to combat climate change — will sing a tear-jerking rendition of Happy Birthday. Everyone who has ever had a birthday will blow out the fire like candles on a birthday cake as if their life—and not the children’s lives—depended on it. The collective power of everyone wishing for the fire to go out should be enough to stop it. Their gift? Smokey Bear’s forgiveness. And rescuing the park rangers from obsolescence.
Tornadoes
Easy. Clean up all the dust off the ground. Get vacuum cleaners, brooms, Swiffers, lint rollers, and just go nuts making the Midwest’s floor sparkle like Mr.Clean’s smile. Then rig those inflatable tube people to spin around instead of blow side to side. When a tornado starts to form, it’ll have nothing to pick up. Then, after catching a glimpse of the leaner, more colorful “tornadoes” in the distance, it’ll become intimidated. Eventually, it’ll say, “Sorry dude, didn’t know this spot was taken” and spin itself back into the sky. It’s about time those tube people actually contributed to society.
Food shortages/Environmental migrants/Death
Get together a bunch of friends and start a small movement. Work together to educate yourself and how best to create more sustainable communities and environmentally-friendly policies. We have the majority of the people, why not organize to demand action from our leaders. From corporations. From each other.
Just kidding. That’s way too out-of-the-box. We can just get Elon Musk to relocate us all to a different planet and start this society from scratch.