Behind most of the suggestions for killing hurricanes is the idea that they begin as small whirls in the atmosphere and go through early stages of growth to the size of a tornado or a thunderstorm, and if they could be hit with great force in a vital place while small, they might die out. On this assumption, there have been a great many proposals that the Navy send battleships into the hurricane area to search for incipient hurricanes and fire broadsides into them. No test of this kind has been made for two reasons. The hurricane region is so large that the entire Navy would be insufficient for such a patrol. On the other hand, there is not a shred of evidence that hurricanes begin as small storms like tornadoes or thunderstorms. Actually, they seem to develop as mildly disturbed weather over an area of thousands of square miles. The experts say that shooting at the weather in such a large region would certainly be futile. After the World War II, the atom bomb stimulated some new ideas and thousands of letters were written to the government about knocking a hurricane out with an atom bomb at the right time and place. When the New Mexico atom bomb was exploded, the weather was bad, with rain in torrents, strong winds, lightning and thunder. Afterward, the weather was much better and this led to a lot of speculation. The fact is, however, that the scientists waited until the weather improved before they exploded the bomb; hence neither the bad weather nor the improvement could be attributed to the explosion. Before the tests at Bikini in 1946 and Eniwetok in 1948, the scientists received numerous letters, warning them that the explosions would start storms and might cause a typhoon. But the effects of explosions of this kind are soon over, while the forces that maintain a hurricane or typhoon must be applied continuously day and night for a week or two, to keep one of these big tropical storms going in full fury. One of the scientists who witnessed these tests estimated that it would take a thousand atomic bombs at any moment to equal the energy of motion in a hurricane. No scientist has figured what would happen if one thousand atomic bombs were exploded at one time in a storm area! After a year or two of rainmaking with dry ice and another chemical, silver iodide, the conviction grew that it would be possible to kill a hurricane by dropping some of this material in a vital spot. Some of the bolder students of weather control actually tried it. One of them was Gordon Clouser. Just what he did when he flew into the storm and what happened to it afterward make a mystery, for he gave his life in the effort. It is a good example of the fearless activities of the hurricane hunters.