The Real History Behind the Tornado-Control Theories in Twisters

Central to the plot of Twisters, the 2024 stand-alone sequel to the 1996 blockbuster Twister, is a scientific dream: researcher Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar-Jones) wants to launch absorbent polymer material into a tornado to deprive the storm of moisture and kill it. It makes for a compelling premise, one that turns a natural phenomenon like a tornado into a sort of sentient movie monster that humans can take on and overcome.

It seems like an innovative idea: not just study a tornado, like the storm chasers in Twister did, but confront and eliminate one altogether. And indeed, this notion is almost as old as tornado research itself. Researchers and members of the public alike have proposed various schemes to stop tornadoes over the decades. None have been feasible enough to test, let alone work. But the real problem with this approach is that, while trying to stop a tornado makes for compelling movie drama, in the real world resources could be better spent on studying and implementing more practical solutions for saving lives and property in the path of tornadoes.

Attempts at weather modification in the United States began in earnest in the 1940s and grew in the 1950s, as government officials and researchers pursued ways of shaping the weather to suit national needs. They sought to improve flight safety, bring moisture to drought-prone areas, protect crops, and more. Others wanted to use the weather for military advantage or to stop hurricanes before they could reach the coast. Much of the research focused on cloud seeding, in which researchers added agents like silver iodide to clouds to produce precipitation. The bulk of the research and discussion focused on precipitation and large storm systems like hurricanes, but tornado research also included speculation about weather control.

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In 1961, a civil engineer sent a letter to the director of the National Severe Storms Project (established in 1960 and later renamed the National Severe Storms Laboratory, or NSSL). The letter proposed using unmanned aircraft to “fly through the upper part of tornadoes” and use rockets to launch napalm into the tornado to increase the temperature and “cut off the tornado.” Accompanying the proposal was a sketch of a tornado and proposed rocket trajectory. The author had drawn a tiny house near the base of the tornado and a stick figure running away.

Startlingly, officials did not seem to find this plan outlandish. One NSSP researcher attached a note to the proposal that read: “This sounds theoretically possible. Might be very difficult to guide the missile into the proper place, though.” Difficult indeed.

This response reflected a Cold War-era receptiveness to the possibility that, with enough research and technological expertise, scientists might be able to harness the weather. As historian of meteorology Kristine Harper put it, “weather control efforts fit in with the postwar, Cold War-era hubris that people could gain the power to dominate nature.”

Severe storms researchers were still attempting to learn some of the most basic information about tornadoes—How do they form? How fast are their wind speeds? But some outspoken team members hypothesized to the press that, once they knew more, tornado control would be a logical future step. In 1965, for example, an Oklahoma newspaper wrote that “Eventually, when weathermen know the exact causes of a tornado, they may be able to prevent its formation, possibly by a cloud-seeding technique.”

It’s hard to blame anyone in the Great Plains for this wishful thinking, especially in 1965, when a series of tornadoes known as the Palm Sunday outbreak had devastated communities across multiple states, causing 271 fatalities, thousands of injuries, and $200 million dollars in damages (in 1965 dollars). Still, researchers were far from determining even the specifics of tornado formation, let alone how to stop one.

Many weather researchers were reluctant to embrace wide-scale weather modification. The atmosphere, they understood, was complex and there was much they still did not know about how a slight change in one area would impact weather somewhere else.

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In the 1970s, some atmospheric scientists used the language of tornado control—which appealed to elected officials in the Great Plains—to argue for more research funding. Simultaneously many concluded, as NSSL director Edwin Kessler and a coauthor put it, that regarding tornado modification, “the evidence is not now persuasive that this will ever be possible.”

In 1972, researchers at the National Severe Storms Laboratory launched a new form of field observation known as the Tornado Intercept Project, the first scientific storm chasing effort. Between chasers’ ground observations and data from Doppler radar, they made dramatic strides in understanding tornadoes. But the more scientists learned about tornadoes, the more they realized just how complex the atmospheric phenomena were.

As the 1970s continued, faith in technological fixes—and the funding that had come along with it—began to wane. By the 1980s, official interest in weather modification and the possibility of tornado control faded. In addition to a lack of funding and bureaucratic support, the complexity of severe storms themselves deterred scientists from believing they would be able to stop a tornado any time soon.

The NSSL continued to field pitches for ideas about stopping tornadoes, but they came from increasingly fringe perspectives.The office received a rambling letter, for example, from a self-described “freelance imagineer” in 1982. Sometimes officials were pressed to comment publicly when reporters got wind of one of these ideas. In 1990, an Oklahoma newspaper reported on a self-financed inventor who wanted to use a “150-pound bomb flown into the full force of a twister with a remote-controlled helicopter” to stop a tornado. In an understated dismissal, a state official told the reporter that they “were pretty uncomfortable” with the proposal. Robert Maddox, then director of the NSSL, explained that destroying a tornado would be more complicated—and potentially harmful—than many such proposals reflected. “There are folks around like this who basically have their own ideas that they can modify or affect a natural process like a tornado storm,” he said, “but the reality is they’re dealing with terribly huge energetics.”

Today, some weather modification projects are still underway in the United States, focusing primarily on improving precipitation in drought-prone areas, mitigating hail to protect crops, or improving snowpack. Debate continues over the efficacy of these efforts.

Agencies like the NSSL continue to field suggestions from the public for unlikely schemes to stop tornadoes. In a region where destructive storms are a frighteningly regular occurrence, the idea of being able to stop a tornado has powerful emotional appeal. But there remains little evidence that it is realistic—or advisable—to control tornadoes.

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Present-day tornado research is often less flashy than fighting tornadoes head-on. Scientists are seeking to continue to improve tornado warnings and give more advanced notice. Some researchers have also turned to social and behavioral science to try to understand how people respond to warnings. Some of the greatest potential to limiting injury and property damage from severe storms seems to come from improving building codes to reflect scientific knowledge and helping local residents evaluate tornado risks to take safety precautions.

It makes sense that filmmakers would latch onto the idea of tornado control, which is more compelling for movie audiences than gathering incrementally better data that will take years of analysis.

But the impulse also reflects our troubling tendency to be drawn to the sexiness of technological solutions to complex problems. The hope that humans might still be able to stop a tornado harks back to the Cold War era faith in new technology, often at the expense of employing knowledge already proven effective. It’s a focus that pervades much of the American response to climate change, a belief that we will eventually engineer novel technological solutions rather than adopt behaviors and enact policies that we already know will make a difference.

There’s something reassuring about imagining the atmosphere as the antagonist in a monster movie (in one scene in Twisters, a tornado tears through a movie theater screening Frankenstein), a daunting foe that the hero’s bravery and ingenuity will nonetheless overcome. But the atmosphere isn’t our enemy. It’s not deliberately coming after our loved ones. Despite decades of careful scientific research, it is still frustratingly complex. The sooner we decide to live with and responsibly respond to that complexity, the better—and safer—we will all be.

Kate Carpenter is a doctoral candidate in the history of science at Princeton University, where she is writing a history of storm chasing. She also hosts Drafting the Past, a podcast about writing history.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.