As if global warming isn’t posing a great enough challenging to low-lying regions, New Zealand author recently uncovered evidence that the United States perfected a “tsunami bomb” that can flood whole coastal cities decades ago.

The blasts from a series of these tsunami bombs can create waves up to 33 feet high, which can wipe out small towns or villages along the coast. The United States—acting in partnership with New Zealand—perfected the bomb during World War II by testing nearly 4,000 tsunami bombs off the coast of New Zealand throughout 1944.

New Zealand author Ray Waru discovered these secret tests, known as “Project Seal,” while doing research in the national archives for his new book Secrets and Treasures, which first revealed information on this bomb testing.

"It was absolutely astonishing,” he told the AFP. “First that anyone would come up with the idea of developing a weapon of mass destruction based on a tsunami … and also that New Zealand seems to have successfully developed it to the degree that it might have worked."

The United States ultimately dropped the nuclear bomb, rather than the tsunami bomb, on Japan at the close of World War II.

Tsunami Bomb later became the name of a short-lived California punk band in the late ’90s and early 2000s.