Looking for an alternative to the billions of dollars spent the Ground-based Missile Defense system? One Russian scientist has the answer: places domes over entire cities. The paper, "Cheap Method for Shielding a City from Rocket and Nuclear Warhead Impacts," by Alexander Bolonkin and submitted to ArXiv earlier this year, describes this proposal in detail:

* The author suggests a cheap closed AB-Dome which protects the densely populated cities from nuclear, chemical, biological weapon (bombs) delivered by warheads, strategic missiles, rockets, and various incarnations of aviation technology. The offered AB-Dome is also very useful in peacetime because it shields a city from exterior weather and creates a fine climate within the ABDome. *

Not convinced? Well, here are the technical details:

The film has thickness 0.05 – 0.3 mm. One is located at high altitude (5 - 20 km). The film is supported at this altitude by a small additional air pressure produced by ground ventilators. That is connected to Earth's ground by managed cables 3. The film may have a controlled transparency option. The system can have the second lower film 6 with controlled reflectivity, a further option.The small additional pressure creats a signufically (sic) lift force.

The most awesomely fascinating part of this proposal is the idea of using "stones" to defeat thermonuclear warheads. "For increasing protection the AB-Dome cover may be armored with selected strong stones (for example, pebbles, rock flakes, pieces of concrete, and other cheap and available materials), having mass 0.1 – 1 kg." The paper goes on:

The offered protection defends in the following way. The smallest space warhead has a minimum cross-section area 1 m2 and a huge speed 3 – 5 km/s. The warhead gets a blow and overload from film (mass about 0.5 kg). This overload is 500 – 1500g and destroys the warhead (see computation below). Warhead also gets an overpowering blow from 2 -5 (every mass is 0.5 - 1 kg) of the strong stones. Relative (about warhead) kinetic energy of every stone is about 8 millions of Joules! (It is in 2-3 more than energy of 1 kg explosive!). The film destroys the high speed warhead (aircraft, bomber, wing missile) especially if the film will be armored by stone as it is described in Fig. 2, above.

Next up: sharks with frickin' laser beams on their heads.

[Top picture: Alexander Bolonkin's Inflatable Dome, Bottom Picture: The Springfield Dome from the Simpsons Movie]