India, Oct. 25 -- What if the best way to get more gas out of the ground was to set off a nuclear bomb under it? It sounds like a bad movie plot, but the US government really did try it. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the Atomic Energy Commission detonated a 29-kiloton nuclear device in northwestern New Mexico on December 10, 1967. The idea was to break up the rock deep underground to get more natural gas flowing. The test was named Project Gasbuggy.

The site is located about 55 miles east of Farmington in Carson National Forest. The device went off 4,227 feet down, aimed at a gas-bearing rock layer called the Pictured Cliffs Formation. Gasbuggy was the first natural-gas experiment of the Plowshare Program, a program designe...