If I Get Too Many Complaints, I Will Delete This Post ...

... I have not defined "too many."

Alert: adult language at the link.
Serious readers will know where this is coming from. It results in comments that were sent in earlier today.

I did not know this.

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After posting the above, a reader sent this to me --

Starting on page 27 of Zukerman's book The Frackers,

But George Mitchell was willing to try a relatively new drilling technique he had read about in petroleum-engineering literature that held the possibility of loosening up this compact raock and getting the gas to flow. The technique, a way of "completing" oil and gas wells, or preparing them to produce energy, was called hydraulic fracturing, or "fraccing." It entailed fracturing the rocks, or breaking them up, by pummeling them with various liquids to free up the gas trapped in those rocks.

(Years later, hydraulic fracturing became known in the popular media as "fracking" with a "k" replacing the "c." From the beginning, industry members detested the word because of its closeness to the common expletive, not to mention a similarity to "fragging," the act of attacking fellow soldiers. "Fracking" also rhymes with "hacking," yet another word with a negative connotation. Energy veterans claim that "fracking" was first used in the late 1970s in the science fiction series Battlestar Galactica as a substitute for the curse word.)

From this point Zuckerman continues with other methods of breaking up wells such as explosives, machine guns, and nuclear. 

I like the "nuclear option."