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"Finish this sentence" re: nukes, exams, and Cabell's post

posted by [personal profile] perldiver at 03:16am on 30/03/2009 under ,
So, I was reading Cabell's post about exam dreams and nuclear bomb warnings and it made me think of the following game.

Complete this sentence in a way that is true for you:

 
I am a school principal, final exams are happening now, and I receive a call saying that there might be a nuclear bomb in the city.  I would....

Here's my completion:

....kick back and surf the net.  If the bomb is real and goes off, none of us will ever know.  In any other case, why panic?  Besides, I had to sit through sixteen friggin' years of exams.  This crop of school kids should share my pain.
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There are 9 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
avram: (Default)

(no subject)

posted by [personal profile] avram at 07:42am on 30/03/2009
Are you sure? My city's big enough that a 100-kiloton nuke in Times Square would probably just break my windows here in Brooklyn. A full megaton in Times Square might do some damage to my building, but I doubt it would kill me outright, and might not even injure me. A lesser bomb, like the 10- to 20-kiloton nukes Iran is said to be developing, would do even less -- figure it would wreck most buildings in a half- to one-mile or so radius.

Here's a simulation tool you can play with.
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ext_23444: This is a multi-spectrum false-color image of the Sun. (Default)

(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] perldiver.livejournal.com at 07:53am on 30/03/2009
Drat, I knew I shouldn't have written the deadpan humor in black-on-white and the terminal smiley in white-on-white. :>
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] docorion.livejournal.com at 02:05pm on 30/03/2009
See, that would have been my answer. Sit down and finish your exams; either it's nonsense, or ohgodohgodwe'reallgonnadie, and there's nothing you can do about it. This works almost everywhere except NYC or Los Angeles, which of course are also the cities you're gonna bomb. Let's face it, if a terrorist blows up my town, here's him reporting to Osama:

Clueless Terrorist: "Oh, great Leader! My cell has blown up Boston!"

Osama bin Laden: "Boston? Where the hell is that? I specifically told you to blow up one of the homes of the Great Satan."

CT: "But revered one, Boston is one of the greatest educational centers of the Satanic Empire! Seventeen colleges and universities are now monatomic dust, including Harvard and MIT! Have we not struck a great blow for our cause?"

OBL: "Everyone knows the Great Satan lives in NYC, vacations in LA, and works in Washington DC. Did you blow up one of those places? No! And Harvard?! My great-nephew goes to Harvard! If you have harmed him, I swear, you won't have to wait for hell to suffer endless torments. I'm sure I can come up with some..."

So yeah, I feel pretty safe up here.
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ext_23444: This is a multi-spectrum false-color image of the Sun. (Default)

(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] perldiver.livejournal.com at 04:22pm on 30/03/2009
Heh. Glad we're on the same page, there.

Even though I realize (as I know you do) that a nuke, even a big one, wouldn't REALLY reduce a school campus to "monatomic" dust, there were sure times back in grade school when I wished that someone would try that on MY school. Even fairly large-particulate rubble would have been fine, honest. :>

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avram: (Default)

(no subject)

posted by [personal profile] avram at 08:25pm on 30/03/2009
Hiroshima had a population of over 380,000, but that was down to about 250,000 because of wartime evacuation. Only about a third of them died instantly in the attack, and another third or so were injured. One survivor was only a hundred meters from ground zero.
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] docorion.livejournal.com at 08:37pm on 30/03/2009
True, but compared to currently available yields, that was an itty-bitty bomb, at 'only' 15 kilotons. I'm assuming yields in the hundreds of kiloton range, at least.

Also-as [livejournal.com profile] perldiver notes, I am actually clueful enough to realize that almost nothing except some minor bomb components will actually be 'monatomic dust'; it's just that 'monatomic dust' is so fun to *say*.
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avram: (Default)

(no subject)

posted by [personal profile] avram at 04:22am on 31/03/2009
What sort of nuke do you think would get detonated in an American city nowadays? I'm not nuclear engineer, but from what I can tell reading online, yields in the 100kt area and higher are only possible with fusion bombs, not fission bombs. Is anybody with fusion bomb technology mad at us?
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ext_23444: This is a multi-spectrum false-color image of the Sun. (Default)

(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] perldiver.livejournal.com at 05:57am on 31/03/2009
Dude, let it go. Both DocOrion and I were treating this as a throwaway joke, not a debate about the politics and science of nuclear terrorism.
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Oh honey.

posted by [identity profile] avivasedai.livejournal.com at 04:17pm on 30/03/2009
You were up at 3 AM, and this is what happened? I'm so sorry you had that cappucino at dinner. I hope you get some good sleep right now (or in the past ~6 hours). (I would suggest other things to do at 3 AM when I'm sleeping over, but the sleep was good for me. Well, I could always sleep again later... dang, hard decision... )

In my case, I might want to go out to eat. I'd drive with the windows open, or walk to a nearby enjoyable place, and splurge on a tasty beverage AND dessert with my entree. Oh, work? Yeah, it should continue without me for the duration.
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