I’m really hoping that Strategic Air Command doesn’t have to wait on civilian utilities before launching a counter-strike.
I don’t see anything unreasonable about that. You need to block or filter out the particulate matter to prevent contamination - so if you seal air leaks in your house with plastic sheeting effectively, it would offer decent protection. What about that strikes you as unreasonable?
Also, apparently everyone listened to the 2002ish homeland security suggestions to get plastic sheeting - everyone had pounds of it.
Missile launches aren’t automated like that, and they certainly don’t rely on the civilian power grid. The phone system… maybe. Phones have a seperate power system, though, and I imagine an emergency dialer like that (do they exist?) would have its independent power supply, so I don’t see why that would be directly connected to the power grid.
Would it be so hard for shows to portray computers in a realistic fashion? It’s not as bad as it used to be, but, ugh.
That scene where the girl says “well did you try the IP address?” was unnecesary and ridiculous. Who the hell knows offhand the 12-digit IP of their e-mail server? In any case, it doesn’t matter - the odds of the domain name system somehow being down while the internet is still functional seems pretty unlikely. So what was the point of adding that dialog? Was the writer trying to say “look at me, I’m hip, I know computers… I can differentiate between a domain name and an IP!!!”?
Also - the computers all having the “EMERGENCY BROADCAST” image. They’re not TVs receiving a signal. That makes no sense whatsoever. You can’t even play solitaire because that damn message is taking up your screen 
BTW, watching ICBMs take to the sky is creepier than seeing nukes explode, I think. The scene in the day after, where everyone just silently watches the missiles go up, is chilling.
I guess this means that there’s some readily identifiable target for the nukes - another nation. After all, if it was Al Qaeda, who are you going to launch the nukes at?
Good grief, that show needs a medical advisor.
Juicebox tracheostomy…not good.
Ventilating a man obviously dying of radiation poisoning…not good.
A character who is supposed to be a former nurse giving mouth to freakin mouth to someone who had an endotracheal tube in place moments before, when there is oxygen and bag-valve-masks easily to hand… how stupid are these people?
Plus, the IP address had “.304” in it. Is that the IP address equivalent of “555” phone numbers? 
If there was anything else to watch in this time slot I’d be all over it. I’m very disappointed in this show.
I think the IP scene had more to do with the father than the daughter. Something along the lines of he trained them in how to do all sorts of things the regular dumbass teenagers don’t know. Notice the next scene was of him setting up the dish and getting on his laptop.
:smack: So that’s why she looked so familiar! (I agree, it was hilarious!)
It wasn’t hawkins’ daughter that told her about the IP thing, was it? I thought it was one of her ditzy friends. Which made it seem even more excessive, unnecesary - and totally wrong.
Yes, it was. Remember last week (?) when he busted her at the party and gave her a good reeming?
I’m like SenorBeef, I didn’t think it was Hawknis’ daughter. But defer to your certainty.
And my take on the IP address scene, was that it is some secret on-line mystery that all the shows want (a la Lost) and that I don’t care for.
Pretty hard to miss since there is exactly one minority family in the entire town. Anytime you see a black person in Jericho, assume they are part of Hawkins family.
Yep, I rechecked. That adds some vague justification for the scene, but… bleh.
The recap at TWOP (episode 4) includes a link to a physicist who explained this. Something about plastic protecting you from fallout but not doing a thing about radiation. He said if there was any fallout in Jericho (there wasn’t), barriers like plastic would help, but staying underground for a few weeks is the only thing that would protect from radiation.
Or something like that. Interesting article.
Elaborate, please.
I’m trying! 
The recapper said there was no fallout, but when I click on the link in the episode 4 recap – presumably where she backs up that statement – I get a page-not-found.
But there was no evidence of fallout – the geiger counters didn’t register any, if I remember right.
Here is the link to the physicist’s blog. He says fallout is like particles of sand. We didn’t see anything like that – just rain that everyone assumed was radioactive – and nobody on the show referred to seeing any actual fallout. At least not the way Granades describes it.
Yes, I remember that.
Which led me to think it’s a fake out, a test of some sort, but the crashed planes and folks dead from radiation dispell that.
Our problem is that the writers don’t seem to know Jack about radiation, nuclear weapons, computers or, hell, cell phones. We don’t know if it’s and important plot factor or a screw up.
I’d go with screw-up. I wouldn’t trust any of the science, medicine, mechanics, or technology that we’ve seen in Jericho.
Did Hawkins contribute to the panic over the rain coming from the west? It gave him an opportunity to move whatever it was he moved in that U-haul truck without being seen. Everyone else was in the mine or a basement.
Except that he put on a Hazmat suit to do it. Or was that ordinary yellow rain gear he was wearing?
So yeah, they’re keeping us guessing, but I’m afraid none of it holds up as a real mystery – just sloppy story telling.
I was gonna post this last night, but the board was screwy. I posted this at the blog entry, and he replied.
Anyway…
His complaint isn’t technically incorrect, but seems to miss the point.
It’s the particulate matter that emits the radiation (or rather, things attached to/part of it). So the better you can seperate yourself from that particulate matter, the better off you’ll be.
If you use plastic sheeting to seal your house, then you go hide in the basement, if you’ve done a good job, you’re going to be 10+ feet and several walls/floors between you and the radiation emitting particles. In an unsealed house, the particles could make their way through the house, including the basement, so now you’re surrounded by them and breathing them in, which is a much bigger hazard.
The level of “ambient” radiation occuring in the days after a nuclear bomb are a bit overstated in popular culture. To my knowledge, just being in the general area of somewhere affected by moderate fallout, say, in a chem suit, isn’t quickly fatal. It’s ingesting the particles that’s the biggest hazard - through air, food, and water.
So, lacking a dedicated fallout shelter, trying to seal up your house would be a prudent thing to do.
This seems to tie into the general tendency of people to mock civil defense ideas. “Duck and cover” is brought up mockingly as a ridiculous notion when it’s actually quite practical.
It stems from the popular conception of nuclear war being a lot more destructive than what actual nuclear would be like. People just assume everyone is going to die, that we have enough nukes to destroy the world “7 times over” (utter nonsense), and that there’s no use in trying to survive.
The immediate kill zone (95%+ casualties) of a nuclear blast is relatively small. Much bigger is a zone where a relatively smaller number of people will be killed, depending on their circumstances and action. Sure - if a nuclear bomb goes off 10 feet from you, ducking and covering isn’t going to be an option. But if you’re, say, 10 miles away from a 1MT blast? In that case, indoors, you (probably) won’t be killed by the immediate effects of the bomb. However, the blast wave created will propogate out that far (in limited strength) - and a big immediate danger is going to be flying glass. So what do you do to avoid being killed by flying glass? Duck and cover. It could easily make the difference between life and survival for some people.
After the storm, IRS woman got her hand covered with ash, she askes the woman next to her, “What’s this?” and the woman replies “Denver”. Wouldn’t the matter blown into the atmosphere have been radioactive? I guess it could have been from a firestorm and the wind carried the ash but it was made to appear as fallout.
If it was fallout, what the hell was with the whole “We’ll wait till it stops raining and go outside” idea? Been awhile since I read those Surviving Nuclear War books my father had but wouldn’t they have had to stay indoors weeks after the fallout settled over their area? If it wasn’t fallout, what the hell happened to it? The storm was coming in from Denver. If I’m offbase with this, please correct me because this bothered the hell out of me watching the episode where they came out and found no radioactivity.
One minor thing. If the power came on, I’d find the closest transmission line and start following it. You want info, screw driving in four different directions. Go to the nearest powerplant.
The only plausible explanation for what’s happened is that they had uncontaminated ash from a distant (from ground zero) firestorm blow into town. Unlikely.
Yep. I can’t remember if I mentioned last week’s was “He knows Rob.”
I think my husband only watches in the hopes they’ll have more Morse code.