# Nuclear meltdown! Holy Godzilla NOOOO!!! **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 12, 2011, 8:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389 "2011-03-12T08:19:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 17
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2011, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/321 "2011-03-14T04:51:55Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > There are so many threads on the quake/tsunami/meltdown now that I’m sure I could have missed this if it’s been covered, but: What is the danger of fallout to Hawaii and the North American West Coast? Is that about to become a hot topic, so to speak? Don’t know about Hawaii but most of the headlines I’ve seen here in the States are that there’s nothing to worry about. I haven’t heard any discussion of it. There was one anti-nuke expert talking about how horrible it would be if there a full, explosive meltdown but I really don’t think anyone cares at the moment. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2011, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/322 "2011-03-14T04:57:57Z")
Exactly! Nobody really cares what happens. Even if all four reactors explode, melt down and go boom, you will hear how safe nuclear power plants are. That’s the important message to get out right now. The REAL danger in all this is it might make it more difficult to build nuclear power plants. That’s the most important issue. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2011, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/323 "2011-03-14T05:01:37Z")
> [@groo](#): > > Hard to tell. I’d choose fallout over other syndromes. [You just have to pick the right vault.](http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Vault_69) ---
**Author:** ![matt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@matt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2011, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/324 "2011-03-14T05:17:43Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > This isn’t a coal thread. Stop peddling your dirty, dirty, dirty coal here. Engineers and their fellow travelers, accountants, are responsible for every engineering failure in history. Tacoma Narrows bridge, Hyatt Regency walkway collapse, the Ford Pinto, Cleveland East Ohio Gas Explosion, Chernobyl, every dam damn that ever failed, the Boston Molasses Disaster, the DC-10, the Hindenburg, Lake Peigneur, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig spill, Bhopal, flooding of New Orleans during Katrina, etc. etc. etc. > > And let’s not forget that engineers are responsible for virtually all weapons systems and the efficiency with which they have slaughtered millions of people. > > Anyway Una, try not to make this thread about your blindness to all the blood on your profession’s hands. > > Engineers are an evil. A necessary one, but an evil nonetheless. So what does your wonderful engineerless society look like, you insufferable moron? You want to live naked in a mud hole eating wild nuts and beat in the brains of anyone who figures out how to knap flint and make cutting tools? (Engineers.) Don’t bother with fire, or clay ceramics, or animal skins, because they all have their dangers and can be put to evil uses? Have fun watching 9 out of 10 of your kids and everyone elses die before their 1st year in that world. You colossal prick. Who the fuck do you think you are? What do you do in the world that’s remotely useful or beneficial to your fellow man? Every damned improvement in human existence since apes started to walk upright is owed to the engineers. And yes, things will go wrong. You don’t get to build and cross bridges without some of them collapsing. Sorry. You don’t get to fly to the other half of the world in 16 hours without some aircraft crashing at some point. You don’t even get to leave your miserable heap of sticks in your engineer-free hellworld to collect berries without someone occasionally getting pricked by a thorn and winding up with tetanus… or gangrene. Pig-ignorant, ungrateful parasite. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2011, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/325 "2011-03-14T05:22:49Z")
Where do you go to buy ten billion dollars of liability insurance for a prospectve nuke plant? What was the premium for that last week? What will it be next Friday? ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2011, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/326 "2011-03-14T05:24:47Z")
> [@matt](#): > > …Every damned improvement in human existence since apes started to walk upright is owed to the engineers… Engineers invented pecan pie, oral sex and fishing? Wow! ---
**Author:** ![matt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@matt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2011, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/327 "2011-03-14T05:38:18Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Engineers invented pecan pie, oral sex and fishing? Wow! I was being kind of hyperbolic, but engineers developed stoves and ovens and worked out how to control fire, all of which you need for your pecan pie. Also showers, bathtubs, hot running clean water and the development of soap, without which oral sex becomes less attactive, at least to me. And fishing - absolutely! Unless you’re talking about tickling trout by hand, which you then eat raw. I’ll give you “rock, paper, scissors” or “eye spy” as not needing engineers, if you like. Although “rock, paper, scissors” would have to be called “rock, leaf, fingers” or something… ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2011, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/328 "2011-03-14T05:42:43Z")
> [@matt](#): > > So what does your wonderful engineerless society look like, you insufferable moron? You want to live naked in a mud hole eating wild nuts and beat in the brains of anyone who figures out how to knap flint and make cutting tools? (Engineers.) Don’t bother with fire, or clay ceramics, or animal skins, because they all have their dangers and can be put to evil uses? Have fun watching 9 out of 10 of your kids and everyone elses die before their 1st year in that world. You colossal prick. Who the fuck do you think you are? What do you do in the world that’s remotely useful or beneficial to your fellow man? > > Every damned improvement in human existence since apes started to walk upright is owed to the engineers. And yes, things will go wrong. You don’t get to build and cross bridges without some of them collapsing. Sorry. You don’t get to fly to the other half of the world in 16 hours without some aircraft crashing at some point. You don’t even get to leave your miserable heap of sticks in your engineer-free hellworld to collect berries without someone occasionally getting pricked by a thorn and winding up with tetanus… or gangrene. > > Pig-ignorant, ungrateful parasite. I’m a lawyer. I sue engineers who make things that hurt people. Without lawyers, engineers would be even more dangerous. As much as I dislike lawyers, engineers are worse. Firestone SUV tires? The fault of engineers. Pinto gas tanks. Engineers. Everybody ever killed by a machine gun? Engineers. Melting nuke plants. Engineers. Exploding nuke plants. Engineers. Things that are built that fail are all the fault of engineers. Humorless engineers. Building a nuke plant to withstand 7.5 or 8.5 doesn’t matter when your quake is 9.0. A lawyer would draft a law to make the plant withstand any earthquake without regard to how big the earthquake is, but an engineer doesn’t even bother to try to change the laws of physics. No, an engineer gets together with an accountant and they say: this is how strong we can afford to make it, you approve the budget and I’ll say it’s strong enough to withstand any foreseeable earthquake. After all, I can’t see an earthquake in the future, the future hasn’t happened. Now in the past the biggest earthquake in this area in the past 90 years was measured at X. We won’t have one bigger than X. Derp, derp, derp. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2011, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/329 "2011-03-14T05:45:17Z")
> [@matt](#): > > I was being kind of hyperbolic, but engineers developed stoves and ovens and worked out how to control fire, all of which you need for your pecan pie. Also showers, bathtubs, hot running clean water and the development of soap, without which oral sex becomes less attactive, at least to me. And fishing - absolutely! Unless you’re talking about tickling trout by hand, which you then eat raw. > > I’ll give you “rock, paper, scissors” or “eye spy” as not needing engineers, if you like. Although “rock, paper, scissors” would have to be called “rock, leaf, fingers” or something… Dude, cavemen invented fire and barbarians did fine smelting it for bronze age weapons with controlled fire. I knew engineers were Dilbert like losers, but you have fought my ignorance: engineers are barbarians. Derp, derp, derp. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2011, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/330 "2011-03-14T05:52:49Z")
Murdered it. Murdered my poor little joke, beat it to death with a slide rule… ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_Ellis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/977dab/32.png) [@Michael\_Ellis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Michael_Ellis)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2011, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/331 "2011-03-14T06:09:44Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > [Japan investigates possible nuclear meltdown | CBC News](http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/03/11/earthquake-japan-nuclear-reactor.html) > > Who the hell could have predicted that a nuclear power plant, the most safe form of energy in the history of humanity with the exceptions of Chernobyl, Hanford, Windscale, etc. might melt down? It’s impossible in a modern reactor. Ipso facto, cuz I say so! Nobody could have predicted this. Kinda like nobody could have predicted 9/11 other than the people who did predict it. Certainly not those who own and operate nuclear reactors and make profits from them. They could not have predicted such a thing. They in fact declared it impossible for such a thing to happen. > > Who could have predicted a 8.9 or 9.0 or 9.1 earthquake near Japan? Fucking nobody, that’s who. Japan is seismically inactive! Everybody knows that! > > Now let’s get the government to spread the cost of repair and clean up among the whole population, while those injured can fend for them fucking selves. We wouldn’t want the people who invested and took the risk to actually pay for the cost of not preventing the unpredictable catastrophe! That might chill others into not making such risky investments. > > Privatize profits, socialize losses. It’s the American way. Such a patriotic capitalist windfall could never happen in a socialist country like Japan. We are on the cutting edge. Hey! I can see my hand glow in the dark! I have super powers!!! You’re a fucking idiot pig-ignorant piece of shit. Hope this helps. ---
**Author:** ![matt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@matt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2011, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/332 "2011-03-14T06:12:02Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > Dude, cavemen invented fire and barbarians did fine smelting it for bronze age weapons with controlled fire. I knew engineers were Dilbert like losers, but you have fought my ignorance: engineers are barbarians. Derp, derp, derp. You miss my point. An engineer isn’t a modern phenomenon. Not someone who has an “engineer” badge or an engineering degree or job title. Anyone who ever figured out how to make anything work and shared it with anyone else is doing engineering. The cavemen who worked out that whole business of the firebow and tinder and kindling and using dry wood were doing engineering. And yes, maybe someone then used fire as a weapon. Sorry. Or fires got out of control and burnt down the village. It’ll happen. Life has risk. Life has cost-benefit decisions. You seem to want all the benefits without bearing any of the risk and then demonise a whole segment of society when things go wrong. Well they’ll continue to go wrong. Planes will crash and cars will smash and Nature will throw disasters at us, and we’ll deal with it because the alternative is to abandon technology and return to the trees. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2011, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/333 "2011-03-14T06:12:25Z")
He didn’t get it. He didn’t understand that you weren’t actually claiming that engineers hadn’t invented pecan pie or oral sex. Literal poster is literal. Of course engineers did dangerous oral sex: too much pressure has been known to blow pipe wide open and leave a mess everywhere. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2011, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/334 "2011-03-14T06:16:39Z")
> [@matt](#): > > You miss my point. An engineer isn’t a modern phenomenon. Not someone who has an “engineer” badge or an engineering degree or job title. Anyone who ever figured out how to make anything work and shared it with anyone else is doing engineering. The cavemen who worked out that whole business of the firebow and tinder and kindling and using dry wood were doing engineering. And yes, maybe someone then used fire as a weapon. Sorry. Or fires got out of control and burnt down the village. It’ll happen. Life has risk. Life has cost-benefit decisions. > > You seem to want all the benefits without bearing any of the risk and then demonise a whole segment of society when things go wrong. Well they’ll continue to go wrong. Planes will crash and cars will smash and Nature will throw disasters at us, and we’ll deal with it because the alternative is to abandon technology and return to the trees. So it doesn’t require a degree or license to be a dangerous engineer, any fool can use the laws of physics to maim and kill? What does the engineering degree do? Remove the ability mock stupidity? That can’t be it, I read Dilbert. ---
**Author:** ![matt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@matt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2011, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/335 "2011-03-14T06:39:42Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > He didn’t get it. He didn’t understand that you weren’t actually claiming that engineers hadn’t invented pecan pie or oral sex. Literal poster is literal. Of course engineers did dangerous oral sex: too much pressure has been known to blow pipe wide open and leave a mess everywhere. Sigh. Of course I did. But as well as **elucidator** making a joke, he was also making a point regarding my post and I was addressing it. > [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > So it doesn’t require a degree or license to be a dangerous engineer, any fool can use the laws of physics to maim and kill? What does the engineering degree do? Remove the ability mock stupidity? That can’t be it, I read Dilbert. Are you implying that ALL engineers do is maim and kill? Or that’s even the majority of what they do? The whole world is sitting in the remains of their collapsed houses, not daring to drive their deathtrap cars on the unsafe roads with their rickety bridges? ---
**Author:** ![Garfield226](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Garfield226](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Garfield226)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2011, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/336 "2011-03-14T06:48:48Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > I’m a lawyer. I sue engineers who make things that hurt people. Without lawyers, engineers would be even more dangerous. As much as I dislike lawyers, engineers are worse. > > Firestone SUV tires? The fault of engineers. Pinto gas tanks. Engineers. Everybody ever killed by a machine gun? Engineers. Melting nuke plants. Engineers. Exploding nuke plants. Engineers. Things that are built that fail are all the fault of engineers. Humorless engineers. Building a nuke plant to withstand 7.5 or 8.5 doesn’t matter when your quake is 9.0. A lawyer would draft a law to make the plant withstand any earthquake without regard to how big the earthquake is, but an engineer doesn’t even bother to try to change the laws of physics. No, an engineer gets together with an accountant and they say: this is how strong we can afford to make it, you approve the budget and I’ll say it’s strong enough to withstand any foreseeable earthquake. After all, I can’t see an earthquake in the future, the future hasn’t happened. Now in the past the biggest earthquake in this area in the past 90 years was measured at X. We won’t have one bigger than X. Derp, derp, derp. This is a **Der Trihs** parody, right? [sub]…right?[/sub] ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2011, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/337 "2011-03-14T06:56:28Z")
> [@Garfield226](#): > > This is a **Der Trihs** parody, right? [sub]…right?[/sub] I hadn’t thought of it that way. But no. It’s kinda a Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show meets SNL’s Weekend Update “Really?” At least that is the voice I’m going for in my head. I’ve been giggling like a moron for two days without any intoxicants. In my own mind I am really, really funny. But apparently not to others. I guess I’m a “fucking idiot pig-ignorant piece of shit” in the words of one of our wittier posters. “In that case Winston, please be around today for tea.” Lady Astor “The first thing we do is kill all the engineers.” Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus. Act III, Scene 2 ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2011, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/338 "2011-03-14T07:00:01Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > I’ve been giggling like a moron for two days I’m pretty sure that _whenever_ you giggle, just like \*whenever \*you post, you do it like a moron would. ---
**Author:** ![cckerberos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@cckerberos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cckerberos)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2011, 7:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/339 "2011-03-14T07:12:06Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > What is the danger of fallout to Hawaii and the North American West Coast? Is that about to become a hot topic, so to speak? Fallout will certainly reach Hawaii and the West Coast, but not in quantities sufficient to cause any public health concerns. That will probably continue to be true even if things get much, much worse. I’m getting really annoyed by media reports talking about “increases in radiation levels”, “twice normal levels”, etc., without any specifics. How much of an increase in actual numbers? How does the current level compare to safety standards? What are the half-lives of the isotopes involved? They’re giving out just enough information to confuse and scare people and then assuring them that “officials say things will be okay”. That isn’t helpful. ---
**Author:** ![cckerberos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@cckerberos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cckerberos)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2011, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/340 "2011-03-14T07:21:54Z")
> [@D\_Odds](#): > > Ignorant histrionic retardation always follows disaster. How long before certain ‘religious leaders’ blame this on the Japanese peoples heathen ways? Haven’t seen any religious leaders comment on this. [Paul Watson, on the other hand…](http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/03/14/paul-watson-tsunami-that-killed-hundreds-of-japanese-was-divine-punishment/). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389.md?page=16) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389.md?page=18)