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The Perfect Plate for the Nuclear Family Car

Posted by chrisd on from the nevada-is-americas-holster dept.

In what must be a dream come true for some, Nevada has approved a License Plate commemorating the Test Site and the connections Nevada enjoys with Nuclear weapons in the United States. The Associated Press article on the subject notes that a lot of people are up in arms about the new design, as Nevada is embroiled in controversy over the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage facility. The license features an atom. a mushroom cloud as the background and the equation E=mc2 on the plate. I was unable to find a picture of the plate on the web (I saw it in my morning paper). I'm sure a picture must be on the web somewhere. I'll leave it to slashdotters to suggest the best personalized lettering for the plate. My entry: DUKNCVR?

6 of 223 comments (clear)

  1. Re:ahh, something to be proud of. by NixterAg · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Second, how can we be proud of creating a weapon that caused such destruction and left our country (and the world) on the edge of destruction for nearly 50 fucking years (and currently, moving closer to the edge than ever before).


    You know, the same weapon you claim has left our country on the edge of destruction is also responsible for keeping our country from destruction in those same 50 years. I very much like my life here in the US and whether you like it or not, nuclear weapons have played a big role in making sure I have that life to enjoy.

  2. Re:How about a /. plate? by handsomepete · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It would never happen. Too many of the people interested would boycott it because they'd have to pay for it.

  3. License plates dont have to be politically correct by shoppa · · Score: 5, Insightful
    License plates don't have to be universally approved or politically correct to have meaning and relevance. If that were the case, we'd have nothing but boring "beige" plates on all the cars.

    Let's see, off the top of my head:

    • New Hampshire - Live Free or Die. Luckily this resonates strongly on both sides of the aisle.
    • District of Colubmia - Taxation without Representation. Makes a point, does so with historical relevance, yet the possibility of a DC vote in congress is hated and despised by the majority of congress - who are forced to view it every day :-)
    Excising the Manhattan Project and the Cold War from history is something I'm sure that a certain fraction of the world would like to do. But face it, millions of Japanase civilians and probably a million US serviceman would've died if the conventional war had continued. If Nevada wants to take pride in this, it's fine by me.
  4. Nuclear waste in outer space by dillon_rinker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Its amusing that people are opposed to nuclear waste in outer space...after all, the mass of all nuclear waste in the sun is probably greater than the mass of everything on earth. For that matter, the mass of radioactive materials on earth is probably orders of magnitude greater than all the radioactive materials mined/produced/enhanced by human beings.

    Only idiots are fundamentally morally opposed to radioactive material or its production. The only rational basis on which to oppose it is safety. Not that this is a trivial basis =)

  5. Re:ahh, something to be proud of. by hij · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I spent a year in the mountain west, and there is a very strong anti-us government undercurrent there. Last year a Utah congressman aired commercials saying that his father was a "down-winder" (local parlance for those downwind of the Nevada test sites). This was his way of making sure everybody knew he had the requisite distrust of government needed for someone in the government.

    The license plate is the sort of thing that serves as a reminder for many people who in the words of one former governor "fear the government in Washington DC more than the one in Moscow." Many people see this as a symbol of the way they have been abused and is not a symbol of pride in any sense!

    --
    Believe nothing -- Buddha
  6. Associating Nukes with Cars by hanway · · Score: 4, Insightful

    One could probably make a case that gasoline-powered automobiles have had much more devastating negative effects on the world than nuclear weapons and nuclear energy put together: pollution, global warming, urban decay, and so on. If you buy that argument, then it's denigrating to nuclear testing to depict it on an auto license plate.