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The Perfect Plate for the Nuclear Family Car
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?
since the test site is bigger than Rhode Island, and we let *them* have their own liscence plates....
CNN has one here.
Shh.
To commemorate this on a license plate is very strange.
CNN has a story about it, with a (somewhat decent) picture.
Makes me want to move to Nevada just so I can put these on my car. Too bad it's not a Delorean with a Mr. Fusion.
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
to have his most recognizable work put on a licence plate celebrating nuclear weapons - which he came to oppose.
Wow, must be a slow news day on the ole /. But hey I'll bite anyway. I'm not surprised that members of the general public are all up in arms about it. My neighbor across the street works for NASA and he's a scientist working on the idea of nuclear propulsion in space. Their real task now is figuring out how to safely and efficiently get such an enormous reactor into space. Anyway his license plate is an MIT plate (my state has plates for almost any university that has an alumni association that can rustle up however many signatures you need) customized as "SPCNUKE" He's always getting honked at, cut off, sworn at and lectured by the obligatory mother with three kids in the grocery store parking lot. Seems everyone thinks that his project is really about one of two things. 1) How to get nuclear weapons into space. Or 2) Failing that, how to dump all our nuclear waste into outerspace.
I've asked if he's ever considered changing the plate and he said no, he kind of likes the reactions he gets from people. (Lack of attention in grade school, perhaps?)
Hey....I always knew there was something just a little bit 'odd' about those folks...
As I see it, the real problem is that when it comes to something people don't understand that sometimes has the ability to maim or kill them they don't want to take the time to learn more about it. They want it banned, damnit, banned! Out of my children's face!!!
When I see one of these plates crusing down the road I probably won't give it a second look, it's just too bad people can't see the larger issue (or more often, the lack of one) sometimes.
(See Nevada License Plates)
On the other hand, you'd have to get the Legislature's approval...
exactly, they want you to think of it much like a cartoon. That's exactly what the government did for 20 years after the first nuclear weapon was used in WWII. They would give information out to movie makers, authors, etc, but would limit this info to make a push for movies/stories that were centered on horrendous creatures. Attempting to move the public away from the truth that this is a devastating weapon that causes LONG-TERM, horrific damage to REAL fucking people.
Thermonuclear war is NOTHING like the Acme rocket.
I propose the skyline-licence-plate. And as a primer, it should come in two kinds. On front of the car it pictures the New York skyline before september 11th, on the back you get the same picture, but without the WTC.
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.
Very, very, true. Not the point. The other problems associated w/the weapons far outweigh it's positive impact on our domination.
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.So if Nevada wants to be proud of their history instead of ashamed of it, more power to them.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
lots of venomous creatures, nasty non-venomous creatures, aliens, secret government projects and a handful of radioactive yokels
Sadly, you just described my 20 year high school reunion.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
Maybe it's actually a hidden agenda campaign, trying to rally support for simply nuking Nevada off the map, and all it's sinful habits (guns, gambling)
(kidding)
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 =)
At least Fark rates stories. Slashdot doesn't let you moderate an entire story down, just comments. Just being able to note "redundant" on the duplicate stories would be a plus.
I found this page at Nevada's DMV sites. Doesn't have the nuke one, but it has others:
c . icenseplates.ap/story.nevada.license.ap.jpg
http://nevadadmv.state.nv.us/platesmain.htm
Someone else posted the new nuke one:
http://i.cnn.net/cnn/2002/ALLPOLITICS/04/26/atomi
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
Actually the horrendous creature movies of the 50s and early 60s are probably what embedded some of the ridiculous notions about atomic energy in the public's mind.
As for weapons that cause "LONG-TERM, horrific damage" -- one, weapons are supposed to cause damage, and two, dead is about as long term as you can get. If you look at the objective facts, nukes actually have a pretty good record for keeping the peace: they ended one world war, and have deterred any others in the nearly sixty years since -- precisely because they are so horrific.
(It was Alfred Nobel's hope that his invention, dynamite, would make war so horrific that it would never be fought again. Didn't quite work out that way.)
-- Alastair
if we hadn't begun development and let the Russians develop it w/us in the first place, there is the small possibility that they would not have been able to complete their weapons in the short time-frame that they did. Thus creating a longer time before their development of more advanced thermo-nuclear weapons and thus our heated confrontations in the future.
Chernobyl wasn't a nuclear explosion, it was primarily a fire fueled by the graphite moderator of the reactor. Quite nasty enough, but after they got the fire out and thousands of cubic yards of concrete dumped on the debris, Chernobyl's remaining reactor (there were two) continued to produce power for many years. But yes, it did litter the countryside with radioactive material.
(Power reactors elsewhere in the world use completely different designs, (non-positive void coefficients, or additional safety mechanisms) and can't catch fire.)
-- Alastair
Mushroom cloud license plate to be tested
they're as big a part of NV history as big ass bombs
It's not the effect of the bomb that they are proud of. It's not the state of the land that they're proud of.
What they are proud of is the patriotic effort that was made, the sacrifices. It's part of keeping track of the history of that particular state. Noone wants to be history-less, even though the history might not be all about greatness and cheerfulness. Remember, history is a way to avoid making the same mistake over and over and over (ad nauseam) again.
The plate should contain what people actually associate with the bomb. Nobody would think of a nuclear device if you created a rushing fire-storm, both flash and radiation burns, sickness, and cancer' (which would be nearly impossible to depict on a licence plate anyways).
You might not have been infiltrated by radiation, but you have been infiltrated by ignorance, which I personally think is worse.
As a side-note. I'm not from Nevada. I'm not even from the states. I don't think highly of the nuclear devices. I don't even think highly of the states (There goes my karma). But one thing I care about, is that people are allowed to express themselves freely, without ignorant idiots preaching their "truth", which is clearly superior to others'.
It's not even so much the storage of nuclear waste in the Yucca mountain are that annoys many - but rather the transportation of the material across the U.S.
The current proposals to move said waste involve using barges across many waterways including the Great Lakes.
Not only that, but a new transportation would be starting every four hours, using trucks that haven't even finished the design stage yet, designed each to move at only an average of 20-30 miles an hour, carrying 75 or 125 tons at a time
Not that storing the material in one central area isn't a good idea - but moving it in this manner may be more dangerous than anything we've ever encountered with nuclear material - especially the responsibility is handed over to the private sector.
Ryan Fenton
Sure.. Nukes are bad... But you can argue that they are the best thing that happened to us and that its the Nukes themselves that saved human race from ultimate destruction.. How?? You could argue that nukes serve as deterrent that keeps all the major world powers from going into the war.. think about it.. Without Nukes to serve as deterrent US and Russia would have probably went into a war that would have costed millions of lives.. So as bad as they are, you could argue that nukes brought STABILITY since no country is willing to risk complete destruction.. So when u look at the nukes as pacifying factor in world today then really it does not seem as bad. Few times Nukes have been used in Japan probably prevented an all out ground war between Japanese and Americans that could have resulted in far greater number of casualties then it was the case in Hiroshima and Ogasaki..
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.
Any dissnet at the state level is going to be overridden at the federal level. Yucca Mountain is a done deal.
No. This is not true. While prostitution is legal here on a county by county basis, many counties allow prostitution, including Elko, Wite Pine, and Nye counties. The only places that I know of right off where prostitution is not legal are Las Vegas County, and perhaps Carson County. It may also be illegal in Reno, as there are no brothels in town here, but there are several "bunny ranches" just outside of town. Elko County alone has a population of at least 20,000 (with some 10,000 in Elko alone). In Elko County, there are at least five brothels, three in Elko and two in Wells, 60 miles east of Elko.
Rhapsody in Numbers
So if we'd never bothered then the Soviet Union wouldn't have either? And the nuclear programs of National Socialist Germany and Imperial Japan weren't a worry because...?
We rebuilt National Socialist Germany and Imperial Japan into prosperous, pacifist democracies. We're working on doing that with Afghanistan. Yeah, we're awful people.
(Nazi == National Socialist Workers Party.)
Prostitution is only legal in a couple counties in Nevada - even then those counties COMBINED all have a population LESS than 250 people
Just what the hell are yout talking about? I don't know about Storey county, but the
census figures for Lyon county show 34501 for this county alone. Although the median family income is only $33k, the economy here is moving ahead pretty well...
A dingo ate my sig...
Big deal, my license plate features a lot of atoms. ;)
I'm a huge licene plate fan...here in Ohio...I've assisted with several license plate projects.
/. crowd, I submit an article, written last year, in which I half seriously proposed another plate for the great state of Ohio. Any Ohioans out there wishing to help me...please send me an email.
For the amusement of the
___________________
Every time I see a bumper sticker or a t-shirt that says, "Don't mess with Texas" I find myself snickering. It's not that I do not like Texans, on the contrary, I've met a bunch of them, and they are quite an independent lot. (A Texan I know, in protest of his local school taxes, intends to pay his property tax in person with 63,000 nickels. It's that type of ballsy bravado that does Texas, and America for that matter, proud.) Regrettably, most Texans these days are just as milquetoasty as people from any other state.
But Texans do make a good marketing campaign. The Alamo has become a fantastic tourist trap in spite of being a horrific military failure. We Ohioans have much to learn about marketing our own state.
A great example of this is our license plates. Finally, with the introduction of the new Bicentennial Plate on October 1, we can actually put a halfway nice looking license plate on our cars. However, it is still encumbered by the "Birthplace of Aviation" slogan. The problem is, another state claims to be the birthplace of aviation, and they're doing a better job marketing it. (The North Carolina plate is a more elegant salute to the Wright Brothers than our half-ass'd slogan.) Unfortunately, the slogan on the plates is state law, and will require action by the state legislature to change (and that is akin to an act of God.)
Perhaps we should go into our history books and find something of consequence to feature on a special plate--something which encapsulates Ohio, its people and its history. You wouldn't need to look far, because Lancaster's own Gen. William T. Sherman blessed Ohio history with the type of achievement over which other states regularly drool.
In November 1864, he burned Atlanta down.
In commemoration of this event, work should begin immediately on a special license plate devoted to this incident in history.
First, we must find an appropriate tagline and graphic. If we choose a graphic that's, say, a little building burning, then a good tagline may be "Sherman burning Atlanta --Nov. 1864." I guess the plate could be devoted to General Sherman himself, with a little picture of him and the tagline "Gen. Sherman--the man who burned down Atlanta."
I am however much more in love with a tagline saying, "Don't mess with Ohio or we'll burn down Atlanta...again." (Consider the new tagline a swipe not at Georgia, but at Texas--I mean, what have they ever burned down?) I think that nicely summarizes this feat in Ohio history, in addition to describing the feistiness that Ohioans should be known for. (Admittedly burning Atlanta down today would require a lot of work--its metropolitan area now extends into Tennessee and Florida.)
There is precedence for acridity on license plates. New Hampshire started it all with "Live Free or Die"--homage to our Revolutionary roots. Washington DC's new plates are emblazoned with "No Taxation without Representation"--another commemoration of America's Revolutionary history, not to mention the District's unique political situation. Even "Birthplace of Aviation" is a passive-aggressive swipe at North Carolina. Not all Ohioans may wish to have the Sherman plate; some may wish to drive south of Covington, Kentucky. But for those who do, I don't see why "Don't mess with Ohio or we'll burn down Atlanta...again" cannot be issued to the proud Ohioan interested in memorializing our state, and our nation's, history.
To the critics who say that license plates are meant only for vehicle identification purposes, my response is that special plates are doing an adequate job identifying vehicles. However, they are a medium for so much more. Pennsylvania's ex-Governor Tom Ridge said that license plates are moving billboards for a state. Ohio must learn to leverage this advertising space in its favor in order to establish a unique state identity. The new Bicentennial plate is a start.
A petition must be circulated to collect 1000 names, addresses and current plate numbers of individuals willing to buy the plate when it is introduced. Contact me if you're interested in helping get the petition started.
Uhh, we didn't "let" the Russians develop it with us, unless your definition of "let" involves failing despite heroic effort to keep the hows and such secret.
Learn to spell: nickel, missile, lose, solely, amendment, speech, kernel, probably, ridiculous, deity, hierarchy, versus
I'd have mine say: "MPAARLS". I'd kick ass, like unicorns.
Sadly, that goddamned balloon fiesta has commandeered any and all "Yay, NM!" stuff. Dollars to dildoes when our state quarter comes out it (like the license plates) will sport a Zia-marked balloon.
Learn to spell: nickel, missile, lose, solely, amendment, speech, kernel, probably, ridiculous, deity, hierarchy, versus
Gee, I hope Germany follows with plates commemorating gas chambers and crematoriums. Or what about a plate depicting people burning in the Dresden and Tokyo fire bombings? People with limbs shot off by guns or blown off by landmines? People dying of secondary nuclear effects? Maybe some black slaves whipped bloody.
I think that's the stuff we should remember, the innocent people who suffered and died horrible deaths so we could have minivans, wall to wall carpeting, and a corporate-run government to build roads for us to drive around with cartoon pictures of nuclear blasts. Kaboom!
-Kevin
You are aware the "Nuclear Family [columbia.edu]" has nothing to do with nuclear weapons, right?
You are aware the word "pun" has nothing to do with such witty retort, right?
American Ground Zero by Carole Gallagher
She set out to debunk the allegations of high illness rates associated with the Manhattan Engineering District.
She instead wrote a book about the "downwinders." Extremely sobering, even heartbreaking.
I can envision California's new license plate: California: Blackout Capital of the world
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Gee, I hope Germany follows with plates commemorating gas chambers and crematoriums. Or what about a plate depicting people burning in the Dresden and Tokyo fire bombings? People with limbs shot off by guns or blown off by landmines? People dying of secondary nuclear effects? Maybe some black slaves whipped bloody.
I think that's the stuff we should remember, the innocent people who suffered and died horrible deaths so we could have minivans, wall to wall carpeting, and a corporate-run government to build roads for us to drive around with cartoon pictures of nuclear blasts. Kaboom!
You're right! A license plate commemorating trolls would be a great idea!
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
"+1, interesting" -- as in: now there's an interesting example of historical revisionism.
So Japan was "on the edge of a surrender"? Hardly. And while there may have been a faction that wanted an end to the war, the militarists in control were in no way going to allow a surrender, at least not without a bloody, massive invasion of the home islands that would make Normandy look like a seaside picnic. The nukes brought something enough radically different to the equation that a surrender could be negotiated with less loss of face.
And in a technology-driven World War, there may be civilians, but there are no non-combatants. The "civilian" industrial complex was a key part of the war machine on all sides. As it was, fewer people died in Hiroshima or Nagasaki than in the "conventional" firebombings of various cities earlier in the war.
-- Alastair
Now people are unhappy that the government is less than an ideal neighbor. Maybe the old sayings "caveat emptor" and "you get what you pay for" are proved right again.
Here in Michigan the license plate used to say "Winter Wonderland". A constant reminder as to how our weather sucks. To me this would be like Florida having a plate that said "Hurricane Target"
http://www.kubuntu.org/
Japanese government was willing to surrender
Revisionism. A minority faction wanted to, but the militarists in control would have none of it, and were willing to -- as Churchill put it in a different context -- "fight them (the US) on the beaches,...in the streets," et bloody cetera.
It has maybe deterred one or two, but not all as you claim.
Did you flunk reading comprehension in school? How many world wars have there been since 1945?
-- Alastair
The world is a violent place, it is like a society where you do have to carry a gun to be safe.
In response to the second poster, the Soviets would have still developed the bomb if we never did. They would have been much more willing to drop the bomb if they knew we couldn't strike back.
Have you ever heard of MAD (mutaully assured destruction), in which if one nuclear power strikes another nuclear power, it is assured that both countries would be destroyed. This was the main detterent during the cold war.
If we didn't have nukes, somebody would set us up the bomb.
Damn good thing we used the bomb in WW2 also. We saved many lives by dropping the bombs. While there were some moderates, the vast majority of the Japanese gov't was planning to fight to the last man. They were training women and children to kill our soldiers with homemade spears.
We would have had to invade if we didn't drop the bombs. We would have firebombed the shit out of everything in Japan to soften it up for our troops. That would have killed a couple million right there.
Then, hundreds of thousands of our troops would have been killed. Since the Japanese civilians would have been very hostile, our troops would be forced to kill millions of Japanese citizens. Also, many, many more Japanese would have commited suicide as our troops advanced, as we saw in Okinawa.
When you look at it, the bombings killed several hundred thousand people but prevented the loss of millions of lives.
Anyway, remember how fiercely we fought at Okinawa? That isn't even the Japanese homeland. Imagine how bad it would have been in mainland Japan.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
I don't think it's fair to associate Albert Einstein's theory of relativity with a mushroom cloud. The theory and Einstein himself were about advancing the state of human knowledge, not destroying it. It was even Einstein himself who made the famous quote, ""I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
Uh, it's quite logical when you think about it. Military gunnery ranges are usually off limits for civilians => less human activity there (they don't shoot _that_ much there...) => animals like it. Why not call it a wildlife range at the same time and make some tree-huggers happy.
Off course there will be incidents when animals are killed by shells, but I think they are quite rare after all. There are exceptions though. Reindeers during winter being a famous one. Now, contrary to what you might have understood from watching xmas movies, reindeers are not very smart animals. In fact, they are fucking stupid. No survival instinct whatsoever.
Now for a short introduction to artillery. Usually you fire calibration rounds to calibrate the tubes. Only when you know the rounds hit the target you shoot with all you got.
So, during winter artillery firing exercises, the calibration shells blow away the snow cover. This often leads to reindeers arriving at the scene to eat the newly exposed undervegatation. Usually just in time for the "big arty barrage" to hit them...;) IIRC, there was a case in Finland a few years back when an entire herd of like 50 reindeers were blasted in one go.
Just so I can get one of these plates, with "DUKNCVR" on it. :-)
~Philly
So I see I'm not the only one who wants that...
Maybe they should sell replica plates with that on it to anyone, whether they live in Nevada or not-- like those ones from Universal Studios that read "OUTATIME" like the one on the DeLorean in Back to the Future.
~Philly
It saved many Japanese lives too, you know. Everyone in Japan was prepared to do their civic duty and die with honor, whether they wanted to or not. Fat Man and Little Boy did what no other method could do - shocked Emperor Hirohito into ending the war.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Nevada: First in...First Out
call me stupid, but what does this stand for? (DUKNCVR)?
:-)
DUcK aNd CoVeR. As in look at the pretty light, I'd better duck and cover because that will protect me from the car thats about to fly into me when it starts to get windy.
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
Parts of Nevada are quite beautiful. I go to Black Rock City every year, and enjoy views like this and this and this (the last is Pyramid Lake, about 50 miles south of BRC). Anyone who claims that Nevada is a wasteland is just fucking wrong - it's well worth the visit for the scenery alone.
sulli
RTFJ.
AJWM wrote:
> (Power reactors elsewhere in the world use completely different
> designs, (non-positive void coefficients, or additional safety
> mechanisms) and can't catch fire.)
Perhaps not, but safety measures have to be kept in place to be effective. The September 1999 accident in Tokai Japan (Japan's worst ever, though not as bad as Chernobyl) was due to a complete lack of safety mechanisms. To save money, somebody got the bright idea of preparing nuclear fuel by mixing it with nitric acid in a really big open bucket. None of the recommended cooling procedures were in place to make this remotely safe. Of course nuclear fission started in the open acid vat, and did a nice job of irradiating the neighborhood. It took a while to contain it, and there were fatalities. Needless to say, Japan is no longer fond of "safe" nuclear power.
Funny thing is, this plant was filmed by Toho to be the subject of an attack by Godzilla in an upcoming movie. The movie mentioned Chernobyl by name (and the mention was by an actress born in Hiroshima) as Godzilla's attack on Tokai would have a similar effect. After most, if not all, the film was in the can, the accident occured. Three months later, "Godzilla 2000 Millenium" opened in Japan. The next summer it opened in the US as "Godzilla 2000".
Nuclear plants are only as safe as the people who run them. When the people who run them are imbeciles, Godzilla will pay a visit sooner or later. Live and in person!
Godzilla, Godzilla! God of Radioactive Fire:
Come and save us! Please don't stomp us!
It's the other way around. It's illegal in Clark County (which includes Las Vegas) and Washoe County (which includes Reno). It's legal nearly everywhere else in the state.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
While our fearless leaders would have been riding out World War III in the comfort and safety of places like the shelter under the Greenbriar resort in WV, the Joe and Jane Taxpayers of the country were mostly left with the "duck and cover" method.
~Philly
BLOWME
Is far more suitable for an NV plate: covers nuking and prostitution in NV.
good point. I have never been able to understand why people think that dropping the bomb was a bad idea.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
And the fact that the opposition to the license plates seems to love citing the current Yucca Mountain plan is annoying to me.
Well, opposition or not, I think most people think it's just pretty damn ironic for the state to be issuing nuke plates to commemorate all the nuclear tests there but be fighting tooth and nail to keep Yucca Mountain from being finished.
Guess what folks, Yucca Mountain can't be used for much else. The Nevada test site is hot enough that you have to wear radiation badges to even visit the place, and there's no waste there yet.