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Nuke-Proof Bunker Turns Out Not Waterproof
An anonymous reader writes "The AP reports on the opening of a vault in Tulsa, OK which was designed to withstand a nuclear attack by the Russians. 50 years ago they put a Plymouth Belvedere in the vault to preserve it so that we could get a good look at it in the (for that time) magical year of 2007. Unfortunately it turns out that the vault wasn't even waterproof. The once beautiful car is now a literal rust bucket."
I think the moral of this story is that archiving anything, even if it seems durable, is hard. Now, how confident do you feel about those backup tapes that are in the closet down the hall? How much moisture is getting to them just from the humidity in the air?
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
what about the fallout from a nuclear attack? Seeing as so much is soluble in water, that's probably the last thing we want leaking in to a shelter.
Life is rarely fair. Cherish the moments when there is a right answer.
What's so worthless about duck and cover? In the event you're not close enough to be vaporized or significantly irradiated, why would you want to just stand up and die due to head injury if you have an opportunity to protect yourself? Plus it's useful for natural disasters.
And most importantly of all, it helped traumatize the public, keeping them in the palms of exploitive politicians.
Evidently, the key to understanding recursion is to begin by understanding recursion. The rest is easy.
Wait wait wait... a rant about liking older cars is now insightful?
Dude - you're not the only one. In fact, there are millions like you around the world. There are car collector clubs, shows, magazines, books, damn near entire TOWNS dedicated to the preservation and appreciation of older cars. Some of these cars sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars (even millions) depending on rarity and condition. You can't seriously be unaware of this. It's one of the most common hobbies out there. Shit, in ANY North American city at this time of year, you're bound to see one drive by every few minutes if you open your eyes.
Are we here at Slashdot actually this unaware of what goes on in the "real world", that not only can someone ask this with a straight face, but it's "Insightful"?
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
The story says it is a "literal rust bucket". No, it is not a literal rust bucket, it is a FIGURATIVE rust bucket. This is a literal rust bucket. Actually, no, that isn't a literal rust bucket either, that is a literal rusty bucket, a literal rust bucket would be a bucket which holds rust.
I'm sure we could find the same car (same model, same year) that's been used every day since the 50s in better shape! No joke.
I'm amazed not one slashdotter here realized the point I'm about to make.
Most revisionist historians often reflect on the fear that Americans had of being obliterated in the 1950s from a nuclear catastrophe. For a midwestern American city in 1957 to have a contest to determine how many would be living there in 50 years and especially predict the winning guesser (or closest of kin) would be alive in 50 demonstrates there was hope for a future.
What's interesting about 'duck and cover' (and other civil defense campaigns from the era) is that it's nowhere near as useless as it sounds. The primary kill mechanism of a nuclear bomb (not 'neutron bomb', which really should be called 'reduced blast nuclear weapon'), so being in cover can help a lot. The secondary kill mechanism is prompt radiation, manifesting as the flash - likewise, if that doesn't hit you, then you have a much greater chance of survival. The tertiary mechanism is fallout, and it's one that a lot of systems are designed to minimize (who wants to conquer a highly radioactive landscape?); most fallout comes from the actual explosion cloud touching down, sucking in dirt particles that are rendered highly radioactive. Because of this, a lot of work was done to minimize the fireball radius - and also most warheads were designed to airburst high enough to avoid the problem. You can read about this in The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, and also in a number of discussions of the issue in various defense studies/international studies journals.
What's REALLY interesting is why we, in the West, abandoned civil defense. With the wholesale adoption of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) theory, it was considered a DOWNSIDE to be able to save one's population - so civil defense, missile defense, air defense, and shelters all vanished from the budget. The theory being that you want everyone to be as vulnerable as possible - because otherwise the cost of launching a nuclear strike may seem low enough to make a nuclear war palatable. It amazes me to this day that the US persuaded its allies to buy into that theory. Yes, nuclear war sucks - but it seems that maximizing the damage it would do to you in the name of avoiding one is rather shortsighted. That's especially true in the post-cold war multipolar world. It's hard to say 'MAD works' when suddenly you are trying to deter anyone capable of building a nuclear device - which overall, really isn't that hard to do.
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