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Submitting "Nuking the Fridge" To Scientific Peer Review
An anonymous reader writes "George Lucas claims there was 'a 50/50 chance' Indiana Jones could survive the atomic blast in Legend of the Crystal Skull by hiding inside a refrigerator. Dr. David Shechner subjects this claim to rigorous peer review, and his findings are not good news for people looking to hide from nukes in appliances."
Glad I'm not one of Dr. David Shechner's peers, then. Although from the sound of things he must not have many left!
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Is that he denied the Mythbusters a chance to go nuclear.
Forget the radiation and heat. The trauma from the g-forces of that flight and landing would have killed anyone easily.
Better known as 318230.
The only thing George is an expert on is MOICHANDISING!
But, if you're about to suffer the effects of a close range nuclear detonation, you could do worse... At least this way you'll feel proactive about avoid death as you die horribly.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
n/t
Or, how about just shut up and watch the movie.
Peer review? This is a job for the Mythbusters!
Let's see, we have a fridge, now we just need a nuclear testing facility!
Shoulda put the webserver in that fridge instead - maybe then it could survive a slashdotting...
... but the franchise didn't.
Does that make him "Schrodinger's Archaeologist?"
Don't do this at home.
How high would the overpressure be under the nuclear blast? There would be a lot of pressure pushing on the fridge to blow it that far. And why was it lead lined? What would be the purpose of that in a commercial refrigerator.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_nuclear_explosions_on_human_health#Blast_effects_-_the_initial_stage
http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/IndianaJones3.htm
These links provide some food for thought.
liberare massarum ex ignorantia, clausa descendit molestie.
Actually it's the TARDIS, and Indiana Jones is just another alias of Dr. Who. Of course he will survive.
I, for one, wish they had peer reviewed THE SCREENPLAY.
What a shit movie that was.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
George Lucas must be dumber than I thought if he really thought there was a 50/50 chance of survival. What kind of odds does he give for being in a fridge while it gets hit by a 18 wheeler going 70 mph? Gotta be a 80%+ chance of survival compared to the nuclear blast.
The webserver!
Fall! Fall before the power of the Slash and the Dot!
HMBOOWAHAHAHAHA!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
( ! ) Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 15728640) (tried to allocate 19456 bytes) in /var/www/overthinkingit.com/wp-includes/class-http.php on line 1358
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:zG-BilzlF4UJ:www.overthinkingit.com/2012/02/22/fridge-nuking-scientific-peer-review/%3Fpage%3Dall+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
For those that want a read-through while the server has it's heart ripped out.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I guess it is back to hiding under a desk if we ever see a nuke coming.
Out next experiment, called "nuking the server", was carried out successfully. Oh I love a good slashdotting in the evenings. Now, anyone care to calculate the temperatures on the server at this time?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Of course it's 50/50, either: A. You live, or B. You die You can't fault his reasoning. Unless you took a math class ever.
Thanks for the spoiler, Slashdot.
Am I the only one who hasn't watched this supposed piece of crap movie?
It would be almost certain that Ford would survive a movie nuke in a prop refrigerator. Union rules specify that prop 1940s refrigerators weigh enough to require an entire crew to move. It was probably made of depleted uranium. As for the nuke, it was no more than 450 teraflops due to FX budget constraints. It takes at least an petaflop to kill an A-list movie star, and that is contractually stipulated.
Since Indy is the star of the action movie, he cannot die, unless it's a plot device where later in the movie he gets reanimated.
So even if Indy only had his signature Fedora and Leather Jacket and no fridge, he would have survived the blast with just a few scratches. QED
One guy writing a "funny" article in which he is the third guy on a website to criticize some ideas and writes it sort-of in the style of a scientific peer review is not actually sending an idea around for scientific peer review. Headline and summary failure.
Server is down, cached version : http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:zG-BilzlF4UJ:www.overthinkingit.com/2012/02/22/fridge-nuking-scientific-peer-review/%3Fpage%3Dall+http://www.overthinkingit.com/2012/02/22/fridge-nuking-scientific-peer-review/%3Fpage%3Dall&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca
Tomorrow is another day...
Fridge nuke YOU!
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
Scientists aren't the only peer-reviewing group. Bethesda looked at the evidence presented and showed their judgement here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-iPC-IyZCY
In other news, still no cures for cancer
wouldn't need a refrigerator.
So a director of fiction makes an absolutely absurd claim that can damn near be debunked with common sense, and someone with a doctorate degree (which I now question) feels the need to not only study this, but submit it for peer review?
Is the good doctor high on his own supply, or is this because it's George Lucas and therefore sensationalist attention-grabbing?
Uh, not to mention we're submitting a scenario for peer review that has likely NEVER happened and likely never will. I suppose the icing on the cake would be that this is a Government funded study...
... he got suffocated inside a fridge
And this is not a fake news
It happened, about 4 decades ago
I think George Lucas ought to be careful of movie scenario he puts on his movies.
Children watching the movie might just do what the hero does - hide inside a fridge, - and suffocate, just like that poor child who died 4 decades ago
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Surviving a nuclear bomb in a fridge? All I see is 'duck and cover' homage there. Same with the rest of the movie. It's a big 50's homage, same as the original 3 were 30's homages.
That said, I still wanna know how one tub of water the size we were shown in Temple of Doom can possibly flow through all those mine passages and have the kind of water pressure they put on film.
Having watched all four side-by-side? Temple of Doom was the least like an IJ story to me. Raiders and Crusade were the best, followed by Skull and Temple.
It appears to be slashdotted :)
While I certainly agree with the HIGH probability of Dr. Jones dying in his flying refrigerator, it is worth noting that in the Hiroshima bombing, there is a documented case of a bank worker surviving the blast from less than 330m from the hypocenter. Now granted, she was inside, at the back of a concrete bank building, but she DID survive, and was not fatally injured. Assuming the bomb was at the low edge of the kilotonnage listed (i.e. similar to the Hiroshima bomb), and assuming that the distance was as far as it appears in that one shot (i.e. much greater than 330m), I think Dr. Jones would have quite a reasonable chance of surviving provided the blast wave was NOT enough to propel his refrigerator through the air (and frankly, from the movie shown distance it seems unlikely). If instead George Lucas had chosen to have the fridge knocked over in a pile of burning rubble, I think Dr. Jones's chance of survival, while not excellent, would be within the real of reasonable probability.
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
Crap, looks like I'm going to hvae to stop cutting corners and go back to digging my underground bomb shelter. Oh well.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Hiding in the fridge won't protect you from Slashdot, either.
Disbelief can only be suspended so far.
That is a failure of you, not the movie.
I am perfectly happy to suspend disbelief as much as the movie would like me to; I'm in it for the enjoyment of the spectacle, not to gripe.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
in the original back to the future script, marty mcfly was sent "back to the future" in a refrigerator in one of the model houses at a nuclear test site. doc brown modded the fridge somehow so that the radiation would trigger the time circuits.
the original script was very surreal, and a blatant social commentary on the failure/decay of the space age. for example, iirc, the time machine was powered by diet cola and marty is stranded because aspartame isn't invented until 1965.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
This review is... almost as bad as the movie scenario it attempts to debunk. I don't disagree with the math given the assumptions, but... the assumptions are stupid.
First, the review is not clear about what it is trying to debunk--that Indy could have survived what would have been the real effects of a nuclear blast from the approximate distance shown (at least 2-3km), or that he could have survived given what was shown happening to the fridge. I'd say the former is far more interesting. Next, there's the list of stupid assumptions/analysis decisions. (1) The fridge's resulting velocity was inferred from its overtaking the car, (the shown result, not the actual effect from such a blast) (2) that the air blast would accelerate the fridge from zero to the speed of the wavefront by the time its leading edge got to the far end of the fridge (that is some THICK air...), (3) using THAT force to calculate how close he must have been to the epicenter.
If the author really is a professional scientist, and this reflects the kind of analysis he normally does... Sigh...
Unfortunately, the rigorous scientific review ignores what I call the 'Chuck Norris Theory of Relativity', which states that for certain heroes there is an area relative to the location of the hero where the laws of the universe bend to their will instead of being the fixed laws that Einstein and others trotted out.
In essence, every hero has a personal form of "gravity well" where normal theories concerning the mechanics of the universe do not strictly apply or are muted in effect. This theory is named after Chuck Norris, because he is the extreme example where the entire universe is affected by his will. Of course, except for Chuck Norris, this effect is not absolute; heroes can be harmed and even die in extreme cases, and it is even possible that the strength of the hero field fades with the number of books/movies/ tv episodes that he/she appears in.
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Karma: Chameleon
Let me start by arguing that "realism" does in fact matter and that it is a key problem with this scene. Yes, a movie can ask you to suspend disbelief and watch improbable things-- but the degree of improbability needs to be established early on and it needs to be consistent. You can't suddenly up the ante and insert a sequence which belongs in a Road Runner cartoon.
The scene could have been fixed, or at least improved. Instead of showing the fridge hurtling a hundred yards through the air (which of course would have reduced Indy to a pulp), they could have thrown it twenty feet and shown the walls of the house buckling (but not vaporizing) from the overpressure. And maybe had the mannequins catch fire, just to further establish the lethality of the blast. And they should have gotten rid of the cute little fucking CGI gopher.
Indiana Jones drank from the holy freaking grail! He's immortal!
He had as much chance of surviving a nuke in a fridge as he did flying off a cliff in a heavily laden life raft into a river far below...its FUN you dummies, anyone remember laughter?
Yuma, AZ...You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.
It depends on personal toughness body building acumen, I would cite Arnie in “Predator” just after he says “What the hell ees that?”
The purpose of existence is to make money.
Sounds witty. Is it available somewhere to read ?
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Kingdom, not Legend
Clinging to the outside of a submarine while it travels halfway around the world...
The fridge stunt was completely in keeping with the tongue-in-cheek tone of the Indy films - the film sucked because it was the much-delayed fourth film in a trilogy. When has that ever worked?
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
That explains the " I'm sure that in 1985 plutonium is available in every corner drugstore, but in 1955 it's a little hard to come by. " line.
That never made any sense to me : surely Doc Brown, as crazy as he was, knew that plutonium was too dangerous to ever be sold to ordinary consumers in a residential area. But diet soda WAS sold then, if he said " I'm sure that in 1985 aspartame/diet soda is available in every corner drugstore " it would have made perfect sense.
Ironically, the line is funnier with plutonium.
In the 50s, people thought the atomic age was upon us, and thus soon everything was going to be "atomic". For a cultural example, just go back and re-read the original Asimov "Foundation" novel, written during that era. There are lots of references to "atomic" technology, including bizarre and improbable stuff that was pretty silly in its loose description considering Asimov's normal level of rigor, such as glowing personal force fields that were somehow "atomic"-ly generated, without really getting into any specifics as to how (not even to the normal speculative sci-fi level of explanation). Not even ol' Isaac was immune to the hype of the day which elevated the word "atomic" to basically mean "magic". Given that environment, it's not implausible at all for the Doc Brown of 1955 to think that plutonium would be a household item of the future.
Oh man, that original script sounds so much better. Much better than, "oops I slipped. TIME TRAVELLL MY BOYYY!"
Even better would have been if he was indirectly the person who gave the guy who invented aspartame the formula to make it. (not sure how or why Marty would be carrying the chemical formula, but eh, we could always have some note scribbled on the floor stuck to his shoe or something)
And because it was some scrap, after all that hard work he'd think it was one of his old scribbles that wasn't done, does it, SCIENCE MY BOY.
Looks like TFA got nuked as well...
Don't know about the fridge, but I sure wish someone had nuked "Legend of the Crystal Skull" before production...
That's because the line was a joke. It is not some silly irony...they intended for it to be a joke. The joke is exactly that...it would be silly for him to even think that in the first place.
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - BenF
It was ludicroius when Michael Mann did it twenty four years ago.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Dunno, but I heard of one poor sod that was caught within the Hiroshima bombings and, after being exposed, evacuated to Nagasaki just in time for...
And that was a genuine, documented case from what I remember.
Maybe people should watch "When The Wind Blows" more often and less Terminator. Nuke != instantaneous death. Really. It's a whole lot worse than that. In comparison to what happens to you after, it's probably better to go out in an instant flash of hot, burning death.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
In the early days of US nuclear bomb testing, no one knew what effect the bomb would actually have. So they built up a test around the bomb test tower. They parked Sherman? tanks at 1000 yards from the tower, manned them with volunteers, and asked the volunteers to seal their own tanks.
They had a trench at 2000 yards? 8 to 12 feet deep, covered with canvas tarps, and had volunteers at the bottom of the trench.
They built a TOWN 2 miles out and completely furnished it, inside and out, and had a company (Dukane Corp) instrument it completely so they could measure the effects inside the buildings.
When the time for the test came, they asked photographers to stand 7 miles out and take photos and movies of the test. The Dukane engineer in charge of the instrumenting was one of the photographers.
They told the photographers to face away from the bomb blast, wear dark glasses they gave them, close their eyes, and not open them until told.
The bomb blast went off. The heat wave rolled out and set fire to the canvas tarps, so the soldiers in the bottom of the trenches had burning tarps falling on them (Oops). They said later that they hung on to the ground for dear life as it tossed around 10 feet in every direction. The soldiers in the tanks lived and were interviewed ass well.
When the heat pulse hit the town, it set the paint on fire, but passed so quickly that the fires went out. they had not had time to reach self-sustaining.
When it hit the photographers, it singed the hair on the backs of their heads.
The photographers then thought it was ok for them to open their eyes. But the bomb light output was still increasing, and they said it went out 14 miles, bounced off the mountain they were facing, and blinded them. One of the guys in the tanks said they forgot to close the big gun breach, and the light poured in like a liquid and filled up the tank, blinding them.
The Dukane engineer was the only photographer who had listened when they were told to us e# 5 or 6 sun filters on their cameras, so he got pictures and movies.
Because he had listened, (and because Dukane was in the audio business?), he was asked to interview the volunteer soldiers.
When he checked out the town instrumentation, he found that when the high pressure pulse in the air hit the wooden houses, it went through the walls like they were not there, and pushed everything into the center of the rooms. Then the vacuum pulse following the high pressure pulse hit the houses sucked everything back to the outside walls where stuff then fell down.
You can see the Dukane engineer's photos, movies, and listen to his interviews at the Smithsonian Museum. I worked for him, years later. He was white-haired. He was the calmest, quietest, solidest person I have ever met by far. How are you going to disturb a guy who was standing on ground zero?
So, yes, actually if Indiana Jones was in that town, like the movie had him, and he had jumped into a fridge, he would have survived just fine, even maybe without significant radiation damage.
wake up and hold your nose
I remember those. Something along the lines of "...but to a small child it's a submarine, a castle, or a gipsy caravan".
Unless it was nothing like that, in which case I clearly don't remember.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So he'd have had to sit around for a few parsecs.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Poor Indy doesn't have much of a chance, but TFA is much too pessimistic. There could have been a big berm between the fridge and the nuke, absorbing and deflecting the initial impulse and direct radiation. He could have been accelerated very rapidly instead of instantaneously. He could have been launched with the fridge at an angle, so that aerodynamic forces kept it aloft only a few feet above the earth (no devastating landing crash). Rapid application of heat does not melt an object all at once, the surface boils off like the "ablative shield" of the Mercury capsules. Being sealed in a fridge doesn't asphyxiate you immediately, it probably takes about 20 minutes if you're at ease and very inactive and aren't oxygen deleted when you get inside. And so forth, and so on.
It does not make a convincing argument if you don't allow for possibilities that defeat your viewpoint. Not all sharks wear lasers.
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We figured out that G.L. was an idiot years ago.
Sure, the lead lining very well might protect you from radiation. But there is nothing in a lead lined fridge that protects you from velocity.
Assuming that the fridge stayed intact (and your body was not spread over a 20 mile radius) you would probably just be a pile of chunky pink goo when it landed. Best case scenario, the majority of your bones and organs would be destroyed.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.