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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!!!
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!
... but the franchise didn't.
Does that make him "Schrodinger's Archaeologist?"
Don't do this at home.
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
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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.
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.
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
that's not unique. There were enough cases of that exact thing happening that they made a federal law requiring that any non-functioning fridge with a latching door must have the door REMOVED. Deep freezes included.
Not only are they mostly airtight, they're also fairly soundproof. Makes them an effective deathtrap.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Most home refrigerators do not have latches anymore.
Right. And that was directly the result of a child watching an Indiana Jones movie. The idea of hiding in a fridge while playing hide and seek would never cross a child's mind had they not watched the movie.
Completely incorrect - but when did that ever get in the way of making a buck?
I submit that there is a distance from ground zero at which chances of in-fridge survival are in fact 50/50. Computing the distance is left as an exercise for the fanboy.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
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
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.
You're new here, aren't you.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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.
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.
The first drafts for Back to the Future had a fridge for a time machine, but it was changed to a car because they were worried about kids climbing into fridges.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
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.
It happened often enough in the UK that safety videos were made about it. No links as I am at work, but it's easy enough to find on Youtube.
[FUCK BETA]
And this is not a fake news
It happened, about 4 decades ago
And do you know what has changed in the past four decades?
Residential refrigerators don't latch. Haven't for 20-30 years, at least. They use a passive magnetic seal that even a kid could push open. Even standalone (residential) freezer units don't self-latch - They require a removable key-like knob to engage the lock, manually, from the outside (and even then, always have a safety release inside).
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
So really, you just want to advocate for Time Machine safety, rather than ranting against how many cases of the plague we could avoid by simply getting rid of the rats?
Sorry, bullshit on that. Growing up, we hid in cupboards, under the kitchen sink, in the fridge, everywhere when playing hide and seek. My dad actually went through several plate glass windows in one game. You're severely underestimating the imagination of children, or you had a crappy childhood.
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.
More importantly, most home refrigerators do not have nukes anymore.
Not only are they mostly airtight, they're also fairly soundproof. Makes them an effective deathtrap.
I've added that to my list of ways to dispose of my enemies.. Your Secret Overlord thanks you. You will receive a box of chocolates at your work station soon. They most certainly do not contain Thallium and most certainly nothing radioactive... and completely 100% do not contain a combination of the two.
Yours in Russia,
P.
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."