{"id":728,"date":"2016-07-22T10:33:59","date_gmt":"2016-07-22T14:33:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/?p=728"},"modified":"2016-07-20T14:36:26","modified_gmt":"2016-07-20T18:36:26","slug":"three-thoughts-on-nukes-the-parable-of-six-fishes-the-demon-core-and-the-10000-dead-americans-you-dont-care-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2016\/07\/three-thoughts-on-nukes-the-parable-of-six-fishes-the-demon-core-and-the-10000-dead-americans-you-dont-care-about\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Thoughts on Nukes: The Parable of the Six Fishes, the Demon Core, and the 10,000 Dead Americans We Don&#8217;t Care About"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>one<\/h1>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Roger Fisher&#8217;s idea for making the decision to use nuclear weapons less abstract (from March 1981 <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BulletinAtomic\">@BulletinAtomic<\/a>): <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/h7arl36sKE\">pic.twitter.com\/h7arl36sKE<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Stephen Schwartz (@AtomicAnalyst) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AtomicAnalyst\/status\/672124785271312384\">December 2, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Which reminds me of a story <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Penn_%26_Teller\">Penn Jillette<\/a> used to tell.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>He and Teller were scheduled to appear on TV (maybe Letterman?), and so they prepared a new twist on a classic trick: You take a volunteer&#8217;s watch, put it in a bag, smash it, dump out the tattered remains, do some patter, and then make the watch reappear whole and ticking.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>In their version for Letterman (or whoever), they were going to take the host&#8217;s watch, smash it, then wheel out a big aquarium, and sprinkle the parts in the water, where they&#8217;d dissolve and the fish would eat them.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>The host would freely select one of the fish, Teller would scoop it out with a net, they&#8217;d gut and and <i>ta-da!<\/i>, there would be the whole, ticking watch in the fish&#8217;s guts!<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But the network standards folks wouldn&#8217;t let them do that trick; it&#8217;d be too brutal to have an animal killed on screen.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>So Penn and Teller re-jiggered the trick: Instead of an aquarium full of live fish, they&#8217;d wheel out a fishmonger&#8217;s ice table with six dead fish on it.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>They&#8217;d take the host&#8217;s watch, smash it, sprinkle the bits in the ice, the bits would dissolve, the host would freely select a dead fish, and Teller&#8217;d fillet it to reveal the watch.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Standards loved it, the host loved it, and that&#8217;s what went on live TV.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The point of the story\u2014which is the sort of thing that belongs in an atheist&#8217;s Bible\u2014is that <img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-727 alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Nuclear_Blast_Animation_Blinding_Light.gif\" alt=\"Nuclear_Blast_Animation_Blinding_Light\" width=\"126\" height=\"75\" \/>everyone was more comfortable with six fish dying instead of one, provided they didn&#8217;t have to watch.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Perhaps this is why, if we are to have a death penalty, we should televise it.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Perhaps viewing should be mandatory.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Perhaps the president should be forced to kill one patriot before he or she kills 10,000 abstract men, women, and children.<\/span><\/p>\n<h1>two<\/h1>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Consider <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/tech\/elements\/demon-core-the-strange-death-of-louis-slotin\"><span class=\"s2\">The Demon Core<\/span><\/a> and the sacrifices researchers make (occasionally heroic, but almost always mundane, and very often totally unforeseeable).<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>I&#8217;m mostly putting this here because I&#8217;d first heard about this when I was a kid, and realized that many folks hadn&#8217;t&#8211;and further, that most folks don&#8217;t realize what a duct-tape-and-butterknives affair science really is.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>We imagine clean labs and specialized gear, but in real life it&#8217;s a lot of tupperware and dirty countertops.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>A few folks are celebrated for the &#8220;Eureka!&#8221;s, and even fewer die terrible (but instructive) deaths.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>The vast majority toil steadfastly day after day to further human progress one negative result at a time\u2014so that we can go onto to totally disregard their hard-won findings because an actor or know-nothing shouted something demonstrably false at the top of their lungs just long enough to fool our just-half-a-step-from-monkey brains.<img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-725 alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/nuclear_explosion_test_at_sea.gif\" alt=\"nuclear_explosion_test_at_sea\" width=\"415\" height=\"308\" \/><\/p>\n<h1>three<\/h1>\n<p class=\"p1\">I hasten to add that, having protested the continuing operation of a damaged Fermi II back in the 1990s and edited\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/29MkEl0\">a textbook about Chernobyl<\/a>, I am now nonetheless firmly pro-nuclear energy.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>As a species, we need a lot of electricity, and we&#8217;re gonna need even more to dig ourselves out of the slow climate avalanche that&#8217;s going to kill us.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>The way we currently generate bulk electricity kills tens of thousands of people annually (for example, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/mg20928053-600-fossil-fuels-are-far-deadlier-than-nuclear-power\/\">air pollution from burning coal kills more than 10,000 people each year just in the US<\/a>)\u2014and that&#8217;s when it&#8217;s working <i>as intended<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Even taking into account the inevitability of the occasional Fukushima or Chernobyl, we&#8217;re <i>still<\/i> better off with the Demon Core than the Devil We Know.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_726\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-726\" style=\"width: 320px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-726\" src=\"http:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/nuclear_test_bikini.gif\" alt=\"FUN FACT: My grandad is in this picture!\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-726\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">FUN FACT: My grandad is in this picture!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>one Roger Fisher&#8217;s idea for making the decision to use nuclear weapons less abstract (from March 1981 @BulletinAtomic): pic.twitter.com\/h7arl36sKE \u2014 Stephen Schwartz (@AtomicAnalyst) December 2, 2015 Which reminds me of a story Penn Jillette used to tell.\u00a0 He and Teller were scheduled to appear on TV (maybe Letterman?), and so they prepared a new twist &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2016\/07\/three-thoughts-on-nukes-the-parable-of-six-fishes-the-demon-core-and-the-10000-dead-americans-you-dont-care-about\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Three Thoughts on Nukes: The Parable of the Six Fishes, the Demon Core, and the 10,000 Dead Americans We Don&#8217;t Care About&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_share_on_mastodon":"1"},"categories":[11],"tags":[52,33,41,31],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=728"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":733,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728\/revisions\/733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}