I suppose a fiery rant every once in a while is also more acceptable than blowing up effigies of David Cameron in one's backyard. Not sure about puppets of Iain Duncan Smith though, those might be considered appropriate kindling.

Anyway, if I was involved in any popular social media, I'd be prone to make statements that might get me into trouble at some point. Mum's the word.

By the way, later this month, I'll be in the presence of people who are already on Uncle Sam's shit list.

Your video, Neil deGrasse Tyson: How to Blow Up a Planet, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

*dead to the video and that Oregon man who decided to blow up this dead whale: http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&boardid=1&threadid=146398 ...

As I recall from studying this is a college class, we had only the two atomic bombs available. Getting material for another was possible, but I think I recall that at the time we could only collect enough for one bomb every several months.

So, a HUGE aspect of this is that we had a pretty good hand of cards in the poker game, but felt that we had to bluff to suggest that it was even more overwhelming.

To me, the interesting part of the debate isn't blockade vs conventional bombing vs invasion vs A-bombs. I think it gets most interesting to consider alternatives that involve dropping one or more of the 2 A-bombs some place where their power would be demonstrated, but where casualties would be as low as possible.

Either option you mentioned would have been GREAT, if they worked (and forced surrender). But both had potential pitfalls also. Drop one on an unpopulated area, and they might have believed we were trying to take credit for some sort of natural event (German V2s blowing up in London were often attributed to sewage gas explosions early on). Staging a demonstration for scientists and leaders to witness might have hardened their resolve and/or made them question ours.

If I had been in Truman's shoes, I feel like I would have preferred to use ONE of the two bombs on something like one of your suggestions; either unpopulated drop or demonstration. Then, use the second on a target of military significance if/when they didn't surrender.

However, in hindsight that would have been a risky move -- they didn't surrender after the Hiroshima bomb, only after both. Would a demonstration and one "we mean business" bomb have been enough to elicit the same response? Who knows. At that point, consider how screwed we could have been if it HADN'T, and it would have taken months to build another bomb (plus keep in mind that we weren't 100% confident in the bombs working reliably, even after trinity and the first two drops). I guess that we could have maintained a blockade and said "we'll give you 3 months to come to your senses" while we made another bomb, but I think that would have legitimately resulted in Japan questioning our resolve quite a lot; we'd be showing our cards too early.

I guess that at the end of the day, I don't envy Truman for having to make that kind of decision. Given the givens, I think that he probably played it as safe as possible and went with the option that was the MOST likely to force surrender. Perhaps some other option would have worked as well but avoided some of the casualties, but Truman took the information available to him and made the decision that he felt was the best -- I think that is pretty much the best we can ask of our leaders.

My friends,

Surely this will be the last opportunity for me to address you. The Air Force has bombed the towers of Radio Portales and Radio Corporación.

My words do not have bitterness but disappointment. May they be a moral punishment for those who have betrayed their oath: soldiers of Chile, titular commanders in chief, Admiral Merino, who has designated himself Commander of the Navy, and Mr. Mendoza, the despicable general who only yesterday pledged his fidelity and loyalty to the Government, and who also has appointed himself Chief of the Carabineros [national police].

Given these facts, the only thing left for me is to say to workers: I am not going to resign!

Placed in a historic transition, I will pay for loyalty to the people with my life. And I say to them that I am certain that the seed which we have planted in the good conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans will not be shriveled forever.

They have strength and will be able to dominate us, but social processes can be arrested neither by crime nor force. History is ours, and people make history.

Workers of my country: I want to thank you for the loyalty that you always had, the confidence that you deposited in a man who was only an interpreter of great yearnings for justice, who gave his word that he would respect the Constitution and the law and did just that. At this definitive moment, the last moment when I can address you, I wish you to take advantage of the lesson: foreign capital, imperialism, together with the reaction, created the climate in which the Armed Forces broke their tradition, the tradition taught by General Schneider and reaffirmed by Commander Araya, victims of the same social sector which will today be in their homes hoping, with foreign assistance, to retake power to continue defending their profits and their privileges.

I address, above all, the modest woman of our land, the campesina who believed in us, the worker who labored more, the mother who knew our concern for children. I address professionals of Chile, patriotic professionals, those who days ago continued working against the sedition sponsored by professional associations, class-based associations that also defended the advantages which a capitalist society grants to a few.

I address the youth, those who sang and gave us their joy and their spirit of struggle. I address the man of Chile, the worker, the farmer, the intellectual, those who will be persecuted, because in our country fascism has been already present for many hours -- in terrorist attacks, blowing up the bridges, cutting the railroad tracks, destroying the oil and gas pipelines, in the face of the silence of those who had the obligation to protect them. They were committed. History will judge them.

Surely Radio Magallanes will be silenced, and the calm metal instrument of my voice will no longer reach you. It does not matter. You will continue hearing it. I will always be next to you. At least my memory will be that of a man of dignity who was loyal to [inaudible] the workers.

The people must defend themselves, but they must not sacrifice themselves. The people must not let themselves be destroyed or riddled with bullets, but they cannot be humiliated either.

Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment when treason seeks to prevail. Go forward knowing that, sooner rather than later, the great avenues will open again where free men will walk to build a better society.

Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!

These are my last words, and I am certain that my sacrifice will not be in vain, I am certain that, at the very least, it will be a moral lesson that will punish felony, cowardice, and treason.

The script makes it seem potentially better (sort of), but the bits about Bullock's character seem as though they may ruin it. Basically, in a film like the one described, I want to see a professional, someone with a lot of balls (male or female) and brains, making an impossible situation work. Just having a bumbling, panicky, under trained astronaut surviving by dumb luck luck and a "will to survive," will short change us. Trying to squeeze an "everyman" (or "everywoman") character to elicit sympathy from the audience is doing a disservice. An extremely competent woman, put in a situation where the odds are way stacked against her, yet she perseveres through cunning, grit and level-headed intelligence to survive would be much, MUCH more gratifying.

The overbearing sense of Hollywood-style American patriotism ("evil Russians blow up satellite") and selling it like she's just pulling herself up by her bootstraps to get things and survive against the odds.. bleh.

Anyways, I kind of see the Hollywood executive patting themselves on the back saying "our lead is a woman... we are so progressive," but then still making her effetively a damsel-in-distress (saved by the man), even if she does ultimately save herself.

Mercs these days are overengineered and full of useless electronics. But they don't blow up, they don't turn into a ball of fire on their own.

It wasn't an LPG Merc, was it? So what's the freaky one-in-a-million coincidence that happened here? Did he happen to transport a couple of tanks of propane in the back?

The docos I have seen on excavations of suddenly abandoned cities generally feature some discussion of whether there is evidence of political collapse (fire, looting) or natural catastrophe (climate records of drought, or evidence of earthquake etc.).

In some cases it is possible to determine, but sometimes we'll just never know.

Of course, it's always possible that a city happened to suffer a GFC style bank blow-up exactly as a natural catastrophe arrived, there's no rule that droughts can't happen in years of political or financial ineptitude.

well it looks like the video title includes the reaction (NH4)2Cr2O7 + Hg(SCN)2

so

Mercury (II) thiocyanate and Ammonium dichromate


make some Tannerite instead... its legal to posses the components because we're at war with terrorists or something...

The oxidizer is a mixture of 85% 200-mesh ammonium nitrate and 0–15% ammonium perchlorate...the catalyst is a mixture of 90% 600-mesh dark flake aluminium powder, 5% 325-mesh titanium sponge and 5% 200-mesh zirconium hydroxide... ammonium nitrate and aluminium powder work too.

thanks to Amazon.com and Google.com, you too can blow up many things.

So few people know the Floyd pre-Dark Side, but the More, Blow Up, and Zabriskie Point soundtracks each have some of the more quintessential Floyd songs on them, to say nothing of Ummagumma and A Saucerful of Secrets.

Just in general terms, I'm one of those non-nuclear-physicists who was under the (mistaken) belief that fusion and fission reactions were different from each other. One being explosive, the other being incredibly hot. I had thought reactors were fissile, and Chernobyl was a massive steam explosion, and incapable of blowing up like a nu-cu-lur bomb. Instead, melting down and causing the "China Syndrome"

Finding out both fission AND fusion can "go Hiroshima" gives me pause when considering nuclear-electric power..

This video has been seconded as a duplicate; transferring votes to the original video and killing this dupe - dupeof seconded with isdupe by RedSky.

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/IED-blows-up-road-in-middle-of-convoy-no-injuries