NUCLEAR CONSENT SETTINGS
- YES
- NO
- MAYBE
- CAN YOU REPEAT THE QUESTION?
"Oops, bumped it with my knee again!"
You’d be shocked at how many times we’ve almost seen a nuclear apocalypse for this exact reason.
The end is far more likely to come from a whoopsie daisy than an intentional decision.
If I wasn't feeling lazy I would post the lyrics to 99 Luftballoons
Who’s got two thumbs and has your back?
This guy! (you can’t see it, but I’m using both thumbs to point at myself. I’m really doing it. As I type this. Don’t doubt me.)
Hast du etwas Zeit für mich
Dann singe ich ein Lied für dich
Von 99 Luftballons
Auf ihrem Weg zum Horizont
Denkst du vielleicht grad' an mich
Dann singe ich ein Lied für dich
Von 99 Luftballons
Und dass sowas von sowas kommt
99 Luftballons
Auf ihrem Weg zum Horizont
Hielt man für Ufo's aus dem All
Drum schickte ein General
'Ne Fliegerstaffel hinterher,
Alarm zu geben, wenn's so wär'
Dabei war'n dort am Horizont
Nur 99 Luftballons.
99 Düsenflieger
Jeder war ein großer Krieger
Hielten sich für Captain Kirk
Es gab ein großes Feuerwerk
Die Nachbarn haben nichts gerafft
Und fühlten sich gleich angemacht
Dabei schoss man am Horizont
Auf 99 Luftballons
99 Kriegsminister
Streichholz und Benzinkanister
Hielten sich für schlaue Leute
Witterten schon fette Beute
Riefen Krieg und wollten Macht
Mann, wer hätte das gedacht
Dass es einmal soweit kommt
Wegen 99 Luftballons
Wegen 99 Luftballons
99 Luftballons
99 Jahre Krieg
Ließen keinen Platz für Sieger
Kriegsminister gibt's nicht mehr
Und auch keine Düsenflieger
Heute zieh' ich meine Runden
Seh' die Welt in Trümmern liegen
Hab' 'nen Luftballon gefunden
Denk' an euch und lass' ihn fliegen
If you want it en ingles then find a site that doesn’t make it a bitch to copy and paste. It’s about a world civilization ending war because people in love let loose a bunch of balloons. 99 to be exact. We’ve been 30 minutes away from white hot civilizational atonement ever since nuclear armistice became a concept.
Dammit, Horndog Tango, that's how we lost Belgium!
Damn. I really liked their waffles...
I love the implied message in various switches.
Your average wall switch is about convenience. It says that it's ready to go on or off with reasonable effort.
The "emergency stop" switch is designed to be as easy as possible to hit. If you're barely hanging on to consciousness, are missing your hands, and have only a vague notion that you really need to push that button, you can smash it with any available body part and it will switch.
The nuke switch is the opposite. It says that you really really really better be sure before you flick this switch. If you aren't alert enough to solve a bit of a puzzle, the switch stays off.
Good to know that one of the high-tech speed bumps between us and atomic obliteration is an inconveniently positioned ½" steel tab with a warning that says "you really probably shouldn't" 🤣
We should put a piece of tape on the switch too. That'll really get the point across
But not just any tape! This 3x1" hyper-engineered marvel has been rigorously tested, exhaustively reviewed, signed off by a slew of brass, lost in a logistics chokepoint, found again, shipped faster-than-thought to a facility that's nearly spelled the same but on the wrong continent... So, this tape? This is what we pulled off the battery hatch for the coffee room's boombox while we wait for the certified piece.
Looks like we just found our new marketing executive for HEMtape boys! Tell us more about this tape's military applications.
"one of" is doing some heavy lifting there :)
That button isn't meant to stop crazy or evil people from killing us all. That's (hopefully) taken care of by things like careful pilot vetting.
A completely sane and non-mass-murderous pilot might still accidentally press a normal button. Especially if they were tired near the end of a long mission.
It's not as stringent as the safeguard that Roger Fisher proposed. He suggested that the nuclear launch codes be placed in a capsule and surgically implanted near the heart of a volunteer. That volunteer would follow the president around with a butcher knife. If the president ever wanted to launch the nukes it would need to be serious enough that he was willing to take that knife and carve the launch codes out of the chest of an innocent man.
I like the Homer approach. I want three different nuclear launch codes! One here, here, and here. You can never remember the nuclear launch code when you're angry.
Three different fastener heads within like two inches.
Government efficiency at its best
High torque on the side holds one of the cockpit fairings and isn't involved with the switch. Flathead fasteners are trapped screws and part of a different module that can be removed independently of the switch. Only the phillips is part of the switch assembly.
The vast majority of screws are high-torque, while a few odd bits and bobs are different types for one reason or another. It's not as bad as you'd expect.
Not a Phillips, that's a Pozidriv.
And Torq-Set might be higher torque, but it still sucks. The heads strip and bits cam out just like Phillips. If anything, they use it because it's easier to take out because the offset gives it more torque in removal.
I'm guessing the slotted screws are there to discourage a 200 lb gorilla from trying to use an impact driver.
Just use Torx, for the love of science. I'll allow Robertson but only for wood screws.
It may be a pozidriv, but I guarantee you the vast majority are being removed and installed with a #2 phillips driver, chalk it up to government efficiency again, lol. However, as egregious of a fastener sin as this is, to my knowledge it has yet to cause a catastrophic incident or frequent work stoppages.
The slotteds are maybe a step up from a thumb screw, not much torque at all on those, If you have to use an impact driver someone fucked up intentionally in such a way that it would almost constitute deliberate sabotage. They're recessed below the panel so you need a little something for purchase, hence the slot. They're also integral to the component, so no chance of FOD with those.
It's a 50 year old airframe, torx was still relatively new around the same time it was first being drawn up. Torq-set has been around since the late 50's or early 60's IIRC and is a proven NASM standard. They went with what they knew worked in an aviation application, and it gets the job done well enough. And, as I was pointing out in my last comment, it's typically one kind of fastener per job, unless its a fairly big job. So the work flows fairly smoothly considering the age of the aircraft and number of subcontractors involved.
Imagine if there was an accidental nuclear strike because the government refused to spring for $0.01 worth of panel fasteners and the industry standard will-only-fail-once-every-million-years arrangement hit that one-in-a-million situation.
Penny-wise and pound-foolish.
I'm not thinking of upfront cost, I'm thinking about the engineer that needs to constantly change drivers to access something. Huge pain in the ass, plus a higher chance of FOD.
What needs to be done to move/remove the red guard piece so that the switch can be used? Is it something the pilot can just do quickly, does it require a special tool, etc.?
It flips to the side, freeing the switch to move up and down.
Releases two dozen power bottoms.
So, where does one find this button?
Asking for a friend.
"Nuclear Consent" would make a helluva band name.
What's their music sound like?
Geiger counters and regret
Remorse* 😅
Whatever the opposite of this is.
REL ONLY
"Enjoy your 350kg of radioactive scrap, fuckers!"
Gives them a way to jettison the bomb in an emergency, like before a forced landing or crash. A flaming pile of wrecked airplane is bad enough without a nuke also being on fire
... isn't there someone you forgot to ask?
Judgmental F-16 watches
Since when do they put nuclear warheads on F-16?
Or is it just the button to say "You are allowed to nuke my position if it is necessary for the mission"
That second one absolutely does not require your consent
F-16s were certified to carry B-61 nuclear bombs in October 1980, the same time they were certified as combat operational with the USAF.
In GI-JOE, they had lasers and everyone had a parachute.
I had a very smug "ACKSHULLY" all lined up about how the Joes only flew F-14 and X-29 derivatives, but nope. Late in the run, they got an adorable little mini F-16.
Oh that one they had in the 80s with the wings that would fold back, that was an F14? I always thought it was an F16, but I don’t know shit about planes other than some flight sims I played decades ago.
Folding wings is practically the trademark of the F-14 Tomcat. I understand why we stopped making planes that do that, but I thought the folding wings was the coolest shit as a kid.
Right up there with suicide doors and the bench-seat as trunk-space "upgrade". 🤣
As a kid, I was super interested in entering/exiting vehicles being dramatically faster, and spent years watching every trip go by via rearview w/ the fam noise in the back of my mind. ☝🏼
Also (correct me where I’m wrong) I thought the F16 seated two, a pilot and a weapons officer, while the f14 only had the pilot? And I thought the GI Joe toy sat two. Of course the folding wing would be the much more obvious identifier, given it’s a toy and a replica where they probably took a lot of license, and this isn’t that tank wars forum where everyone is posting military secret schematics for akshually points.
F 14 is also a 2 pilot plane, there may have been some single seaters, but the default had 2 pilots.
LOL, I had my "JETS ARE COOL!" phase when the F-1n fighters were the only active ones, so yeah. The swing-wing one from Top Gun is an F-14. F-16's (provided by the Israeli Air Force, so... yay?) were featured in the, ahem, somewhat less well regarded Louis Gossett Jr. vehicle Iron Eagle.
Hey, you leave ol' Iron Eagle outta this. That was the best fuckyeah-milprop winter blockbuster that '86 had offer. Besides, at least LG Jr isn't a gawdamn sociopathic cultist. 😅 I think.
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