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Movie: The Crazies
07-04-2010, 07:46 PM
Is anyone else distinctly put off by this film? Because I have trouble with the idea that the US Government would nuke one of its own towns and not have some like, say, the President notice. And I have trouble with the idea that any US President would authorize measures like the ones taken in this movie.
You know, just saying from the perspective of a US Serviceman.
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I liked the movie. The fact that the heros don't fall into many heroic cliches and still end up getting screwed is wonderful. I also really love the subplot with the Deputy. It was very nicely done.
As for the whole "would the US nuke US soil" thing. Well, yes. I think they would, in certain circumstances. Did the events in questions qualify? Maybe. It's hard to say since we get so little information about the contagion. I mean, if you accept that the US Government is creating biological weapons that are this horrific as one of the premises of the film, you basically are dealing with a government that is far more evil than actual America.
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Epsilon
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Who says that they have to use a nuke, after all don't sufficiently large enough FAE devices get confused for one if spotted by the untrained.
Anyway if someone can pry Ed from spacebattles, perhaps he could verify the existence of any such plans.
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any sufficiently large explosion can cause a mushroom cloud, and can easily be confused with nukes. Mainly because the first nuclear detonations are fairly iconic and people think: mushroom cloud == nuke
-Terry
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True -- even relatively small explosions produce (small) mushroom clouds. It's a result of the physics of the bang, not the nature of the explosive.
That said though, because Hollywood screenwriters are generally an ignorant and superstitious lot, when we see a mushroom cloud on the screen it means nuke -- as Sweno noted.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
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How about the general rule of BIG WHITE FLASH = Nuke?
EDIT: Oh, another thing that bugs me. The woman was looking right at it. By all rights her eyeballs shoulda been melted right outta their sockets, especially as close as they were.
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An FAE bomb or something similar would simulate a nuclear explosion pretty convincingly. If you want proof, there was a recent gas line explosion in Texas which did a pretty good similacra of a mini-nuke. 1000 ft blast radius. Another one that comes to mind was an explosion in a plant that manufactures the solid fuel for missiles. That one looked like someone set off a 5k nuke and registered 4.7 on the seismograph.
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You mean the Pepcon explosion? It produced a sufficient shockwave, but not the blinding flash of ZOMG-MICRO-SUN-light.