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Eniwetok options
06-18-2014, 04:30 PM
Doctor Radiation's write-up in Super Scum puts the nuclear test that empowered him and Cascade, and turned Harvey Banks into an origin magnet, in 1952. According to the Wikipedia entry on Eniwetok Atoll (which, these days, is spelled "Enewetak" to more properly reflect Marshall Islander pronunciation), this would make it part of Operation Ivy. The question is, which part?
The OTL-historical tests, Ivy Mike (the first H-bomb) and Ivy King (which tested a more potent implosion system called the "Super Oralloy Bomb"), both have similarities with the test described on pp.SS8-9 and SS15, but neither's really an exact match for Mark Johnson's statement that Glass and Banks "had altered the bomb to produce a previously unencountered form of radiation." As such, I think it's legitimate to interpolate a third test, unique to the Krypton skerry (call it "Ivy Lima").
?Comments?
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Well, I'm inclined to think the "previously unencountered form of radiation" is either exaggeration or someone covering their ass after the fact because a) if it were previously unencountered, how would they know how to generate it? and b) it is apparently un-re-encountered to this date despite the existing documentation, skimpy as it may be. And given its apparent success rate at inducing origins, I would bet everyone would want to reproduce it for military purposes if it was really something completely new and unknown. This would have a (forgive me) cascading effect through military and scientific history that really isn't there.
That said, I'm not sure that it's necessary to postulate a third test.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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All good points. Particularly about ass-covering, which we know Banks did enough of to end Glass' scientific career.
Of the two, then, I think Ivy King's a better fit; both Cascade's and Dr. Radiation's write-ups say the bomb was dropped, which King was and Mike wasn't. The "previously unencountered" etc. could be a misunderstanding of the Super Oralloy Bomb's mechanics (Mark Johnson, after all, was an aerospace engineering major at the time, not a physics major).
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Works for me.
-- Bob
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I've finally realized why keeping the "previously unencountered form of radiation" line, possibly as hyperbole by a reporter, tickles me so. It's because it provides a possible excuse for this pull quote to accompany it:
"...which will give us a tremendous, really tremendous tremendous tremendous clue as to the origins of the Earth and what God Himself is made of."
-- Monty Python's Flying Circus, "How Far Can a Minister Fall?" (Episode 1.12, "The Naked Ant")
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Heh.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Alternatively: "Mr Neutron. No one knows what strange and distant planet he came from, or where he was going to!... Wherever he went, terror and destruction were sure to follow."
(At the very least, it'd make up for the fact that SJGames' legal beagles would probably prevent having Mr Neutron as a canonical IST character.)
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Well, then, let's go with something completely different -- we'll call him... Mr. Proton!
-- Bob
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Call him... Neutron-man!
Neutron-man, Neutron-man,
does whatever a neutron can ...
Okay, maybe not.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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What's he like? It's not important. 
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Quadrangle-Man!
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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