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You guys should go play with the COVID tracker again. It's kinda amazing what the "end of the pandemic" looks like vs when we started 2 weeks to flatten the curve.
U of U student arrested after making nuclear threat at Utes football game
The blurb:
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SALT LAKE CITY — A 21-year-old University of Utah student was arrested after police said she threatened to detonate a nuclear reactor if the U of U football team didn’t win its game.
Police arrested the U of U student and booked her into the Salt Lake County Jail for investigation of making a terroristic threat.
Police said prior to the Utes’ home game with San Diego State on Sept. 18, the woman used the app Yik Yak to post threats of violence.
According to police, the woman posted that if Utah didn’t win its football game she was going “detonate the nuclear reactor that is located in the University of Utah causing a mass destruction,” according to a police booking affidavit.
There was cause for concern according to police. The student has knowledge of where the nuclear reactor is stored on campus. Authorities said the suspect attends class in the same building.
I'm familiar with the type of reactor at the University of Utah. We had a similar one at the University of Florida as well. They give tours.
U of U's reactor is a TRIGA Mk 1, manufactured by General Atomics. This specific unit is rated for 100kw continuous.
Now, TRIGAs have been around since the late 50s, and are a special breed. The name stands for Training, Research, Isotopes, General Atomics. In other words, they're specifically intended for students and researchers to play with.
Reactors of this sort are fairly low-power and very inefficient. They don't use them to generate electricity, rather they are both a teaching tool for budding nuclear engineers, and a source of neutrons for physicists to irradiate things with. They are so safe that the NRC allows them to sit completely unattended for days at a time. They're not pressurized, and in fact not even enclosed in a conventional reactor vessel. You can literally stand on a platform at the top and look down into the water where the actual reaction is taking place:
(They're quite pretty. They actually do glow blue like that when running.)
So... talk about the very definition of a non-credible threat.
And now, because we live in an absolutely hysterical society, poor Meredith Miller is facing charges of terrorism because she made a joke at a football game.
On an unrelated note, the flexing in Moscow continues to increase. Putin is now using phrases such as "we will certainly use all the means at our disposal," which certain folks (who are not rubes, but report directly to them) are interpreting as including battlefield tactical nuclear weapons. Which is a thing that Russia does have a lot of. So those folks are chest-pounding and saying that if Russia does start popping off nukes, then the consequences for them will be "devastating" and "catastrophic," further adding that "In private channels [between the WH and the Kremlin], we have spelled out in greater detail exactly what that would mean."
Are we trying to start World War III?
Because this is how you start World War III.
And you wanna know what's even worse than deliberately referring to someone as a male, just because they are in fact male?
Dude, I don't know how anyone in government can think this is ok. And its coming from the left! they are supposed to be the anti-war at all cost party. Starting a proxy war with a FORMER RUSSIAN STATE when Russia is OPENLY threatening the use of NUCLEAR WEAPONS is INSANITY. I feel for the people of Ukraine, but maybe the US and NATO should have headed Russian warning for the past 6 years and styed out their business. And/or the people of Ukraine should have elected new leaders or thrown out the perhaps not legit leaders they have. Now they suffer, but it is/always was THEIR PROBLEM. We can NEVER advocate for nuclear conflict. In fact, the use of nukes is an abhorrent humanitarian disaster perhaps only justifiable if the enemy is at your actual doorstep using them on you. And Realize, that from the Russian government's perspective (because they have said so but no media here covers the actual words out their officials mouths), that is how they feel about us minglining in the Ukraine.
If the Chinese did this in Puerto Rico or the us virgin islands, for instance, would we allow it?
But you know, its not gonna get real till the EU starts to freeze sometime in December. Happy Christmas.
You guys should go play with the COVID tracker again. It's kinda amazing what the "end of the pandemic" looks like vs when we started 2 weeks to flatten the curve.
when the vaccine trashes your immune system and makes it easier to catch and spread the virus...
I feel for the people of Ukraine, but maybe the US and NATO should have headed Russian warning for the past 6 years and styed out their business.
This is a tough one.
I mean, consider US involvement in WWI and WWII. We didn't start those, we came to the aid of sovereign nations, with no history of being part of Germany, which Germany was actively trying to conquer. And, of course, the world was already AT war when we decided to become involved. There was no risk of escalation, as the situation was already as escalated as it could possibly be, short of some dumb-*** inventing the atomic bomb or something equally improbable.
But that doesn't seem to be the case here. Putin clearly wants to re-assemble the USSR, but I would be extremely surprised if his desires reached any further west than that. And right now, Ukraine is a very limited conflict. That may be of no consolation to the people of Ukraine, but we have a choice to make, as to whether Ukraine's sovereignty justifies the risk of creating a much broader, and bloodier, conflict than what exists now.
Of course, was US involvement in WWI justified? Was US involvement in the Atlantic theater of WWII (eg: against any nation other than Japan) justified?
I mean, consider US involvement in WWI and WWII. We didn't start those, we came to the aid of sovereign nations, with no history of being part of Germany, which Germany was actively trying to conquer. And, of course, the world was already AT war when we decided to become involved. There was no risk of escalation, as the situation was already as escalated as it could possibly be, short of some dumb-*** inventing the atomic bomb or something equally improbable.
But that doesn't seem to be the case here. Putin clearly wants to re-assemble the USSR, but I would be extremely surprised if his desires reached any further west than that. And right now, Ukraine is a very limited conflict. That may be of no consolation to the people of Ukraine, but we have a choice to make, as to whether Ukraine's sovereignty justifies the risk of creating a much broader, and bloodier, conflict than what exists now.
Of course, was US involvement in WWI justified? Was US involvement in the Atlantic theater of WWII (eg: against any nation other than Japan) justified?
I don't know my history re:ww1 well enough to comment. RE: WWII, by the time we started to get involved via supplying arms to England the stated goal of the reich was to literally take over the world. It was clear at that in time they would eventually strike our homeland, and probably with nuclear weapons had the European campaign ultimately proved successful. We spend the time leading up to the war training troops and getting ready. Its why Congress declared war on two fronts within days of pearl harbor. Our sovereignty was under threat it was clearly morally justified.
The Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention is a well-known economic rule which, in summary, states that no two countries which both have McDonald's franchises have ever gone to war.
Now, there have been a few exceptions to this rule, but they've tended to be pretty minor. Things like the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama, or the 1999 Kargil Conflict between India and Pakistan in Kashmir. Really limited, small-scale stuff in which nobody was commerce-raiding the Atlantic with fleets of submarines, or threatening to start popping off nukes.
It should be noted that McDonald's completely withdrew from Russia in May of this year.
Most of their former locations were taken over by a Moscow-based firm called Vkusno i tochka (Tasty, period), using all of the old McDonalds equipment, ordering terminals, menus, etc. But the fact remains that Russia is no longer a McDonald's country. As such, nothing prevents them from engaging in a full-scale war against Europe, North America, and whoever else is feeling uppity about their ongoing siege of Ukraine.
Last edited by Joe Perez; Sep 26, 2022 at 07:57 PM.
The Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention is a well-known economic rule which, in summary, states that no two countries which both have McDonald's franchises have ever gone to war.
Now, there have been a few exceptions to this rule, but they've tended to be pretty minor. Things like the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama, or the 1999 Kargil Conflict between India and Pakistan in Kashmir. Really limited, small-scale stuff in which nobody was commerce-raiding the Atlantic with fleets of submarines, or threatening to start popping off nukes.
It should be noted that McDonald's completely withdrew from Russia in May of this year.
Most of their former locations were taken over by a Moscow-based firm called Vkusno i tochka (Tasty, period), using all of the old McDonalds equipment, ordering terminals, menus, etc. But the fact remains that Russia is no longer a McDonald's country. As such, nothing prevents them from engaging in a full-scale war against Europe, North America, and whoever else is feeling uppity about their ongoing siege of Ukraine.
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