Non-Nuclear

[merovingian_backup]

The Russian government just built and tested the biggest bomb ever.

It is very weird that this is not front page news. Or in mainstream American news at all.

I spoke with my parallel history twin, and he says that in his timeline, everyone is in fallout shelters now because of this. Of course, he's also got a terrible, terrible haircut and seems to think it's the best thing ever. And don't even get me started about the zeppelins. Why does every parallel timeline have so many zeppelins?

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

It's because the time membrane is permeable only by zeppelin.

[the-leewit.livejournal.com]

Many parallel universes were caused when Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive copy of "the Gernbeck Continuum." In ours, he got bitten by a unicorn.

Friend of yours?

[mcfnord.livejournal.com]

it only seems so from your point of view. i think there's a zeppelin crunch. those new "vacuum bombs (http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL1155952320070911)" are twice as deadly as nukes, and better for the environment. finally something we can all agree on.

[lbmango.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine suggested that Zeppelins are what happen when Germany wins WWII.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

In radioactive environments, Zepplins can be used as shelters. Y'know, because of the Led.

[jiawen]

"Parallel Haircut" is my favorite episode of Star Trek The Original Series.

[crisper.livejournal.com]

No other timeline ever discovered hydrogen, so they never had the Hindenburg disaster. Also, this means they never discovered fusion, so their ideas of "biggest bomb ever" are actually pretty puny.

[elynne.livejournal.com]

What stopped the zeppelin explosion - er, poor choice of words. The reason there aren't so many zeppelins in our timeline is because of the Hindenberg disaster, which was a statistical fluke of such vanishingly small likelihood that in the majority of even marginally similar timelines, it never happened.

[orb2069.livejournal.com]

Airplanes are faster, boats are cheaper - Luxury travel has always been a niche market, as far as I can tell.

As far as airship fires being a statistical fluke... IIRC, something like 1/4 of the LZ's went up in flames: Accidents, tracer round fire during WWI, etc, etc. Barring the war controls letting the germans have sufficient helium, it had to happen sooner or later. The thing that made the Hindenburg memorable was it's burning to a crisp right in front of a squad of news reporters and radio announcers - Talk about your bad PR.

Not that the Shennendoah, the Akron, the Macon or any of the others helped.

[elynne.livejournal.com]

You seem to be operating from some paralell reality where hydrogen burns like crazy.

[crazyunlikeafox.livejournal.com]

Why are they in fallout shelters? It's not like it's a nuclear bomb.

Or are they worried about the fact that reports about cruise missiles getting flown over the US can't seem to figure out if it was five or six missiles (and if the number recovered matches the number missing). Seems like people in a parallel history would get worked up over that.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

In most parallel timelines, airplanes lost their popularity after the Spruce Goose crashed into the Eiffel Tower.

[zunger.livejournal.com]

It's not really that impressive a bomb. It's a big thermobaric gizmo, which basically sprays an aluminum-based explosive into a big cloud, and then lights it on fire. The explosion is sort of like what happens if you light up a big balloon of hydrogen; the detonation wave spreads almost instantly throughout the cloud, and then the whole thing makes a single big and really loud "bang!". Large explosion but it's very spread out, so it isn't very penetrating. And the bomb is bulky (weighs about 8 tons, needs modified bombers) and has an equivalent yield of 44T.

But since it doesn't really penetrate anything, it's no good against hardened targets; pretty much the only thing this is good for is bombing cities. So basically, tey have a new way of blowing up cities, that involves bulky devices that are hard to work with but sound really impressive on the news when they boast about The Biggest Non-Nuclear Bomb Ever.

A very Russian bit of PR.

Your friend in the parallel timeline is right to be more worried, though -- thermobaric explosions are absolute murder on lighter-than-air craft, especially if they get caught up in the explosive cloud itself. It could be that the Russians just borrowed this hardware from that timeline and thought it would be impressive-sounding over here.

Damned trans-universal arms dealers...

[rokica.livejournal.com]

All you really need is a sonic screwdriver to deal with any and all bombs and zeppelins.

Oh yes, and bananas.

I like bananas.

[datan0de.livejournal.com]

I think that the better question is why in Gawd's name does this timeline not have zeppelins? It boggles the mind!

While I'm on the soapbox, there are a few other things about this timeline that bug the hell out of me. There's no Peppermint Pepsi, Spam tastes like crap, Microsoft is arguably the most powerful software company in the world rather than a small but well-respected maker of compilers and coding environments, only geeks have ever heard of OS/2, evolution is considered controversial, and narwhals are real animals instead of mythological creatures like unicorns.

Want to know why you people don't have flying cars in the 21st century? Me too. In the alpha timeline, the first fully automated flying car (requiring no special license) for general consumer use was produced by the Tucker Corporation in 1998, after they purchased Moller Aviation in 1996. By 2007 they were selling 12,000 M-404 SkyCars every month.

In short, you people suck.

[aleph.livejournal.com]

That's the silliest thing I've ever heard. Spam does not taste like crap. It even says "crazy tasty" on the packaging. Can't you kids these days read?

And I hope you're happy: the narwhal is becoming increasingly rare (http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Mythologiz---mythation--mythification_of_the_Narwhal) due to a slow process of mythologization. Mytholation. Mytholiatorization. Whatevs.

[aleph.livejournal.com]

The worst parallel universe I went to (or rather, the one built in worst taste*) was one where giant gray zeppelins with giant loudspeakers roamed the cities and blared... Well, you can probably guess: continuous Wham! songs. People had blocked it out so thoroughly that if they went into a particularly quiet room (say, underground) they would hear a negative version of the songs.

* It turns out parallel universes don't just happen, but are actually made by near-omnipotent lizards. And they're not parallel, either, but are arranged more like a crossword puzzle (which helps to explain how different universes can support each other without vicious circularity).

[redwill.livejournal.com]

''Why does every parallel timeline have so many zeppelins?''

coz zeppelins are just cool.