Comments by "Helium Road" (@RCAvhstape) on "Today I Found Out" channel.

  1. Turns out Rasputin was not immune to high speed lead poisoning.
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  2. I was playing around with my SW radio a couple of years ago and randomly found what I think was the Cuban one, the lady speaking numbers in Spanish. Really creepy, but cool to find after hearing and reading so much about them. The tougher thing these days is finding a decent quality SW receiver that isn't junk right out of the box.
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  3. Cigarette Smoking Man: [lights up off camera] "Very good, Mr. Whistler, we're finished for today. Don't forget out conversation earlier, about your family's well-being."
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  4.  @rickd1412  Well, I'm glad somebody out there is willing to do that for our benefit, because I sure as hell ain't doing that.
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  5. Nah, it was heavy church organ music and easy access to swords and lances.
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  6. In Soviet Russia, bore drills you!
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  7. If you read about this kid he wasn't really a garden variety introvert. He had a girlfriend and liked the Scouts. But he was almost like autistic or something when it came to certain things. He sucked at everything in school except for chemistry. He could barely write things. He had absolutely zero sense of the danger he was putting himself in dealing with explosive chemicals or radiation, and took laughably stupid safety precautions, like wearing rubber gloves to "protect" himself. He had burns on his wrist where radioactive substances got caught under his wristwatch and zapped his skin.
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  8. Have another Big Ass Fries? Fuck you, I'm eating!
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  9. The German flying saucer and moon colonization project, on the other hand, was well-funded and totally successful. Or so 'they' say....
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  10.  @christopherreed4723  Oh I get it, space is scary dangerous, it's just that deep sea diving is even scarier. I've done recreational SCUBA diving and while it's plenty of fun even that has multiple ways to kill the careless or stupid. Even if it doesn't kill you, things like the bends or embolisms can make you wish you were dead. And you're right about radiation in space, but that's known and manageable (mostly). The other danger in spaceflight is that getting you back to a major hospital in time to deal with a serious problem can take too long or even be impossible. A trip from the Moon's surface to Earth takes about 3 days. From Mars it takes several months.
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  11. Depending on where you work, you also have to deal with the risk of being carjacked, stuck up, or just murdered.
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  12. The deep sea is a far deadlier environment than space or the surface of Mars. In space the pressure differential between your cabin and vacuum is never more than 1 atmoshere, so you won't explode if there is rapid decompression. You'd be awake for a few seconds and pass out and die not long after, but if someone repressurizes the cabin before you die you'll survive and recover. In the deep sea, no chance.
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  13. "Safety measures are for pussies." - also probably Slotin
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  14.  @Sanguine_Entertainment  Sounds good. Now just slap your tattoo up on that shit. Wait...why come you don't have a tattoo? Unscannable!
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  15. The blue flash of Cherenkov radiation that victims witness is caused by charged particles from the reaction passing through the aqueous fluid in the witness's eyeballs. While Cherenkov radiation can occur in air, criticality accidents caught on security cameras usually don't catch any blue flash, even though the unfortunate people in the video reported seeing a bright blue flash.
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  16.  @crazyeyez1502  Oh, sorry, I misread your post. So that's way down past Blacksburg, middle of nowhere. Wonder what the heck you tuned into. Good X-Files type stuff.
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  17.  @KCJbomberFTW  Look up Idiocracy.
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  18.  @iivarilappalainen9836  That's true, and it's human nature. Also related is what astronaut Mike Mullane calls "normalization of deviance", which is when you do something unsafe over and over again with no bad consequences and think it's not a problem, until the odds catch up with you. That's what happened when space shuttle Challenger was lost: NASA got used to ignoring problems with the SRB O-rings until one day it bit them hard and killed 7 people.
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  19.  @tboogz284  Ignorant comment.
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  20. Tom Clancy said that back in the 80s after his books Red Storm Rising and The Hunt for Red October were published, he got a visit from some FBI types who asked him where he was getting all his technical information about submarines and weapons from, and he pointed to his bookshelf and piles of Aviation Week and Space Technology magazines and stuff.
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  21. His parents had no clue how any of that nuclear physics and chemistry stuff worked.
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  22. This is why when I hear rumors of allied troops summarily executing captured SS troops I don't really feel too bad about it. Scum of the earth.
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  23.  @Sanguine_Entertainment  Lol yeah. But I put out.
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  24. It is a great movie, but not historically accurate. And Wolfe was very hard on Gus Grissom, which was uncalled for. If NASA really thought he blew the hatch they'd have never put him back on the flight roster.
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  25. This is a fun and interesting thread. Couple of things to add: there were colonists of German ancestry in the Continental Army, in particular from Pennsylvania, where some people still speak a dialect of German to this day (especially the Amish and Mennonite communities), but they were small in proportion to the rest of the army. I think I read somewhere that many Hessian mercenaries who were taken as POWs wound up settling in Lancaster County, Penna. after the war, but I don't have a source to cite at the moment. Also, when the war began, most of the American rebels thought of Parliament as the enemy, not King George III. The American Colonies had no representation in Parliament and it was believed to be unfair that Parliament impose taxes and other laws on the Colonies, treating the colonists as second class Englishmen. There was initially hope that by going around Parliament and appealing directly to the king they could regain their rights as Englishmen, end the uprising, and continue as loyal subjects of the crown. Obviously things didn't work out that way and the revolution took a more radical turn with separation being the result.
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  26. If this tree was from Australia it would walk around like Treebeard and assault people.
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  27. I remember back when this was big in the news, one of the news shows (60 Minutes or 20/20) did a piece on it and interviewed some postal workers, who reported horrible things like having managers follow them to the bathroom and measure how much time they spent pissing at the urinal and so on, just constantly on their ass for every little thing all day long. Sounded like a horrible place to work. Of course, my solution would be to quit, but I'm not fucking crazy. Honest. Really. REALLY.
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  28.  @unstable_one4838  It's good but it's a bit dated so you have to cut it some slack. I watched it back when it aired and watching it now it's very much a 90s TV show. Still good and creepy though.
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  29. Where were you near? I don't see I-71 crossing I-81 on a map. That's pretty creepy.
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  30. If you look up BioNerd23's channel, she did a video of herself climbing all over the Woodpecker's giant antenna some years ago. Fascinating, if scary; she was known for taking huge risks.
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  31. And he had the balls to try to sue Richard Feynman to cover up his crime. What a dirtbag.
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  32.  @busylivingnotdying  I think you and Hillary need to mind your own business.
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  33.  @jmchez  Neil Young, anyone?
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  34. The Kursk is really sad. The US Navy offered to send their rescue crew but the Russians turned them down.
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  35. Bet that poor guy's ear is ringing to this day.
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  36.  @billysgeo  That's exactly what an alien would want us to think.
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  37. "...nearby nuclear power plant that employs most of its residents." Cool. What could possibly go wrong?
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  38.  @busylivingnotdying  "We"? Are you Hillary Clinton?
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  39. @Another Wacko Quite the opposite: the attitude of "I'm going to force everyone to help each other" is the greatest source of misery.
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  40.  @catatonicbug7522  Or... America is Canada's underpants.
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  41.  @springbok4015  More corrupt than incompetent.
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  42. That's the idea behind listening to The Cure, or so I thought.
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  43. I've read enough Lovecraft to know that what lies deep under that ice is best left undisturbed.
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  44.  @w00tb0ss  His ilk own youtube so they're not going away.
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  45. Lol I had a buddy who had a .50 BMG rifle and he would joke about firing ten dollars downrange with every shot.
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  46.  @SheepInACart  Steam rocket guy was an idiot either way. If he really believed you could prove a flat earth from high altitude he could've chartered an airplane ride that would go much higher than his rocket, and if didn't believe in flat earth than he died looking like a giant moron, building a deathtrap to prove nonsense. If there is an afterlife, he's the laughing stock of it.
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  47. Reminds me of the quack shrink who took over Brian Wilson's life for a while. Horrible person. As for the Soviet Union using psychiatry to control and punish political dissidents, that remains a threat. Look at the recent use of terms like "deprogramming" people who vote the "wrong" way in elections.
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  48. Atari was a large part of my childhood, had a 2600 and later a 5200 (anyone remember that?). Very sad to see the fall of Atari in the mid 80s, before that Atari represented the coolness of the future. And so happy to see that whatever happens to the Atari brand in real life, it lives forever in the Blade Runner universe, when I saw that giant Atari logo ad in Los Angeles in Blade Runner 2049. Atari is now the stuff of cyberpunk dreams.
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  49. 20:20 We prefer to avoid phrases such as "crash course" in videos such as these, please.
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  50.  @pr0xZen  Not very F, either, unfortunately.
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  51. Which is dumb. Considering he's not from there his pronunciation is reasonable.
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  52.  @mitchellpatterson1829  It's the only logical explanation. Like in the movie Moon.
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  53. All the greatest pilot heroes have southern accents. I know this from watching movies like The Right Stuff and Dr. Strangelove.
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  54. There is no parking in the red zone!
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  55. So basically the Brits were years ahead of the Mythbusters when it came to sticking rockets on every damn thing in sight.
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  56. You just explained why it's super dangerous and then you encouraged Simon to try it. What'd Simon ever do to you?
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  57. I know a township in NJ where the fire trucks are white.
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  58. I keep thinking it's outside my door and pausing the video.
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  59. Just wait.
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  60.  @stevengordon3271  Or styptic pencils, or nuclear fuel pencils...
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  61. Apparently the long term consequences involve mutation the exposed people into crazy drug cartel warrirors.
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  62. When I was about ten I wreckd my ten speed bike and bent the frame right behind the forks just a bit. After I repaired/rebuilt the bike, I noticed a difference. Before the wreck, that bike would ride no-handed very easily, but after the frame was bent wonky, it was never stable enough to ride no-handed and couldn't "ghost ride" with nobody on it. Take your hands off the handlebars even for a second and very quickly wanted to wipe out. I don't know what that has to do with all of this exactly, but it was an interesting thing to observe. Epilogue is that I didn't keep that bike much longer after that since it would never be trusted.
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  63.  @woodhonky3890  The front wheel was no longer aligned with the rear wheel, so I guess that's why it wouldn't right itself.
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  64. Here's a bonus fact I was hoping you'd mention: In the 50s or 60s there was a machine called the "Lady Godiva Device" which was an unshielded nuclear reactor. It was used by US nuclear scientists to create short bursts of radiation for testing purposes, and it was basically a metal framework with two fuel elements. One element was fixed and had a hole through it, and the other element slid down a rail and passed through the hole as it fell. For a brief moment, as the two elements passed, they formed a critical mass and reacted, creating a blast of neutrons and gamma rays, which would be used to dose items placed nearby. The reaction was less than a second, so the thing wasn't supposed to get hot enough to need a cooling system, but there was an accident once when the element didn't slide fast enough and the reaction created enough heat to bend the metal structure and wreck the machine. From what I've read the machine was operated out in the open air desert in a pit, and the operators stayed a safe distance away. I don't know why it was called Lady Godiva but I would guess because it's a "naked" reactor, maybe?
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  65. Yeah, but usually they're just weird.
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  66. If they want to buy up all the cows and kill them, it's okay. Same with toilet paper. Buy up all the toilet paper and wipe up the dead cow juice.
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  67. Raylan Givens and Boyd Crowder approves this post.
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  68. In the US military, "pogue" is a derisive term for anyone who is deemed useless or lazy. According to wikipedia it originates from "POG" meaning "person other than grunt". A grunt is an infantryman, which is considered the toughest job in the military. "Poguey bait" is snack food or junk food, the kind of food fat lazy good-for-nothings eat while grunts are busy training for war.
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  69. Dirty Harry has entered the chat
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  70. And now Arecibo's big antenna has been destroyed by neglect :-(
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  71. Like shooting clay pigeons.
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  72. Nazis didn't trust free market capitalism.
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  73. 4:56 that girl would've been mugged for that headgear a few months ago.
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  74. If you turn on closed captions it skips the word "Cock" in "Colditz Cock". So glad google is protecting us from naughty words.
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  75. 5:06 RIP that guy's hearing.
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  76. The only reason you can drive a car or fly on a plane is because some rich guys made it happen and began the auto and airline industries. I'm no Bezos fan, but if I just blew a whole fortune to start a rocket passenger business, god damned right I'm gonna go for a ride on it.
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  77. 9:30 The glory days of Camden, when they actually built stuff there.
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  78. If playing pinball is gambling, it's a shitty gamble, since you literally have zero chance of winning any money ever lol. It's a game, not a slot machine.
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  79. TMI was very public, got lots of media attention, and happened right after the scare flick China Syndrome came out starring Jane Fonda and Jack Lemon, so it gets a disproportionate level of attention, unfortunately. The fact is that TMI showed how safe US powerplant reactors are despite the clown operators screwing the pooch multiple times.
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  80. I think he just chose a stock photo of President Carter visiting NORAD or SAC HQ.
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  81. 1:45 I almost tried to wipe that crap off my screen.
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  82. Or a magic wand, like in Harry Potter.
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  83. The ancients were smart, they knew prog rock would be invented someday and that capes would be needed.
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  84. That film is so inaccurate in terms of dates and names etc.
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  85.  @akizeta  Doesn't change the fact of my statement. Maybe Apollo 13 would've been a better film if they used warp drive engines. I doubt it.
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  86. Simon not being the least bit familiar with not only the Banshee's music but also how to even say Siouxsie Sioux's name makes me feel really old.
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  87.  @neezduts69420  ok
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  88. Apollo 11 dropping the space race mic on the Moon. Nice.
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  89. Romulan plasma torpedo. From the TOS episode Balance of Terror.
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  90. This. You don't reveal sources and methods of collection, unless the President or Congress orders you to for policy reasons. Even if the Soviets probably know about your capabilities, you don't confirm it for them. Ralph Nader is, as usual, full of shit.
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  91. There is a passage in one of Stephen Ambrose's books, (Band of Brothers I think) where an American GI in Europe found Hemingway sitting in a bar in a combat zone. The soldier was a fan of Hemingway's writing and talked to him for a few minutes, before deciding that Hemingway was a worthless drunken douchebag who was touring a combat zone basically for fun, while soldiers like himself were getting shot up. The encounter ended with the soldier telling Hemingway to fuck off. I'll have to look it up; I can't remember the details of the exchange.
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  92. Smooth-headed Fact Boy
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  93.  @musicglenn  Don't worry, Scro, just slap your tattoo up on that shit and we'll get you out of here.
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  94. The test "pilots" judgement must be called into question here.
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  95. They did an episode of Myth Busters on this subject, BTW. Adam, with zero flying experience, was able to land a jetliner simulator by being talked down over the radio, using the autopilot as stated in this video.
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  96. Given that in the past Simon has defended Americans against the constant harassment by metric users, I had a feeling he'd do this right. Well done sir.
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  97.  @brianm6117  Almost, what really happened at the end of Sopranos wa
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  98. I like how the thumbnail is less "clickbait" than "click command"
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  99. "(Do this today.)"
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  100. We all agree that Nickelback sucks. Right?
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