This Is All Very Scientific

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I've Got a Message For the Action Man

He may have that macho image and Kung-Fu grip, but inwardly he's just a tapestry of quiet desperation.

We owe it all to Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov

1983 was an historic year. The first Nintendo video-game console went on sale in Japan. Michael Jackson's Thriller was shown on TV for the first time. McDonald's introduced the world to the McNugget.

Also: a nuclear exchange between the Soviet Union and the United States (which would've resulted in the deaths of millions and the annihilation of entire cities) was averted. The cataclysm was avoided thanks to a single man. At the time, he was reprimanded by his superiors for ignoring the chain of command and for the improper filing of paperwork.

On September 26th, 1983, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov was stationed in a bunker near Moscow, monitoring data from the USSR's satellite missile-detection network. At around one o'clock in the morning, Petrov's computer indicated that the United States had launched a single nuclear missile at Russia. Later, the computer registered four more launches. Ordinarily, the procedure would have been to initiate an immediate counter-attack. This would have ignited the apocalyptic Mutually Assured Destruction scenario, in which both superpowers utterly destroy each other.

Fortunately, despite protocol and lack of sleep, Petrov kept a calm head. He knew that the early-warning equipment had proven unreliable in the past, and reasoned that it was unrealistic that the US would launch only five missiles. Any first strike from the United States would likely be comprised of thousands of missiles, in order to render the Soviet Union unable to respond with an attack of their own. Deciding that the probability of computer error outweighed the chance that the missile launch was genuine, Petrov classified the event as a false alarm. He was correct.

Afterwards, Petrov was interrogated by his superiors about the event. Air-Defense commander General Yuri Votintsev agreed that Petrov's decision was the right one to have made, but Petrov was lambasted for failing to record the event in the military journal. He received no acclaim, no increase in salary, and was moved to a new post. By exposing the much-vaunted early-warning system as being prone to malfunction, Petrov had embarrassed the Soviet military and they weren't about to let him forget it. After early retirement, Petrov suffered a nervous breakdown.

Ten years later, Votintsev published his memoirs and for the first time people became acutely aware that the world had come within a razor's width of a nuclear war. Petrov, now living off his pension in a small naukograd (or "science town") near Moscow, finally began to receive recognition. In 2004, the Association of World Citizens in San Francisco gave Petrov one thousand dollars and a World Citizen Award, in gratitude for Petrov's effectively saving the planet. Despite an official statement issued by the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation, asserting that no one man could have halted or ignited a nuclear war, several Cold War experts (including former KGB chief of foreign counterintelligence Oleg Kalugin) agreed with the Association's assessment. Two years later, the Association paid for trip to New York City, where he was honored at the United Nations. He was subsequently interviewed by renowned journalist Walter Cronkite.

Petrov continues to live outside Moscow. A documentary about his life and the day he saved the world is due out this year.

Would you like to know more?
Read this article from Wired Magazine
Read this article from the Association of World Citizens website

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How Things Work: Titanium Edition

The Laser Gyroscope looks identical to the Pre-Programmed Suit Motivation Comps. This could lead to confusion in the work-place.

Behind the Scenes and Beyond the Thunderdome

It has come to our intention that the Hyper Kitchen has reached 40 posts. Well, despite our insistence that we're 39 forever, we thought it'd be interesting to take a look at the many subjects examined by the Kitchen. Here's the rundown:

• 3-D (1)
• afterlife (1)
• aircraft-carrier (1)
• airplane (1)
• Alan's Affordable Autos (1)
• Alpha Centauri (1)
• Andes (1)
• ape (1)
• ape man (1)
• art (1)
• artificial intelligence (1)
• atoms (1)
• Aztec (1)
• b-movies (1)
• Ba'al Berith (1)
• bad taste (1)
• bandages (1)
• belated (1)
• Betamax (1)
• bioluminescence (1)
• Black Bart (1)
• blob (1)
• blood (1)
• blue (1)
• bold (1)
• bomb (1)
• bones (1)
• brave new world (1)
• breakfast pastries (1)
• Brighton (1)
• Buzz Aldrin (1)
• cadaver goddess (1)
• calamari (1)
• Call Steve McQueen (1)
• Cambell's Condensed Homestyle Soup (1)
• cannibals (1)
• carcasses (1)
• Cardiff Giant (1)
• careful now (1)
• carrot noses (1)
• cheap (1)
• cheapness (2)
• Chernobyl (1)
• Chesterfields (1)
• chicken fritters (1)
• cigarettes (1)
• coal buttons (1)
• comic-strip (1)
• comics (2)
• convex lens (1)
• crazy (2)
• Creature from the Haunted Sea (1)
• crystal radio (1)
• cut-away view (1)
• cybernetics (1)
• cyclops (1)
• Dalek (1)
• death (2)
• dinosaurs (2)
• disaster (1)
• Discomania (1)
• disease (1)
• dogs (1)
• Doktor Beak (1)
• Don't Stop Believin (1)
• doom (5)
• Doom Patrol (1)
• dragons (1)
• Dual Claw Action (1)
• electormagnetism (1)
• Elektro (1)
• era (1)
• evil old ladies (1)
• evolution (1)
• excess (1)
• fall (1)
• family (1)
• fat bastard (1)
• fatalism (1)
• FIRE (1)
• Fletcher Hanks (1)
• FM 2030 (1)
• frilled lizard (1)
• Gabriel Green (1)
• Gamera (1)
• germs (1)
• giant lego men (1)
• giants (1)
• gigantism (1)
• globster (1)
• glutton (1)
• goddamn aliens (1)
• Godzilla (1)
• gojira (1)
• gold (1)
• great (1)
• greedy (1)
• green (1)
• guts (2)
• hadron collider (1)
• hazmat suit (1)
• hell (1)
• hoax (1)
• How Things Work (2)
• Htrae (1)
• Huey Lewis and the News (1)
• Hugo Hercules (1)
• human suffering (1)
• humbug (1)
• I Will Stay On Dry Land Thank You Very Much (1)
• ice-world cometh (1)
• inexpensive heat (1)
• influence (1)
• ingenuity (1)
• innards (1)
• insects (1)
• Japan (1)
• jesus h. christ (1)
• Kevin Spacey (1)
• kittens (1)
• kryptonite (1)
• lardo (1)
• leap (1)
• little tiny cars (1)
• loose-fitting mask (1)
• Lord of the Rings (1)
• man (1)
• mankind (1)
• marine biology (1)
• mass hysteria (1)
• medieval times (1)
• Men Without Hats (1)
• Mexico (1)
• miniature cities (1)
• monster of the month (3)
• monsters (1)
• moustache (1)
• muscles (1)
• mustard gas (1)
• mutants (1)
• mutation (1)
• mysticism (1)
• mythology (1)
• naval oranges (1)
• Nazis (1)
• Negative Man (1)
• new (1)
• No (1)
• nuclear power (1)
• nudes (1)
• nuerotheology (1)
• off-schedule (1)
• Oh no (1)Orrazib (1)
• over-deadline (1)
• P.T. Barnum (1)
• petrified man (1)
• poetry (1)
• politics (1)
• poor foolish robot smoker (1)
• post-human (1)
• power (1)
• presidential candidate (1)
• pseudoscience (1)
• public domain (1)
• radiation (1)
• radioactivity (2)
• RAF (1)
• raw power (1)
• Ray Harryhausen (1)
• red (1)
• religion (2)
• reptiles (1)
• revolutionary (1)
• robber baron (1)
• robots (2)
• Roger Corman (1)
• Rondo Hatton (1)
• rye bread (1)
• Santa Muerte (1)
• schlock (6)
• science (5)
• scimoc (1)
• scooters (1)
• sdrowkcab (1)
• Seven Days (1)
• sex (1)
• She'd Never Look At Me Again (1)
• shiny (1)
• Sinbad the Sailor (1)
• skeletons (1)
• slashers (1)
• sleaze (1)
• snow (1)
• snowmen (1)
• squid (1)
• stagecoach robbery (1)
• Stardust (2)
• steaming mug of hot morning coffee (1)
• STENDEC (1)
• stove (1)
• styrofoam Dixie cups (1)
• suck out your brains (1)
• sucker born every minute (1)
• super strength (1)
• superheroes (1)
• tarantulas (1)
• ten gallon hats (1)
• terrifying bird mask (1)
• terrifying oceanic life (1)thank-you (1)
• the American Bald Eagle (1)
• the American Post Office (1)
• the Apollo space program (1)
• the Black Plague (1)
• the Civil War (1)
• the Creeper (1)
• the future (2)
• the king of this here dance floor (1)
• The Mad Zepplin (1)
• the sea (2)
• the shore (1)
• There really IS an ape man (1)
• thoughtforms (1)
• tongue (1)
• tragedy (2)
• Transcranial Magnetic Stimulator (1)
• transhumanism (1)
• UFOs (2)
• UK (1)
• USSR (1)
• utopian (1)
• vacation (1)
• vampires (2)
• videotape (1)
• wasps (1)
• way too wealthy (1)
• we'll make it up to you (1)
• we're sorry (1)
• wealth (1)
• what are you a doctor of exactly? (1)
• wheel-eyed (1)
• white (1)
• Whittier CA (1)
• wild west (1)
• winter isn't over yet (1)
• witchcraft (1)
• women (1)
• WWI (1)
• Zandvoort (1)
• zombies (1)

By the 108 aspects of Krishna! At our quick (and doubtlessly inaccurate) count, we tally 251 distinct topics served by the Hyper Kitchen. Among the reoccuring themes have been radioactivity, guts, religion, comics, How Things Work, and the sea. So far, the most frequent subjects appear to be doom, science (both mentioned 5 times), and schlock (mentioned 6).

This is the merely a prelude for further excellence, and we owe it all to our readers. Thank you for your continued interest and comments! We've got even greater things in the works.

The Hyper Kitchen: 251 Served.

I taught you how to cyclops rock

Ray Harryhausen's creatures never looked real. They looked better than real. He gave them such meticulous, organic detail and then brought them to life. Their animation was graceful, fluid, savage, and electrified...all at once. They looked like they belonged to another world.
This is art.

Larger Than Life

There were giants in the earth in those days;...
-Genesis 6:4

It was that line from the Bible that led to creation of the Cardiff Giant. Standing at ten feet tall and weighing around 3000 pounds, the impossible man of stone is the subject of April's Monster of the Month.

Are you ready? Then we shall begin.

On October 16th, 1869, Gideon Emmons and Henry Nichols of Cardiff, New York, were hired to dig a well by farmer William Newell. When their shovels struck something hard beneath the soil, they unearthed an enormous human figure, seemingly fossilized. Newell was quick to put the thing up for display, claiming that it was a petrified corpse belonging to the last of a lost tribe of giants. He charged twenty-five cents for people to take a look. The following day, business was so good that he raised the price to fifty.

Geologists and archaeologists cried foul, convinced that no such man could've once wandered the hills of Cardiff. Several evangelical ministers leaped to it's defense. The Giant drew such crowds that it was eventually moved to Syracuse under the new ownership of a group of New York investors. Famed circus proprietor P.T. Barnum leased the giant for three months. It cost him sixty-thousand dollars, but Barnum made sure he got more than his money's worth by secretly having a plaster duplicate made while it was in his possession. Upon returning the original, Barnum began displaying his copy, insisting that the copy was the genuine Cardiff Giant and that he one resting in Syracuse was a brazen sham.

Outraged by the sheer chutzpah of Barnum's claims, the owners of the true Cardiff Giant sued.The courts, firmly convinced that both giants had been fabricated, were unsympathetic to owners of the original. Meanwhile the newspapers had a field day, and P.T. Barnum was famously misquoted as saying "There's a sucker born every minute." From out of the blue emerged George Hull, a tobacconist with a story to tell. Hull proceeded to bust the Cardiff Giant secret wide open, with the explosive revelation that he was the giant's creator. It turned out to all be a practical joke.

Hull was a life-long atheist, and in 1868 he had an especially fiery argument with a fundamentalist preacher concerning the line from Genesis that spoke of giants. Hull bought a block of gypsum from Fort Dodge, Iowa, claiming that it would be used to create a commemorative statue of Abraham Lincoln. The block was shipped to a German stonecutter in Chicago. Sworn to secrecy, the stonecutter carved the block into the giant. The illusion of ancient age was accomplished by staining the stone and wearing it down with acids. Pore-like pock marks were chipped into the stone using knitting needles. The completed giant was sent to Hull's cousin, William Newell, who buried it in his farm. The entire process cost Hull two-thousand six-hundred dollars, but Hull was delighted when it was dug up a year later and caused such a commotion.

In 1870, the Cardiff Giant and it's plaster twin were legally declared hoaxes by New York courts, and the lawsuit was dismissed. That year, Mark Twain wrote "A Ghost Story" featuring the phantom of the Cardiff Giant haunting the plaster replica of his petrified body. L. Frank Baum wrote a poem about the giant the following year. These two Cardiff Giant themed works assured it's place in history. After an ignoble stint as a novelty coffee-table for an Iowa businessman, the Giant was sold to the The Farmers' Museum of Cooperstown, New York, where it resides today. Barnum's plaster copy is currently displayed by in an arcade/oddity collection called Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum.

The Awful Truth

This is highly symbolic.

"Plague Doctors" or "It Weren't Called the Dark Ages for Nothin"

The Black Plague was one of the most lethal diseases that mankind has encountered. Not only was it responsible for the deaths of those it infected, but it also indirectly contributed to terrible famines as those millions who suffered from the plague were unable to work the fields. The total death toll was astonishing.

Medicine was woefully primitive and muddied with arcane practices born out of superstition and alchemy. Despite this reliance on crude mysticism, even the doctors could comprehend the danger of the plague and the majority fled for their lives. In their absence, groups of volunteers dedicated themselves to studying the disease, treating the victims as best as they could, and fighting further contamination. They were called Plague Doctors.

The beak-faced figure to the left may seem like he crawled out of a nightmare, but his outfit was actually the world's first Hazmat suit. Although the nature of the disease was not understood, the Plague Doctors sought to protect themselves as best as they could. Underneath their heavy black robes, they wore leather aprons, along with boots and gloves of leather. The bizarre bird-like mask was stuffed full of aromatic herbs and spices, in hopes that it would filter out infectious elements (as well as cover the ghastly odor of plague-ridden Europe). The wide-brimmed hat was like a policeman's helmet: alerting others to the Plague Doctor's presence and authority with its distinct design. Frequently they carried canes to prod dead bodies and use as levers to move the cadavers aside.

The Plague Doctors were severely ill-equipped to deal with the crisis, but tried to save as many lives as possible, while their own ranks were progressively ravaged by the plague. As that hellish era eventually came to a close, medicine was changed forever in Europe. The arcane procedures of the pre-plague era were cast aside as witchcraft, and a more practical approach was adopted. While this new generation of doctors were only slightly less ignorant of pathology than their predecessors, it was an important step towards the development of medical science. Despite limited effectiveness, the innovation of the Plague Doctor's protective costume was undeniable, and the modern Hazmat suit has its roots in this Dark Age get-up.