Welcome, PWoT fans! David Wong and PWoT have merged operations with Cracked.com, so you need to update your bookmarks or else you're going to see this damned banner every time:
The 5 Most Ridiculously Over-Hyped Health Scares of All Time
|
Fear is our national pastime. As a society, we have a long history of getting whipped into a collective frenzy over threats to our health or children that are nearly (or completely) non-existent. No danger is too small or remote to be exaggerated and screamed from the headlines. For example: #5.
Three Mile Island
On March 28, 1979, what should have been a minor plumbing problem somehow escalated into a reactor fuel meltdown at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Station in Pennsylvania. Within five days, the Governor had ordered the evacuation of all children and pregnant women (fuck you, dad!) within a five-mile radius of the area. Since that time, the name Three Mile Island has been synonymous with nuclear disaster. Hooters even named one of their hottest (and most delicious) wing sauces after it!
So why all the ruckus? Much like that restraining order Catherine Zeta-Jones slapped us with a few years back, we blame Michael Douglas for this. Just 12 days prior to the incident at TMI, The China Syndrome premiered. In the film, Michael Douglas plays a television news reporter who surreptitiously films a nuclear power plant crew as a near meltdown is taking place. As luck would have it, the events depicted in the movie almost perfectly mirrored what occurred at TMI. With the movie stirring public debate about the safety of nuclear power, there was no way the incident at TMI occurring just days later would do anything less than scare the ever-loving shit out of people. And that's exactly what it did.
In 1979, Three Mile Island killed fewer people than ...
Robot attacks. Ford factory worker Robert Williams was killed when a robot hit him in the head, thus outranking Three Mile Island's death toll, 1-0. |
But unlike other nuclear disasters, Chernobyl for example, which caused at least 4,000 eventual deaths, Three Mile Island was responsible for a whopping zero fatalities. In fact, there weren't even any injuries. Later tests revealed that the level of radiation people were exposed to in the five-mile radius was equivalent to the amount of radiation a person is exposed to while flying on a commercial airliner. In other words, the danger was nil.
Reddit
Facebook
StumbleUpon
Digg
Del.icio.us
FarkRecommended for Your Pleasure
-
6 Inventors Who Got Jack Shit for Changing the Modern World
by: Bronzulton Q646,747 views -
Nuke the Moon: 5 Certifiably Insane Cold War Projects
by: Bronzulton Q612,264 views -
6 Ancient Sports Too Awesome For the Modern World
597,585 views -
The 7 Most Badass Last Stands in the History of Battle
by: Ben Thompson569,940 views
"Who gives a f**k about the damn birds?"
I DO!!!! They're in my username, dagnabit!
Put otherwise, it was a good article.
There's the SL-1 reactor in Idaho, 1961. All 3 of the crew died there. (One of which had a control rod shoved through him.) It's biggest asset is probably why it's so unknown: it's remote location.
3 mile island didn't cause any deaths but if the fuel had melted though the containment vessel and into the ground it would have eventually reached the water table and caused a steam explosion. And that would have caused a radioactive cloud and massive contamination.
Evacuating people was not an overreaction. All that may not have happened, but it could have.
"Because it was kind of effective in fighting malaria. When spraying of DDT stopped in Ceylon (present day Sri Lanka), malaria cases rose from 17 in 1963 to 2.5 goddamn million in 1969, an increase of approximately a bajillion fofillion percent. And to this day, the mosquito remains the deadliest killer Mother Nature has to offer, with a confirmed 2 million kills per year."
Ok tree huggers, what exactly about this statement is a lie? How do we know mosquitos here are unaffected by DDT? They stopped using it! TWO million is not a small number of HUMANS... And I doubt they have Bald eagles in Sri Lanka and if they did, aren't human lives more important? I wish all tree huggers would go live in Sri Lanka armed with nothing more than a net.
TMI ACCIDENT WAS INTENTIONALY CAUSED BY AN EX-US NAVY NUKE SUB OPERATOR WHO DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A COLLEGE DEGREE...HE SAW THE CHINA SYNDROME MOVIE AND WAS TRYING TO RE-CREATE IT BY REMOVING ALL THE WATER FROM THE CORE...WANTED TO SEE IT MELT DOWN INTO THE EARTH....AND IT DID...JUST DIDN'T MAKE IT THROUGH THE FLOOR COMPLETELY AND PEOPLE NOTICED IT AND PUT WATER BACK ON THE CORE....CAUSING BIG STEAM & HYDROGEN BUBBLE...WHICH THEY VENTED INTO THE AIR OVER YORK HAVEN...BUT ANYWAY....JUST LIKE 90% OF ALL ARSONS ARE CAUSED BY FIREFIGHTERS...TMI ACCIDENT WAS NOT AN ACCIDENT...IT WAS DONE ON PURPOSE BY A NUTCAKE WHO ALTERED THE LIGHT ON THE VALVE DISPLAY
the problem with DDT is that it effects the generation after, the eggs were cracking for pecivorous species such as the American Bald Eagle and lowering the birth rates. Yes, let's let the symbol of American life go extinct. Also the US still sells DDT to foreign countries and it pretty much doesn't work for most mosquitoes anymore anyways.
Why all the profanity? I enjoyed reading the story - but the profanity really puts me off. This language has become every-day for most people, including children. I say - JUST SAY NO to profanity.
I'm surprised that there's nothing about Alar here.
You're right, don't believe everything you read...including all of this article.
the percent increase for the malaria is %14705782.35
HIPPIES ARE DESTROYING THE WORLD
Trains are a good one, when they were first introduced people were scared to ride them as it was believed that going faster than 30 mph could squash your internal organs into nothingness.
Putting DDT on this list is absurd. It wasn't so much banned for its carcinogenic effects as much as for its absolutely devastating ecological impact. And like it or not, the state of the environment DOES affect the state of humanity eventually.
But don't worry, the United States still to this day manufactures and sells DDT to third-world countries (you know, the ones that don't care about human rights, much less human responsibility to the environment).
DDT is no longer useful for preventing malaria; most mosquitos are now resistant to it. Still, the hippies should shut up.
To all the nuclear power proponents: It really isn't nearly as cheap as you make it out to be. It's just cleaner, which in my view, already recommends it enough.
Heh. Haven't heard about DDT since The Machine used it to try and kill Willy in the Free Willy Cartoon. GOOD times...
The China Syndrome and Three Mile Island is what caused all nuclear power plant building to come to a screeching halt. Thereafter we have visions of glowing green whenever we we hear the word "nuclear" much less use it. This is still true dispite the many years of safe use by electrical utilities (and military aboard ships and subs.)
Oh yeah, those of that will bring up Chernobyl should note that it envolved a screwball, obsolete reactor design that we don't use and there are modern pebble bed reactor designs that would be as safe as running a microwave.
And those environmentalist got the DDT banned once it had removed the malaria from their continents. Once they were safe from it, save the f*****g birds!, who cares of the africans and asians that still die in millions because of no DDT?
"No, when you absolutely, positively must kill every m**********r in the room, crocidolite or amosite is what you need."
Substitutes not accepted. That made me laugh a lot.
More on History
-
5 Myths That People Don't Realize Are Admitted Hoaxes
1,234,211 views -
The 5 Ballsiest Lies Ever Passed off as Journalism
778,963 views -
The 6 Most Horrific Bosses of All Time
770,915 views -
5 Great Things You Didn't Know Came from Horrific Tragedies
746,748 views
-
The Men Who Stare At Goats: New Trailer
by: CRACKED21,967 views -
Curse of the Duck Hunt Dog
by: Tremendosaur68,496 views
-
Articles
-
Videos
-
Columnists
-
More Cracked
-
About
Copyright © 2005 - 2009 Cracked Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved. CRACKED, CRACKED.COM and the "CRACKED" logo are trademarks owned by Cracked Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved.
Some countries still use DDT. THAT'S how they know mosquitos build up immunity to it. That's also how they're able to test for the dozens and dozens of other fucked up problems it's use causes. I swear some of you believe it's some f*****g miracle product. It's a fucked up chemical that does a lot of damage. So what if it saves people from Malaria? It kills them in other ways. And yes it does kill a lot of animals and causes severe environmental damage as well. Plus it's not like they don't have other chemicals that are JUST as effective and don't have all the band side effects.