Here's that scary story that made me think a little further into the crisis and frankly, freak out a bit:
SF Chronicle: "THE MAZE MELTDOWN: Safety: Nuclear shipments questioned"
Aside from all the very expensive gasoline the burned up, this is something that struck me as a major disaster threat during the oil crisis. So, apparently, this tanker fire was burning for three hours at 3,000 degrees. Thats twice as hot and six times as long as any of these nuclear shipping containers have been tested. My guess is that if something like that melted the I-880 freeway, and I mean MELTED, Salvador Dali style, of course it could melt these shipping containers full of enough nuclear contaminates to make babies grow third arms for 50 miles around. Chernobyl.

Another thing - If these trucks (they're called SST's for Safe Secure Trailer), which are constantly and quietly transporting nuclear weapons material and nuclear waste all over the country for assembly, disposal, power plant material, etc. just, well, ran out of gas they would be forced to just sit there. And decompose. There wouldn't be much chance for containing any kind of contamination without widespread transport and people in surrounding area would just be stuck, sitting around glowing in the dark.

The Bush Administation, for the past few years has been (also constantly and quietly) pushing forward with a new generation of nuclear weapons, coded as "Complex 2030" and "Reliable Replacement Warheads" - sounds safe right? Well they're not, especially not now. That means they are in developement and the materials for these things are flying around the country much more readily than they were before.

Here's some info on Nuclear Shipments across the country:
MILNET: Nuclear Weapons Couriers
The U.S. Department of Energy employs approximately 238 nuclear weapons couriers. Their job is to transport either weapons, the critical mass containers, triggers or other major components of nuclear weapons between manufacturing and storage sites.

The sites that are possibly served by these couriers are:
* Hanford Site, Washington
* Lawrence Livermore Labs, Livermore, California
* Oak Ridge, Tennessee
* Pantex, Texas
* Rocky Flats, Colorado
* Savannah River, South Carolina

Are you near any of those places? I am (Livermore, CA). But it might not matter. They're coming to a highway near you.

This one seems to be a circular chart recorder, though exactly what it is recording could be just about anything. It seems to be used to record a bunch of environmental factors like flow, pH, level, or any analog or temperature value. From the name of the photo (vib-press) i would guess its measuring something to do with vibrations or pressure or both.

I found this one of the photos on flickr -



apparently its in the Tiger Balm Theme Park in Haw Par Villa, Singapore. Also, here's the Wikipedia entry.

i took rumpletoe's post to heart and spent some time playing around with the map overlay from nico's(??) photos and some south america mappage. Its not exact by any means, but is maybe not exact on purpose, or mapped from memory, or made simlar just to confuse people of possibly completely unrelated.

In any case I now know a whole lot more about the topography of colombia, equador, peru, and venzuela, and more knowledge is never a bad thing.



I made a note of map items that seemed to correspond to cities and borders and other things of note. It looks like food/sleep icons might be cities (some are numbered though I can't quite make out where 5 & 6 are), rectangular wall looking things are physical or international boundaries. The bottom of the map seems to cross a border into equador and peru (nueva loja, iquito, zancudo), though the numbers 8,9, & 10 seem to zig zag over the border if we are following in order. I have a feeling that not much demarcates international borders in that area (i'm thinking volcanos and amazon jungle leads to a relaxed border situation, but that is an assumption).

The main thing that seems clear is that Tumaco is the point of entry and numbers follow a logical path around the map back to Tumaco again. For what? Beats me. Any ideas?