Just thought I'd share this...

[subject x]

As we are all aware, NASA recently launched another shuttle mission. As I live in Daytona, I can walk 3 minutes to the end of the street to get a nice view of it to the south as it makes it's way into the sky.

Well anyway, when it got to be about post time, I headed down to watch it. Just as I got to the end of the street, I ran into a fella who was walking north on the adjoining street. As I came up to him, I said "Hey, check it out" and pointed behind him.

He paused, and just as he turned around to see what I was pointing at, the night sky lit up with the impressive orange glow that comes from a night launch, shortly followed by the flaming trail of the shuttle as it came into view and started gaining altitude. About this time the faint rumble of the launch reached us.

Well, this fella just about lost his freakin' mind! "Holy shit! Oh my God! It's the end of the world!! Oh God!! What do we do?!" and similar exclamations. It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud! It took me few minutes to convince him that it was not the end of the world, just the shuttle, and calm him down a bit.

I'm not sure what this says about the average guy on the street, but was an amusing incident and I thought I'd share it with y'all here.

Hope it made you chuckle!

 

[fitzbew88]

...this fella just about lost his freakin' mind! "... Oh my God! It's the end of the world!! Oh God!! What do we do?!" and similar exclamations. It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud! It took me few minutes to convince him that it was not the end of the world, just the shuttle [launching], and calm him down a bit.

What did he think it was? A nuke going off? Jesus returning?

 

[subject x]

What did he think it was? A nuke going off? Jesus returning?

I really don't know what he thought it was, but he was pretty shook up about it.

 

[mike]

That reminds me of an incident of my own.

a very large LPG gas tank servicing Sydney airport once exploded in the middle of the night. we lived about 4 blocks away, and the bedroom had a skylight.

so i wake up in the middle of the night, there is is loud roaring noise, the bed is shaking and thanks to the skylight the room is lit up with an orange glow...... first thought ive died and i'm on my way to hell.......

but eventually everything returned to normal, i nudged my wife awake and said "did you see that" and described it, she said no that i was dreaming and went back to sleep....

but when i went to the front door and checked the whole street (bar my still snoring wife) was standing there in their pajamas... looking at this large mushroom cloud.

took 20 mins for the various news feeds (radio in this case got there first) to tell us its nature, i then phoned a friend (a scientist) who advised there is no fall out from LPG, so i went back to bed.

 

[subject x]

Damn, that must have been a rude awakening!

I'm sure it seemed very bizarre in that just-woke-up state.

 

[Kevin Daly]

There's a lesson there too...normal events can seem completely extraordinary to anyone without prior experience of them.
I was following Jan Aldrich's Project 1947 quite closely at one stage a few years ago, and I remember going over a lot of the newspaper articles from the time and thinking that once the saucer flap started, a lot of people started looking at the night sky possibly for the first time in their lives and were naturally surprised by what they saw (including, sadly, Venus - which after all moves quite fast and is big and very, very bright). If we'd had artificial satellites then it would've been a real shambles.

It's no wonder the noise to signal ratio is so high.

 

[subject x]

True enough, Kevin. People's imaginations tend to take over in a lot of situations, and conclusions are jumped to. Usually, these conclusions are dead wrong.