Comment by retired
7 days ago
Schiphol Airport has large No Balloons signs when you go down to the train station. Aluminum balloons can create havoc on the overhead power lines. It recently shut down the train service for the morning.
7 days ago
Schiphol Airport has large No Balloons signs when you go down to the train station. Aluminum balloons can create havoc on the overhead power lines. It recently shut down the train service for the morning.
And they sell them right in the arrivals hall...
Maybe their born with it, maybe it’s…
How have we not blown ourselves up yet?
We do on a regular basis, it's just that most of the accidents are relatively small-scale, like one person being mistaken for an explosive-vest wearing terrorist chased onto a subway train and shot, or just one of many reactors being made to go Chernobyl, or just the occasional huge dam here and there failing and damaging a few million homes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure
Most people aren't sadistically malicious, and most security is professional, so random little failures like metalled balloons or reflections off clouds (or the moon) scaring a security system will only blow up to something important (even on the scale of previous paragraph) every decade or so.
> How have we not blown ourselves up yet?
It's not that we haven't, it's just that we can only observe from those few realities where we didn't.
Give it some time.
The Netherlands did not even blink when unknown actors (read Russians) were flying drones around the country but balloons is too much.