Friendship equals Magic times Celestia squared.
With the quillstrokes recording that fateful equation into a sun-embossed, sticker-plastered diary, the young Tweinstein dragged Equestria hoofing and screaming into the Atomic Age.
The intangible force binding ponies into communities, and the solid thaumic masses bound in flesh and bone and blood, were in reality just two sides of the same coin.
Friendship was magic.
Magic was friendship.
All things were one.
⚛ ⚛ ⚛
Two decades later, as Nightmare Moon's second Great War wracked the continent and the moon hung still in the midday sky …
A team of six metaphysicists, huddled in a small bunker outside Alamadiscordo, bombarded an isotope of Harmony with elemental Generosity. The stone scintillated.
They had not so much as spoken to each other, yet the room suddenly felt more welcoming. Incrementally more intimate. Indeed, when they raced to their instruments, the readouts had measured a sudden Spike.
The sleeping dragon had stirred.
"We have become Dash," Appleheimer whispered, "Destroyer of worlds."
You get a thumbs up forAppleheimer.
Oh good, the Atomic Rainboom scenario didn't happen. Stopping Nightmare Moon isn't worth setting the atmosphere on fire.
“Friendship vomited forth everything she could.”
6472468
Well, magic did, if we're following Stanislaw Lem. But yes.
6472504
It’s funnier my way.
So begins the era of Discord
There is nothing stronger than the bond of friendship. "My god, the ponies have the Bond"
This is beautiful and terrible in equal measure.
Though man, the scientists who built The Bomb knew that they had done something special.
Though the fact that they were taking side-bets on the destruction of the entire state of New Mexico in front of the governor of the self-same state has always made me happy.
Also, the poeticness of "I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds" contrasts nicely with Bainbridge's more practical, "Now we're all sons of bitches."
6472504
Actually, this sounds more like what went on under the west stands of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago. Much quieter, and at least as significant. Or perhaps they were tickling the dragon's tail?
While reading this, I had a sudden, intense pain shot through my abdomen. I thought it was a kidney stone or appendicitis or something. But then I realized it was the word Alamadiscordo.
There... it just happened again.
6514001
Let's face it, this is Equestria. Accidentally waking up a sleeping friend is probably more traumatic to them than watching a 20 kiloton friendship explosion. Hell, canonically they toss around that size of friendship bomb just to flatten an unused barn.
6533675
If you suffer pun-induced muscle spasms lasting longer than two sentences, call your doctor. It might be an early symptom of acute reader sanity.
6535088
Thinking about Chicago Pile-1 always gives me the shivers.
• It was the world's first artificial nuclear reactor, and by definition it was experimental—with all that implies.
• It used graphite as a moderator—like Chernobyl.
• It had no containment structure—like Chernobyl. It had no cooling system or radiation shielding, either, unlike Chernobyl.
• Its primary control rods were oriented horizontally and were moved by hand. By hand! In case of emergency, a literal suicide squad armed with only a liquid cadmium solution would attempt to poison the pile—while everyone else SCRAM-med.
• It was built near the heart of Chicago—roughly a mile west of the Museum of Science and Industry and six miles south of the Loop.
The math had been checked and double-checked and triple-checked and cross-checked enough times to make even Twilight Sparkle happy before the nuclear reaction was initiated, but there was always the risk that the theories behind the math were not (entirely) correct. Chicago Pile-1 was a gamble, with the odds heavily in favor of success or a non-event, but like the Trinity test there was always the possibility that something the physicists were unaware of or didn't account for would result in a catastrophe, e.g., the Castle Bravo test some years later.
If Fermi's calculations had been off, if the reactor had run wild and ignited the graphite, the casualties would have been enormous—and Chicago today would have a population similar to that of Pripyat. To say nothing of the domino effect such a disaster would have had on the Manhattan Project and the war effort in general; less than twenty miles away in Indiana, the Gary steel mills and Whiting oil refinery were in full wartime production mode. If the prevailing winds had been blowing southeast… well, those mills and that refinery would have been kept running at full capacity, but at what cost?
6535522
It really is chilling.
... the author in me is obligated to add, "Fertile ground for storytelling."
I seriously less than even.
6677387
Less-than-three ya back, big guy.
6535522
Actually, as I recall the safety control rod was vertical, and held out of the reactor by a rope. An individual was stationed nearby with an axe to sever the rope and drop the rod into the reactor, shutting the system down. And that's where the word "SCRAM" came from in regards to rapidly shutting down a reactor in an emergency...
Safety Control Rod Axe Man. SCRAM.
(Though honestly, it seems that the term came into existence well after the fact... Or so a quick Wikipedia search tells me! )