funranium | A Comment On The Opening Scene Of "The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" (Reply)

Since enough of you have asked my what I thought of the beginning of the new Indiana Jones movie, I thought I'd put all my thoughts together here.

First off, I did not hate it. There was only one point in that scene where I had a headscratching moment and my willing suspension of disbelief wavered, which is bullet number 7:

Because I love bullet points, here is the list of thoughts for you:

Area 51 is real. It is part of Nellis Air Force Base. Areas 1-50 are real also. It is likely that Area 51 is just as interesting as Areas 1-50, all of which are chock full of Nevada.
There seems to be a remarkable lack of security at Area 51, which is within Nellis AFB. Two guards my ass. I know it was a different time and highways used to run through military bases up until 2001. Suffice it to say, all roads in the restricted areas there became thoroughly non-public. No hot rodders, other than military ones, tooling around there to drag race with. There were a lot more big guys with guns out there then than there are now...
They turned right (thank you for your astute correction blark) from in front of the Atomic Cafe sign into Area 51. That particular sign and cafe was in Atomic City, Idaho (now known as Arco) near the Idaho National Laboratory where the Energy Research and Development Program was going. To see when that one went wrong, see this post.
I am not even fucking commenting on Hangar 18 malarky. I enjoy conspiracy theories as much as the next geek but I do not give our government, particularly the military, doubly the Air Force, any credit. Things like Hangar 18 have a bad habit of being forgotten about and scattered to the winds. This is the problem with secret stuff...they're hard to fund consistently. That might have explained the dust although being in Nevada would too.
Nellis Air Force Base does abut the Nevada Test Site (NTS), though in 1957 it would have been known as the Nevada Proving Grounds. Though we have no idea how far the rocket sled took Indy and the random commie, Nellis and NTS encompass a very impressive amount of desert. It is not likely that a random stroll would have taken you to the Model Town.
The Model Town, originally constructed by Bechtel, actually did have running water and electricity. They wanted to try to understand everything that would happen. Those taps should have run when Indy turned the knobs.
When he climbed in the refrigerator, they make a point of zooming in on the manufacturers plate that says "lead lined to keep food cold". Lead lining does nothing to enhance insulating properties, however fridges like this did exist, though I can't say they ever saw widespread sale to the housewives of Eisenhower's America. You need lead lined refrigerators when you have radioactive things that are perishable like, say, an ice chest of radioactive robber crab corpses (they damn well better be dead) from the Marshall Islands right after a nuclear test. A pile of rotting, stinking, radioactive goo makes scientists sad.
It is conceivable that Indy could have survived the bomb going off in that fridge, depending on the distance. He is not likely to have survived the asphyxiation of the firestorm nor fridge's impact on ground and the rolling that would have turned him to jelly. If by some miracle that didn't kill him, the fresh fallout he was standing in as he watched the mushroom cloud certainly would have. As in, would have immediately started burning his skin in that short a time period after the blast.
The decon room and procedure...awesome. I wish it were that cool.