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I used to think the show was tolerable, but in the early 90's when I worked for the Fish and Wildlife Service, everyone there watched it. One day we had to all hop in a van and drive up to Dunsmuir when there was a train derailment/chemical spill. For the entire drive up there, all anyone would talk about was Star Trek, there was no way to shut it out, all I could do was sit there and grunt. Hated it ever since.
good grief !!!! I remember that chemical spill !!!
we were going to overnight in Dunsmuir that night, but for some reason had a "funny feeling" and chose to drive further
(it hadn't happened yet, then ....
)
good thing, as my copilot of the time, had severe asthma, which would have been a very BAD thing had we been in town
wound up staying in the car at the airport at Weed, instead (no motel rooms available, all full)
Yeah - not good at all. In the news, all the concern was over the odor of the hydrogen sulfide gas it produced; but that was not the real danger. It produced 3 nasty chemicals when it reacted with water, the worst one being the same gas that killed all those poor folks in Bohpal, India a few years later (remember the Union Carbide disaster?)
I guess we did talk about something else - at the time we were called to leave our labs, there was no MSDS available. They had to fax it to the libaray in Redding where we picked it up on the way up. The mood in the van really changed when we saw the list of breakdown products, and realized this was far more serious than we had expected. They also changed our plans from monitoring fish kills downstream to running controls near Whiskey Town. It was far too toxic to go in the river, the divers working there had to throw out their wet suits after each dive.
