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Very few of us ever really experience the sort of weather that nature can throw at us, if we are in the right, or wrong, place.
Here at Force 13 (Everything has to be larger than life) we've put paid to that. When you arrive at Force Ten you are given a flashlight, emergency food, warm clothing and
a set of safety instructions.
As you walk in through the door you are blown off your feet, by a howling gale, commemorating Hurricane Katrina and every other tropical storm that ever hit a mainland..
Rides include:
Helicopter Rescue: Of a yacht crew whose vessel has foundered in the Southern Ocean, in a howling blizzard.
Everest Expedition: A climb up a snow-covered conveyor belt, conducted in a thin atmosphere with freezing winds and driving spicules of ice.
Perfect Storm: Where you join the slickered crew of a trawler, 'midst towering walls of water, to save your catch and the dignity of the townsfolk.
'Bama Slamma: Cower in darkness while a massive tornado tears the roof off the chicken shed where you're sheltering.
Of course, for the kiddies there's a rather gentle ride, where they sit in inflatable tubes from tractors and are tossed about for a while, in the Giant Teacup Tempest.
Backdraft at Universal Studios
http://themeparks.u...info/backdraft.html
[xandram, Feb 17 2006]
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This could be extended to natural disasters, such as earthquakes, avalanches and tsunami (plural correct?). |
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I like the idea of giving each ride a nice little name: The 'Wizard of Oz' for the tornado, for example. |
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I suppose it could. I dealt only with weather, as it would be easier to replicate than shifting massive areas of rock and rubble repeatedly. |
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Avalanches could be fun, if the rescue teams dig you out in time. |
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Yeah. Sign me up for the Everest ascent. When I have a couple weeks vacation, I mean. |
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Oh, we'll get you through it quicker than that. This is the age of instant gratification. |
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kind of like the Universal Studios rides |
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For a touch of realism, fake a mechanical failure and let them believe they are trapped there. That's evil, I know, but there are no words to describe what it is like when survival instincts take over. On second thought, scratch that, everyone reacts differently - too unpredictable. I'm in. |
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An extreme water park. Could be fun (at least till Granny drowns). |
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Ya pays ya money, ya takes ya chances. If Granny signs the waiver then Granny puts herself at risk, [DC]. |
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I've not been on the Universal Studios rides, [xandram], but the idea here is for high realism, and quite expensive for the experience. Not quite like flying a Russian fighter jet but more like the cost of driving a race car for a day. |
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Tsunami, as a Japanese word, has no
true plural. You can add "s" if you want
to, but pedants will catch you. |
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And that's Japanese for what, exactly? |
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Wouldn't 'café' have originally been an Ethiopian word? |
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//Giant Teacup Tempest//
[+] |
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The Universal Studio Rides are as real as it gets, for not being real. In "Backdraft" (old movie) the whole place is on fire and more stuff catches on fire and when you are sufficently scared and want to run out, the whole sidewalk collapses under your feet! It's pretty cool, but so is your idea.[UB] I bunned it.
[link] |
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I would vote for this if there were a ride where you were stuffed in a dryer with a bunch of wet shirts and an elderly schnauzer. That was pretty scary. |
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//Tsunami, as a Japanese word// //And that's Japanese for what, exactly?// "Harbor wave", I think. |
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The English term used to be "tidal wave", but a few pedants were complaining that the big waves were not caused by the tides, so they wanted another term. Why they went to the Japanese, and why they didn't ask for a translation first, I don't know. |
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I favor "tidal wave", with the understanding that the big wave is LIKE a tide, regardless of cause. It isn't just something that hits once and rolls away, it is something that raises the level of the ocean for a while. |
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Anyhow, if you want to experience the aftermath of a tsunami, there is a lot of restoration work still going on in Indonesia. Volunteers are welcome. |
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Big soggy croissant for the idea. I'd buy a ticket. |
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Tsunami are called that because of the phenoemenon observed when a harbour would empty before one was due to hit. This was what prompted the warning from the young English girl (Tilly Someone?) who warned everyone on Maikhao beach, at Phuket, on Dec 26, 2004. The Japanese knew it was a warning sign of a tsunami when the water all headed out to sea. |
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Hmmm, okay, I'll accept that. I'd once read that "tsunami" was simply Japanese for "tidal wave" and hadn't bothered to think it through once I heard the "harbor wave" term. |
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I read about the girl having to tell allegedly-grown people what the receding water meant. I knew what it meant when I was only ten years old, in Kansas, even. One of the tsunami/tourist videos features a German voice asking, "What is that?" over and over, with another voice saying "All the Thais have run away." |
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For a tsunami simulator, build a section of fake beachfront on rails, on a slope like a boat-launch ramp. Wheel it up out of the water, let the people climb on, then shove it down the rails, into and under the water. Shaking it could simulate an earthquake and hide the feeling of acceleration. |
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Heck, I knew that tidal waves were preceded by the sea disappearing, but I doubt I would have put the two together if I'd been on that beach. |
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I've thought about that a few times. I think I would have put it together, pretty quickly. There just aren't that many ways it could happen. |
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Of course, we'd all get it, now. |
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<Off-topic showing off>
Actually [zen_tom], one way you can tell that Ethiopia is the original home of coffee is that it has a word for coffee *not* etymologically related to 'coffee'/'cafe'/'kahve', namely 'buna'. |
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All the words that *sound* like 'coffee' originate from, I think, Yemen, which was the *second* place in the world to have coffee, but had much better trade links than Ethiopia; so the rest of the world calls it by the name the Yemenis made up. |
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Or something like that.
</Off-topic showing off> |
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<Awaits challenge from Uber-pedant.> |
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I was taught that a sudden outgoing tide meant a tidal wave was on the way in. The question that has remained with me is, would I have had sufficient confidence in that knowledge to act on it? People are incredibly good at believing that the unusual isn't happening. |
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//I like the idea of giving each ride a nice little name: The 'Wizard of Oz' for the tornado, for example.// |
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I hate books, stories, whatever, that cause the main character to have a freaking hallucination, mind fuck, as an acceptable plot. It's just bad writing. Just like how the ending to 2001 A space oddyssey bit the big one. The most of the book was pretty cool, the interview with the author was enough to tell me: "This guy is an asshole". |
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pertinax, don't you mean "Überpedant"? |
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The etymology of the word coffee is fairly recent. A quick googlegouge reveals: |
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1598, from Italian 'caffe', from Turkish 'kahveh', from Arabic 'qahwah'. The word is said to have originally have meant "wine," but perhaps rather from Kaffa region of Ethiopia, a home of the plant (Coffee in Kaffa is called buno). |
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Diverse original spellings, in Roman alphabets, including 'chaoua'. Yemen was the first great coffee exporter and to protect its trade decreed that no living plant could leave the country. |
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In 16c., a Muslim pilgrim brought some coffee beans from Yemen and raised them in India. Appeared in Europe (from Arabia) c.1515-1519. Introduced to England by 1650; by 1675 England had more than 3,000 coffee houses. |
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It certainly spread quickly, though the earlier chocolate craze may have been the reason for the fast uptake of coffee, in most of Europe. |
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There is also the city of Mocha, in Yemen, as I recall. Nor should we forget the retirement village of Hot Coffee, Florida. |
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