History Main / HiroshimaAsAUnitOfMeasure

* Small lengths will be compared to the thickness of a human hair. Also acceptable is the head of a pin, as in how many of what can fit on one. Also acceptable: amount that can fit in the eye of a needle or point of a pencil. Another uncommon one is how many of something can fit inside a period. ([[NoPeriodsPeriod The punctuation mark, you pervert]].)

* In ''Film/{{Jarhead}}'', this is noted as a legitimate military tactic to quickly gauge distances: use things you know, such as the length of a football field.
-->'''[=SSgt=]. Sykes:''' You take what you know, and then you multiply. Please don't use your dicks. They're too small, and I can't count that high. I don't wanna hear, "400,000 inches."

* In ''Film/TheAbyss'', Lindsey asks Lt. Coffey how many missiles are on the wrecked sub they are investigating:
-->'''Coffey:''' Twenty-four Trident missiles, eight [=MIRVs=] per missile.\\
'''Lindsey:''' ''[{{beat}}]'' That's a hundred and ninety-two warheads, Coffey. How powerful are they?\\
'''Coffey:''' The MIRV is a tactical nuke. Uh, fifty kilotons, nominal yield, say... five times Hiroshima.\\
'''Lindsey:''' Jesus Christ. It's WorldWarIII in a can.
* In ''Film/Cradle2TheGrave'', the second-most powerful setting of the superweapon is described as "two Hiroshimas". The number-one most powerful setting is described as "new world order".
* The Soviet movie ''Film/OperationYAndShuriksOtherAdventures'' has this personified in the construction foreman -- he gives a lengthy speech consisting entirely of this trope, culminating [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ouz4l_lAK7A&feature=player_detailpage#t=420s in this exchange]]:
-->'''Foreman:''' ...twice as tall as the world-renowned Eiffel Tower, or thrice as tall as the famous Notre Dame de Paris, incidentally, that's French for "Our Lady of Paris".\\
'''Brute:''' ''[nonchalantly]'' Whose lady was that?\\
'''Foreman:''' ''[taken aback]'' Our. Of Paris.
* In ''Film/{{Help}}'', as Music/TheBeatles record a song in the middle of Salisbury Plain with the Army protecting them, the bad guys burrow underneath, setting a massive amount of explosives labelled in military-grade stencil "Equal to exactly one millionth of the explosives exploded in one week of the Second World War".
* In ''Film/IndependenceDay'', when describing the mass of the alien mothership, it's said to be "a quarter the size of the moon."
* ''Film/{{Ghostbusters|1984}}'': Egon uses a convenient Twinkie to describe the current PKE levels in the containment unit. Ironically, he gets something about the size of Mr. Stay-Puft.
* The simple Russian peasants of ''Film/{{Siberiade}}'' are a little fuzzy on how long a journey of 500 kilometers is, so it's also described as "six goose flights".
* In ''Film/DoctorStrangelove'', the narration explaining the bomber wing to the audience showcases how serious the stakes are if the bombers reach Russia by mentioning that the nuclear bombs they carry have a higher combined explosive yield than all of the bombs exploded (in ''total'') during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII.
* ''Film/TheBurningSea:'' Trouble is looming for the Norwegian oil drilling industry. "Deepwater Horizon made an oil slick the size of Denmark, and we have 350 rigs."

** For smaller automotive sized objects, a VW Beetle will be the yardstick. For larger objects, (especially in North America) a Greyhound bus may be the comparison. The British equivalent would be a Routemaster London Bus.

* The movie ''Film/Armageddon1998'' uses this trope while describing the size of the asteroid.

Many of the units on Wiki/{{Wikipedia}}'s [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_units_of_measurement list of unusual units of measurement]] are of this form.

* The movie ''Film/{{Armageddon}}'' uses this trope while describing the size of the asteroid.

* This article from Wiki/TheOtherWiki lists [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humorous_units_of_measurement several of them]].

* ''LetsPlay/TwitchPlaysPokemon'' has the "Wattson" unit of measure. One Wattson (or WA) is equivalent to twenty-three attempts to defeat a single NPC opponent by the Mob. So far, five trainers(including Wattson himself) have reached Wattson ranking of one or more WA, with record belonging to Drake from [[VideoGame/PokemonRubyAndSapphire Hoenn Elite Four]] at 1.39 WA, or 32 attempts. [[note]]If one counts [[BossRush Elite Four]] as a single opponent, then the record still belongs to Hoenn Elite Four with whopping '''4,48''' WA (102 attempts), which is sometimes called 1 Em.[[/note]]

* Online, it's popular to respond to Americans doing this with the phrase "Americans will measure in anything but the metric system."

* ''WebAnimation/DeathBattle'' is justified in doing this as some of the calculation for the feats done by combatants enter frankly absurd numbers. Usually measured in "____tons of TNT" (kilotons, gigatons, etc.), followed by a point of comparison (with - surprise! - Hiroshima being a common usage). Exaggerated with "Hulk vs. Broly", where the combatants are so absurdly powerful that ''our universe'' has to be used as a unit of measure to describe their destructive power.

* ''Franchise/MassEffect'' tends to use Hiroshimas to quantify the yields on starship [[MagneticWeapons mass accelerators]], both in-game and in the Codex. One [[MemeticMutation particularly memorable scene]] from ''2'' has a gunnery captain chewing out a pair of recruits about just how powerful the gun really ''is'', and how important it is to check their targets.

* ''Series/PlanetOfDinosaurs'' did this straight ''three'' times. The Meteor Crater was made by a rock which hit the Earth with an impact like 4 Hiroshima bombs; TheTunguskaEvent (1908, in Siberia) was provoked by a mysterious body with a power of 1,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs; finally, the iconic meteorite of the End Cretaceous with its [[UpToEleven 10,000,000,000]] Hiroshima bombs.

## contrasting against the price tag of some known to be pricey, usually impressive military, objects; e.g. "The Federal deficit in 2015 was 442 billion dollars. That's enough to buy 52 ''Nimitz''-class aircraft carriers."

## contrasting against the price tag of some known to be pricey, usually impressive military, objects, like ''Nimitz''-class aircraft carriers,

** Areas are measured in soccer fields or [[UsefulNotes/The16LandsOfDeutschland Saarlands]] (a quarter million soccer fields each).

* ''ComicStrip/TheFarSide'' had a panel inspired by writings about how fast a school of piranha can skeletonize a cow. He thought this was an odd thing to use as the standard unit of measurement, and since his comic regularly features cows anyway, this inevitably became the basis for a panel: Two cows in pith helmets and hiking gear are exploring the Amazon, and one of them reads the statistic from a guidebook, commenting "...now ''there's'' a vivid thought." Note that the cows are standing in a piranha-infested river while reading this.

* Creator/AnimalPlanet likes to compare animals' caloric intake with numbers of hamburgers. Like, a vulture eats the equivalent of 50 hamburgers in one sitting. (Scaled down to the body mass of a vulture, of course. If a vulture ate 50 actual hamburgers, it would explode.)

* The narration writers for The History Channel series ''Series/ModernMarvels'' love these, even when they're less than helpful. Particular favorites are "the thickness of a human hair" or some fraction of it; aircraft carriers for size or volume; and football fields, or "Los Angeles to {insert appropriate city}" for distance. Of course, before you can describe something's size in units of aircraft carriers, you first have to mention that an aircraft carrier is the length of 5 football fields.

* [[http://colinmorris.github.io/blog/size-of-things "The size of things: an ngram experiment"]] is an analysis of how size comparisons have changed over the past 200 years. Of note is how comparisons from nature have largely fallen out of favour, while sports analogies have emerged relatively recently.

** When Vegeta and Nappa start growing Saibamen, Vegeta comments that their power level is the same as Raditz's, so that they can literally grow Raditzes. Cut to Raditz going "I. Hate. '''ALL OF YOU'''."

* And, of course, every dinosaur's brain is about the size of a walnut.

* Pretty much all scientific units of measure are based on some property of some physical object, most commonly water.

* Storage devices for computers are often measured in quantities of files commonly stored now. Such as a 16GB thumbdisk holding 30,000 images or 5000 hours of music or 300 hours of video. All of some standard quality of course. Sometimes they're compared to other storage formats, like 4 [=DVDs=] or 23 [=CDs=] or 11,000 floppies.

* Speeds are often described in terms of the time it would take to cross a given distance at that speed. For example the TGV (operating speed up to 320 km/h or pretty much 200 mph) would take 15 hours from LA to New York City. If there was a rail line built to that speed, that is.[[note]]Given that very little of the US network is electrified, it would probably stop somewhere in Pennsylvania (on an east-west journey) shortly after the end of the catenary[[/note]]
* The Maracanã stadium in UsefulNotes/RioDeJaneiro is the largest stadium in Brazil, and was the location of many important sports moments. Since so many people are familiar with the stadium and its noteworthy size, many people use it to compare the size of something, as in "That could fit inside the Maracanã", or "That's about the size of two Maracanãs".

* As one user on ''ImageBoard/4Chan'' explained, [[UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler a hitler]] can be used as a measure of death and financial value:

* ''WebAnimation/DeathBattle'' is justified in doing this as some of the calculation for the feats done by combatants enter frankly absurd numbers. Usually measured in "____tons of TNT" (kilotons, gigatons, etc.) Exaggerated with "Hulk vs. Broly", where the combatants are so absurdly powerful that ''our universe'' has to be used as a unit of measure to describe their destructive power.

** A regular example at the Halifax memorial museum. The Halifax explosion is described as the biggest single explosion before the Trinity Test in July 1945 and the bombing of Hiroshima a month later.