This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
This example:
- Subverted in The Simpsons: In a Treehouse of Horror episode, Ned Flanders has to stop Homer before he absent-mindedly pushes a button that will lead to a nuclear meltdown, destroying the city. Out of options, Ned steals a gun from a guard and shoots Homer with it thrice, a second before he hits the button. Homer then has one last death-spasm, sending his tongue right onto the button and destroying everything.
is not apt. The question is not whether the disaster was averted, but whether the aftermath of the disaster (or near disaster) is realistic. Moving it to discussion. Seanzo
Gus: Seconded. The example seems to be entirely off-point.
Morgan Wick: I think it got included because this trope is just a slightly smaller cut-out of the larger trope of averting the nuclear disaster Just in Time.
Tangent128: "Also occurs when a meteor strikes the planet, and within minutes is cool enough to touch." Aren't meteors cold when they hit the ground, coming from deep space and everything?
Robert: They get violently heated while speeding through the atmosphere, often by enough to melt the surface.
Webrunner: I had heard that although they superheat quickly, the parts that do get superheated break off quickly as well- leaving only a very slight crust of hot but not superheated material, which quickly cools down.
Aubri: This is correct. The air ahead of the meteor is technically what heats up, and radiatively heats the outer surface of the rock, which melts and ablates. Most meteors (the ones that don't leave craters, that is) slow down sufficiently that they take several minutes to fall through the lower atmosphere and are quite cool when they hit — often cold enough to frost over after landing. Imagine a Baked Alaska: briefly heated on the outside, but still freezing cold on the inside. Reference Bad Astronomy: http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/news/salisburymeteor.html
Ununnilium: I knew I'd heard this somewhere, but I couldn't remember where, so I didn't comment. Turns out it was that very Bad Astronomy article.
FireWalk: Does this just apply to Nuclear Meltdown, or is there another trope for when things go back to normal ridiculously quickly following a near-disaster? Reading this I thought of Flash Gordon, which stopped the moon crashing into the earth by about 5 seconds, but was still apparently OK.
Fighteer: This page really needs some more wicks. Whoever launched it utterly failed at pimping it. I'm trying to cross-reference it with its sister tropes in the hope of attracting some attention.
