The Blackout In The Blizzard Analysis

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Technology Dependent Technology is ingrained in our everyday lives. People use it at work, at school, and as a form of “relaxation”. So what would happen if it was taken away? In a popular television show called Bones directed by David Boreanaz, which is about a forensic anthropologist who helps the FBI solve murder cases, there is an episode called “The Blackout in the Blizzard” where the team has to find alternate ways to catch a murderer with city wide power outages. Because this is a work of fiction they find a way to solve the case using alternate techniques. They use scotch tape in a vacuum to produce x-rays, they use dozens of potatoes to create enough electricity to power on the victims cell, and they use an emissions spectrograph…show more content…
Many people would be without jobs and our young people would not know how to do the simplest tasks. Jobs such as computer programing, computer engineering, and other such jobs would cease to exist. In this episode the team lost power and had a moment of “what do we do” before they figured out alternate ways to process evidence. At a key point in the episode they needed to x-ray the body to identify the victim. Wendell, an intern for Dr. Brennen, called her to tell her that they could not x-ray the bones. She suggested that he look through some of her medicinal physics journals because she remembered an article that used electrostatics and triboluminescence that allow you to take x-rays without electricity. According to the article “Triboluminescence and X-Rays” by T.V. Trevenslik “triboluminescence is shown to produce X-rays from the nanoparticles that form as the sticky acrylic adhesive of scotch tape is peeled from the polyethylene roll in a vacuum.” What this means is if you peel the tape off of the roll while it is in a vacuum it creates light fields for a nanosecond which allow you to produce an x-ray. Because Dr. Brennen thought of this it allowed the team to get the x-ray and move along in finding the identity of the victim. So even though they did not have modern technology they were able to produce results by thinking outside of what type of machine can do this, and instead thinking of how people from a…show more content…
In the show they adapt to the circumstances to solve the case. In one scene they need to get the victim’s phone powered on to retrieve the last phone calls that she made. To get the phone powered on Wendell and Hodgens use dozens of potatoes to create enough electricity to get the phone powered on long enough for Angela to get the numbers. Another scene depicted Hodgens using a emissions spectrograph which he powers by tapping into a battery from an emergency sign to vaporize the shrapnel to id it. They accomplish all of this without the use of modern technology. Many different cultures still live without our “modern technology”, such as the Amish. They live a simplistic lifestyle that follows their beliefs and have done so for the past 200 years. They grow their own food and build their houses and furniture by hand using hand tools. It’s not just the Amish that are living off the land. There are whole communities that are going off the grid. So could we learn to live off the grid? According to “Back to Basics: A Conversation with Lucas Foglia” an article by Harry J. Weil, he talks about how many people who go back to the basics are from the suburbs or cities and how it's a lifestyle that you have to choose. These people are choosing to live simply so it works for

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