Hiroshima as a Unit of Measure: Difference between revisions

Basically, any unit of measure that equates to something extreme in that property, but is still rather vague and hard to comprehend since the average person doesn't know what that ''is'' off the top of his or her head. Bonus points if the number of the unit of measure is still ridiculously large (e.g. 1,000,000 Hiroshimas) thereby defeating the purpose of describing it in those terms even if the unit was something people would intuitively understand.

This trope is for unusual units for quantities that have well-defined values in ordinary non-facetious units. If you measure an amount of something that usually is not given a numerical value at all, it is an [[Abstract Scale]]. See also [[Fantastic Measurement System]].

== Film - Live Action ==

{{quote| '''President:''' How big are we talking?<br />

'''Scientist:''' Sir, our best estimate is 97.6 billion--<br />

** This makes it a whole lot more threatening than [[Dueling Movies|the other asteroid movie]], ''[[Deep Impact]]'', featuring a comet described as "The size of New York City, from the Battery to the Bronx."

** The opening narration also used the "Hiroshima measurement" when speaking of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Hilariously, even though they try to make it sound impressive, they ''[[You Fail Physics Forever|severely]]'' [[You Fail Physics Forever|underestimate]] the energy released by the real impact.

* In ''[[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.

{{quote| '''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 the film ''[[The Giant Claw]]'', the [[Special Effects Failure]] creature is constantly compared in size to a battleship.

* In ''[[The Abyss]]'', Lindsey asks Lt. Coffey how many missiles are on the wrecked sub they are investigating:

{{quote| '''Coffey:''' Twenty-four Trident missiles, eight MIRVs per missile.<br />

'''Coffey:''' The MIRV is a tactical nuke. Uh, fifty kilotons, nominal yield, say... five times Hiroshima.<br />

'''Lindsey:''' Jesus Christ. It's [[World War III]] in a can. }}

** That scene is full of these, starting with a SCUD missile. However, they're making a presentation to a bunch of terrorist and rogue state leaders, who are probably not rocket scientists.

* The Soviet movie ''Operation Y and Other Adventures of Shurik'' has this personified in the construction foreman - he gives a lengthy speech consisting entirely of this trope, culminating [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ouz4l_lAK7A&feature=player_detailpage#t=420s in one of the movie's many] [[Crowning Moment of Funny]].

* In the last episode of ''[[Cosmos]]'', [[Carl Sagan]] compared the total tonnage of bombs dropped in [[World War II]] -- about 2 megatons of TNT -- to the yield of a single modern strategic thermonuclear weapon. The tonnage of bombs and warheads we could theoretically drop in [[World War III]], he said, would be "A world war 2 every second, for the length of a lazy afternoon."

** He then went on to say that this was the equivalent of a million Hiroshima bombs.

{{quote| "Rand & McNally will have to redraw their maps."}}

* These kind of measurements come up on ''[[QI]]'' from time to time. Apparently the UK purchases enough wrapping paper for the Christmas season every year to gift-wrap the island of Guernsey.

* ''[[Katamari Damacy]]'' uses this form of measurement to illustrate the size of your katamaris.

* ''[[Mass Effect]]'' tends to use Hiroshimas to quantify the yields on starship [[Magnetic Weapons|mass accelerators]], both in-game and in the Codex. The above quote is a gunnery captain chewing out a pair of recruits about just how powerful the gun really ''is'', to get them to "check [their] damn targets" before firing. Also, in ''[[Mass Effect 1]]'', Admiral Hackett will use it to describe the size of a tactical nuke attached to a ''recon probe'' launched during the First Contact War.

{{quote| '''Grobnar:''' No one really knows how big the Wendersnaven are. They could be thousands of Khelgars high!<br />

'''Khelgar Ironfist:''' What did I say 'bout usin' me as a unit of measurement?!<br />

'''Grobnar:''' Er, right, several Neeshkas high. }}

* Faye in [http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=702 this] installment of ''[[Questionable Content]]'' claims to be a unit of measurement, but the formula is rather complex.

* [http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1804 This] [[Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal]] strip pokes fun at the tendency of science TV programming to do this.

* In ''[[Goats]]'', Phillip needs one of these to comprehend the number of people he's killing every time he creates and destroys another universe:

{{quote| '''Yakmeat''': Every time we run a simulation, we are literally creating an entire artificial universe to experiment with. And when an experiment is over, we're just turning off quadrillions of lives.<br />

'''Phillip''': Oh my God. 3.5 gigahitlers? Each time? }}

* One Achewood comic cites the made-up unit "the fermule" as "the basic unit of physics." One reader lampshades the silliness of this in the comments section: "That's right. Losing control of a 200 kg van on an icy road while traveling at 45 mph, skidding off a 45 degree turn and wrapping that van three times around a tree takes a total of 67 fermules of physics."

* Dave in ''[[Homestuck]]'' mediates on this trope over instant messaging.

{{quote| like "mr president theres a meteor coming sir."<br />

* Eohippus, the tiny ancestor of horses, is almost universally described as "about the size of a fox terrier". What makes this case particularly interesting is that this comparison is considerably more well-known than the size of a fox terrier itself, at least among paleontologists. Stephen Jay Gould [http://books.google.com/books?id=etKX2s6JgAkC&pg=PA163&lpg=PA163&dq=eohippus+fox+terrier&source=bl&ots=RayCMOp0IC&sig=CdVL2RMgq52vJn0c8bPnbkWgKS8&hl=en&ei=iAxITbSjH4LEgAel1YSoBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=eohippus%20fox%20terrier&f=false wrote a lengthy article on the origin of this meme].

** Similar to the above, it's common (mostly in documentaries) to compare the size of anything prehistoric with the size of a dinosaur. For instance, you typically won't get through a documentary talking about pliosaurs like Mosasaurus or Tylosaurus without having the narrator mention how it was "X times bigger than a T-Rex".

** A somewhat more peculiar measure: ''The Economist'' invented, and uses, a measurement called "The Big Mac Index" to compare currencies; since McDonalds is very strictly standardized, the price of a Big Mac directly corresponds to what it costs for the restaurant to serve it; as such, comparing the cost of a Big Mac to currency exchange rates can tell you when a currency is under- or over-valued.

* Astronomers routinely measure the masses of stars and other heavy objects in increments of "solar masses". The masses of extrasolar planets are usually measured in increments of Jupiter masses or Earth masses.