Undergrad no. 1: “Wonder what happens if you press that button?”
Undergrad no. 2: “Maybe the bus undergoes spontaneous combustion…”
Undergrad no. 3: “Maybe it instantly folds up into a suitcase…”
Undergrad no. 2: “Maybe it starts thermonuclear war.”
Undergrad no. 1: “He he. Hey what’s the difference between thermonuclear war and plain old nuclear war?”
Undergrad no. 3: “Well, “thermo” means like temperature doesn’t it?”
Undergrad no. 2: “…all I remember is that they talked about global thermonuclear war in that old movie War Games.”
Undergrad no. 1: “Isn’t that the one where they teach chimps to fly planes…?”
Undergrad no. 2: “No, that’s Project X. War Games is the one where Matthew Broderick fries the military super-computer by having it play tic-tac-toe against itself.”
Undergrad no. 1: “Yeah, but you still haven’t explained what thermonuclear war is…”
Me: “Regular-ass nuclear war is when weak-ass fission bombs are involved, you know, like the ones we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II. Thermonuclear war involves Hydrogen (or fusion) bombs. These are several orders of magnitude more powerful than your garden-variety fission bomb. In fact, H-bombs require fission bombs to detonate.”
Undergrads nos. 1, 2 and 3 look back at me with contemptuous faces. They remain silent for the next five blocks before my stop.
Me: “If you don’t want your ignorance rectified, next time maybe keep your conversation to yourselves.”