Post by Lien on Apr 8, 2017 19:21:28 GMT -4
So the Ghostbusters have a big rep for using high-tech equipment to capture ghost-like creatures in New York City and keeping the city safe. But they're full of shit.
As we see in the second movie and The Real Ghostbusters, every time the power is shut off, all of the ghosts escape. Which is just absolutely stupid design. No well-reasoned person in the world would ever make a machine this important so sensitive. Hell, we know that it's not even a necessary aspect of the machine. In the second episode of The Real Ghostbusters they power the main containment unit during a power outage with a single bicycle generator for at least an hour, and it works. It works completely perfectly.
An adult in peak health can produce 150 watts of mechanical power for an hour, max, not factoring in loss of energy.[1] A solar panel that could produce 150 watts would cost only 975 dollars in 1985.[2] So why not just install a single solar panel? When the lives of 7 million[3] are on the line, that seems worth it.
It takes 25 seconds for the containment to fail[4] and the average length of a blackout is 69 minutes.[5] In New York, the odds of being affected by an outage in a year is about 8% so it's fair to say that there has been AT LEAST one outage in the Ghosthouse (increased dramatically by its location in Manhattan so we can feasibly increase it to ten.)(Note 1), each one of them causing a complete failure. They can fix this, but they choose not to. Egon is a brilliant engineer, who can't figure out how to use a solar panel. My person hypothesis it they realize the problem, and do nothing about it so they can keep having business. We keep seeing them run out of ghosts to bust, and this is their solution from 1986 onwards. An intentionally bad system we see them install in the first episode of The Real Ghost Busters. There's not one, not two, but four different shutoff handles for no apparent reason. Only one of them needs any sort of identification to use. They are endangering the entire city for selfish reasons.
LEGALITY
This section doesn't have anything on it, I've only done a preliminary round of research, but I have gotten in contact with the legal firm Kaufmann, Gildin, & Robbins LLP in New York for legal advice.
NOTES
1. The Ghostbusters use Con Edison for their power, a notoriously unreliable power company.
SOURCES
1. "Human power." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 22 Mar. 2017. Web. 08 Apr. 2017.
2. "Cost of Solar Panels Over Time." Understand Solar. N.p., 12 Jan. 2017. Web. 08 Apr. 2017.
3. "Demographic history of New York City." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 24 Mar. 2017. Web. 08 Apr. 2017.
4. Nsputnik. Ghostbusters Containment Unit Shutdown: Putts Law in Action. YouTube, 24 Mar. 2011. Web. 08 Apr. 2017.
