what actually happened at dashcon to make it so awful? ive seen lots of stuff making fun of it and complaining, but nothing explaining why

greatmountainfloofsquatch:

rhube:

lrgcarter:

officialunitedstates:

It is one of the biggest errors in world history and here’s why:

• Although starting in the middle of summer with a few small battles, it eventually dragged on for almost six more months into a brutal winter
• The Russians’ scorched earth policy surprised the French and made the French’s advances much more treacherous and costly
• Napoleon’s thirst for a full victory were impossible to satisfy because the Russians refused to engage in any prolonged battles, instead wisely choosing to use guerrilla tactics to decimate an already broken, famished, and sickened French Army.
• Over 17,000 French troops lost their lives each month during the disastrous campaign

I think you’re thinking of the French Invasion of Russia. I understand the confusion, as I always get dates mixed up if the numbers or first letter of the month are the same or even similar. The French Invasion started in June not July, on the 24th rather than the 11th, and in 1812 rather than 2014.

Dashcon was a disaster because:

• Everyone was relying on an intricate network of trade. So, if the materials from location A were delayed, that would affect the production of materials at location B, and people C would end up without the final products. These chains were multilayered, so if something went wrong in one place, the dominoes would start falling in all directions all at once.
• There was a similar intricate network of political alliances that could also unravel at a moment’s notice.
• Stress on the trade networks would put stress on the political network, and vice versa. Basically, society was a tightly wound tinderbox kept in a grain store.
• In a very short space of time, a couple of events threw metaphorical lit matches at this explosive society, namely: new technologies, wars, plagues, droughts, and volcanoes. Any one of these things, perhaps even two or three of these things, might have been survivable. All of them at once was apocalyptic.
• This is where Dashcon comes in; some people blame it for the destruction of Mycenaean Greece. Like, the whole thing. Others argue this is one of those internet rumour mill exaggerations.
• And then the Sea Peoples attacked.

I think you’re thinking of the Bronze Age Collapse, it’s an easy mistake to make as there are many similarities, but this actually happened several thousand years BC and not in 2014.

Dashcon was a disaster because:

• Early online fandom was a dumpster fire of cliques, Big Name Fans vying for attention, and people drunk on the idea of reinventing themselves behind usernames.
• Harry Potter fandom, in particular, was a mess of in-groups and small posting venues moderated according to the whim of individuals.
• It was easy (and relatively common) to create additional accounts that would fan the flames and agree with a user whenever they needed back-up – these accounts were called ‘sock puppets’ after the kind of old-fashioned homemade toy we elder fans played with because they were children before the internet.
• In addition to the shipping wars, there’s a fake stalker, a fake nanny, and MsScribe even harassed a woman dying of cancer, all in her quest to be the centre of attention.
• Dashcon is really an uber wank containing many other wanks within.

I’m not even familiar with what you’re talking about there. But I know it’s not Dashcon.

Dashcon was a disaster because:

• Operators reduced power to reactor #4 in preparation for a safety test, timed to correspond with a routine maintenance shutdown. They wanted to test if the plant’s turbines, which would still be spinning, would provide enough power to keep the reactor cool in the event of a power failure.
• In order to conduct the test without interference, the operators disabled reactor #4’s emergency cooling system.
• Power in the reactor stabilized at too low a level to conduct the test. To raise power, the operators removed almost all of the control rods from the reactor.
• The test began, and then there was an unexpected power surge. In response, the operators tried to scram the reactor (emergency shutdown), but the control rods jammed going in. The reactor’s power surge caused a massive increase in steam pressure inside the reaction vessel, which caused the fuel cladding to fail and release fuel into the water coolant.
• The increased steam pressure caused a steam explosion, which blew the roof off of the reactor building, ruptured more fuel rods, and severed the coolant lines that fed more water into the reactor. The remaining coolant flashed to steam, leaving the core exposed with nothing to cool it down.
• A second explosion, much more powerful, sent chunks of graphite from the control rods flying out of the building. These lumps of hot moderator caught fire, increasing the spread of radioactivity from the destroyed reactor.

From there, it was a matter of realizing the extent of the damage, evacuating civilians, and containing the meltdown to prevent further contamination. To this day, a 1000 square mile area around the site of Dashcon is off limits to human habitation and contaminated with radioactives.