The Simpsons : Tapped Out Game Play

That venerable idiot Homer Simpson is ultimately at fault for a disaster that destroys the town of Springfield, Oregon and the surrounding retirement community of Springfield Falls, the survivalist village of Springfield Green, and an old logging town now converted into a theme park called Krustyland.

Employed as the Senior Safety Officer at Springfield's Nuke Plant, Simpson occupies one of the critical monitoring and safety stations commonly knows as a "Reactor Safety SCRAM Station."

The name of the safety station is actually an acronym that stands for Safety Control Rod Axe Man -- a job created by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and required by law for the safe operation of plants of the type found in Springfield.

Basically there are multiple SCRAM Stations at every plant, and each are fitted with exactly identical instruments and controls that permit their operators to monitor nearly every aspect of the plant and its reactors and cooling systems, including temperatures for all critical and backup systems throughout the cooling network.

When trouble is found -- but for that to happen it is necessary for layer upon layer of redundant safety inspectors and systems (some of which are actually automated) that exist between the SCRAM Station and the physical plant to somehow fail.

This is so unlikely as to border upon the impossible. So unlikely in fact that one of the premier experts on safety in the nuclear power industry was heard to comment that for the situation to get so bad that a SCRAM Safety Officer actually has to slam their palm down on the large red plunger that is, naturally enough, labeled "SCRAM" that plant would have to be under attack.

If that does not put the matter in perspective for you, perhaps this will: most dictionaries define the term “Scram” as “A rapid emergency shutdown of a nuclear reactor.”

That may seem like a reasonable definition but Ironically the Senior Safety Officers who are trusted to actually judge the circumstances that are required to initiate a SCRAM Shutdown have a very different definition for the term: they define it as meaning “to place the reactor in a safe condition.”

I don't know about you but I like the second definition better than the first. Just saying.

Anyway this is a video game not real life, and in this video game the threat that came to cause the plant to blow was not a terrorist attack, but rather a Freemium Grinder Video Game and a case in which the SCRAM Safety Officer (in this case Homer Simpson) grew so narrowly focused upon the game -- darn those bunny rabbits! -- that he was playing that he failed to heed both the audible and visual alarms that were ringing.