Safety cut rope axe man In the first nuclear reactor, constructed by Enrico Fermi in 1942 under the bleachers of the University of Chicago football stadium, the control rods were held up by a manila rope. A man with an axe was told to cut the rope if the reactor got out of hand. This "safety cut rope axe man" is supposedly the origin of the term SCRAM for an emergency shutdown procedure. Brian Hayes, Infrastructure: A Guide to the Industrial Landscape wordsacronymsenergy
Hints towards a non-extractive economy An Article by Matt Webb interconnected.org There’s a movement called the circular economy which is about designing services that don’t include throwing things away. There is no “away.” A non-extractive economy is going to look very different to today’s economy. These points feel opposed somehow but they are part of the same movement: With CupClub, it’s all about infrastructure. With the battery-free Game Boy, it’s untethered from infrastructure: once manufactured, no nationwide electricity grid is required to play. We’ll need better tools to track and measure. There will be new patterns for new types of services. New technologies to build new products. New language. So it’s fascinating seeing the pieces gradually come together. Introduction to Permaculture economicsrecyclinginfrastructure