Hazmat Carriers

The public’s perception of hazardous materials has changed a lot through the years. Part of this is because the hazmat threats have changed as new ones have been created and others have been rendered less effective or even eliminated. The world of fiction also has an impact on the perceived hazmat threats as they use new methods to inspire terror, dread, and anxiety in the viewing public.

Then

Then is a general term, but mostly means anything before 1980. At that time, the threats that seemed to drive people into wearing face-masks in real life and hazmat suits on screen were radioactive in nature, with nuclear weapons being a popular hazardous threat. Part of this is due to both the end of World War II and the Cuban Missile Crisis being fairly fresh in the minds of enough people to make them credible threats.

Now

The threats we see now haven’t so much changed as grown. While nuclear weapons and radiation are still prevalent both in the real world and in Hollywood, it’s been joined by other threats. Biological and chemical threats are the most recent additions to the list of hazards that are in the forefront of peoples minds, with Anthrax, Swine Flu, and Bird Flu all being real threats that have caused panic.

Environmental concerns are also a new addition to the list that could result in the need for hazmat suits. While smog and air pollution were real issues 20 years ago, natural disasters and the fallout they cause is as real as the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

The Future

It’s impossible to predict what the future of hazardous material threats will be, but it’s probably fair to assume that it will be some combination of those that have already come and gone. Only time will tell.

It’s pretty hard to watch a movie or TV show these days and not see an explosion (looking at you Michael Bay), but what is interesting is how the use of explosions has evolved in film from when you first started seeing things go boom to these days when everything under the sun seems to have explosive capabilities.

When we first started seeing explosions in old black & white films dynamite was pretty much the only option that the bad guys used. As the only commercial explosive readily available, it made sense to use that instead of having the guy tying the damsel to the train tracks break out something that only the military had access to.

As we moved forward to more military inspired movies and bad guys, grenades became a common explosive device, often being tossed in and out of rooms for comedic effect, though the “real” threat of the explosion was always there. While the power of these devices was typically exaggerated, the threat to life and limb wasn’t.

Until recently nuclear weapons had become the explosive threat flavor of the month, but with the current political and military climate, they seem to have fallen out of favor, perhaps because the threat of nuclear weapons is more real than ever before.

Plastic explosives, C-4 in particular, on the other hand, seem to have grown in popularity by leaps and bounds. While typically relegated to military use, by watching movies and TV (Burn Notice in particular leaps to mind), you’d think that it’s easy to find a block of the stuff just laying on the ground.

They have, however, done a good job of showing off just how “safe” and dangerous the materials are, with the explosives often being used in their intended manner, by being shaped into charges that a stick of dynamite or a grenade can’t.

As explosives technology moves forward, it will be interesting to see which new types find their way into fiction, as the bad guys on screen are always looking for the newest thing to take out a city block with.