Calls to ban Helium balloons

Originally posted by blownaway
if im correct helium is lethal lol. yeas i know about funny balloon voice u do it non stop ur brain will fry. my aunts cousin died from hellium on a dare she died seizuring. but mixed with oxygen i dunno?

You're not correct unfortunately... you cannot 'fry your brain' with helium. The only risk that it poses is that if you inhale it too quickly, too often, whatever, you're depriving your body of oxygen which can cause you to collapse or faint. Now if you're two college students inside of a balloon full of helium, then you're just dumb... Stay out of that balloon

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


what about pure helium can it really kill? i know freeon if it leaks and you smoke a cigaret it well set off a chemical reaction the tip glows green the smoke taste sweet u fall over dead. its bad news. from what i can remember its freeon that does it. only with fire like a cigaret and drawing off it. are is that halon?

reply to post by SilentKillah


lol yeah i saw that on a thousand ways to die as well lol.

Well so much for an easy way out.. Helium and a turkey bag is said to be the best method for painlessly offing one's self. They say just 4 breaths and you are out with no suffocation reflex etc...

I know they dont float, but I'm all for replacing helium balloons with nitrous oxide balloons

reply to post by roughycannon


The difference is we have loads of oil. And decaying plant matter creates more of it.

Peak oil is a joke.

Originally posted by signalfire
It seems like if it 'can't be synthesized' and it's 'non-renewable' that substitutes may be looked for and found when the need arises.

You don't know much about chemistry, do you?

For something so potentially valuable, it's still awful cheap.

Sure...because to date the highest and best use we have for it is birthday parties. Won't we feel stupid if we find out someday a couple thousand years in the future that the secret ingredient to power the cold fusion generators was helium...which we are now all out of.

And am I the only one who ever wonders if helium balloons have ever caused an airplane accident?

Yep.

Has one ever been reported to have been sucked into the air intake of a jet engine?

Nope.

Birds are bad enough...

The are??

Originally posted by cartesia
I know they dont float, but I'm all for replacing helium balloons with nitrous oxide balloons

I second the motion.

If we can't make the balloons float...we can damn sure make OURSELVES float.

Originally posted by blownaway
reply to post by Wrabbit2000

 

what about pure helium can it really kill? i know freeon if it leaks and you smoke a cigaret it well set off a chemical reaction the tip glows green the smoke taste sweet u fall over dead. its bad news. from what i can remember its freeon that does it. only with fire like a cigaret and drawing off it. are is that halon?

Helium is a Noble gas. It's inert.

I wouldn't mind the end of balloons that's for sure. I've always hated the things as people loooooooved to pop them by me just to watch me twitch.

Originally posted by roughycannon
I heard about this years ago, there's tons of it throughout the universe but not here on earth so in the future we might be able to mine it, Jupiter has lots I think...

Let's just hope like hell we don't find out the warp drive on the interstellar mining rig can only be powered with He^3, huh? I'm pretty confident our Chinese overlords won't permit us to venture near the moon to harvest the lunar sources.

Oh well...at least we our frivolous BS right now!!! Yay for being dumb!!!

Here's what happened to the helium. They just decided to get rid of it due to bugetary issues.Or if you're in a conspiratorial mood, the government has created the shortage.

From waymarking.com
"Also known as the Cliffside Storage Facility - National Helium Reserve. The National Helium Reserve, also known as the Federal Helium Reserve, is a strategic reserve of the United States holding over a billion cubic feet of Helium gas. The helium is stored at the Cliffside Storage Facility about 12 miles northwest of Amarillo, Texas in a natural geologic gas storage formation. The reserve was established in 1925 as a strategic supply of gas for airships, and in the 1950s became an important source of coolant during the Space Race and Cold War. After the "Helium Acts Amendments of 1960" (Public Law 86–777), the U.S. Bureau of Mines arranged for five private plants to recover helium from natural gas. For this helium conservation program, the Bureau built a 425-mile pipeline from Bushton, Kansas to connect those plants with the government's partially depleted Cliffside gas field. This helium-nitrogen mixture was injected and stored in the Cliffside gas field until needed, when it then was further purified. By 1995, a billion cubic metres of the gas had been collected and the reserve was US $1.4 billion in debt, prompting the Congress of the United States in 1996 to phase out the reserve. The resulting "Helium Privatization Act of 1996" (Public Law 104–273) directed the United States Department of the Interior to start liquidating the reserve by 2005".

reply to post by roughycannon


I heard about this years ago, there's tons of it throughout the universe but not here on earth so in the future we might be able to mine it, Jupiter has lots I think...

But as usual people don't care until its nearly run out just like the oil, when will we learn...


after reading your idea, i think its a good idea to use as much of it as possible. then maybe we will see real space exploration. i think ill start buying them and giving free helium hits on the street.

but honestly, omg what happens if it runs out ohh noooos. um we will make something better to replace it? if i base my assumption that 99% of all business' in the world use the cheapest possible form of anything to make a buck, i presume there are better methods , just to expensive to make a 20000% profit.

At the moment people are inhaling helium to get a "Legal High" in the UK and this is where it is all going, i cant walk down past more then 3 pubs and see a group of people sitting around a canister and sucking on balloons. It is puzzling to me why they do it, but if were running out they need to ban this at least.

reply to post by signalfire

It seems like if it 'can't be synthesized' and it's 'non-renewable' that substitutes may be looked for and found when the need arises.

There aren't substitutes for elements. Sorry about the one-liner.

reply to post by kicker074


lol i think you mean nitrous oxide dude not helium..

reply to post by blownaway

if im correct helium is lethal

Helium is inert, not even slightly poisonous. If you breathe it exclusively without taking time for oxygem breaks, you will suffocate. Helium is mixed with oxygen so that divers can go very deep without the need for decompression stops on the way to the surface.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000

I'll take the possible crisis in 3 decades for the smiles it puts on little kids faces today.

You think it is a good idea to waste the gas for laughs at the expense of welding aluminum or allowing divers to setup rescues of striken submarines? Are you one of those that is OK with carbon taxes?

reply to post by signalfire

And am I the only one who ever wonders if helium balloons have ever caused an airplane accident?

Those little toy ballons burst after the rise a few hundred feet due to the reduced air pressure. Even if ingested in an engine, they wouldn't case any damage.

reply to post by N3k9Ni


You've tied it up nicely; into a mere afterthought as it were! Mayans>Balloons>End=Precisely.