300 million lbs of fireworks and 2.7 billion dollars gone in a cloud of smoke.
Fireworks are a complete waste of other people’s money. Besides the regular fireworks show (taxes), I like watching people’s money go up in smoke. It’s fun!
They seem very backwards when there are drone displays and other forms of entertainment. Humans cling on to things way too long.
I think a big part of it is that they’re dangerous. It’s fun to experience just a tinge of fear from how big they sound, or even just from being near the little street versions. It’s a (relatively) safe way for us to experience something that would otherwise be terror inducing explosives.
I mean, safe aside from all the accidents that happen every year. Like kids blowing off fingers or what have you. I mean I get it, but having any random Joe be able to buy a ton of explosives then go home, drink, and play with them seems needlessly risky. Especially in dry areas where fires can start or around large groups of people.
Yes. Fireworks are not as safe as pillows. They’re … relatively safe.
That’s a false equivalency.
They are explosives. They are less safe than most sports, movies, video games, concerts, tons of things. This is like saying “yes, doing knife throwing tricks at people is less safe than pillows”. Of course it is, what bar are you setting. Come on, fireworks are literally playing with explosives. Children and drunk people alike.
They’re safe relative to other explosives like bombs.
And way less safe than not playing with explosives at all.
You gain brief enjoyment at the risk of fires and injuries. This makes no sense.
It’s almost like our collective experience is so boring and gloomy and so stressful for our little bodies and brains that we as a species are prone to mercurial outbursts where we act recklessly as a way to prove our existence to ourselves
And you’re in your 60s or something, wise with age and experience? You’ve at least got half a century under your belt I hope, to criticize the concept of traditions generally?
In many fireworks displays such as the London new year ones there are drone displays incorporated.
Of course they are a waste of money, and the plastic packaging is incredibly bad for the environment. And they are fun and I will buy them again next year.
No
I think they’re amazing. The chemistry of colored flame has fascinated me since I was young, and there’s nothing quite like being close to explosions. If I had more time and lived in the US I’d be a hobby pyrotechnician.
Asceticism is a dead end.
100% Thats why there is thr Middle Way.
As a middle path I propose we let people buy fireworks on a free market. That way they’re there, but nobody is forced to set them off.
They also scare the crap out of my dog, and cause a lot of accidents. Though, they can be beautiful…
Fireworks are a funny one because you’re completely right and also not completely right I think. It’s one of those unresolvable dichotomies of life where two opposing ideas are both true at the same time. I’ve often thought fireworks were the most obvious way to set fire to a lot of money that could be better used somewhere else. However, what is also true is that humans have a deep need to celebrate and to come together in large groups and have shared experiences. Fireworks are perfect for that. You can put a million people together and launch a massive firework display and they will all immediately connect with each other through the shared experience of going “Oooooohh” and “Aaaaaaahh” :) Fireworks are awesome and also, personally I feel they remind me that there are bigger things out there than the daily grind of existence.
humans have a deep need to celebrate and to come together in large groups and have shared experiences
Isn’t that what parades are for?
personally I feel they remind me that there are bigger things out there than the daily grind of existence
There are other ways to get that. The universe is huge, look up on a quiet night with little light pollution.
Isn’t that what parades are for?
Kinda. Parades are also for showing off nuclear warheads and how precisely your soldiers can march.
Fireworks are a more non centralized version of it. Everyone can participate in the fireworks, not just stand there and watch.
Also they burst in air, giving them better visibility than something that just flows down the street in front of you.
Everyone can participate in the fireworks, not just stand there and watch.
Don’t we just stand there when we watch fireworks too 🤣
Isn’t that what parades are for?
But parades are boring
There are other ways to get that. The universe is huge, look up on a quiet night with little light pollution.
People need novelty in life, if it’s there every day it’s not special.
That’s fair, I just think there are ways to get that besides blowing things up once a year, especially given that fireworks produce a lot of unnecessary waste and pollution in the environment.
I just think there are ways to get that besides blowing things up once a year
I mean, I think it’s good that people get to safely experience explosions, something most people probably wouldn’t experience in their lives otherwise.
I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily safe, ERs are full of people who almost blew off their hand or other appendages around 4th of July.
Stairs are relatively safe, tens of thousands of people still die from them every year.
Only one of those things is completely optional.
“Your existential fulfillment is wrong, do it my way instead.”
Fair enough, but why does every single person need their own firework? That connection is conpletely lost then
I obviously can’t speak for everyone, but whenever we do fireworks on the 4th or New Year’s, it’s with a group of a solid 15-30 people. I don’t think we’d ever set off fireworks by ourselves
Yup, we have a solid 30 people put together a show. It catches on fire every year and it is awesome!
Every single person needs the opportunity to get their own firework and contribute. We’ve never had a rule like “everyone needs their own firework”.
Everyone needs the option. That is important. It’s not important that everyone takes it, but it’s important everyone is given the option.
I just don’t get it. It terrifies people’s pets, and the wildlife outside, it’s incredibly noisy (meaning you can’t get away from it if you live near someone doing it), and it produces tons of waste and pollution. Can’t we just have a big BBQ like we do the rest of the year when we celebrate stuff?
No.
i think fireworks are nice but they’re to a large degree something from a different age and at this point we should only really be using smaller volcano-style ones, and like holy shit we have drone technology, why aren’t drone displays standard in any vaguely populated area?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lnBmYAiduo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyEWcfn7rT0look at this shit, it’s so cool! can we please push for this to be the standard?
Good news then!
NPR: Why drone light shows are replacing traditional July 4th fireworks
Cities like Napa, Calif., and Salt Lake City, Utah, have opted out of traditional pyrotechnics this year. They say they’re worried about pollution and the risk of wildfires, so instead, they’ll create a tribute to America with a light show made by drones.
What makes them “something from a different age”?
For pollution, at least CO2, 300M lb is 136k metric tons. I didn’t know the water to CO2 ratio for solid rocket motors, but I’d guess maybe half is CO2. Cars produce 1.5B tons of CO2 per year in the US, so the CO2 would be about equivalent to about 24 min of driving cars. That doesn’t seem too unreasonable.
But maybe you were taking about the metals? I don’t know how much of an issue those are.
The particulate matter, specifically heavy metals, go through the roof.
There’s also a bunch of paperwork involved in removing those measurements from the pollution data sets with a rule that gives a pass for fireworks.
The metals are a big thing. Breathing heavy metals is bad for people and animals.
Unfortunately this isn’t complete combustion. There’s a shit ton of PM and everything else. Ever go to a big show? They have to take pauses for the smoke to clear so that you can see the next batch.
You’re concerned about the smoke rather than the CO2?
You’re concerned about the smoke rather than the CO2?
You do know that CO, SOx, NOx etc is worse that CO2 right?
Health wise, not global warming wise. The original post sounded like a global warming concern.
Acid rain ain’t no problem huh.
Post said “unnecessary pollution”.
Everything is unnecessary. We could just off ourselves and there’d be no more pollution. The only reason our existence matter is the way we feel about it. Which is the same reason fireworks matter.
That depends on a lot more factors for how dilute it gets. I didn’t know how likely it is for the air currents to dilute the aluminum exhaust over a large enough area before it rains. Maybe someone could do some analysis, but I don’t know how.
You shoud do a calculation and show the expected change in global temperature from a fireworks show.
It’s not worse, it’s different. CO2 kills everything on earth but that takes a lot of it. The toxins you listed can give a community long term health issues without that much exposure. It’s a local problem vs a global problem.
How many fireworks shows does it take to give someone long term health effects from the smoke?
Fireworks are a cool spectacle, imagine never seeing a fireworks show. Also the money isnt gone, its just changed hands.
They probably shouldnt be how they are now though, where every individual family wants to fire their own, thats a waste and really obnoxious when its in the middle of neighborhoods. Keep it to one centralized show, away from residential areas, and everyone gets to watch a bigger show.
Fireworks are a cool spectacle, imagine never seeing a fireworks show.
Completely agree!
Also the money isnt gone, its just changed hands.
Not with this though. A portion of the money has changed hands, the portion that goes to paying workers and investors. Another portion of the money was used to extract, refine, and process something that just burned up and no longer exists.
While money as an abstraction is made up, what it represents, the underlying value of society’s resources, is not, and that is unfortunately finite. So it’s also important to consider opportunity cost. That money could have been spent on other things, when you spend it on something wasteful and unnecessary that means it can’t be spent on more useful or productive things.
All that being said, I still think fireworks are rad and worth it, but they are a waste.
Money was used to pay workers to extract, refine, and process resources. Absolutely none of the money is gone.
The money itself? Sure. But that’s not what people talk about when they talk about money, they are usually referring to what the money represents, i.e. resources, which were all burnt up and used to create that fire work when they could have gone to something else.
i.e. if we spent some huge proportion of our money on fireworks every year, we would still have the same amount of money on paper in the economy, but absolutely everything else would cost far more. From our actual lived perspective we would be poorer.
Thats just not how money works. We did spend a huge amount of our money on fireworks, things didnt become more expensive.
That is absolutely just how money works, if that same money had gone to say, healthcare companies instead of fireworks companies, we would have the same amount of paper money, and we wouldn’t have fireworks, but we’d have lower healthcare costs since we already paid some of them.
You’re bringing up a lot of examples that literally happen in reality and do not have the results you are claiming. Healthcare companies have been both steadily receiving more money and increasing their prices.
Wait, are we not supposed to tie $100 bills to our mortars?
Cost saving tip! Use $20 bills and cut your holiday expenses in half!
It’s just not the same…
Money isn’t gone, resources are gone.
Money was literally invented to be an abstraction of resources. When people talk about money they usually mean resources.
3/4 of the fun is doing it yourself.
For you. Its obnoxious for others.
Technically it’s 2.999…/4 of the fun
So technically 3 again?
I think I will fight that math forever. Getting infinitely closer does not count as actually getting there.
I’m not totally against fireworks. As others have mentioned, sometimes we do need to just have some fun and not worry about the consequences. But they should be done far from residential area, so that unwilling people (e.g. vets, children, or pets) aren’t disturbed. (Honestly though, I wish we didn’t have any vets with PTSD, that’s the worse problem. As long as we still have wars, I’d say let the people have some fun.)
Waste of money? No more so than any other form of entertainment that is temporary.
Environmentally, yeah…they’re pretty bad. Air pollution is a big issue. Some birds get killed when they run into things because they can’t see very well after being scared off by the fireworks. Any large human event is environmentally bad, like a sporting event.
We generate literal tons of plastic and other human waste when we gather for mass entertainment.
Yeah but at the end of the day we’re handing out explosives for people to play with, even kids. Just feels like it’s not the best form of celebration.
Yes. Injury and fires are compounding factors, no denying that.
We already know sterile environments make people allergic.
I am actually concerned about what kind of behavioral “allergies” will arise from a society with no danger. It is not a natural state and it is not something we should be experimenting with lightly.
We already know what happens.
Anti-vax
Pro-war
Pro-authoritarianism
Anti-education
Etc.
Once you’ve divorced yourself completely from the dangers of watching family and people around you die from preventable diseases all the time, the horrors of actually having to live through your city destroyed and people you know be devastated by war, the crushing oppression and greed of authoritarian regimes, your education controlled specifically to prevent you from you getting any ideas about real freedoms, that’s what you get when you remove real danger from society.
But I think you probably meant something more mundane like kids will start making graffiti or something.
Well, I meant more like the dangers of nature.
Having your whole city get destroyed is an unnatural thing that comes with advanced civilization and armies. I’m totally fine with eliminating that kind of “danger” from the world.
But the danger of riding a motorcycle, or lighting firecrackers, climbing a tree, fighting a beaver, whatever, those are dangers on the level that we evolved to deal with.
Just like in the analogy with sterility, I’m fine with making environments free of bio weapons and meat industry goop full of mega bacteria and the kinds of biological threats that civilization itself creates. But getting rid of the base load of strange micro critters, that yes do pose some danger of sickness and even death, turns out to be taking it too far because it makes people more likely to have allergies and autoimmune problems.
Explosives are actually predictable. Way more predictable than people or animals, for instance. A person can protect themselves when handling explosives by being careful.
But these are just my theories about what the mechanism might be. At the higher level, by analogy it’s just there’s a system we have, that has evolved to protect us, but it’s evolved to learn from encounters with the thing it’s designed to protect us from. If you give ir no encounters, it goes haywire.
I don’t know what the mechanism might be exactly, but I worry our ability to navigate danger might itself be a system that can go haywire.
Ok, I follow. I think we’re already there. Plenty of people are doing stupid things that are dangerous, either out of ignorance, lack of forethought, or nowadays for clout on social media. Pretty sure people have been doing dumb things for a long time, but they were more lethal in the past.
Okay so we generate literal tons of waste. There are also literally hundreds of millions of us, so “tons of waste” would happen if we gathered to eat brownies distributed on napkins.
Well that makes it all right then, doesn’t it?
here and there are fine, I think sometimes they have their place but I’m really not a fan. the noise bothers me and I hate that people shoot them off to celebrate the same veterans that suffer ptsd during firework shows. I hope some communities start to move to drone shows in the future. https://youtu.be/pZ-zJ0Vq0FU Much quieter and leaves way more room to switch it up year to year.
