Meltdown

Right now if I walk up to someone and ask "What are your thoughts on 'the meltdown'?" They will know I'm talking about the trouble in the U. S. economy. I'm pretty sure the phrase 'meltdown' came in to the lexicon around Three Mile Island sometime in the seventies. The phrase means, from my experience, a complete catastrophic failure of some mechanism or system.

I bet more people will die from the Wall Street meltdown from heart attacks than Three Mile Island.

A person might have a meltdown.  I've had a couple myself. I've had computers have meltdowns. A couple of those lead to my meltdowns. Talk about a chain reaction. Why, just the other day a plastic spoon had a meltdown while I was heating some Spaghettios in the microwave at work. I learned from this experience and now, do not put the cheep plastic spoons in the microwave when heating.

Normally, meltdown stories are much better than that.