Antimatter—and You!
As the title faded in, the usual oddly perky Perseus Safety Accord instructional film background music kicked in. The picture flickered like an old film projector movie—bafflingly incongruous with the top-of-the-line holoprojector showing it, and with the setting of a room on a ridiculously advanced multi-billion-bit space station.
As the title faded, a clear, authoritative, and slightly nerdy voice that everyone in the room was exhaustingly familiar with started speaking over various diagrams, pictures, and slides full of equations.
"Antimatter! What is it? How dangerous is it? What should I do if I detect some?"
"Of the three hundred and twenty seven Class-A hazardous materials, machines, artifacts, and spatiotemporal configurations, antimatter is one of the most blatantly dangerous and difficult to manage!"
A slide showing a pony in a lab coat, peering into a test tube. Several in the audience snorted.
"Antimatter is just like normal matter, having the same properties and quantum numbers except for the charge. All known Category-3 and above sapient civilizations have at least a basic knowledge of antimatter and its properties, as it is a natural product of the high-energy experiments which eventually lead to the development of advanced power and space travel technologies."
Now a cartoon of two particles, one with a blue plus, the other with a red minus, as they collided.
"The danger of antimatter lies in the fact that, when normal particles and antiparticles make contact, they annihilate, releasing particles and radiation. Because mass contains enormous amounts of energy, the results of even a small antimatter annihilation event can be catastrophic!"
Back to the 'scientist', but now he was holding a broken, empty test tube, and looked dazed and comically singed.
"Just one gram of antimatter is a city-scale threat! A kilogram can obliterate a megacity and render large areas of a continent uninhabitable! And just a thousand kilograms presents a planetary-scale threat!"
A terribly animated view of a planet exploding.
"But what of peaceful uses, you might ask? Well, the developments required to produce and contain large amounts of antimatter also immediately make available far safer methods of energy storage and propulsion! It is for this reason the Accord specifies that the production and storage of greater than nanogram quantities of antimatter is confined to only a very few tightly regulated and extremely secure research facilities.”
A brief shot of some fancy lab with lasers and other nonsense—probably a fake set.
“What to do if an Accord-compliant sensor system notifies you that antimatter has been detected?”
The next slide was a bulleted list, made redundant by the narrator reading it out loud.
“Step 1: Don’t Panic! Step 2: Contact an Accord officer or outpost through the best available channel. Step 3: Track if possible, but do not engage or agitate!”
Now a grainy film that was believable as real, of a ship being fired upon by a number of smaller vessels.
“Remember: avoid confrontation at all costs! Even with stable exotic-matter containment systems, a single excessive shock or vacuum breach can lead to complete annihilation!”
A shot connected with the ship, and there was just enough time resolution to see a blast of light expand outward from the it. Then, nothing.
“For the safety of you and any innocent bystanders, confrontation of suspected antimatter producers, smugglers, buyers, or users must be handled by trained Accord officers, accompanied by full wings of SCP ships of class Kappa or above!”
Now a cheesy shot of somepony in an Accord uniform standing next to the ‘scientist’, both of them grinning and waving like idiots. This faded to the usual ending: an animated PSA logo weaving around on the screen, as the music came to a bright, cheerful conclusion.
“Unregulated antimatter is one of the most dangerous materials for all citizens of the Perseus Arm! But together, we can keep each other safe!”
Fin.