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if they wanted to talk to this guy, Antonio Meucci invented a very useful tool circa 1870 that would've let them do so. Since it's 2015, they could even have (gasp) video!
The guy's already in protective custody anyway.
A bit low, but reasonable.
Try making stuff that goes on ships, there's usually double redundancy AND a completely mechanical system in case everything goes to pot.
Well, division by zero should never happen, but you want it to be handled gracefully in case it does. Nobody wants the autopilot in charge of a barge train to segfault.
Basically, every variable in the system was stored three times, past value - current value - predicted future value. If I saw a zero, I could use the past value to get the sign of the zero, and work from there.
Division by zero if anything would be +infinity or -infinity depending on signs, not zero.
A while ago I wrote an autopilot that handled division by zero by looking at the signs and setting the result to (maxpos) or (maxneg), the zero's sign being derived from the variable's last value scavenged from the PID function.
What I generally do with coercive people is conspicuously ignore them other than tell them "if you shout, I can't listen to you".
Even works with muggers and cops, if you got the balls.
It has happened to me, though, that I had to give a physics demo as to why you don't bring a knife or a taser to a polite conversation.