contamination and flooding". He regards it as superior to "Pit of Peril", which he considers thematically similar. Sylvia Anderson remembered "Path of Destruction" as a "great special effects episode" and the Crablogger concept "marvellous" and "ingenious". The Crablogger has also been well received by Peter Briggs, who praises it both as a vehicle and as a plot device. He believes that with its references to food poisoning, "Path of Destruction" is one of several Thunderbirds stories that can be categorised as "weird science". Rating the episode three out of five, Tom Fox of Starburst magazine praises the story's "nicely direct dilemma" and unpredictable resolution, as well as the "marvellously monstrous machines" on display and the scenes of the Crablogger wreaking havoc (which he considers to be the episode's highlight). He is less complimentary of the restaurant sequence, arguing that it promotes negative stereotypes about South Americans. Mark Braxton writes that the Crablogger itself "strains credibility", arguing that the combination of a nuclear-powered design and obscure shutdown procedure turns it into "a disaster waiting to happen". However, he regards the overall episode as an entertaining "race-against-time" story, asserting that it "would have made a great big-screen outing". He believes the restaurant scenes display the Andersons' skill in devising "comic, even grotesque characters and situations" and counts the rat-infested kitchen – complete with a real mouse scurrying across a table – among the "great triumphs" of series art director Bob Bell. He also praises the "seamless" integration of Penelope and Parker's subplot, adding that their meeting with Lucas results in "one of the show's funniest pay-offs". Hearn, Anderson and Nicholas J. Cull have all commented on the episode's depiction of nuclear hazards. According to Hearn, "Path of Destruction" is one of several Thunderbirds episodes that portray humanity as being "dangerously over-reliant" on atomic power – to such an extent that the fictional world of the series "seems to teeter on the brink of a radioactive nightmare". Cull writes that along with many other APF productions, "Path of Destruction" shows that "nuclear weapons and wider nuclear fears in general" were a major influence on Gerry Anderson's work. For Ian Fryer, the episode plays on contemporary fears about travel abroad and developments in road transport. He notes that the Crablogger crew fall ill through interacting with a foreign culture and draws parallels between the rampaging machine and the heavy goods vehicles of 1960s Britain,