Rube's Gold Ribbon

 refers to an unmarked quest in Fallout 3.

Gold Ribbon Grocers is a store on Jury St, near Jury Street Metro Station, west of Megaton.

The entire store appears to have been set up as a Rube Goldberg machine, using pressure plates, a long row of boxes, several traps and explosions. Your reward for setting off the Machine is a few missiles, a mininuke, Nikola Tesla and You and Tumblers Today. For this reason we suggest not grabbing the many boxes of Sugar Bombs and Abraxo Cleaner until after the Machine has completed.

YouTube video:
 * http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gmMKjtCxAw

Setup
Follow the arrows to a...
 * Pressure plate triggering log-with-skull
 * ...triggering a long line of boxes
 * ...triggering a Pressure Plate
 * ...triggering a Pitching Machine
 * ...that eventually pushes down a fire extinguisher on a Bear Trap
 * ...which explosion makes a Grenade Bouquet fall down and explode
 * ...setting fire to the gas cloud, which will seek its way to the second floor
 * ...shaking a kid's slider (!) to drop its contents down the hole!

Activating the mechanism after "destroying" the setup

 * If you went ahead and disarmed all the traps before picking up your missile and reading material, you can simulate the explosion simply by shooting the gas cylinder lying next to the bear trap - you might want to stand back though. Following the ensuing explosion the books and missile will fall out of the hole in the roof on the other side of the room.
 * Another alternative is to shoot the end of the slide with a reasonably high-impact weapon, such as a hunting rifle. This seems to work in cases where the items -almost- make it down the slide.
 * Alternately, you can gain the reward by igniting the gas cloud (for instance by shooting the generator until it explodes) in the back.
 * If all else fails, the slide can be activated with a Frag Grenade.
 * If you enter the store with a Shishkebab holster it, or you will ignite the gas in the room.

Light Step
Players with the "Light Step" perk can't set off the initial pressure plate. However, you can use the method above to get the reward - or if you want to see the whole machine in action, simply grab and release the skull log. Or you can pick up the paperweight (any item will do, i used pre war money to set it off) on the counter next to the cash register and just drop it on the pressure plate.

If you do not get the full show and you have Autosave on, try reloading the Autosave where you came in the front door. This has been seen to set off the chain reaction, for unknown reasons.

Activating the slide with only a grenade
You do not have to activate the machine to access the slide and its goodies. In fact you can get in to the second level of the grocery store in 3 simple steps. 1) stack FOUR milk crates, in any formation, on to the three broken refrigerators that are by the counter. It doesn't matter how you organize them up there yet, just put them there for step 3. 2) Jump up on the edge of the counter and position yourself so that you are facing the hole in the ceiling that is directly between the counters edge and the three broken refrigerators that have your crates on them. 3) Now jump from the counter to the top edge of the three broken refrigerators and simply stack all four crates on the corner of the left fridge so that they stack up to the whole in the ceiling. You should now be able to jump up on the crates and access the top floor. There are invisible walls around the slide that will keep you from walking directly up to it but you can throw a grenade under it and watch its contentments spill out to the floor below. Note: if you do not ignite the gas in the room your grenade will ignite it and you'll take a little fire damage. This method should only be used if you're either curious about getting up to the top floor or if the initial triggering of the machine failed to yield your skill books or all the rockets. Sometimes they'll get stuck on the bottom of the slide and require a little push from an explosive.

Reward

 * Nikola Tesla and You
 * Tumblers Today
 * 3 Missiles
 * Mini-Nuke

Video

 * YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gmMKjtCxAw