What If? (xkcd)

I think you need to write at least two interlaced stories before submitting it here, because otherwise the idea is difficult to understand. (This is my recommendation, not an official hard rule.) Somewhat related: The current popular version of the story of "King Arthur" is a mix of a bunch of books written by different unrelated authors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Arthur#Medieval_literary_traditions Are you imagining something like that? Somewhat related: Before launching the "What if?" serie in https://what-if.xkcd.com/ he wrote the first five stories just to be sure that following his idea it was possible to write some interesting post. (I can't find the post where he describe this.) I recommend to try your method and write at least 2 stories.

If you love Wait But Why, Randall Munroe's What If? blog has a similar semi-visual explainer style, but has more of a focus on scientific answers to ridiculous hypotheticals: https://what-if.xkcd.com/

Tip: Extract useful information from people's mistakes, and show it to them. They'll love it (and it's really fun!). (It's a bit like when you ask a smart physicist a silly question instead of telling you're wrong he'll make the most out of it) Examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8 https://what-if.xkcd.com/

Also see his fantastic "What if?" series[0] where he answers fantastical questions using similar research. Examples of recent questions include "If you call a random phone number and say “God bless you”, what are the chances that the person who answers just sneezed?" and "What place on Earth would allow you to freefall the longest by jumping off it?" [0] http://what-if.xkcd.com/

> Somewhat related: The current popular version of the story of "King Arthur" is a mix of a bunch of books written by different unrelated authors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Arthur#Medieval_literary_... Are you imagining something like that? Yes - pretty much exactly like that. To make an analogy, kind of like “cryptopunks” in the world of crypto - except instead of “images” you buy & use as profile pictures, these characters have “behaviors, traits, persona, etc.” (revealed in the story) that a wannabe writer can reinvent & use to write an original short story, movie, novel etc. (but has to be copyleft licensed CC BY-SA) > Somewhat related: Before launching the "What if?" serie in https://what-if.xkcd.com/ he wrote the first five stories just to be sure that following his idea it was possible to write some interesting post. I have written 2 part short stories, but your idea of connecting “unrelated” short stories sounds a next step The stories are pretty good .. maybe I should make more of them free? I have zero lit community to talk to about this so I do much appreciate you helping me “conceptualize” this & providing the resources by which to offer comparisons / explanation.. Maybe I’ll just give them all away for free. (Almost am at that point anyway) In any case, will share with you in comment a short story I wrote to give you an idea the kind of story. Thanks again - and if you’ve any more thoughts I’ll check by here Enjoy your Sunday

According to Randall Munroe, you'd actually experience less radiation about a metre under the water in a spent fuel pool then you do walking down the street. https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/ On a tangent, I kinda love the fact that I've learned more about nuclear physics, orbital mechanics, and relativistic speeds from a poorly drawn webcomic than I have from any other source. (Ok KSP might actually have xkcd beat on orbital mechanics)

https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/ pretty sure this is the text version, for those who can't watch a video (I recommend you do, xkcd YouTube channel is awesome)

> let's hope nobody drills a hole in the Moon https://what-if.xkcd.com/46/ - while it deals more with the Earth (which has a more molten core), its still applicable. There's still molten material ( https://science.nasa.gov/moon/composition/ ) but it's a lot deeper. > (or blows the Moon up) As a classic Neal Stephenson (great world building, good plot... and it ends)... Seveneves starts with: > THE MOON BLEW UP WITHOUT WARNING AND FOR NO APPARENT reason. It was waxing, only one day short of full. The time was 05:03:12 UTC. Later it would be designated A+0.0.0, or simply Zero. ... and given the book and the "what happens"... a watch surviving (much less keeping the phase of the moon) would be impressive. There's also the Dr. Who take ("Spoilers") https://youtu.be/pHOnGSFzd3Y

My grandfather lived in a time when commercial hunting was outlawed. I worry that I live in a time when commercial fishing is not sufficiently regulated so that rather than being outlawed, it will simply become infeasible, with the attendant knock-on affects of countries which depend on the oceans for a significant portion of their protein. There are now a greater tonnage of ships in the ocean than bony fish: https://what-if.xkcd.com/33/ What will be the next marker to be dropped? Makes one wish that we could manage something like to Hal Clement's "Raindrop": https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/939760.Music_of_Many_Spheres

xkcd what-if has a great picture of what a typical orbital flight is really like: https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/ tl;dr: Our atmosphere is surprisingly thin.

Here it is in written form. The punchline is worth the read/watch. https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/

The concern is more spreading Earth life. NASA's Planetary Protection team (which is a delightful job title) is largely concerned with sterilizing stuff we send out so any discovery of microbes on Mars doesn't turn out to be hitchhikers. Even a fully fleged nuclear reactor isn't gonna do much damage to Europa and potential life. Swimming in a nuclear reactor's fuel pool is quite safe; water's some of the best shielding we have. https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/

> A few years ago I saw someone calculate the energy required to melt the ice in front of a locomotive (I think) at speed; IIRC it required a (not small!) nuclear reactor's worth of energy. Sounds like https://what-if.xkcd.com/130/.

Obligatory xkcd reference: https://what-if.xkcd.com/73/ > Which of the following would be brighter, in terms of the amount > of energy delivered to your retina: > * A supernova, seen from as far away as the Sun is from the Earth, or > * The detonation of a hydrogen bomb pressed against your eyeball? > > ... the supernova is brighter ... by nine orders of magnitude.

This exact question has been tackled by Randall Munroe in his "What If?" section: https://what-if.xkcd.com/38/ Barely related, but on the same spirit, I recommend Kafka's short story "The city coat of arms" for his perspective on the "there are better engines" line of reasoning: https://www.babelmatrix.org/works/de/Kafka%2C_Franz-1883/Das_Stadtwapp…

The article hints at, but doesn't really discuss, the concept of information entropy [1]. Each word in that message has a very high entropy because it conveys a lot of information. I read an XKCD What If article [2] a while back that gives a really cool and intuitive introduction to the concept. I don't know all that much about computer science so it was a great way to get learning more. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(information_theory) [2] https://what-if.xkcd.com/34/

This is a really great link! > Getting to space is easy. It's not, like, something you could do in your car, but it's not a huge challenge. You could get a person to space with a small sounding rocket the size of a telephone pole. The X-15 aircraft reached space just by going fast and then steering up. > But getting to space is easy. The problem is staying there. [...] To avoid falling back into the atmosphere, you have to go sideways really, really fast. This image accompanies the above excerpt: https://what-if.xkcd.com/imgs/a/58/orbit_x15.png

This is exactly the kind of question Randall Munroe answers in his What If <https://what-if.xkcd.com/>. Unfortunately, this specific one seems not to be answered there?

It seems like https://what-if.xkcd.com/, absurd hypothesis and correct maths

The idea of something with ten solar masses moving so fast still terrifies me. It's just mind-boggling to think about something at that scale completing an orbit in the blink of an eye. I am reminded of Randall Monroe taking about the sheer energy of a supernova: > Which of the following would be brighter, in terms of the amount of energy delivered to your retina: > A supernova, seen from as far away as the Sun is from the Earth, or > The detonation of a hydrogen bomb pressed against your eyeball? > Applying the physicist rule of thumb suggests that the supernova is brighter. And indeed, it is ... by nine orders of magnitude. https://what-if.xkcd.com/73/

https://what-if.xkcd.com/ >> Could I cool down the Earth by capturing a comet and dropping it in the ocean, like an ice cube in a glass of water? > No. In fact, it's honestly sort of impressive to find a solution that would actively make the problem worse in so many different ways. The short answer is, the falling ice adds about 100x as much heat from the difference in potential energy than it cools.

Energy is dangerous (mechanical, chemical, etc.) and produces waste. And great power requires great responsibility. "Safety" can be seen thru different lenses. If we measure by number of deaths, then nuclear is safer than dams or coal/gas power plant. Nuclear requires some expertise to run safely, but now the plant designs are better. I am wondering if the fear of nuclear is greater than the actual risk. https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/

Indeed. As usual XKCD is helpful here. https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/ It's similar to why launching from a mountain top isn't worth it. If you're launching to a few hundred km altitude, a 2km or even a 10km head start is peanuts. And altitude is only a small fraction of the problem, compared to orbital speeds large jet aircraft are barely even moving. If you're launching anti-satelite missiles that's different. Getting altitude is the main aim, and military jets can get reasonably high with a small missile as payload.

If were going off on a tangent to nuclear explosions why not supernova: XKCD What if: https://what-if.xkcd.com/73/ Quotable quote: "However big you think supernovae are, they're bigger than that." The following paragraph to that quote is a great demonstration of that point.

I'm a little sad that this isn't (re)posted on https://what-if.xkcd.com/

Weird to see this on Nautilus instead of Randall's site where he's put hundreds of other "What-If"s https://what-if.xkcd.com/

This reminded me of this classic: https://what-if.xkcd.com/8/

"But getting to space is easy. The problem is staying there." - that's been an real eye opening read for me from fantastic "What If": https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/

Which brings us to one of the best XKCD punchlines of all time: https://what-if.xkcd.com/3/

That picture of the "NYC Banana Fire" was so perfectly random that it is my new favorite picture ever. https://what-if.xkcd.com/imgs/a/158/nycbananafire.png