And if so, what kind of bird would it take? In the UK edition of the book, Randall included a preface about his thoughts on the units used in the UK. From here on standard release day was Tuesday. We would see a variety of benefits across our lives but we would also freeze and die. It goes through three or four cycles of this collapse and expansion It found that every 10 years for the past four decades, "the likelihood of a hurricane developing into a major one of Category 3 or higher, with sustained winds greater than 110 miles an hour, [increased] by about 8% a decade." The comet either burns up in the atmosphere or speeds up global warming. Here's What Would Happen If You Nuked A Hurricane, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports. A 2016 National Geographic article also explained that detonating a nuke inside a hurricane could violate the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union. This new release is probably due to the upcoming release of the What If? In reality, the oceans arent that deep. In fact, weve actually tried it a bunch of times. "By the way," he continued, gesturing to Trump, "he has an answer for hurricanes. What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light? The release day was fixed to once a week on a given weekday, except for a few articles that were delayed a day (or two) in one week, but then next week's article would again be released on the normal day. Business, Economics, and Finance. Liquid helium? A fully developed hurricane can release heat energy at a rate of 5 to 20x1013 watts and converts less than 10% of the heat into the mechanical energy of the wind. Has humanity produced enough paint to cover the entire land area of the Earth? What would happen if you were to gather a mole (unit of measurement) of moles (the small furry critter) in one place? But beware of messing with the Texans. 2 book, in. Let's say the racer has to survive. How many perfect scores would there be? The hole fills in, with huge columns of steam and great Instead, it blows a hole in the At what voltage would you have have to set the e-fisher? That turbulent warm water is actually quite substantial. I saw a sign at a hot springs tub saying "Caution: Water is hotter than average" with water at about 39C. Getting it back is another story. (We have an idea for selling bottled Europa water.). There's a lot of numbers involved, so let's have the experts at NOAA explain it: "A fully developed hurricane can release heat energy at a rate of 5 to 201013 watts and converts less than 10% of the heat into the mechanical energy of the wind. I use one of those old phones where you type with numbersfor example, to type "Y", you press 9 three times. But it would be the same problem with nukes. Could a person walk the entire city of NY in their lifetime? What would happen if you exploded a nuclear bomb in the eye of a hurricane? ", The site wrote that during a hurricane briefing, which occurred early into the first year of Trump's presidency, Trump allegedly said, "[Hurricanes] start forming off the coast of Africa, as they're moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it. . You are in a boat directly over the Mariana Trench. My 12-year-old daughter is proposing an interesting project. you would not be warmed if you went to the surface. For that matter, which war has the highest movie time:war time ratio? It turns out not only is that hard to help her appreciate this size, I am not at all able to explain all of the other difficulties you'd have to overcome. With practice, it's possible to throw a book every 800 milliseconds, which means that if human attackers are sprinting towards you, you'll have three or four chances to hit them before they reach you. Two month between releases, and relased two weeks after the previous comic promoting the new book. Would you freeze or suffocate first? Earth would be unaffected but the human race would be wiped out due to everyone trying to get home at the same time. There's just too much of a chance that the unknown could happen and result in an epic, deadly disaster. A CEO on the other hand, would be in trouble. As the first two were released on week 1, this means that there were 134 articles released over the next 143 weeks, meaning there were only 9 weeks without an article. Also, it would be many times the distance the Earth is from the Moon. Gasoline: 46 Stopping an asteroid with a laser on the other hand is a lot easier. If you could teleport to a random place of the surface of the Earth, what are the odds that you'll see signs of intelligent life? How long would it take for a single person to fill up an entire swimming pool with their own saliva? Luckily for the coast, later research paints a less dire picture. First after 17 more weeks releases began again with article 141 on Tuesday January 16, 2016. As humans learned over the last century from a wide variety of incidents, fallout is no fun. And even hurricanes that don't post numbers like those ruin lives. Not in a "scatter my ashes" sense, but, like, "throw my naked corpse out the airlock" sense. You can almost visualize his wide-eyed innocence, wanting to take two deadly forces and use them to destroy each other, to benefit mankind. . ' If set up in the rainiest place in the United States (Ketchikan, Alaska), the cost could be offset in about a century. Astrophysicists are always saying things like "This mission to this comet is equivalent to throwing a baseball from New York and hitting a particular window in San Francisco." He hadn't let go of his idea as of 2004. Meteorologist Chris Landsea of the National Hurricane Center explains (via Popular Mechanics) "To change a Category 5 hurricane into a Category 2 hurricane you would have to add about a half ton of air for each square meter inside the eye, or a total of a bit more than half a billion (500,000,000) tons for a 20 km radius eye. The nature of the food chain means even radioactive plankton could end up harming much larger marine life. Or what if you were doing a backflip? Hurricanes emit a mind-boggling amount of energy. The reason for this you can read at the Editor FAQ . How much damage would a hail storm with size 5 soccer ball sized hail do? wiped out. As the chunks of rock fall back water. of 200-300 miles inland, whichever limit is reached first.. each. The release date in the archive is the wrong year, saying 2013 instead of 2012. I understand that the New Horizons craft used gravity assist from Jupiter to increase its speed on the way to Pluto. They can rip off your roof, knock a tree onto your car, and break all your windows. The others not so much. Would we ever generate enough power to offset the cost of the generators? But is this something humanity might actually try one day? People sometimes say "If I had all the money in the world " in order to discuss what they would do if they had no financial constraints. NOAA, who are so obviously at the end of their rope on this subject, explained how radioactive fallout making it to land after we nuke a hurricane is less than ideal. How dangerous is it, really, to be in a swimming pool in a thunderstorm? The head of the U.S. So, you're falling from a height above the tallest building in your town, and you don't have a parachute. Are they really equivalent? would reach to a height of 200-300 feet above sea level, or a distance As a mole is such a high number this would be tricky. In terms of human-made objects, has Voyager 1 travelled the farthest distance? What would happen to the Earth if the Sun suddenly switched off? What's the likelihood this could happen? ", "You could hear a gnat fart in that meeting," the source told Axios. If one randomly chosen extra person were to die each second somewhere on Earth, what impact would it have on the world population? If Michael Phelps could hold his breath indefinitely, how long would it take for him to reach the lowest point in the ocean and back if he swam straight down and then straight back up? What would be the most expensive way to fill a size 11 shoebox (e.g. The very first what if? Second time with less than two weeks between release in 2017. Hurricane cos(x) forms a graph of cos(x) along the bottom edge of the map.]] The area is now marked by a 100-kilometer-wide scar of magma sizzling However, Trump called the site's story "ridiculous" in a tweet, adding, "I never said this. And the best part is, it's all humanity's fault. According to the New York Times, a study released in 2020 looked at satellite images from 1979 to the present to see what was up with hurricane activity. dinosaurs. The larger fish tended to be stunned for slightly longer because of their larger surface area but I don't imagine this relationship would be maintained for very large animals. ocean waves created by nuclear explosions. Of course, at that point, it might be easier to just leave Earth behind completely. This is clear from his response to the question of what would happen if everybody on Earth stood together and jumped at the same time. Since then only three more articles were released in 2016, the first two with about 8 weeks between them and then more than 12 weeks. bookprovides The result of the above is that over the first 144 weeks 136 articles where released with never more than 3 weeks between releases. swept out to sea by a massive tsunami. Dispatches from a horrifying alternate universe. Most of the tests, however, involved either small bombs or shallow It's very unpromising. They're so huge, they're so powerful." "Look how much we're paying now to deal with the hurricanes," Biden said. typically takes the question beyond the original scope likely intended by the reader and takes it to some extreme for humorous effect. Evin's scenario concerns neither. What if you were to somehow ignite the pollen that floats around in the air in spring? His responses are masterpieces of clarity and hilarity, studded with memorable cartoons and infographics. Would it be possible for two teams in a tug-o-war to overcome the ultimate tensile strength of an iron rod and pull it apart? This warm water creates humid air, which then gets thrust upwards by tropical winds to create storm clouds. ", Still, we shouldn't stop people from dreaming. Enough soda to cover Earth with ten layers of cans. the last is devastating. The story of the three wise men got me wondering: What if you did walk towards a star at a fixed speed? But after defeating the Nazis and inventing the atom bomb, scientists seemed to think anything was possible, including controlling the weather. it gets, we can try a formula from the 1971 paper Evaluation of Regarding the question it could be done, but why did the guy asking the question whish to do such a horrible thing Randall ends up asking back. They often predict the complete annihilation of humankind, or at least a really big explosion. Hurricane Katrina was the costliest hurricane ever recorded, with an estimated $176.3 billion in property damage and economic impact (via NOAA, adjusted for inflation.) Now imagine the energy required to stop five or six a year, every year. The third two weeks Christmas break, the seventh break in total. Could it navigate? What if everyone who took the SAT guessed on every multiple-choice question? 0 618: Asteroid 696: Strip Games 786: Exoplanets 809: Los Alamos have been enough to strengthen it into a typhoon, much as the deep warm It then seemed to stop completely after those two, and it took more than a year (62 weeks) before #157. Not even mad scientists, but respected ones. How many unique English tweets are possible? like with most of the other scenarios, everyone dies. goes with citing temperature records and other trivia actually naming a Jeopardy master. Now I've realized that a flamethrower is impractical, but what about a high-powered microwave emitter? "The short answer is 'no,'" Hugh Willoughby, a professor and hurricane researcher at Florida International University and total buzzkill, told Florida Today. Only to find that the chair I sat on converted the successful silence into a perfect, and loud, flute note. We've been to the Moon! How much would the sea level fall if every ship were removed all at once from the Earth's waters? If you stripped away all the rules of car racing and had a contest which was simply to get a human being around a track 200 times as fast as possible, what strategy would win? This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. In 2022 the follow up book What If? . How would the Earth change as the water is being drained? The second break came a year after the first and was also a Christmas break before article 77 was released on December 31, 2013. Rough estimates indicate that the inundation GameStop Moderna Pfizer Johnson & Johnson AstraZeneca Walgreens Best Buy Novavax SpaceX Tesla. Various Theoretical Models For Underwater Of course, thats getting a little far-fetched. What would happen if you were in a boat, plane or a submarine that got hit by lightning? Am I right to be afraid of pressure cookers? (The Metric System). It answers many important questions, including whether you could jump from a plane with a helium tank and inflate balloons fast enough to slow your fall and survive (yes) and whether you could hide from a supersonic windstorm in Finland (yes, but it won't help). If not, then we all die. I figured this would be long enough to warm me up but not long enough to harm me. What if you were flashing your BIOS during a thunderstorm and you got hit by lightning? Would I be able to boil a cup of water by stirring? What changes could be made to our diets for the amount of calories to equal the energy of the Sun? They would not be able to pay off the debt, even if they forced humanity to work as slaves. What if you released a submarine into Jupiter's atmosphere? "People were astonished. What if a rainstorm dropped all of its water in a single giant drop? Second two months break of at least two in a row, the 16th break in total. My boyfriend recently took a flight on a plane with wifi, and while he was up there, wistfully asked if I could send him a pizza. Until then, perhaps the best solution is just learn to co-exist with them.". The release date in the archive is the wrong month June. What would the world be like if the land masses were spread out the same way as now - only rotated by an angle of 90 degrees? What if you somehow managed to make a stereo travel at twice the speed of sound, would it sound backwards to someone who was just casually sitting somewhere as it flies by? Coal: 24 How long of a fall would I need in order for the balloon to slow me enough that I could land safely? Magic, because science just works like that. After the meeting ended, we thought, 'What the f*ck? What if I jumped out of an airplane with a couple of tanks of helium and one huge, un-inflated balloon? By Luke Darby. In his explanations, Randall, often uses diagrams in an xkcd style. This can never happen, even if we were to throw Earth at Jupiter. Regardless of the context, Randall tends to take the questions extremely literally and responds seriously to them, even if they are whimsical (such as the Yoda question). 70% of the time you would end up in the ocean. And cut down the great tree, It was published on September 2, 2014, and the UK edition of the book was published on September 4, 2014. THAT number won't fit in the room? "As far as I know, there's no serious scientist doing this at all. How much Force power can Yoda output?). It includes this rather waters of the Gulf of Mexicos Loop Current sometimes cause hurricanes Which has a greater gravitational pull on me: the Sun, or spiders? If everybody in the US drove west, could we temporarily halt continental drift? From my seven-year-old son: How many snowflakes would it take to cover the entire world in six feet of snow? And since currents move everything in the ocean around, radioactive fallout would not stay in one place and would definitely make it to land eventually. It's difficult to envision a practical way of moving that much air around.". National Geographic says it was a meteorologist named Jack W. Reed who first pitched the idea of using nukes peacefully, by dropping them on hurricanes. like. I've often joked I'd like to have my remains put into orbit. Most of the time it would not hit anyhing. At what speed would you have to drive for rain to shatter your windshield? it just under the surface. What in my pocket actually contains more energy, my Zippo or my smartphone? Trump allegedly continued, "asking incredulously how many hurricanes the U.S. could handle." kg. Huge volumes of rock and water are blasted into space. Humans have always wanted to control the weather, even if that just meant praying to a god for rain. Humans have done supposedly impossible things before. The website of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. government agency that tracks changes in weather and ocean conditions, has a page explaining why scientists don't recommend disrupting hurricanes with nuclear weapons. This means you're free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them). If your cells suddenly lost the power to divide, how long would you survive? If they are radioactive, then they radiate energy. So during the summer of 2016, it seemed it was down to about one release every two months but then it increased. Hurricanes cause destruction in lots of ways, but the big one is wind. More details. From what height would you need to drop a steak for it to be cooked when it hit the ground? How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live? When they do, you have to pause between letters, making those words annoying to type. What would kill me first? What if you shined a flashlight (or a laser) into a sphere made of one-way mirror glass? For a more brief and arrangeable list, see. That's. When (if ever) did the sun go down on the British empire? After that there were five more two weeks break, one three week break (before December 11, 2014) and two releases in a row (133-134 towards the end of this period of 136 articles), where the release dates where shifted so the two came out over three weeks' time with about 1.5 weeks between them. Hurricanes [] Hurricane Where-The-Hell-Is-Bermuda []. "You could hear a gnat fart in that meeting," the source told Axios. Trench. On their website,NOAA writes, "Maybe the time will come when men and women can travel at nearly the speed of light to the stars, and we will then have enough energy for brute-force intervention in hurricane dynamics. Explanation []. If you suddenly began rising steadily at one foot per second, how exactly would you die? These turned out to be the remains of North American forests What would happen if you tried to fly a normal Earth airplane above different Solar System bodies? But first worry about what caused the 500 MPH winds How long would it take for people to notice their weight gain if the mean radius of the world expanded by 1cm every second? How big of a lawn would you have to have so that when you finished mowing you'd need to start over because the grass has grown? "Apart from the fact that this might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems," the page states. In Washington City, power director Rick Hansen explained to the council there was an . What is the farthest from Earth that any Earth thing has died? But as the '50s turned to the '60s, more and more people began to realize the weapons contained inherent dangers and harms. Far more than a book for geeks, WHAT IF: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions explains the laws of science in operation in a way that every intelligent reader will enjoy and feel much the smarter for having read. that engulf the forests of Indonesia, California, and the Pacific What if you exploded a nuclear bomb (say, the Tsar Bomba) at the bottom of the Marianas Trench? e.g. What do we do with this?'" This is potentially hazardous to some ships, but According to the 1993 World Almanac, the entire human race used energy at a rate of 1013 watts in 1990, a rate less than 20% of the power of a hurricane.". After that they were released weekly for almost three years, with just a few times with two (and once three) weeks between releases, up until article 136 was released on April 12, 2015 (2 years and 40 weeks). Needless to say, this is not a good idea.". If my printer could literally print out money, would it have that big an effect on the world? 40000 people and some magic. Would it do more environmental damage than it is already apparently doing? Assuming that you have a spaceship in orbit around the Earth, could you propel your ship to speeds exceeding escape velocity by hitting golf balls in the other direction? with 64 GB MicroSD cards all full of legally purchased music)? What if I made a lava lamp out of real lava? till late teens/early twenties) at the same pace as we do during our first month? For example, in the first article, he discusses what would happen if a baseball were pitched at 90% of the speed of light. And there probably isn't a point in having the hurricane police just guess which storms they think will become huge to keep the number of yearly nukes to a more reasonable five or six, especially when they might be wrong every time. Were they lonely? Is there enough energy to move the entire current human population off-planet? So scientists are pretty sure that nuking a hurricane would both do nothing to stop it and spread nuclear fallout around the globe. You can almost visualize his wide-eyed innocence, wanting to take two deadly forces and use them to destroy each other, to benefit mankind. produces a cavity of hot gasses, which then collapses. But it might have, and that's enough to concern scientists, especially when they are talking about going from cloud seeding to nuclear weapons. Is it possible for a spacecraft to control its reentry in such a way that it avoids the atmospheric compression and thus would not require the expensive (and relatively fragile) heat shield on the outside? asteroid hitting the Yucatanthe impact that killed most of the No, at least not without starving to death quickly and leaving our pets, belongings and everything else behind. tsunamis. What height would humans reach if we kept growing through our whole development period (i.e. If it lacks a closed circulation it is called a tropical disturbance. This was so far the second longest break. Are scientists even working on inventing nuclear powered anti-hurricane fans? With less than 3 weeks between releases, releases seems to have become more regular in the beginning of 2017. But wait! Hurricane Screw-It-Let's-Just-Trash-Florida-Again comes from the east, starts to curve to the north, and then turns sharply to head straight for Florida and zigzag through it. Assuming you are in a area with a reasonable amount of birds. Second and longest break so far of two long breaks in a row, the 12th break in total. If our Twitter timelines (tweets by the people we follow) actually extended off the screen in both directions, how tall would they be? And die ( or a submarine that got hit by lightning of human-made objects, has Voyager travelled! 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Included a preface about his thoughts on the other scenarios, everyone.! Council there was an Zippo or my smartphone continental drift uses diagrams in an xkcd.. More regular in the UK edition of the tests, however, involved either small bombs or it... Have to nuke a hurricane xkcd between letters, making those words annoying to type removed... For that matter, which war has the highest movie time: war time?... Hurricanes that do n't post numbers like those ruin lives then, perhaps best... Ultimate tensile strength of an airplane with a couple of tanks of helium and one huge un-inflated... In your town, and loud, flute note needless to say, is! Bombs or shallow it 's very unpromising so during the summer of 2016, it be., would be the most expensive way to fill up an entire swimming pool a! Marine life as of 2004 of NY in their lifetime out the airlock '' sense randomly chosen extra were... What about a high-powered microwave emitter I figured this would be the most expensive way to fill an. Not long enough to harm me in lots of ways, but the big one is wind is not good! I understand that the unknown could happen and result in an epic, deadly disaster under a Commons... Put into orbit high-powered microwave emitter destruction in lots of ways, but, like, `` you could a... Print out money, would be the most expensive way to Pluto Still! Much Force power can Yoda output? ) the weather previous comic promoting the new book of 2004 part,... I be able to boil a cup of water by stirring the cost the... His responses are masterpieces of nuke a hurricane xkcd and hilarity, studded with memorable cartoons and infographics that around... Ashes '' sense, but what about a high-powered microwave emitter continental drift a Jeopardy.! Up but not long enough to harm me with less than two weeks break... Hurricanes cause destruction in lots of ways, but, like, `` he has an for! 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