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What If? 2
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What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions is the sequel to Randall Munroe's bestseller, What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions. Released in September 2022, the book provides full, in-depth answers to another batch of 64 extremely strange questions, ranging from "If house dust comprises up to 80 percent dead skin, how many people worth of skin does a person consume in a lifetime?" to "What if all the raindrops were lemon drops and gumdrops?" to "What would happen if the Solar System was filled with soup out to Jupiter?", all with the classic style and classic characters of xkcd.Randall takes these questions and answers them all, going into extreme detail about the ins and outs of the question, disassembling and explaining everything. You're almost guaranteed to learn something you never knew from this book,[citation needed] such as the flammability of diamond, or how Jupiter is bulletproof, or how easy it is to destroy the solar system.Not to be confused with What If?, a trope that involves changing an event or factor within a preexisting narrative and creating a whole new story from its effects. | |
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Applied Phlebotinum | |
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Applied Phlebotinum: Used almost exclusively for demonstration. Chapter 2: Helicopter Ride explores what happens to a helicopter if you decide to latch onto the blades. Since, normally, you'd fall off about halfway through the first turn from centrifugal force alone, Randall introduces the ACME Hand Anchors, labeled as "Incredibly dangerous" and "The FAA hates it!", to keep Cueball attached. It doesn't help though, since your body won't be attatched to your arms for much longer. Chapter 28: Earth Eye explores an eye the size of Earth. No matter how you upscale it, the eye wouldn't be able to work, so Randall just gives up on going for realism here and just imagines an eyeball that works exactly like a normal one. Chapter 29: Build Rome in a Day explores the question "How many people would it take to build Rome in a day?" in a literal way. If everyone on Earth helped an equal amount, it could be feasibly be done in two hours to 15 minutes, but this is assuming people actually want to work together. Chapter 54: Snowball replaces the snow on Mount Everest, which is dry snow that isn't sticky, with wet snow, the kind we're most familiar with. A Wizard Did It! Chapter 58: Earth-Moon Fire Pole explores how long it would take to get from the Moon to Earth via fire pole. Since, normally, the pole would be snapped in two by both gravity and rotation, the pole is replaced with a magical pole that is always between the Earth and Moon, and extends and retracts so that it always stays a foot or two above Earth's surface. A Wizard Did It again. | |
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Alt Text | |
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Chapter 58: Earth-Moon Fire Pole contains a callback within a footnote, to an Alt Text from Chapter 40: Lava Lamp under a drawing of the "The More You Know" star. | |
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Awesome, but Impractical | |
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Awesome, but Impractical: Several examples exist within the book. Chapter 6: Pidgeon Chair shows that it is possible to use pigeons to lift yourself to the top of a skyscraper, but it's extremely risky and your life will be in the hands of anyone with a bag of seeds. Chapter 17: Swing Set mentions the swing at the Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban, South Africa. The swing is over 200 feet tall, but while it's pretty cool to go down, you barely get any height once you reach the bottom. Chapter 18: Airliner Catapult explores the idea of using a catapult or pulley to get planes into flight much quicker. It could work very well, but would require a lot of effort to install, and requires an extremely high vertical cliff to pull off. Chapter 22: Billion-Story Building explores a building one billion stories tall. The Star Scraper would go 10 times beyond the Moon's orbit, and would be flat-out impossible to keep standing. Chapter 27: Suction Aquarium explores the idea of making an aquarium by using a large container to create a sort of inverse aquarium using suction. While absolutely and completely possible, there's a number of issues, such as the water boiling due to lack of pressure if you pull it too high, dissolved oxygen reducing the water level over time, animals suffocating if they choose to breathe air from the top of the tank, and the fact that it "could be destroyed by whale farts." Chapter 37: Laser Umbrella explores using laser beams as an umbrella. Since it would require an extremely powerful laser, as well as surgically precise aiming, it's a cool idea that won't end up working very well. | |
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Two-Keyed Lock | |
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Two-Keyed Lock: Parodied in Chapter 59: Global Snow with the idea that the National Weather Service's snow depth-measuring board is important enough to be double-locked. | |
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Disposing of a Body | |
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"If I were to jump into a container of liquid nitrogen (or dispose of a body in that way), how deep would it have to be for me/them to shatter into frozen pieces at the bottom?" | |
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Not the Fall That Kills You | |
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Not the Fall That Kills You…: Chapter 63: Walking on the Sun mentions that, should you choose to keep getting closer to the Sun's remnant core, "it's not the fall that's the problem, it's the sudden stop at the end." | |
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Acme Products | |
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Chapter 2: Helicopter Ride explores what happens to a helicopter if you decide to latch onto the blades. Since, normally, you'd fall off about halfway through the first turn from centrifugal force alone, Randall introduces the ACME Hand Anchors, labeled as "Incredibly dangerous" and "The FAA hates it!", to keep Cueball attached. It doesn't help though, since your body won't be attatched to your arms for much longer. | |
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Rhetorical Question Blunder | |
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Rhetorical Question Blunder: Randall does this to himself in Chapter 53: Saliva Pool: | |
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Surprisingly Realistic Outcome | |
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Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: The entire book focuses on completely realistic outcomes of completely unrealistic events, so to narrow the list down to more comedic uses of the trope: In Short Answers #1, one of the questions asks "What if your blood stream became liquid uranium? Would you die from radiation, lack of oxygen, or something else?" Randall's answer: Short Answers #1 also asks the question "What would we see if we attached a lightweight camera to a balloon and let it fly away?" The answer is a short little comic of Cueball and Megan letting a balloon, with camera, fly into the horizon. In Short Answers #2, a question asks "If you put a vacuum at extremely high suction power and aimed it at a normal BMW sedan, what would happen?" The only answer is an image of someone pointing a vacuum at a sedan, with nothing happening besides confusing the owners. In Short Answers #2, a question asks "What would happen if you microwaved a smaller microwave, while the smaller one was on as well?" In Short Answers #2, another question asks "What would happen if you put a human under a g-force of 417 Gs for twenty seconds?" Randall answers: You would be arrested for murder. Chapter 22: Billion-Story Building shows Megan trying to build a tower out of peanut butter. She tries to use about five jars of the stuff, but it falls over with a small "blorp". In Short Answers #3, one question asks whether one million ants or a person would win in a caged deathmatch, taking place inside a glass cube. Obviously, without air, both would die. On the other hand, if you and the ants escape, it's likely the ants will win. Short Answers #3 declares Jupiter is bulletproof. Chapter 31: Expensive Shoebox showcases the fact that filling a shoebox with 300 kilograms of plutonium does not end well. Short Answers #4 has a question asking if birds could make it to space if it wasn't affected by gravity. The answer is no, because it's too cold that high up, plus they need to breathe. | |
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Three Laws-Compliant | |
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Three Laws-Compliant: Parodied by mashing them up with Three Laws of Thermodynamics in Chapter 51: Fire from Moonlight. | |
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Blunt "No" | |
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Blunt "No": At the end of Chapter 42: Blood Alcohol, Megan can be seen with a gallon of blood, trying to suggest that they do the Gallon Challenge with blood. | |
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Disproportionate Retribution | |
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Disproportionate Retribution: Briefly hinted at in Chapter 4: Ironic Vaporization. | |
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Acquainted with Emergency Services | |
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Acquainted with Emergency Services: In the form of a Call-Back to the first What If? book. In Weird & Worrying #1, one question asks "What would it take to defeat Air Force One with a drone???" Cueball, as Randall, is seen on his phone: | |
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Anvil on Head | |
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Anvil on Head: Explored in a question in Short Answers #4, asking what happens if an anvil falls on you from space. | |
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Grub Tub | |
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Grub Tub: Exaggerated near the end of the final chapter, Chapter 64: Lemon Drops and Gumdrops, with a drawing showing an entire ocean of saltwater taffy. | |
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Pinball Scoring | |
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Pinball Scoring: As shown in Chapter 23: $2 Undecillion Lawsuit, the Sun's weight in platinum isn't worth that much. | |
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Made of Incendium | |
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Made of Incendium: Chapter 3: Dangerously Cold mentions that the real issue with a cube of iron at 0 Kelvin isn't the fact that it's so cold, but the fact that it's so cold it can create not only liquid oxygen, but also solid oxygen. Solid oxygen is extremely volatile, to a point where if it even touches something flammable, it can cause said item to spontaneously ignite. | |
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A Wizard Did It | |
What If? 2 / int_6bfc52a3 | comment |
Chapter 58: Earth-Moon Fire Pole explores how long it would take to get from the Moon to Earth via fire pole. Since, normally, the pole would be snapped in two by both gravity and rotation, the pole is replaced with a magical pole that is always between the Earth and Moon, and extends and retracts so that it always stays a foot or two above Earth's surface. A Wizard Did It again. | |
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Don't Try This at Home | |
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Don't Try This at Home: Right before the book's introduction: Within the footnotes of Chapter 12: Catch!, which discusses firing a bullet in the air and attempting to catch it at its highest point, Randall states that you should not fire a gun into the air at all. People do this at celebrations in some countries and the falling bullets cause hundreds of injuries and deaths every year. | |
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Played for Laughs | |
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Played for Laughs in the first image of Chapter 4: Ironic Vaporization, where two people can be seen next to a cube of iron. | |
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Icarus Allusion | |
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Icarus Allusion: Chapter 61: Into the Sun claims that Icarus's problem wasn't flying too close to the sun, it was staying near the sun for too long. The next chapter, Chapter 62: Sunscreen, also features Icarus, now wearing five layers of sunscreen. | |
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Everything Makes a Mushroom | |
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Everything Makes a Mushroom: The mini-sized Jupiter in Chapter 15: Jupiter Comes to Town explodes in a mushroom cloud. Justified by the fact that this is what would really happen, as long as the shrinking follows the rules of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.layman's termsThe density and composition of the item remains identical to itself at a normal size, and the remaining mass is treated as if it does not exist As said in the footnote, "It doesn't really matter what the source of the heat is—if there's enough of it and it's released fast enough, it will create a mushroom cloud." | |
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Relax-o-Vision | |
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Relax-o-Vision: Chapter 42: Blood Alcohol features drawings of squirrels instead of people vomiting up blood. | |
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Pun | |
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Chapter 38: Eat a Cloud goes into the science of what it would take to consume an entire cloud. If you squeeze the air out, eating a house-sized cloud is equal to drinking 3 glasses of water. Near the end is a nutritional label for a cloud, and at the bottom it says "* Iron value may be higher if you live downwind from the house from Chapter 4", referencing Chapter 4: Ironic Vaporization, which involved vaporizing a cubic meter of pure iron, releasing about 8 tons of iron into the atmosphere. | |
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Non-Answer | |
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Non-Answer: Used somewhat often in Short Answers segments. "What if all atoms on Earth were expanded to the size of a grape? Would we survive?" "Billy the Clown is running out of cash, so in order to raise money, he devises his newest trick: He will inflate, by mouth, a standard-size party balloon until the material (some form of indestructible rubber) is just one atom thick. How large would the inflated party balloon be?" "What would happen if you microwaved a smaller microwave, while the smaller one was on as well?" "How many bones can you remove from the human body while allowing the human to continue living? Asking for a friend." "What, in today's world and yesterday's world, does it mean to be human, in all social and biological factors?" "What if all of humanity set all of their differences aside and work together to level out the Earth into a perfect sphere?" "I posted a question on social media asking what would be the smallest change that would create the biggest disaster. One of the responses I got said 'if every atom gained 1 proton.' So my question for you is, what would happen if every atom gained 1 proton?" | |
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There Is No Kill Like Overkill | |
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There Is No Kill Like Overkill: In Chapter 48: Proton Earth, Electron Moon, Randall warns that this scenario is probably the most destructive one he's ever written about, even compared to the former Earth-Shattering or Earth-Scorching ones found in previous chapters, the first book, and even the blog. Indeed, it ends with the destruction of the entire Universe solely via a black hole with the mass of the observable universe. | |
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Ludicrous Speed | |
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Ludicrous Speed: Short Answers #1 has a question that asks if it's possible to jump out of an airplane traveling Mach 880980 (about 0.75c, or 3/4 the speed of light) at 100,000 feet altitude over New York City, and whether or not you can live with normal skydiving gear. The answer: absolutely not. Short Answers #2 has a question asking how fast you have to go to break every bone in your body on a trampoline, as well as how fast you have to go to go through the holes in the mesh. The answer is indeterminate, since there are very tiny bones, mainly in your hands and feet. As for going through the mesh, it's not possible. Chapter 19: Slow Dinosaur Extinction explores the Chicxulub meteor impact, the impact believed to have killed off the dinosaurs, if the meteor hit the Earth at only 3 mph (4.83 km/h). The result isn't mass extinction, but since many meteors are essentially giant balls of gravel, the impact leads to the meteor spreading outwards like a puddle via soil liquefaction, spreading faster than the speed of sound. Chapter 21: One-Second Day almost speaks for itself: Earth spins so fast, each day lasts only a second. It's also moving so fast, anything in its path is either completely annihilated or launched out of the Solar System. Chapter 35: No-Rules NASCAR imagines a scenario where NASCAR strips all of its rules, leading to a race where the goal is to simply get a human around the track 200 times as fast as possible. The answer is around an hour, at a G-limit of 10. If the human doesn't need to survive, it can be done even faster by making a particle accelerator, finishing all 200 laps in only 2 seconds. Chapter 55: Niagara Straw shows that flowing the entirety of Niagara Falls through a drinking straw results in it traveling a quarter of the speed of light. Chapter 60: Dog Overload states that under the conditions outlined in the Apocalypse How section of this page, the dog sphere will expand faster than light itself in only 197 years. | |
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Literal Metaphor | |
What If? 2 / int_8cf6aa | comment |
Literal Metaphor: While explaining why you can't set fire to something with a magnifying glass and moonlight in Chapter 51: Fire from Moonlight, Randall remarks the reason involving "a rabbit hole of optics". Cue image of a literal rabbit hole with a bunch of lenses in it. | |
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Tongue on the Flagpole | |
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Tongue on the Flagpole: Discussed in Chapter 3: Dangerously Cold, which revolves around the properties of a cubic meter of iron cooled to 0 Kelvin. | |
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Apocalypse How | |
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Chapter 60: Dog Overload states that under the conditions outlined in the Apocalypse How section of this page, the dog sphere will expand faster than light itself in only 197 years. | |
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Layman's Terms | |
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Layman's Terms: "It can be shown" is labeled in a footnote as physics-speak for "this probably isn't too hard, but I don't want to do it." "Tephra" is labeled in a footnote as "whatever that stuff is that comes out of a volcano." | |
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Deadpan Snarker | |
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Deadpan Snarker: Randall's personality in general. It shows up very occasionally, more often in Short Answers segments. | |
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Loophole Abuse | |
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Loophole Abuse: Mentioned in Chapter 31: Expensive Shoebox. In the United States, the idea of a trillion-dollar platinum coin has been introduced to help with their debt ceiling crisis. Seeing as the chapter focuses on how much money you could cram into a shoebox, and the fact that, thanks to a loophole, you technically could legally get them minted, the topic of a trillion-dollar coin is inevitable. | |
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Ray Gun | |
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Ray Gun: The premise of Chapter 37: Laser Umbrella. The chapter focuses on the question of stopping rain using an extremely powerful laser to vaporize water before it reaches the ground, but not before Megan tries to stop the idea from happening. Short Answers #4 has a set of 3 questions that ask if we could destroy the moon with modern technology, if global warming can weaken Earth's magnetic field, and if we can bake cookies with lasers. The answer to all three reveals that we cannot use lasers to destroy the moon or weaken the magnetic field, but we can absolutely make cookies with them! | |
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Everyone Has Standards | |
What If? 2 / int_b4a6ae4c | comment |
Everyone Has Standards: As much as Randall seems to enjoy describing potentially apocalyptic scenarios, he still sometimes fields questions that are too bizarre, disturbing, or borderline illegal for him to answer. A few examples are shown in each of the three Weird & Worrying chapters, for a total of eleven. Highlights include: "Can bees or other animals go to hell? Or can they murder other bees without consequences?" "What would it take to defeat Air Force One with a drone???" "Is it possible to hold your arm straight out of a car window and punch a mailbox clean off its pole? Could you do it without breaking your hand?" "In a defensive situation, how much epinephrine (from an EpiPen) would it take to subdue a possible attacker?" "If I were to jump into a container of liquid nitrogen (or dispose of a body in that way), how deep would it have to be for me/them to shatter into frozen pieces at the bottom?" | |
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Take That! | |
What If? 2 / int_b53077b3 | comment |
Take That!: In Chapter 31: Expensive Shoebox, Randall notes that it's difficult to get a handle on the value of diamonds because "<s>the entire industry is a scam </s> the gemstone market is complicated". | |
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Eleventy Zillion | |
What If? 2 / int_b72938ce | comment |
Eleventy Zillion: Chapter 23: $2 Undecillion Lawsuit talks about bakery chain Au Bon Pain, more specifically the lawsuit for $2 undecillion USD that was filed against the chain in 2014. 2 undecillion isn't a made-up number,note 1 undecillion is equal to about 1 trillion cubed but it's large enough that if you're trying to sue someone for that much in US dollars, it may as well be, since there's no possible way for them (not even converting the entire Earth's mass to the Treskilling Yellow postage stamp, the most expensive item ever sold relative to size) to actually come up with it. | |
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Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny! | |
What If? 2 / int_b7bc7d28 | comment |
Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: In Chapter 40: Lava Lamp, Randall discusses why a lava lamp with real lava can be both a lame idea and a terrible idea. Near the end, he veers off into calculations about a volcano made out of lamps — lamp lava, if you will. | |
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Detonation Moon | |
What If? 2 / int_bb18e3c9 | comment |
Short Answers #4 has a set of 3 questions that ask if we could destroy the moon with modern technology, if global warming can weaken Earth's magnetic field, and if we can bake cookies with lasers. The answer to all three reveals that we cannot use lasers to destroy the moon or weaken the magnetic field, but we can absolutely make cookies with them! | |
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"No Rules" Racing | |
What If? 2 / int_c53a8df | comment |
Chapter 35: No-Rules NASCAR imagines a scenario where NASCAR strips all of its rules, leading to a race where the goal is to simply get a human around the track 200 times as fast as possible. The answer is around an hour, at a G-limit of 10. If the human doesn't need to survive, it can be done even faster by making a particle accelerator, finishing all 200 laps in only 2 seconds. | |
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What If? 2 / int_c5f0119c | type |
Insane Troll Logic | |
What If? 2 / int_c5f0119c | comment |
Insane Troll Logic: Fermi Estimation can certainly seem like this, but used correctly, it can at least get you in the ballpark of the correct answer. From Chapter 14: Paint the Earth: | |
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Shout-Out | |
What If? 2 / int_c75df49a | comment |
Shout-Out: Chapter 19: Slow Dinosaur Extinction mentions the Isla Nublar from Jurassic Park. It claims that the 3 mph Chicxulub impactor couldn't cause a mass extinction, but if it were to land on the Isla Nublar from the film instead of its original impact point in modern-day Mérida, Mexico, it could cause a dinosaur extinction. Chapter 51: Fire from Moonlight likely makes a reference to the Bruce Springsteen song Dancing in the Dark. The images seen in Chapter 57: Ammonia Tube are a very clear parody of The Magic School Bus. There's even a school bus and a lizard. | |
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Lame Pun Reaction | |
What If? 2 / int_cb0743c0 | comment |
Lame Pun Reaction: Found in Chapter 20: Elemental Worlds. While Randall is talking about the complications of a Neptunium Neptune, there's a drawing of Ponytail and Cueball in a satellite dish field. | |
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What If? 2 / int_d05cf3f | type |
Footnote Fever | |
What If? 2 / int_d05cf3f | comment |
Footnote Fever: Found very commonly throughout the book, in the form of jokes and nested footnotes. So many, in fact, a subpage had to be made. | |
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Bullet Catch | |
What If? 2 / int_d264e7d4 | comment |
Bullet Catch: The premise of Chapter 12: Catch! Randall explains that this trope might be possible, provided you shoot the bullet upwards so that the bullet stops mid-air, and have a friend catch it there by flying with a hot-air balloon or something. | |
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Implausible Deniability | |
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Implausible Deniability: Chapter 37: Laser Umbrella ends with Cueball setting a neighbor's house on fire. | |
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Frivolous Lawsuit | |
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Frivolous Lawsuit: Chapter 23: $2 Undecillion Lawsuit explores what would happen if the guy who filed a 2 undecillion lawsuit against bakery chain Au Bon Pain actually won. Turns out, he'd never get the money awarded because it's flat out impossible for Au Bon Pain to gather that much money, ever. They wouldn't even get anywhere near the target amount if they were able to convert the Earth's weight into copies of the most valuable item by weight ever sold (the Treskilling Yellow postage stamp) and somehow sold all of them for the original's selling price. In fact, having 320 quintillion Ted Olsons work on the case at $1,800 an hour, 80 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, for 1000 generations would still cost 40,000 times less than losing the lawsuit. Worth It! | |
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House Fire | |
What If? 2 / int_d5bc2131 | comment |
House Fire: Chapter 4: Ironic Vaporization explores the process of vaporizing a cubic meter of iron. It's stated that, to vaporize the cube, you'd need 60 gigajoules (60,000,000,000 joules) of energy, more than enough to set your house, your yard, and maybe your neighbors on fire. The image to go along with it shows a house (on fire), a yard (on fire), and some neighbors (mad at you, and maybe also on fire) | |
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Waxing Lyrical | |
What If? 2 / int_d6707631 | comment |
Waxing Lyrical: In Chapter 16: Star Sand, one image compares the Sun to stars that are "heavier, bluer, bigger, younger, harder, better, faster, stronger". | |
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It's Been Done | |
What If? 2 / int_dc020791 | comment |
It's Been Done: Played for Laughs in Chapter 54: Snowball, which explores what would happen if you rolled a snowball down Mount Everest. Obviously, since Everest is covered in dry snow, not the wet snow everyone is familiar with, nothing will happen. You'd get the same result throwing a cheeseburger down, but if we magically change it to wet snow, it will stick to the snowball. Result: avalanche. Randall sarcastically proclaims: | |
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Bad News in a Good Way | |
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Bad News in a Good Way: In Chapter 61: Into the Sun: | |
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Onomatopoeia | |
What If? 2 / int_e97f0224 | comment |
Chapter 22: Billion-Story Building shows Megan trying to build a tower out of peanut butter. She tries to use about five jars of the stuff, but it falls over with a small "blorp". | |
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Exact Words | |
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Exact Words: Played for Laughs in the first image of Chapter 4: Ironic Vaporization, where two people can be seen next to a cube of iron. | |
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Big Creepy-Crawlies | |
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Big Creepy-Crawlies: The ending of Chapter 44: Spiders vs. the Sun ends with a drawing of a Sun-sized spider and a bunch of spider-sized Suns. | |
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Mailbox Baseball | |
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"Is it possible to hold your arm straight out of a car window and punch a mailbox clean off its pole? Could you do it without breaking your hand?" | |
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What If? 2 / int_f9f2c33 | type |
Running Gag | |
What If? 2 / int_f9f2c33 | comment |
Running Gag: Randall tends to add Wikipedia's [citation needed] template after blatantly obvious facts.[citation needed] | |
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Star Scraper | |
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Star Scraper: Randall explores a billion story building suggested by four-year-old Kiera in Chapter 22: Billion-Story Building. It extends about ten times past the orbit of the Moon. | |
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.
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Acquainted with Emergency Services / int_3048fea4 |
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