From here on standard release day was Wednesday. What if there was a robot apocalypse? Were they lonely? While we might not have experimented with nukes, the government has tried other ways to stop hurricanes, and even those resulted in some terrible and unforeseeable problems. The bar representing Uranium is so large that it extends onto a stack of paper taller than a human]] In the year following that release only 8 articles where released including both #147 and #154. What would be the best way of getting the energy from one to the other? What about using a squirrel suit? Then the They often predict the complete annihilation of humankind, or at least a really big explosion. We've had examples of it before. When completed, six small reactors to be built in Idaho could be powering homes in Southern Utah by 2030. First after 17 more weeks releases began again with article 141 on Tuesday January 16, 2016. With a bigger bomb, it could destroy the world. expand into a bubble 70 miles across. What if everyone who took the SAT guessed on every multiple-choice question? And mess they did. What's the likelihood this could happen? How big would the teams have to be? 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 (now Russia), possibly increasing the arms race tensions between the two countries. The heat release is equivalent to a 10-megaton nuclear bomb exploding every 20 minutes. The comet either burns up in the atmosphere or speeds up global warming. 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." The explosion at the bottom of the Mariana Trench will create a Honestly, my main motivation is to baffle someone in the distant future, but it's an interesting scientific question: what would happen to my body in orbit over the course of years, decades or centuries? Not in a "scatter my ashes" sense, but, like, "throw my naked corpse out the airlock" sense. Trench. This is neither aerodynamic nor a good idea. quite as dramatic as Evin might have imagined. No, but it does make some really cool patterns. I've long thought about putting a flamethrower on the front of a car to melt snow and ice before you drive across it. What could I use as a clear medium? The first scenarios are pretty boring. When they do, you have to pause between letters, making those words annoying to type. Again. The culprit was a comet or But because there are 7800 million $100 bills in circulation and about a billion are produced each year, your bills won't make much of a dent in the US economy, let alone the global economy. However, Trump called the site's story "ridiculous" in a tweet, adding, "I never said this. Surprisingly fast, but beware destroying the city, and fines. After World War II, they started trying in a big way. Various Theoretical Models For Underwater In that year (assuming no more comics before February 26 2017), only 8 articles where released including both 147 and this one. And if the great man took the great axe, This memo has been declassified, but was never published. NOAA says the idea is still popular,noting on their official website, "During each hurricane season, there always appear suggestions that one should simply use nuclear weapons to try and destroy the storms.". What if a rainstorm dropped all of its water in a single giant drop? Chris Landsea, science and operations officer at the National Hurricane Center wrote (via Live Science), "About 80 of these disturbances form every year in the Atlantic basin, but only about 5 become hurricanes in a typical year. What if you built a siphon from the oceans on Europa to Earth? That's scientist talk for "We are so screwed." rim. What a great sea that would be! Join half a million readers enjoying Newsweek's free newsletters. the coast, the waves would be no worse than those from a bad storm. As plastic is made from oil and oil is made from dead dinosaurs, how much actual real dinosaur is there in a plastic dinosaur? beneath the waters of the Pacific. No underwater test has involved bombs anywhere near that size, nor depths anywhere near that deep. Lighter winds outside the clouds steer them and help them grow. If you suddenly began rising steadily at one foot per second, how exactly would you die? Or standing in a graphite field? It includes this rather There is no way to tell in advance which ones will develop." Bernard Le Mehaute and Shen Wang. This comic gives ludicrous and ironic upcoming hurricane paths on an unlabelled map of the Americas that shows the region roughly between central Canada and northern South America.Blue and red dotted lines indicate the future hurricane paths. At least two comics coming out right after this was referencing this article. When (if ever) did the Sun finally set on the British Empire? The finger holes would collapse and then not much would happen. the only thing to do would be to make a swimming pool. Those storms don't even get names, so they can't be that big a deal. For over 20 years, from 1962 to 1983, the fabulously named Project STORMFURY used simulations, as well as four actual hurricanes as test subjects, to see if cloud seeding with silver iodine would reduce a major storm even a little. It's difficult to envision a practical way of moving that much air around.". "Needless to say, this is not a good idea.". It now has 600,000 to a million page hits daily. The book "Caesar's Last Breath" (via Vox) recounts the 1947 cloud seeding experiment on Hurricane King. But come on. How much cornstarch can I rinse down the drain before unpleasant things start to happen? 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? This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. This new release is probably due to the upcoming release of the What If? What percentage of the Sun's heat (per day) does the population of Earth eat in calories per year? More details. How long could the human race survive on only cannibalism? If one randomly chosen extra person were to die each second somewhere on Earth, what impact would it have on the world population? Sanvu could whip up a spray containing fallout from the blast, and More details. 95 minutes at the right place at the right time. A decade or a century, depending if Facebook would still be popular. And it's not possible anyway, since nukes are not giant, cutting-edge fans. We kept the chairs for five years but despite laborious attempts it couldn't be reproduced. Is there enough energy to move the entire current human population off-planet? If all the seas were one sea, 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? But after defeating the Nazis and inventing the atom bomb, scientists seemed to think anything was possible, including controlling the weather. More details.. What if every virus in the world were collected into one area? But the next one (#154) was indeed released only a bit more than week after the one with 15 weeks break, and then less than 3 weeks after followed yet an article on February 28 2017. What if the entire continental US was on a decreasing slope from West to East. Ever since J. Robert Oppenheimer headed the discovery of the atomic devices on July 16th 1945--on both sides of the planet, governments the world over have raced to stockpile the most efficient of. It's the winds that need to be slowed down to stop a hurricane, and nukes would be laughably ineffective at it. Also, the Earth would be destroyed. What would happen if you were taking a shower or standing under a waterfall when you were struck by lightning? After article 136 was released on April 12, 2015, Randal took a, At the time Randall wrote a note stating "What If updates are temporarily on hold, and will resume on July 14th, 2015 at 7:49:59 AM EDT.". Assuming you are in a area with a reasonable amount of birds. It would be too bright to watch and it would turn into rock quickly. you would not be warmed if you went to the surface. 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). First after 25 releases was there a two week Christmas break before article 26 was released on December 31, 2012. book on 12 March 2014 in the blag. What is the point of stopping a hurricane from doing terrible damage to a relatively small area, if to do so, you spread radioactive material around the globe, affecting unimaginable numbers of people for years to come? Other than being a really bad idea, what effect would it have? The bubble grows to about a kilometer across in a couple of seconds. From here on standard release day was again Tuesday. If, on the other hand, you're being attacked by a coyote, it's higher top speed means you'll have only one chance to hit it. What if you were to somehow ignite the pollen that floats around in the air in spring? According to Popular Mechanics, after the nuclear power plant disaster at Fukushima in 2011, scientists looked at sea life in the area and found "low but significant levels of radioactivity in the ocean." On average, not just in spring or fall. But what if we could stop a hurricane in its tracks? If so, how many golf balls would be required to reach the Moon? You just might not be prepared for how big you will need to be dreaming. No, not even if we change the requirements to just the passengers staying alive. What took more energy, the building of the Great Pyramid of Giza or the Apollo Mission? This is potentially hazardous to some ships, but What would kill me first? Suppose you were to print, in 12 point text, the numeral 1 using a common cheap ink-jet printer. 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