XKCD: It's more than a comic

The Alt Text is fun though.

I think the views cap is somewhat well known at least.

To go by the comments on popular videos, it's rather astonishing how many people don't know about it, or that it's a feature rather than a bug.

edited 12th Jun '13 6:07:48 AM by Fighteer

And here I expected a Sparta joke.

I didnt know about it.

http://xkcd.com/1225/

Today: ice sheets!

... this is one of those strips where there's no joke, right?

Not unless you count the alt-text.

... igeddit

I think it's one of those comics that's designed to shock you with just how ridiculously nasty our planet is capable of becoming, and how trivial our efforts are by comparison. The Alt Text is pretty funny, though.

I thought of it as more of a "Did You Know?" kind of thing.

Hehehe, poor Montreal

Does it really matter what city are you in if the ice level gets this high?

Well, Montreal has a pretty elaborate underground system, so maybe you could be safe in there for a time. Before dying of starvation or cold temperature I mean.

Your plan is to live under the ice? That seems like a bad idea, in a general sense.

The tunnels would collapse from all that weight

Sure beat being squashed by it if it's dropped on us or flying on top of it and with however much resources we can carry.

Details.

Well, the ice sheet is about a mile thick, so it's pretty freaking heavy. Also, glaciers leave large depressions on the earth's crust; their weight pushes down on the upper mantle, which pushes back up when the glacier melts. Anyways, I doubt a city's underground infrastructure would last long under an ice sheet. It wouldn't be wrong enough to hold the weight above it

I wasn't serious.

This is XKCD. We take all non-serious things comically seriously.

With some preparation, any human could easily create living conditions under heavy things.

Are you sure about that? The deepest mines in the world are only about 3km-ish deep, which is comparable to the thickness of the Montreal ice sheet. I'm not sure we have enough technology and architectural knowledge to shore up something with that much pressure on it.

I'm stating the obvious when I point out that, had there been a city during the last glacial period where Montreal is now, surely the city would've been on top of the ice.

With the ending of the glacial period the city would've had to adapt to the changing environment but I bet the process would have been so slow that entire generations would have gone by without really even noticing that something was changing. Sometimes (a) layer(s) of ice would've collapsed or gradually melted away, damaging the building(s) on or around them, but that would've just meant that the city would have been always changing, as every city in the world is anyway.

But of course this is not the question that you were discussing.

edited 14th Jun '13 11:15:25 PM by BestOf

I don't think you could build large buildings on ice. A building needs a foundation.

Ahem. Antarctica.