History Literature / HowTo

* PirateBooty: Defied in '''Chapter 2: How to Dig a Hole'''.

---> '''Cueball 1:''' Ok, does anyone have a hollow wooden cylinder 30 feet in diameter with inch-thick walls?
---> '''Cueball 2:''' No
---> '''Unnamed character:''' No
---> '''Hairbun:''' No
---> '''Beret Guy:''' I have one, but I'm using it as a pot for my houseplant, Yggdrasil the World Tree.

* ShockinglyExpensiveBill: The electricity bill for heating a 1-acre lava moat, as per '''Chapter 10: How to Build a Lava Moat'''. A 1-meter, 600°C moat will cost $20,000 per day (at $0.l0/kilowatt hour)... but a 10-meter wide moat at 1,200°C will cost $1,500,000 per day.

* CallForward: Parodied in a foortnote in '''Chapter 4: How to Play the Piano [--(the ''whole'' piano)--]'''.

--> I asked Dr. Mack how much power would be released if someone triggered vacuum decay in their yard, and whether it could be harnessed to power their home. Her response: "Please do not do that."

''How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems'' is the third book by Creator/RandallMunroe, the author of ''Blog/WhatIf'' and the creator of ''Webcomic/{{Xkcd}}''. Released in September 2019, the book features 28 chapters that go in-depth on extremely bad solutions to common, everyday problems, such as how to power your house, cross a river, or dispose of the very book you're reading. ''How'' bad, you ask? Think making a hydroelectric dam with an airport water fountain to charge your phone, sending files with butterflies, and measuring teeth radioactivity to find your age; things all gone into extreme detail and explained as simply as possible, and all with Randall's special sense of humor. ''How To'' is a sort of extension to Randall's own blog, ''Blog/WhatIf'', and tends to follow the same style as ''What If?'' entries, however ''How To'' focuses more on the ''how'' than it does the ''if''.

** '''Chapter 22: How to Catch a Drone''' makes mention of using a boomerang to take down a drone, referencing a [[https://xkcd.com/939/ certain comic]] that's also used as the featured image for BrickJoke.

* ComicallyMissingThePoint: In '''Chapter 6: How to Cross a River''':
--> '''Cueball:''' You know, it's possible to drown in just six inches of water.
--> '''Megan:''' Then we should be ok soon - it gets '''''way''''' deeper than that up ahead.

* ArtisticLicensePhysics: Averted, to a point where even the difference in gravity between Earth's equator and poles are accounted for.

** The end of '''Chapter 11: How to Play Football''' features a comic involving Cueball taking a football and [[Film/TheLordOfTheRings throwing it in a volcano]].

--->(...) to gain immunity and avoid a risky later-in-life (chickenpox) infection. Then everything changed[[superscript:1]] in 1995, when a chicken pox vaccine became available
---->[[superscript:1]] If you expected the words [[WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender "...when the Fire Nation attacked!"]] here, you are of a very specific age.

The first option is no doubt an admirable one, but if that's your choice, then you're reading the wrong book. Let's talk about option two.''

--> '''Megan:''' Then we should be ok soon - it gets '''''way''''' deeper than that up ahead

** We're cheating, but we're not ''cheating''.

-->(...) to gain immunity and avoid a risky later-in-life (chickenpox) infection. Then everything changed[[superscript:1]] in 1995, when a chicken pox vaccine became available
--->[[superscript:1]] If you expected the words [[WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender "...when the Fire Nation attacked!"]] here, you are of a very specific age.

** Lava moats, in theory, are a very effective way to keep undesirable things away from your property (as long as you don't count lava crickets as "undesirable"), but poses as much of a risk itself as the things you're trying to keep out. For one, lava radiates an ''immense'' amount of heat, meaning that you have to use some sort of heat source to actually keep it molten. You ''could'' do this just by using a cruciblel, but this generates more problems -- for one, it'll cost around $10 per hour for each square meter of moat, which quickly adds up when you're trying to cover an actually decent amount of land. Additionally, the immense heat that lava radiates is enough to cause skin pain within ''10 seconds'' just from standing a few meters away from it... and standing very close to it can lead to second-degree burns in ''less than'' a second. In fact, standing in front of a window 10 meters from the moat will still be hot enough to cause pain. You can mitigate this by making the moat deeper in the ground, so more heat goes up rather than out, but then a new issue arises - no matter what way the wind blows, it'll always be blowing the heat from the lava ''towards'' your house, meaning you'll have to install some sort of water cooling system inside your walls. You'd also want to consider ventilation, especially if the lava gives off toxic fumes, but now you have to worry about jellyfish blocking the drain and people crawling through your air ducts. Overall, the concept of a lava moat is AwesomeButImpractical.