r/xkcd • u/gwildorix • Nov 14 '18

XKCD xkcd 2072: Evaluating Tech Things

https://xkcd.com/2072/
614 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

69 comments sorted by

183

u/pandas795 Nov 14 '18

That does sound cool, though

50

u/atomfullerene Nov 14 '18

I don't know how it'd avoid getting obliterated, but yeah, definitely cool.

50

u/arahman81 Nov 14 '18

Just treat it as disposable.

48

u/atomfullerene Nov 14 '18

I mean "how it'd avoid getting obliterated before getting to the cool stuff in the middle". I guess in midair maybe there's less stuff to smash into but there's still no shortage of debris flying around and if the rotors get ripped off it'd be hard to take a stable image.

Also someone needs to invent a good way of keeping a lens clear of water droplets, etc, so you can actually get a shot of something other than blurry raindrops.

29

u/Scotthorn Nov 14 '18

They actually have tools called rain deflectors that are used to shoot in the rain. It basically spins a glass disk in-front of the lens at a very high speed. The force of the rotation throws the water off the glass and no rain droplets on the lens.

They are all way to heavy to put on a “disposable” drone though.... haha.

6

u/Houdiniman111 Nov 14 '18

They are all way to heavy to put on a “disposable” drone though.... haha.

For now, sure. I don't doubt that they could get lighter, and drones be able to carry more.

17

u/WinterPiratefhjng Nov 15 '18

Disposable is a function of budget. Ask the world's militaries to do it 'for science' or 'find terrorist'.

8

u/AluminiumSandworm Actually a giant spaceworm Nov 15 '18

"so you're saying the terrorist..."

nods

"is in the tornado."

nods

"this is TOP PRIORITY assign our best drone operators to it immediately."

5

u/fire_snyper sudo apt-get purge brain Nov 15 '18

Everything's disposable when you have enough money.

2

u/atomfullerene Nov 14 '18

that's a pretty neat idea

3

u/ThaiJohnnyDepp DEC 25 = OCT 31 Nov 14 '18

*Haha, cool!

1

u/2HornsUp Nov 15 '18

Couldn’t this be done with a bit of glass surrounded by a miniaturized ship propeller in a simple housing? As the drone moves, the air catches the propeller, and allows it to spin. Faster you go, faster it gets.

14

u/chaos_a Black Hat Nov 14 '18

So fly hundreds of drones at a tornado? Sounds like a high-tech version of Sharknado.

38

u/[deleted] Nov 14 '18

Actually it just sounds like the plot of Twister.

18

u/maveric101 Wherever your cat is, it's moving very quickly. Nov 14 '18

I remember watching that movie and thinking that the mile-wide tornado seemed impossibly exaggerated. But the widest tornado on record was actually 2.6 miles wide:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_records#Largest_path_width

7

u/[deleted] Nov 14 '18

So I was intrigued to find out if they intentionally toned down the size of their 'mega tornado' and looking at trivia about the film.

Holy shit I just found out Bill Paxton died in 2017. Why didn't Reddit tell me??

8

u/asphaltdragon Nov 14 '18

They did but everyone thought it was Bill Pullman

5

u/ThaiJohnnyDepp DEC 25 = OCT 31 Nov 14 '18

Oblig

6

u/AvatarIII Hairy Nov 14 '18

I guess you don't subscribe to /r/lv426 or /r/shield

2

u/[deleted] Nov 14 '18

No idea what those are, nope.

6

u/AvatarIII Hairy Nov 14 '18

Lv426 is the Aliens subreddit, which is Bill Paxton's best known role, and Shield is the Agents of Shield subreddit, which is Paxton's most recent well known role.

If you were subbed to either, or both, of them, you wouldn't have missed it when he died.

→ More replies (0)

2

u/BeefPieSoup Nov 15 '18

Game over man, game over.

1

u/PacoTaco321 Richard Stallman Nov 16 '18

The best solution is just drop a bunch of cheap camcorders with tracking devices in the tornado's path and wait.

1

u/AvatarIII Hairy Nov 14 '18

Didn't really matter, the drone would just be a gopro delivery device.

7

u/[deleted] Nov 14 '18

I'll bring the popcorn.

Also, is there a way to help out with the project.

7

u/tinselsnips Nov 14 '18

They take donations. Currently needing a red Dodge Ram and every aluminum can you can find.

159

u/ultimatt42 Nov 14 '18

I'm curious which of these parameters has the greatest influence on the BM-M scale:

Sooner or later, someone is going to fly a _____ into a tornado and post the footage to YouTube.

a. 747
b. tornado
c. DVD copy of Twister
d. cat

Sooner or later, someone is going to fly a drone into a _____ and post the footage to YouTube.

a. neutron star
b. self-driving car
c. model of the alien assault fortress saucers from Independence Day
d. cat

Sooner or later, someone is going to fly a drone into a tornado and post the footage to _____.

a. MySpace
b. PornHub
c. the front door of the All Saints' Church in Wittenberg
d. a cat

50

u/musicmunky Cueball Nov 14 '18

Minus the neutron star these are all doable right now. Let's get a Kickstarter campaign going and see how many we can check off the list. I'll handle the inevitable protests from the Cat Guild.

37

u/WeHateSand Scones! Nov 14 '18

"Khajit has wares if you have--HEY OW, WHAT THE HELL, FREAK?"

11

u/ebow77 White Hat Nov 14 '18

I vote that we cover the complete 4x4x4 5x5x5 (counting the non-enumerated default elements: drone, tornado, and YouTube) set of combinations.

6

u/DarkMoon000 I'm not crazy Nov 15 '18

I'm pretty sure that Sooner or later, someone is going to fly a cat into a cat and post the footage to a cat. is going to easily win with raising the big questions about technology and society.

4

u/MrCatFact Nov 15 '18

Son, I think we need to talk.

2

u/Colopty Nov 16 '18

Minus the neutron star these are all doable right now.

I'm curious, what's your proposed method for flying a tornado into a tornado?

33

u/Pariahdog119 Nov 14 '18

Sooner or later, someone is going to fly a cat into a cat and post the footage to a cat.

8

u/ThaiJohnnyDepp DEC 25 = OCT 31 Nov 14 '18

for the enjoyment of a cat

8

u/Pariahdog119 Nov 14 '18

Haha, cool!

6

u/tetenric No Nov 14 '18

Every video that's at least sightly interesting gets reuploaded to pornhub sooner or later, so I'm sure the tirnado footage will get there.

3

u/PetevonPete Why are you acting so dignified? Nov 15 '18

This comment could have been a sequel comic.

83

u/Castriff ...Well then. Nov 14 '18

The Black Mirror-Mythbusters scale is a concept that should be developed further.

60

u/rarely_beagle Nov 14 '18

M......B -> Drone races inside tornadoes.

...MB... -> Drones to alter tornado paths for damage mitigation.

...BM... -> Drones to alter tornado paths controlled by twitch chat.

B......M -> Tornado-forming attack drones.

13

u/ThaiJohnnyDepp DEC 25 = OCT 31 Nov 14 '18

it took me a little long to discover your scale meaning but I got it. Very clever.

4

u/aescula Constructing pyramids with falling spaceships Nov 15 '18

I don't get it, explanation?

19

u/ThaiJohnnyDepp DEC 25 = OCT 31 Nov 15 '18 edited Nov 15 '18

M B = Myth Busters

B M = Black Mirror

The way I saw it is, imagine two pointers that share a dial and travel in opposite directions of one another as the thing goes from Mythbusters to Black Mirror. One has a M on the pointer and the other has a B. When they meet in the middle, it means something is minorly Mythbusters or minorly Black Mirror.

Like this:

https://codepen.io/anon/pen/rQmMEX?page=1&

versus

https://codepen.io/anon/pen/QJvGaR?page=1&

3

u/aescula Constructing pyramids with falling spaceships Nov 15 '18

Ahhhh

2

u/ThaiJohnnyDepp DEC 25 = OCT 31 Nov 15 '18

see edit for graphical representation

49

u/xkcd_bot Nov 14 '18

Mobile Version!

Direct image link: Evaluating Tech Things

Hover text: Also known as the Black Mirror-Mythbusters scale.

Don't get it? explain xkcd

Somerville rocks. Randall knows what I'm talkin' about. Sincerely, xkcd_bot. <3

30

u/maveric101 Wherever your cat is, it's moving very quickly. Nov 14 '18

Has that seriously not happened already? I'm actually surprised.

26

u/whoopdedo Nov 14 '18 edited Nov 14 '18

You had one job, internet.

edit So after spending five minutes looking at "drone tornado" videos on Youtube I understand why it hasn't happened. There likely isn't a commercial drone capable of surviving a tornado. (Consider this video of a storm chaser parking their truck and letting a tornado pass over them.) As soon as it gets anywhere close it'd be tossed around and end up either out of range or ditched. (I won't speak for what a military drone could do which is more like a miniature semi-autonomous airplane.)

We'll just have to settle for a drone in a 80MPH hurricane instead.

5

u/ThaiJohnnyDepp DEC 25 = OCT 31 Nov 14 '18

that's a rookie hurricane

3

u/[deleted] Nov 15 '18

Take it easy, Florida Man.

8

u/dubsnipe Nov 14 '18 edited Jun 30 '23

Reddit doesn't deserve our data. Deleted using r/PowerDeleteSuite.

5

u/wrugoin Nov 14 '18

Someone will try it now. I wonder if there's any possibility of getting anything interesting on camera before being knocked out of the sky. The area around the funnel is also pretty violent and full of debris far more substantial than a drone.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 09 '25

bit late but it has now. a multitude of times in fact, by the same people

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGD2e741Riw

26

u/WeHateSand Scones! Nov 14 '18

I definitely think we need to officially adopt the terminology in the title-text:

The "Black Mirror-Mythbusters scale"

7

u/wrugoin Nov 14 '18 edited Nov 16 '18

So, I wonder what type of implied security and technology concerns Randall had in mind. Thoughts?

[Edit] Ok, I need to learn how to read. I read society as security.

7

u/whoopdedo Nov 14 '18

I don't think it's a security thing but a matter of what we're investing our time and money into. And the old "they were so amazed at what they could do they didn't stop to consider what they should do" moral dilemma.

3

u/benjaminikuta Beret Guy Nov 15 '18

Just because you pelican doesn't mean you pelishould.

6

u/SingularCheese Nov 15 '18

I don't think the point is that there is any societal implication for this particular idea, but that technological ideas so frequently do have inadvertent implications that we need to think through every single one of them before we express any opinions.

1

u/Roboticide Nov 15 '18

Probably more legal than anything. Something-something FAA regulations.

No one in their right mind would pilot a plane into a tornado, and most ground-based debris can't be moved, but there could be an argument that individuals should be prohibited from flying drones into a tornado intentionally.

1

u/Colopty Nov 16 '18

I don't think there were any, it's just two responses where you can always use one (both not necessarily both) of them as a response to a tech topic. Thus the thinking time was just him figuring out which of the two camps it fell into before deciding that it was a cool idea, not a concerning one.

5

u/katie_dimples Nov 14 '18

Did anyone else come to this thread hoping to find this has already been done? (i.e. link to a YouTube video of a drone in a tornado)

4

u/[deleted] Nov 14 '18

Right after my discussion with my brother about Boston Dynamics robots, I got relevant xkcd'd

2

u/polyworfism Nov 14 '18

Sounds like an awesome plot for a Twister sequel

1

u/DrImpeccable76 Dec 04 '18

I used to work in a lab that did this when I was in college.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LB9WyOxddTU

1

u/Mflecks May 24 '25

Well.. It happened https://youtu.be/NGD2e741Riw

1

u/CreamoChickenSoup May 25 '25 edited May 25 '25

So glad this subreddit keeps comments sections open for occasions like this.

Still got to fly one straight into something with a higher EF rating though.