Main Page

Welcome to the explain xkcd wiki!
We have an explanation for all 2987 xkcd comics, and only 5 (0%) are incomplete. Help us finish them!

Latest comic

Go to this comic explanation

|< < Prev Comic #2987 (September 18, 2024)

Tectonic Surfing

Title text: The worst is when you wipe out in the barrel and you're trapped for several million years until erosion frees you.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by an OVERCROWDED SURFBOARD - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.

Surfing is a sport where the participant tries to stand or otherwise remain stable on a moving surface as long as possible. Traditionally the name "surfing" refers to riding a surfboard that is itself floating on the ocean waves as they crash into shore, but in colloquial English it is possible to "surf" other things such as a crowd of people, the floor of a moving bus, or the Internet.

In this comic, Beret Guy is surfing the Earth's tectonic plates. Tectonic plates move very slowly compared to a normal surfing experience.^{[citation needed]} So slowly, ordinary people perceive them to be stationary ground. But Beret Guy, in typical Beret Guy fashion, sees the broader picture in the most whimsical way possible and is now surfing the plates across the Earth's mantle below. He seems to be moving horizontally at about 4-5 cm/year (~1 m/20 yrs) which would put him on one of the moderately fast plates, at least relative to the more stable North American plate.

While doing this he says "Radical", "Gnarly", and "Hang loose" which are commonly used among surfers. After 20 years, he is still standing there, having moved about 1 meter with the continental plate. This is thus another of the Strange powers of Beret Guy, being able to stay in place for 20 years. This was also seen in 1088: Five Years, where he waited five years to find out where he would be after that time.

The title text refers to riding the barrel, in which one surfs inside the hollow part of a breaking wave, while a wipe out means you get swept off your surf board. If you wipe out in a barrel, you most likely submerge under water. If this were possible in tectonic surfing, you would be stuck under a tectonic plate and you would have to wait until the material in which you're trapped erodes. In reality, there's no such thing as breaking waves in plate tectonics, but there are geological folds that can be seen as similar to the way that turbulent water mixes. Things do get trapped when two tectonic plates collide in a process called subduction, in which one plate disappears below another.

Of note, Beret Guy is mentioned to have a "subduction license", as seen in this comic, so he may have some recourse in such a situation. Due to said license, he would survive and reemerge from the continental plate barrel in a million years time.

A previous comic about tectonics being slow is 2061: Tectonics Game.

Transcript

[Cueball walks up to Beret Guy who is standing with one leg in front of another and his arms spread wide.]

Cueball: What are you doing?

Beret Guy: Tectonic surfing!

[Cueball is standing behind Beret Guy, who is in the same pose.]

Beret Guy: Radical!

Beret Guy: Gnarly!

Beret Guy: Hang loose!

[Beret Guy is alone, still in the same position in the center of the panel.]

[Beret Guy is in the same position, but at the right edge of the panel with his head partly outside the right edge. Above him is a box with a Caption:]

20 years later:

References

Is this out of date? .

New here?

Last 7 days (Top 10)

Rank Score Pages Changes Username 1 14 11 14 Charlie Spring 2 13 9 14 Kynde 3 11 5 15 Asdf 4 11 7 11 Natg19 5 10 8 9 oh no 6 8 8 8 TheusafBOT 7 7 3 7 DKMell 8 6 2 6 Apollo11 9 5 2 5 BunsenH 10 3 3 3 Trogdor147

Lots of people contribute to make this wiki a success. Many of the recent contributors, listed above, have just joined. You can do it too! Create your account here.

You can read a brief introduction about this wiki at explain xkcd. Feel free to sign up for an account and contribute to the wiki! We need explanations for comics, characters, themes and everything in between. If it is referenced in an xkcd web comic, it should be here.

• If you're new to wiki editing, see how to edit wiki pages. There's also a handy wikicode cheatsheet.

• Discussion about the wiki itself happens at the Community portal.

• You can browse the comics from List of all comics or by navigating the category tree at Category:Comics.

• There are incomplete explanations listed here. Feel free to help out by expanding them!

• We sell advertising space to pay for our server costs. To learn more, go here.

Rules

Don't be a jerk.

There are a lot of comics that don't have set in stone explanations; feel free to put multiple interpretations in the wiki page for each comic.

If you want to talk about a specific comic, use its discussion page.

Please only submit material directly related to (and helping everyone better understand) xkcd... and of course only submit material that can legally be posted (and freely edited). Off-topic or other inappropriate content is subject to removal or modification at admin discretion, and users who repeatedly post such content will be blocked.

If you need assistance from an admin, post a message to the Admin requests board.