Talk:1895: Worrying Scientist Interviews

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Why not use Heliologist? :~) DarkJMKnight (talk) 14:49, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

If the sun is local breaking news, could be an impending dark age (solar activity destroying all technology) or a dark age (solar implosion/explosion/death). 162.158.79.5 15:42, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

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Why not use Heliologist? :~) DarkJMKnight (talk) 14:49, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

If the sun is local breaking news, could be an impending dark age (solar activity destroying all technology) or a dark age (solar implosion/explosion/death). 162.158.79.5 15:42, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Destroying *all* technology would require something on the scale of a solar expansion (hydrogen exhaustion) Solar flares (even those strong enough to burn all life from the face of the Earth) still would not be sufficient to destroy subterranean shelters like NORAD. Only a total extinction event would be capable of destroying all technology. Even if 99.9% of all humans on Earth were killed off, there are very well secured (& insanely well funded) facilities which will survive any event short of total crust-upheaval, at least for a generation or so. Reverting to primitive lifestyle may possibly happen for a *majority* of humans, but modern military systems are such that some humans with tech are almost guaranteed to remain, no matter what terrible events occur. In other words, the wealthiest technocratic elite aren't going to die off any time soon. 172.68.58.125 00:59, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
Which makes me wonder why only a local reporter is covering the story. Sounds like a media beat-up. The joke appears to depend more on someone's imagination than on the actual news story. 198.41.238.34 23:10, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Everyone else is dead except for the reporter who happens to be beret guy

Marine biologist is probably about oil spills or coral reefs/fish dying etc, rather than invasive species --141.101.99.209 16:18, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

The explanation for "ornithologist" uses "avian dinosaurs" instead of "birds." There's a link to the wikipedia page for birds, but it's still a potentially confusing inside joke. 172.68.54.106 19:01, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

The reference to "ornithologist" is almost certainly a reference to Hitchcock's "The Birds" 172.68.253.209 01:52, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
Definitely, rather than the obscure Birdemic movie --141.101.69.81 06:32, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

So, wait: worried about what the hell is so wrong with interviewers for them to actually want to talk to these kinds of researchers; or about what is happening to the world are we all going to die is it the end times? 162.158.79.71 19:54, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

The solar physicist would most likely be talking about an incoming solar flare, which could shut down the electric grid, satellites, and a bunch of other stuff, potentially within minutes, making it the most pressing of the issues. 162.158.75.112 01:11, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

I think economists and nutritionists are at the lower end for being notoriously wrong in their predictions --141.101.69.81 06:35, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Wow, this comic came on the morning right after the night in which I had a terrifying nightmare about the sun going supernova. I'm SERIOUSLY spooked. --162.158.92.148 08:53, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Well don't worry, the sun is too small to go Super nova. My nightmare as a kid was that it swelled up and swallowed the Earth... This will probably happen, but in 5 bill. years fro now. But when you are 6 years old that is not a number that makes any sense, and I had just heard about the death of the sun :D --Kynde (talk) 09:33, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Bayes! Uuuh-vey! Considering you should pre-multiply with the probability that the desaster happens in the first place (which is rather unlikely for the sun), I definitely would be worried with the economist most. (Mkay, big stock crashes are as probable as volcano eruptions, but I don't live near one.) 141.101.104.29 10:10, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

But economists are interviewed before and after every meeting of the [Federal Reserve / Bank of England / whoever] discussing whether to change interest rates. That's a lot of non-critical interviews. 162.158.34.76 10:52, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
If this is a joke about disaster movies like I think it is, then the probability of a disaster happening is basically 1, then this scale becomes a question of how scary the disaster is. I, for one, definitely think Jaws is a more scary announcement than anything an economist can come up with. 172.68.54.112 15:07, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure this is a joke about disaster movies not a serious scale. So Marine Biologist is pretty worrying because it's a shark attack or a giant octopus. Ornithologist is scary because of the birds, astronomers are meteors, etc. 172.68.54.112 15:07, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

What about the missing entries? Mathematician: "the discrete logarithm problem has been solved" (eCommerce becomes insecure). Divad27182 (talk) 20:29, 28 September 2017 (UTC)