Main Page
Welcome to the explain xkcd wiki!
We have an explanation for all 3316 xkcd comics, the 21 extra comics, and everything xkcd-related.Only 57 explanations (1.7%) are incomplete. Help us finish them!
New to editing? Start with This Week's Explanation for Improvement!
And seriously, my heartfelt thanks to you and everyone there. It's such a privilege to make something that people think is worth so much effort to explain <3
Latest comic
| Siege Engine |
 Title text: They initially thought the containment structure alone would be sufficient, but for good measure they decided to include the Elephant's Foot inside. |
Explanation
Siege engines were often brought to a location, or built from scratch, to help attack fortified positions such as castles during a military operation known as a siege. They would be deployed at some distance from the target, beyond the defender's range, and then either moved closer to the defended position or use their in-built long range capability to bombard the defenders. The ones moved closer would include those that were intended to make contact with the castle, such as battering rams or siege towers, and would be equipped with protective roofs/walls to let the attackers use them relatively safely within the range of the defenders' own weaponry in order to either climb/breach the walls or force open the now sealed entrance.
For whatever reason, in this particular case the 'standard' siege engines have not helped, in what may have been a medieval siege against a medieval castle. In a break from the historic theme, the besiegers have turned to the designers of the Chernobyl New Safe Confinement to solve their problems. This might help in several possible ways. Some of the possible aims of a siege are to prevent the besieged from leaving and for any reinforcing troops or supplies to be provided, in a process known as investment. The containment structure would effectively serve to physically block these accesses. Alternatively, in creating a siege-structure many times larger than the besieged one, it may give them a far greater set of options for bombarding or invading the target. On top of that, the act of being encased would, at the very least isolate those inside from daylight and weather; the lack of natural daylight could be used to confuse or psychologically influence the defenders, if they are relying upon rain for enough drinking water for the long term then they're going to be thirsty. Though just the possibility that the besieging force is capable of ordering up such a large structure might be enough to make them think twice about the wisdom of trying to turtle-down in a castle.
The real life structure in use at Chernobyl had to be assembled some distance from the reactor, then moved over the reactor, as construction near the final location would have involved too great a degree of exposure to radiation from the site. The assembled structure was then moved along prepared tracks to cover the reactor in a much shorter exposure window for the construction crew, effectively achieving the goal of containment while minimising radiation damage to the workers. The method of motion used for this involved greased pads and hydraulic cylinders to slide the structure along these, as wheels were not considered possible to use under such a massive construction. The comic version seems to be using either many self-propelled modular transporters or perhaps some log-based medieval equivalent that might require moving rollers to the front (though there's no sign of anybody doing this, unless they're intentionally keeping hidden from the defences of the fortress). The Chernobyl structure also was given a rather complex shape of doors that hugged the superstructure of the original buildings that it would have to pass over, while the comic's version has a far simpler, but possibly far more imposing, doorway.
In the title text, it mentions the elephant's foot, an unintentionally created radioactive mass of corium formed beneath the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant which formed as part of the meltdown that prompted the creation of the containment building. Due to its extreme radioactivity, being near the Elephant's Foot can result in a lethal radiation dose in minutes. In addition to the offensive and/or psychological pressures of the containing structure, actually adding a large lethal radioactive mass to the inside of the siege-container would cause even more problems for the defenders they have now trapped in its vicinity.
Transcript
- [A large structure on wheels is moving towards a castle.]
- RUMBLE
- [Caption below the panel:]
- After our normal siege engines were foiled by the castle's defences, our king hired the Chernobyl cleanup engineers.
This Week's Explanation for Improvement
As part of the Explanation Improvement Project, each week the community selects one older, stagnant, or otherwise neglected explanation to expand and polish together. This week's pick is comic 1334: Second, you can help us by editing its explanation!
To get involved with the project, you can also nominate an explanation that you think should be improved, or vote on current nominations!
| Second |
 Title text: Let me just scroll down and check behind that rock. Annnnd... nope, page copyright year starts with '19'. Oh God, is this a WEBRING? |
Explanation
|
Welcome to This Week's Explanation for Improvement! Anyone is encouraged to help explain comic 1334: Second; click here to get started! If you are new to wiki editing, you can read our editing FAQ for guidance. Here are some suggestions for improving this explanation: .svg){kind=icon} Copyedit the entire explanation!
.svg){kind=icon} Improve the explanation of "webrings", mentioned in the title text
.svg){kind=icon} Maybe we could add the newer developments in the 12 years after this comic was posted, such as the AI summaries and the enshittification of Google results
|
Google is a popular search engine,[citation needed] and its searching algorithms are widely regarded as the most accurate and useful. If your search terms were sufficiently detailed, you will be able to find what you were looking for on the first page. Having to view the second page indicates your search terms were too vague or the answer to your query doesn't exist. When the search results typically number in the tens of millions (or more; in fact, more popular search results are in the billions), only the very first results relate to the user's real query, so the second page is typically not helpful for the issue.
Cueball, after failing to find his query in the first page of results, takes a curious peek at the second page. This is represented by a not-at-all subtle metaphor in which Cueball is about to wander into a sun-baked desert. According to the title text, he finds one vaguely relevant webpage, but the copyright starting with '19' (i.e. from the 1990s or older), means that it's probably too old to be of any use.
The title text refers to webrings. Webrings consist of multiple websites that are connected together through links, usually with a common theme. They connect from one website to the next, eventually leading back to the starting site. They were popular in the 1990s as a form of web directory, popularized by the titular "The Webring" (later WebRing) and typically curated by a 'ringmaster'. Web directories in general fell out of use with the rise of search engines, so seeing a webring could mean a site has not been updated since then. Yahoo acquired WebRing in 1999 as part of its acquisition of GeoCities and rebranded the service to Yahoo! WebRing in 2000, leaving ringmasters "angry" in part because their customizable homepages had been replaced by the design of Yahoo! WebRing. Taking off in the early 2020s, people have been creating new webrings, often in connection to the web hosting service Neocities, launched in 2013 and inspired by GeoCities. At one time, the importance of a webpage was judged partly on the number of pages linking to it; a webring has at least one page (the previous page in the ring linking to it) but often nothing else (if they were notable enough to be otherwise linked, they were less likely to be on a webring), meaning that reaching a webring meant that one had reached the one-incoming-link level of unimportance.
Transcript
- [Cueball in a desert standing before a rock.]
- Rock: Greetings, stranger.
- Rock: Whatever quest drives you, abandon it.
- Rock: You shall find no answers in these desolate wastes.
- Cueball: I knew I wouldn't.
- Cueball: I guess I... just had to see.
- I hate feeling desperate enough to visit the second page of Google results.
View comic discussionNew here?
You can read a brief introduction about this wiki at explain xkcd. Feel free to create an account and contribute to the wiki! We need explanations for xkcd comics, characters, what if? articles, and everything in between. If it is referenced in an xkcd comic, it should be here.
- See our editing FAQ for specific guidance to this wiki, and the more general help on 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 the list of all comics or by navigating the category tree at Category:Comics.
- The incomplete explanations are listed here. Feel free to help out by expanding them!
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 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 administrator, post a message to the Admin requests community portal.
