2261: Worst Thing That Could Happen

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Worst Thing That Could Happen

Title text: Before I install any patch, I always open the patch notes and Ctrl-F for 'supervolcano', 'seagull', and 'garbage disposal', just to be safe.

Explanation

Ponytail and her friends are considering upgrading some part or program of their computers. They may feel the need to upgrade because the software they are currently using has some vulnerability that is only patched in newer revisions (this comic was released just two weeks after the end of extended support for Windows 7), or because they want to have access to some new feature. As part of the decision-making process, Ponytail asks her friends, "What's the worst that could happen?" If the computers they are discussing are privately owned, she may be concerned about losing personal data or having to learn new software interfaces. On the other hand, if they are discussing a corporate computer system, there may also be business-related risks. If their company relies on functionality offered by their current system that has been deprecated or modified in the updated version (such as in 1172: Workflow, or as with many specialized tools or machines in the real world), they may suffer downtime while they modify the rest of their workflow. Even if the upgraded system should continue to fit their needs, they may need to take some downtime to perform the update and deal with the risks of something going badly along the way, and there may be major costs associated with license subscriptions and support contracts. "What's the worst that could happen?" is also a common rhetorical question; Ponytail may be expressing a belief that nothing bad could happen as a result of the upgrade, and not expecting an answer.

Unfortunately, Ponytail's friends answer with their ideas for the worst things that could happen ever, not as a result of the upgrade, as Ponytail meant, or they are taking the question to the logical extreme and invoking chaos theory. The result is a list of "worst things" ridiculously unconnected to a computer upgrade. At the end, however, Megan interprets these as possible results of the upgrade, and advises against upgrading. A list with explanations can be found below. Ponytail facepalms at her friends' overly-literal senses of humor.

Alternatively, Ponytail could be facepalming at the fact that the worst thing which could happen, according to her team, is that they are put on a ridiculous game show in which, if they answer a question incorrectly, they are chucked in garbage disposal. This may be bad, but it is nowhere near as bad as an erupting supervolcano or nuclear war.^{[citation needed]} However, Cueball has shown anxiety and difficulties in social situations, such as the less-than-helpful advice in 1917: How to Make Friends, so he (and likewise Hairy and Megan) may consider that embarrassment on the game show (which might then be immortalized online) is worse than instantaneous death in a nuclear war.

Megan and Cueball have previously experienced a severely-botched upgrade in 349: Success, in which Cueball somehow caused them to end up in shark-infested waters off the coast of a deserted island when he was just trying to get their computer to dual-boot BSD.

The title text talks about searching upgrade release notes for some of the things listed to be sure none are potential side effects of an upgrade. "Ctrl-F" is a common keyboard shortcut for "find text string" in many programs. Since Randall is just reading but not changing the patch notes, a web browser, PDF viewer, or word processing program such as Adobe Reader or Microsoft Word might have been used.

List of worst things

• The list of "worst things that could happen" discussed by the team are:

Thing	Notes
"Supervolcano."	A supervolcano is a volcano that would (or does) eject over 1,000 cubic kilometers of material when it erupts. The United States in particular is home to a supervolcano in Yellowstone National Park. When it erupts, the results will be catastrophic to the entire world, possibly triggering a volcanic winter, massive crop die-offs (and subsequent cascading extinctions up the food chain), and the destruction of human civilization. This probably would not be set off by any sort of software update (though a weird frequency may be emitted, making the lava rise).
"Robot uprising."	An artificial intelligence overthrows humanity and takes over the world. Hairy is probably concerned with a violent uprising in which the robots are determined to exterminate humanity, as in, for example, the Terminator films, rather than an AI who just wants to stay in a box. Randall has written about robot uprisings (both violent and humorous) in several comic strips. If Ponytail's company is involved in artificial intelligence, a robot uprising could be a remotely plausible worst-case scenario from a botched upgrade.
"Everyone falls down a well at once."	Lassie was a series of books, films, and television shows about Lassie, a heroic Rough Collie dog who either rescues people from dangerous situations or at least goes to find other humans and lead them to the victim. The archetypal rescue in popular culture is that little Timmy, her owner, falls down a well (although this never happened in any episode – it was her first owner, Jeff Miller, who needed rescuing from the well, while Timmy got into pretty much every other kind of trouble imaginable). There have also been several well-publicized incidents in which a real person fell down a well, such as Baby Jessica and this list. If everyone fell down a well at once, there would be nobody for Lassie to summon to get them out, which would be a pretty bad thing. It's unclear how this upgrade could cause this outcome, making this suggestion preposterous.
"Instead of hitting the tallest thing around, lightning starts hitting the nicest."	Lightning generally strikes the tallest object under a thunderstorm, a topic addressed in What-if #16: Lightning. Lightning rods are built to take advantage of this effect to protect nearby important objects from the lightning. If lightning started hitting the nicest thing around, then it would presumably strike whatever it was that the lightning rods are meant to protect (nice buildings, nice people, nice rockets). If the computer that's being upgraded is connected to the Universe Control Panel, this change could be a plausible negative consequence of the update.
"Seagulls all get handguns."	Guns in the hands of humans account for the large majority of homicides and suicides in the USA. Letting handguns be wielded by seagulls, which lack the impulse control and cognitive thinking required to make the ownership of a handgun somewhat safe, would make this much worse. Seagulls are not particularly known for their intelligence, self control, or kindness toward others. At popular beaches, seagulls are known to aggressively harass humans for their food; if they wielded handguns, a great deal of violence would ensue. Even if mayhem and death were not due to intentional use (i.e., if the seagulls were capable of learning that use of a handgun would get them food or something else they might like), they would happen from accidental use.
"A really slow nuclear war."	No nuclear war involving two sides launching nuclear weapons at each other has ever been fought, but experts generally agree that an all-out nuclear war between superpowers would end very quickly and very badly for all parties involved (as well as all parties not involved). A "slow" nuclear war might play out as a series of tit-for-tat individual launches rather than a single apocalyptic exchange, but the destruction of cities and release of fallout would be the same. Perhaps the anticipation of when exactly it's "your turn" to be a target would make the slow war a worse experience. Much of the computer networking technology used today has its roots in research into hardening nuclear command and control systems against an incoming first strike, and many works of fiction have depicted nuclear war (or the risk of nuclear war) resulting from computer and software errors in systems that are supposed to "upgrade" the decision-making process, such as WarGames and "Fail-Safe". If Ponytail's company is involved in the defense industry, a nuclear war could be a plausible worst-case scenario from a botched upgrade.
"We have to go on a game show where they show you photos of people you've met once and ask you their names, and if you get one wrong a trapdoor opens and you fall into a garbage disposal."	The premise of this game show seems to play on Munroe's frequent references to anxiety about social situations. For people who have troubles remembering names, encountering someone you've met once before can be harrowing, as you may know that you should know their name, but be unable to recall it, creating embarrassment and awkwardness (particularly if the person remembers your name with ease). The concept is that fear could be exploited in the form of a game show. Many popular game shows feature contests where contestants who fail are subjected to pain and/or humiliation, such as the Ninja Warrior franchise. This case is particularly exaggerated, as the inability to remember even a single name would result in being dropped into a garbage disposal, which would virtually guarantee serious maiming and/or death. The reaction of the strip characters suggests that they all share a lack of confidence in their ability to remember the names of casual acquaintances, making such a game show one of the "worst things" they could encounter.

Transcript

[Ponytail is standing in front of a desk with a computer. One of her hands is on the keyboard. Behind her, Cueball, Hairy, and Megan are looking at the computer screen.]

Ponytail: We should upgrade. What's the worst that could happen?

Cueball: Supervolcano.

Hairy: Robot uprising.

Megan: Everyone falls down a well at once.

[Zoom in on Cueball, Hairy, and Megan. Cueball has turned toward the other two.]

Cueball: Instead of hitting the tallest thing around, lightning starts hitting the nicest.

Megan: Seagulls all get handguns.

Hairy: A really slow nuclear war.

[Large panel with the original setting. Ponytail has turned towards the other three but is now facepalming, as Cueball gesturing with his hands at chest-height are still looking at the other two facing him.]

Cueball: We all have to go on a game show where they show you photos of people you've met once and ask you their names, and if you get one wrong a trapdoor opens and you fall into a garbage disposal.

Hairy: Ooh, that's a good one.

Megan: Yeah, let's put off the upgrade.

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Discussion

What? No one mentioned Earth being hit by asteroid or one of close stars going supernova? -- Hkmaly (talk) 19:43, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

No, this is just dealing with the worst scenarios. -boB (talk) 21:05, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birds_(film) , isn't it? Wouldn't it be more destructive than just ramming and pecking? 141.101.105.216 21:56, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

I very recently saw a meme I had to think of (and want to share the funny part), where a badass-person was described. The last point was "the morals of a seagull." --Lupo (talk) 07:10, 30 January 2020 (UTC) Edit: Just googled it. It was a reddit post about seals, and the conclusion was, they are like "if a cat weighed 300 kilos and had the intelligence of a toddler & the morals of a seagull". --Lupo (talk) 07:25, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

“Much of the computer networking technology used today has its roots in research into hardening nuclear command and control systems against an incoming first strike...”. This is false, at least as far as the early internet goes. https://www.internetsociety.org/internet/history-internet/brief-history-internet/#f5 — “5 It was from the RAND study that the false rumor started claiming that the ARPANET was somehow related to building a network resistant to nuclear war. This was never true of the ARPANET, only the unrelated RAND study on secure voice considered nuclear war. However, the later work on Internetting did emphasize robustness and survivability, including the capability to withstand losses of large portions of the underlying networks.” Since the authors include Vint Cerf, I’m inclined to give it a lot of credibility. 162.158.2.214 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

How does Ninja Warrior subject contestants to pain/humiliation on failure? The only humiliation factor is from failing in the first place, and the water is there to minimize pain (well, to minimize injuries anyway). There are plenty of much better examples of game shows that "punish" failure. 172.68.70.34 16:12, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Ninja Warrior is the 'painful' contest that I happen to have seen most recently, but on reflection I suppose MXC/Takeshi's Castle is a little more straightforward on the "humiliation" factor. --NotaBene (talk) 02:34, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

CTRL-f for searching... I always imagined Randal as an Emacs user (Emacs standard binding for incremental search is ctrl-s) but I guess no one is perfect. 172.68.70.70 05:14, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Ctrl-F works on almost anything nowadays, such as web browsers, which he probably uses more frequently than Emacs. Of course, Ctrl-F notably does NOT work in Microsoft Outlook. Thanks, Bill. -boB (talk) 16:34, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

It says he's searching release notes, which would be located where the upgrade came from, which means the website it was downloaded from (so, reading in a web browser) or some App Store or another (I would think the notes are in the Store app itself or a plain text file). Since I've never used eMacs, it seems an unlikely format for something meant to be widely seen like release notes. :) NiceGuy1 (talk) 05:05, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

in this comic Cueball et al. are representing programmers not users, they would not be installing the latest release of an app from an App Store but rather applying a patch to, and then recompiling, source code. The release notes would be in a text file, most likely with a .txt extension, and would be readable with any software tool that would be used for displaying or editing .txt files. But setting that aside, to think that because you personally haven’t used of a particular tool has any bearing on its popularity is hubris of the highest order.172.68.70.34 10:11, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

You're right about Randal being an Emacs user though, see title text of 561. Bischoff (talk) 08:13, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

Just added two new categories for this comic: Category:Volcanoes and Category:Nuclear weapons. They were long overdue with 22 and 25 comics respectively after I searched through for relevant words. This is the fourth with Supervolcanoes mentioned. --Kynde (talk) 10:58, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

There are presumably many more people than wells (citation needed). If everybody fell down a well, the people in any particular well would be piled on top of each other, and the ones at the top should be able to climb out. Then they can help the people below them. Barmar (talk) 19:22, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

"Since Randall is just reading but not changing the patch notes, a web browser, PDF viewer, or word processing program such as Adobe Reader or Microsoft Word might have been used."... Uhhhh, just because he's not changing the release notes doesn't mean he isn't using something like Notepad, which to me seems the most likely unless it's an App Store, about just as likely that it's a web browser on the upgrade's website. Also, not to be pedantic (okay, to be pedantic, LOL!), Adobe ACROBAT Reader wouldn't be a "word processing program". I could see calling the writer program Adobe Acrobat that, but the more widespread READER is exactly that, just a reader, no processing. :) NiceGuy1 (talk) 05:05, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Am I the only one that thinks the link to Lassie is extremely tenuous? It seems far more likely to be referencing the general trope of falling down a well, such as this example from TVTropes or even some previous comics, such as 568. PotatoGod (talk) 03:55, 3 February 2020 (UTC) EDIT: fixed the broken link to tvtropes PotatoGod (talk) 17:50, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

I'd say the Lassie connection is valid, partly because it's the first thing I thought of as well. The tvtropes article you referenced doesn't seem to exist and 568 has nothing to do with falling into wells. Mike probably got in voluntarily. Bischoff (talk) 08:09, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

COVID 19. COVID 19 could happen. Cwallenpoole (talk) 14:56, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

If you think the pandemic of the last two years is the worst possible pandemic, then I guess your imagination isn't as good as mine at thinking up "worst thing(s) that could happen." Mathmannix (talk) 18:04, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Oh, no. I'm not saying it's the worst thing that could happen. I'm saying it did happen and because the upgrade happened before the pandemic, the pandemic must be caused by the upgrade. Cwallenpoole (talk) 18:13, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

But they didn't do the upgrade! Nitpicking (talk) 01:49, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Care to explain why the (re)deletion, other-IP? SFAICT, that contribution was relevent, but you're removing it. (Are you the same IP who has been editing a lot of other things out, recently? I bet you are.) And in leiu of re-reverting it myself, which is as bad form as it is for you to repeat removing things in the first place, with no justification given, I shall leave this link and comment as a whole as a note for posterity. 172.70.91.78 19:44, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

just like in voltron--162.158.33.148 10:01, 12 January 2024 (UTC)