Editing 2099: Missal of Silos

{{comic
| number    = 2099
| date      = January 16, 2019
| title     = Missal of Silos
| image     = missal_of_silos.png
| titletext = Welcome to Wyoming, motto "We'd like to clarify that Cheyenne Mountain is in Colorado."
}}

==Explanation==
This comic plays on the similarity in name between missile silos, places where long range weapons are deployed, and the missal of Silos, an old document residing in Spain.

In Christianity, a {{w|missal}} is a priest's book of instructions, texts, and music for the proper celebration of {{w|Mass (liturgy)|Mass}}. The Missal of Silos is an 11th-century missal from the {{w|Abbey of Santo Domingo de Silos}} in northern Spain; it is famous for being the oldest known paper document in Europe, written at a time when the usual writing material was {{w|parchment}}.

{{w|Missile silos}} are often thought to be the first targeting priority in event of a nuclear strike, in hopes of preventing retaliation.  If one was searching for potential nuclear missile targets, the {{w|Missal of Silos}} could conceivably be returned as a result of a fuzzy search for "missile silos", and be made a target.

{{w|Approximate string matching|Fuzzy, or approximate, string matching}} is a technique used for searching text for sequences of characters similar to a given sequence.  Normal string matching would only find results that matched the search exactly (searching for "''missile''" would find only occurrences of "''missile''").  Fuzzy string matching instead finds results that are "close enough" by some metric (searching for "''missile''" would find "''missile''" but also close variants like "''missal''" or "''missel''").  Fuzzy string matching is often used in search engines, as typos, misspellings, and inexact searches are common.

{{w|Cheyenne Mountain}} is a mountain in Colorado, which houses an underground military compound (aptly named the {{w|Cheyenne Mountain Complex}}) designed to withstand a nuclear strike and host to the {{w|North American Aerospace Defense Command}}. {{w|Cheyenne, Wyoming}}, on the other hand, is the capital of Wyoming. The residents of Cheyenne, Wyoming would prefer their town not to be the target of a nuclear attack because of confusion with Cheyenne Mountain.{{cn}} However, Cheyenne, Wyoming is likely a listed target because of the nearby {{w|90th Operations Group}} at {{w|Francis E. Warren Air Force Base}} operating Minuteman III ICBMs from missile silos.

There have been several comics with nuclear weapons as a part of the plot. See for instance [[1655: Doomsday Clock]], where several other comics are mentioned in the explanation.

==Transcript==
:[An (out of date, even if in-date at time of comic-creation) passage from the {{w|Wikipedia}} page for Missal of Silos is shown, with underlined heading and with links in the text in blue font. The last line is partly cut off by the comics panel, but can be read.]
:<big>'''Missal of Silos'''</big>
:<div style="border-bottom: 1px solid #bbbbbb"></div>
:<small>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</small>
:The {{w|Missal}} of Silos is the oldest known {{w|paper}} document created in the Christian West; it is 11th century in date.<sup><span style="color: #0645AD">[1]</span></sup>
:The missal is held in the library of the {{w|Monastery of Santo Domingo de Silos}} near {{w|Burgos, Spain}}. It is one of a number of liturgical manuscripts...

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Spain would like to remind everyone not to use fuzzy string matching in their nuclear strike target lists.

==Trivia==
*The transcript of the Wikipedia article shown on the comic is using parts of the version as after a [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Missal_of_Silos&oldid=615075917 revision made on 30th June 2014]. On the day of the publishing of this comic the Wikipedia article changed drastically.
**This is because a spurt of editing took place on Wikipedia on the day of the comic, since xkcd and Wikipedia editing have similar target demographics.{{Citation needed}}
**This "xkcd-Wikipedia effect" has happened before. 
***One example of this revolved around [[878: Model Rail]], in which the alt-text mentioned that the debate over the title of the HO/H0 system was disturbingly long, and "coincidentally", the talk page debate got a little longer on that very day.
***And most famously, the comic [[1485: Friendship]], caused at least four Wikipedia pages to be vandalized, so these pages had to be semi protected.
***Of course, the canonical example of an "xkcd-Wikipedia effect" is [[739: Malamanteau]]. [https://xkcd.com/739/] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Malamanteau]

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Wikipedia]]
[[Category:Nuclear weapons]]