This entry was posted on Friday, January 1st, 2010 at 9:01 am and is filed under Comics, Part 7 - Homefront.
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However, this is a bit of a sloppy first page. In addition to the misspelling noted above, there’s a typo in the next-to-last box, “a long a costly war”.
The idea that “supersonic” speed is a big deal threw me at first. It seemed like one could drop a freighter (presuming it’s of plausible size and not itself full of explosives) at 1000 MPH onto LA without making too big a dent. Turns out when I did the math under some plausible assumptions (100m^3 solid-steel freighter) that I ended up with roughly a 1/2 megaton bomb. It probably wouldn’t completely destroy the greater LA area, but it would make a gosh-awful mess. And one could get a 5 or 50 megaton bomb by changing the assumptions in reasonable ways.
Of course, for the purposes of the allegory, it would arguably be sufficient for the terrorist to kill 3000 people by plowing a vehicle into their buildings in a major US city. This mechanism will do nicely for that.
January 1st, 2010 at 9:54 am
It’s actually spelled “martial law”.
…or, to put it another way, HOORAY! The comic’s back!
January 2nd, 2010 at 4:15 am
Great to have the comic back!
However, this is a bit of a sloppy first page. In addition to the misspelling noted above, there’s a typo in the next-to-last box, “a long a costly war”.
The idea that “supersonic” speed is a big deal threw me at first. It seemed like one could drop a freighter (presuming it’s of plausible size and not itself full of explosives) at 1000 MPH onto LA without making too big a dent. Turns out when I did the math under some plausible assumptions (100m^3 solid-steel freighter) that I ended up with roughly a 1/2 megaton bomb. It probably wouldn’t completely destroy the greater LA area, but it would make a gosh-awful mess. And one could get a 5 or 50 megaton bomb by changing the assumptions in reasonable ways.
Of course, for the purposes of the allegory, it would arguably be sufficient for the terrorist to kill 3000 people by plowing a vehicle into their buildings in a major US city. This mechanism will do nicely for that.
January 3rd, 2010 at 7:35 am
Did we mention that the ship also had a rigged fusion reactor aboard?
January 3rd, 2010 at 1:29 pm
Woo hoo – they’re back!!!
January 7th, 2010 at 4:42 pm
Oh, booya. Great startup.
January 7th, 2010 at 8:48 pm
115 times the speed of sound would still be super sonic, biiiiiig bada booom!
Yaaaay Comic! Yaaaaay Backlog!