3270: Toasting Marshmallows

Toasting Marshmallows

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Title text: We have two 'in case of fire, break glass' boxes, which you pick between based on how big of a problem the fire is. One has an extinguisher, and one has sticks, marshmallows, graham crackers, and chocolate.

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Explanation

Because electronic components produce heat during operation, malfunctions or overloads may cause them to start burning. This comic suggests engineers should pretend that any resulting fire was the deliberate aim, not a mistake, treating the burning equipment as a campfire over which they can toast marshmallows on sticks.

Cueball and Megan's conversation indicates that this is what happened here. Most electronic components produce “waste” heat as a result of electrical resistance (among other effects), and insufficient cooling and/or excessive amounts of induced power can lead to damage or destruction, often releasing the infamous “magic smoke”. Here, Megan and Cueball have overloaded a circuit board to the point of combustion, which is an unlikely^{[citation needed]} but not impossible result in practice. They are using the resulting fire to toast marshmallows. Megan also (rightly) raises the concern that burning printed circuit boards and other plastics can release toxic fumes, like dioxins and heavy metal vapors. Toasting marshmallows over these chemical flames would contaminate the food, making them extremely unsafe to eat.

The title text deals with equipment intended to be used in the case of a fire. One option is a fire extinguisher, a tool for putting out fires of moderate size and intensity. The other is the equipment and ingredients required to exploit the fire to make the traditional campfire food s'mores, which is presumably for situations where it is not possible or not worthwhile to put the fire out (perhaps due to being too strong or too minor, respectively).

Toasting marshmallows in a lab environment has been previously referenced in 2514: Lab Equipment, while another unorthodox method for toasting marshmallows was covered in 2804: Marshmallow. An alternative use for marshmallows was suggested in 517: Marshmallow Gun.

Transcript

[A single panel showing Cueball and Megan sitting on the ground. Between them is a small fire built of what appears to be a burning circuit board. Both are holding long sticks with marshmallows on the end, roasting them over the flames.]

Cueball: At least we finally determined the board's actual thermal limit.

Megan: Yeah. You know, we probably shouldn't eat these.

[Caption below the comic:]

Engineering tip: Keep sticks and marshmallows around to make failures look intentional.

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Discussion

first Exo (talk) 01:53, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

was the above description created by AI? the description mentions "board" like "printed circuit board", but there is absolutely nothing in the comic that would suggest they are talking about PCBs instead of wooden boards. 135.180.243.100 (talk) 05:59, 13 July 2026 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Why is anything that anyone disagrees with now automatically assumed to be 'created by AI'? If taking a different interpretation of something is a sure sign of being an AI there must be an awful lot of AIs walking around out there. 82.13.184.33 15:19, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

If you're talking about the very first (two?) edits after the original BOT-created page, then that was my work, and I don't mind admitting that. I spotted the new comic page shortly before I was going to bed and set up a 'framework' that I thought could (and would) be improved upon by those who followed. And, if all else failed, I could do it properly the next day. (I thought... By the time I was in a position to do so, the site(s) had become Read-Only, as part of the migration/re-integration process.)

If you look at the edit history, it's fairly obvious that any cock-ups are entirely human. AI's go and hallucinate things in a completely different way that is often at one and the same time both far more subtle and grossly out of proportion.

Yes, there's been AI-output copypasting done here, in recent times (by lazy editors who just want the kudos, without the effort), but far far more accusations of it placed when it's really fallible human input than actual AI-like errors. (If the AI is copying the iterative editing process, then it's doing it the hard way, and I can't see what advantage it's getting out of it.)

As for the 'boards' thing, if that was me (I haven't checked, but it does sound like what I was hastily writing) then... well, yes. That's what I think the comic was alluding to (much as below says). But I'm happy for the community to decide and but the balance of probability on it. 92.23.5.229 20:22, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

"there's been AI-output copypasting done here, in recent times (by lazy editors who just want the kudos, without the effort)" - not sure that's entirely fair - they may just be wanting to get something in place as a starting point that can be improved on, to avoid the 'horror of the blank page' - in fact, on a few occasions they've said as much in the comments. Not sure many people are here editing for the kudos, and anyone who is is probably going to be disappointed. 82.13.184.33 08:01, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

Maybe overstated, but unless there's signs that the AI-paster has refined the output (adding wikimarkup to something, certainly removing non-wiki markup) or has gone through a number of autogenerated summaries and picked and chosen the returned version (or mixed and matched the versions) that they think represents the best of the bunch, then I don't think asking the question "explain <this comic>, please" and blindly copying it across is good foundation for a final article. (What's worse is "this article sucks, let's replace it with whatever my AI says", which has also happened.

A manual, even rushed, attempt to lay out the general story of the comic requires some thought put into it. Maybe thought that is later disagreed with, or overturned, but it's still a conscious attempt to fulfil the remit. IMO, of course. YMMV. 92.23.5.229 19:34, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

It's about engineering. The board has a thermal limit and has burst into flames upon breach of it, and the resultant fire is giving out toxic fumes that threaten to poison the smores. It would be very obtuse to suggest it's anything other than a PCB. Yorkshire Pudding (talk) 13:40, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

Nothing in the comic says PCB. As always people see what they wanna see. 2001:638:807:508:B8D2:AF5F:7591:3432 06:54, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

Plenty of things suggest PCBs instead of wooden boards. The phrase "thermal limit" makes more sense applied to PCBs, as well as "We probably shouldn't eat these", as well as this being a tip for engineering specifically Celene (talk) 07:38, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

Okay, I thought about it again, and you may have convinced me that it's not about the thermal limit of wood or a snowboard. However, the text starts now with computer hardware, while PCBs are used everywhere from toasters to cars. 2001:4090:A245:86E5:3842:93E9:FC0B:6323 04:48, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Weren't original circuit boards actually breadboards made of wood? TallJason (talk) 14:54, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

Not quite. They were made of bread. Hence "baking a circuit"! :P 92.23.5.229 20:22, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

Incidentally, toasting marshmallows was never a thing for me growing up in the UK in the sixties. Whether they weren't available or it was just my family, I don't know. There was a small chocolate covered cake with a creamy centre called a marshmallow, but you wouldn't want to toast them. 2a00:23cc:d248:8901:c8ff:7450:1e9b:1a6d (talk) 08:05, 15 July 2026 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Perhaps your thing was something like Tunnock's#Teacakes - But I believe there were other similar sweeties/mini-cakes, which might have been even more marshmallowy.

Yeah, not really the best idea to stick a stick through one of those and toast it (though not impossible, of course). We'd be melting the chocolate off before toasting the teacakes. If I understand what S'mores are, at least the chocolate has a cracker-like substrate to stay stuck to (while lightly toasting the marshmallow edges).

Though in my youth, in the UK, it was also mostly savoury things we toasted on a campfire. Flour-based 'twists' (water, a pinch of salt, need into a very basic dough, form into a long 'worm' and twist around the poking-end of the stick) were one of the most common things to cook up. That wasn't something wrapped in tin-foil/wet-leaves and buried in the hot ashes (post-fire, or by careful curation of a gap in the 'live' one), or perhaps some sort of meat on a griddle (this was before US-style 'barbecue' culture became the common thing it is now). 92.23.5.229 19:12, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

I only went camping once in my teens, scouts in 1966, and we never toasted anything. Mind you, it rained much of the time so campfires were a problem. 2A00:23CC:D248:8901:C8FF:7450:1E9B:1A6D 08:03, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

Funny (or embarrassing): my 1st thought was that they were BBQing the board of directors of their company, explaining the ick of eating the marshmallows... 205.250.172.90 00:21, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

LOL. Don't eat the rich... they probably taste awful! Compost them instead. 2A0D:5600:9:A26:0:0:0:35 18:45, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

Re: kinds of board, I think it's pretty safe to assume PCBs in that setting, especially with the dialogue about thermal limits. Re: Tunnocks Teacakes, They would definitely be ruined by toasting them over a fire. The alternatives from other brands tend to be sweeter, but the marshmallor is less marshmallowy somehow, and they're not as tall. Re: camprife cooking in the UK, I've seen marshmallows toasted (and done it once) in the 90s, but it's not very common here and I've never even seen a 'smore. I've had rabbit cooked that way, though. My dad shot one to feed a wandering homeless man, and we all had some. He didn't trust him enough to let him in the house, and we didn't have food to spare. 2A0D:5600:9:A26:0:0:0:35 18:36, 23 July 2026 (UTC)
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