3316: Siege Engine
| 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[edit]
|
This is one of 57 incomplete explanations: |
This comic compares siege engines to the Chernobyl New Safe Confinement. In the latter case, a containment structure had to be assembled some distance from the reactor, then moved over the reactor, as the radiation exposure from construction near it would have been too great. A siege engine is also often a covered structure that is moved towards another structure. The assembled structure was them moved to cover the reactor in a much shorter exposure window for the construction crew, achieving the goal of containment while minimising radiation damage to the workers. In the comic, a similar large rolling structure being used as a siege engine, and is being moved to completely enclose the fortification, which was so well defended that it repelled direct assaults. In the title text, it mentions the elephant's foot, a radioactive mass of corium formed beneath the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.
Transcript[edit]
|
This is one of 38 incomplete transcripts: |
- [A large structure on wheels is moving towards a castle]
- After our normal siege engines were foiled by the castle's defences, our king hired the Chernobyl cleanup engineers.
Discussion
First Comment!!! Ozymandias (talk)
the trouble of visiting the wiki to see an explanation of a new comic, only to find that thanks to your new-xkcd-page announcement system, you're visiting the comic immediately after it's been released and nobody's had the chance to explain it yet; first world problems indeed - Vaedez (talk) 05:48, 27 October 2026 (UTC)
Add comment