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]
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This is one of 57 incomplete explanations: |
Siege engines were large constructions often brought to a location, or built from scratch, to help attack fortified positions such as castles during a military operation known as a siege. They would be deployed at some distance from the target, beyond the defender's range, and then either be moved closer to the defended position or use their in-built long-range capability to bombard the defenders. The ones moved closer would include those that were intended to make contact with the castle, such as battering rams or siege towers, and would be equipped with protective roofs/walls to let the attackers use them relatively safely within the range of the defenders' own weaponry, in order to either climb/breach the walls or force open a sealed entrance.
For whatever reason, in this particular case the 'standard' siege engines have not helped, in what may have been a medieval siege against a medieval castle. In a break from the historic theme, the besiegers have turned to the designers of the Chernobyl New Safe Confinement to solve their problems. This might help in several possible ways. Some of the possible aims of a siege are to prevent the besieged from leaving and for any reinforcing troops or supplies to be provided, in a process known as investment. The containment structure would effectively serve to physically block these accesses. Alternatively, in creating a siege-structure many times larger than the besieged one, it may give them a far greater set of options for bombarding or invading the target. On top of that, at the very least, the act of being encased would isolate those inside from daylight and weather: the lack of natural daylight could be used to confuse or psychologically influence the defenders; if they are relying upon rain for enough drinking water for the long term then they're going to be thirsty. Just the possibility that the besieging force is capable of ordering up such a large structure might also be enough to make them think twice about the wisdom of trying to turtle-down in a castle.
The real-life structure in use at Chernobyl had to be assembled some distance from the reactor, then moved over the reactor, as construction near the final location would have involved too great a degree of exposure to radiation from the site. The assembled structure was then moved along prepared tracks to cover the reactor in a much shorter exposure window for the construction crew, effectively achieving the goal of containment while minimising radiation damage to the workers. The method of motion used for this involved using hydraulic cylinders to slide the structure along greased pads, as wheels were not considered possible to use under such a massive construction. The comic version seems to be using either many self-propelled modular transporters or perhaps some log-based medieval equivalent that might require moving rollers to the front (though there's no sign of anybody doing this, unless they're intentionally keeping hidden from the defences of the fortress). The Chernobyl structure was also given a rather complex shape of doors that hugged the superstructure of the original buildings that it would have to pass over, while the comic's version has a far simpler, but possibly far more imposing, doorway.
In the title text it mentions the elephant's foot, an unintentionally created radioactive mass of corium formed beneath the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant which formed as part of the meltdown that prompted the creation of the containment building. Due to its extreme radioactivity, being near the Elephant's Foot can result in a lethal radiation dose in minutes. In addition to the offensive and/or psychological pressures of the containing structure, actually adding a large lethal radioactive mass to the inside of the siege-container would cause even more problems for the defenders they have now trapped in its vicinity.
Transcript[edit]
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This is one of 38 incomplete transcripts: |
- [A large structure on wheels is moving towards a castle.]
- RUMBLE
- [Caption below the panel:]
- After our normal siege engines were foiled by the castle's defences, our king hired the Chernobyl cleanup engineers.
Discussion
First Comment!!! Ozymandias (talk)
- *Rolls impermeable enclosure over the top of the comment* 86.22.132.121 09:35, 27 October 2026 (UTC)
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)
Instead of a Trojan Horse, he sent in the Russian Sarcophagus! Mlarrison11 (talk) 11:57, 27 October 2026 (UTC)
In Soviet Russia, Sarcophagus covers YOU!Oh wait, I'm not seeing the reversal joke here. 64.201.132.210 17:59, 27 October 2026 (UTC)
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