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| Planet Killer Comet Margarita |
 Title text: I'll take mine on the rocks, no ice. |
Explanation
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This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a MARGARITAFIED METEOR - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. |
A margarita is a popular cocktail made from tequila, agave, triple sec, and lime juice. The frozen margarita variety is blended with ice, and this comic suggests making an enormous drink using the ice from a comet nucleus – the one depicted having more than a passing similarity to the much studied 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. Based on the amount of ice in a typical comet, it extrapolates the quantity of the other ingredients. The size of this drink will fill Lake Mead, a massive reservoir on the Colorado River created by the water held by the Hoover Dam.
Beyond the unusual quantities and mixing method, Randall uses the general term "orange liqueur" here rather than specifying triple sec. (As of this writing, orange liqueur redirects to "triple sec" on Wikipedia.) Assuming that each oil tanker holds exactly the same amount of liquid, the tequila:triple sec ratio in the comic is 4:1, meaning more tequila is used than necessary (the ratio should be 5:2).
Armageddon is a movie starring Bruce Willis about a team of astronauts and oil drill engineers on a mission to blow up an asteroid that's on a collision course with the Earth. The oil drill would be used to drill a hole deep into the asteroid, into which they'll drop a nuclear bomb to destroy it. The comic suggests using the same technique to explode the comet nucleus to get the ice. It should be noted that consuming any cocktail which has been infused with the radioactive byproducts commonly resulting from the detonation of a thermonuclear weapon may pose health risks which exceed those typically associated with the consumption of alcoholic beverages in general.[actual citation needed]
In the title text, he asks for it "on the rocks", with no ice. In the context of cocktails this means to serve with ice. But the comet nucleus also contains lots of rocky material. If you explode the nucleus and remove the ice, the drink will be full of rocks.
In the header, it says "Today's comic was drawn for Daniel Becker, based on his winning question submitted to the What If? 2 contest." As explained in the What If? entry melting a comet on Earth has enough negative effects on the climate to negate the cooling effect a couple thousand times over – thus this margarita may in fact proudly wear the title "planet killer".
Assuming an average oil tanker size of 25.8 million gallons, this provides approximately 1,705 servings of tequila per adult on the planet. Therefore it is a planet killer in terms of alcohol poisoning and killing off all humans of adult drinking age.
Transcript
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This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks. |
- The Planet Killer
- Comet Ice Margarita
- Ingredients
- 4,000 oil tankers full of tequila
- 1,000 tankers full of orange liqueur
- 1,000 tankers full of agave
- The juice from 20 trillion limes
- One comet nucleus
- Instructions
- (1) Drain Lake Mead, combine ingredients behind Hoover Dam
- (2) Detonate comet using Bruce Willis's drilling rig from Armageddon (1998)
- Boom
- (3) Dispense drink through Hoover Dam turbines
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