1834: Lunch Order

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Lunch Order

Title text: GO FOR LUNCH, REPEAT, GO FOR LUNCH.

Explanation

Autocorrect is a feature in many software text-entry applications (such as smartphone "keyboards") that will make changes to entered text that it identifies as misspelled in order to quickly increase legibility of the final text. While this process typically makes text entry quicker and easier for users, sometimes the automatically corrected text will not match what the user intended to send, which can lead to miscommunication.

In most circumstances, military units charged with the maintenance of active nuclear weapons will receive their orders to employ those weapons based on direct communication from a commanding authority, these forces in the United States are commanded by the United States Strategic Command. The majority of modern nuclear weapons are prepared to be deployed by rocket launch.

The joke involves anachronisms. To our knowledge, the last time the United States were at readiness to launch nuclear missiles at a hostile power was June 1980, while the function we know today as Autocorrect would not enter development until the 1990's. That said, the comic might be playing off recent fears involving hostilities between the United States and North Korea; if any launch preparations have been taken in 2017, they were not declassified by the time this comic was published.

The comic plays on the similarity of the words "launch" and "lunch." By receiving an order to "Lunch" instead of "Launch," nuclear conflict was avoided.

The title text plays on the similarity between two phrases: "GO FOR LAUNCH" is the standard way to express the Launch status check for a rocket (and means that all checks have passed and launch can proceed), whereas "GO FOR LUNCH" expresses the more mundane act of simply beginning one's lunch break. Despite the repetition (which is intended to reduce the chance of a miscommunication), the autocorrect still managed to distort the message a further two times.

Transcript

[A control panel is showed, three Hairy's are in there, the rightmost one is controlling the panel, the two others are talking.]

Hairy 1: Sir-Strategic command has sent us a lunch order.

Hairy 2: Don't they have anything better to do?

[Below the panel is a caption.]

Caption: Everyone complains about autocorrect, but we forget about the time it prevented a nuclear war.

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Discussion

First! Hee Hee... Anyways... I've been waiting for the site to come back up to find out about "the time autocorrect stopped a nuclear war"... I was sure any such potential war would have been years ago (which this description confirmed), so any such saving would technically be a typo or a mere misspelling and not autocorrect, but I figured that's what this meant. Seeing the explanation now, is this situation just a hypothetical from Randall? The comic is just portraying that? (I didn't make the launch/lunch connection until now, I can only see the title text on this site, which was down) :) - NiceGuy1 108.162.219.16 21:31, 12 May 2017 (UTC) I finally signed up! This comment is mine. NiceGuy1 (talk) 05:51, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

It might be a long shot, according to wikipedia WarGames the movie released on May 7th 1983. 34 years and a day before this comic was posted (IMDB state May 19th 1983 as the release date). 141.101.105.72

The premise could have originated with this short-lived Saturday-morning TV program: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_Out_Space_Nuts Elsbree (talk) 16:10, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

A chem professor I know once gave a presentation on "Monomers, dinners and polymers". Nialpxe (talk) 14:23, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

This is obviously referring to a russian submarine in the cold war. America had litarally blocked cuba off using boats and russia was coming to help cuba. Russian submarines were allowed to launch torpedos when hit. One submarine was reported to have heard a loud noise but did decide not to shoot. In the end russia couldnt take the pressure anymore and had to admit america had more balls. The fact the submarine didnt shoot prevented a WWIII

Okay....here's a comment added weeks later...."Go for covfefe. Repeat. Go for covfefe!"

In Russian, similar missle-related pun will be "приказ пукать" as replacement for "приказ пускать". oke is, "пукать" is the infinitve of verb whih means "to fart". Приступите к пуку, повторяю, приступите к пуку

pedantic: you could also have a 'Launch (the product) order' (esp. when word gets out that a competitor product's time table has been sped up. 141.101.77.232 18:21, 18 October 2021 (UTC)