2752: Salt Dome

Salt Dome

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Title text: The US uses hollowed-out salt domes to store the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and non-hollowed-out ones to store the Strategic Salt Reserve.

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Explanation

This is one of 67 incomplete explanations: Created by STRATEGIC SALT SPREADER - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

This comic refers to how downwards pressure in one area of the world can cause upwards pressure in another, causing salt domes to rise up.

In the comic, Beret Guy and Ponytail are sitting at a table and eating dinner, alongside Cueball, who is presumably a geologist. Thus, when asked to "pass the salt," Cueball, with his extensive knowledge of the Earth's crust and its interactions with the surface world, is aware of this phenomenon, and as such is stomping on his chair in order to create downward pressure on the ground beneath. This apparently works exactly as intended, as a salt dome begins rising out of the floor and even begins to break through the dinner table. The caption humorously remarks that this is what will happen if you ask any geologist to "pass the salt," which conventionally means to simply hand a salt shaker or dispenser to another diner who cannot reach it. A salt shaker, presumably containing the salt intended to be passed, can be seen on their table.

Cueball mentions overburden pressure, a geological term referring to the pressure that outer layers of rock exert on inner layers. This is what usually causes the rising of salt domes, though Cueball's stomping on his chair would not produce sufficient overburden pressure to raise a salt dome.Template:fact However this is exactly the kind of Beret Guy is a very strange character. Sometimes he takes these strange tendencies into the supernatural.

Click to expand for a more detailed explanation:

Explanation

In the early comics he was mostly just a strange and naive guy. There is an early start to the strangeness, but that power could also be attributed to Cueball (at least it is a shared power) in 248.

From comic 1088, Beret Guy begins to appear frequently with these strange powers, typically not related to each other, except that he has some issues with electrical sockets and power cords as seen in 1293 and 1395. (See also 509: Induced Current and the title text of 614: Woodpecker, regarding power cords, but not these strange powers.) He is also capable of waiting for very long time as seen both in 1088, 1617 and 2987.

Many of these apparent powers manifest as objects behaving strangely around him. It is unclear whether these are in fact powers inherent to Beret Guy or whether the objects are simply cursed; as indicated in 1772, most of his possessions were acquired from shops specializing in cursed items.

Here is a list of the comics where Beret Guy displays strange powers that are beyond the realm of possibility.

List of abilities

1. 248: Creates hypothetical situations which trap him and others around him. These situations are spaces, formed with thin, flexible walls that can be torn open with a knife.
2. 1032: Is able to photocopy 3d objects to create clones of said object
3. 1088: Capable of waiting in the same place for highly extended periods of time, presumably without sustenance
4. 1099: He has the ability to grow wings at will, which can extend infinitely if he chooses to do so.
5. 1135: He can persuade spiders to spin their silk in such a way that it forms a wearable shirt.
6. 1158: He can use his imagination to manifest physical objects
7. 1293: His office has an outlet which can dispense soup when needed.
8. 1388: He can subduct himself through the floor to form mountains in his room.
9. 1395: Is able to inflate a laptop by blowing into a power cord, implying that 1) he exhales helium and 2) he can change the properties of any object at will.
10. 1422: His phone has the same properties as a dying star, expanding and exploding as it runs out of power.
11. 1486: He is able to harness the energy of a vacuum cleaner and fly using it.
12. 1490: He can see individual atoms and distinguish elements apart, but he cannot discern what these atoms make up (he cannot distinguish a human from a dog).
13. 1522: By standing on a stepladder and looking through a magnifying glass, he can examine life on exoplanets in detail.
14. 1614: Another example of changing the properties of objects at will.
15. 1617: He can survive without oxygen for many years. He is also able to gain all necessary nutrients via eating newspaper.
16. 1922: Yet another example of changing the properties of objects. He is also apparently able to make dogs follow his exact commands.
17. 2310: He has higher dimensional bones, leading to a much greater than normal attraction to the Great attractor. This allows him to sleep and rest on walls and ceilings.
18. 2325: Nearby flowing water flows towards him rather than towards the nearest drainage basin. It appears that he is not capable of controlling this.
19. 2376: Has the knowledge of a cursed amulet that attracts malicious ghosts. He claims that the can do battle with ghosts, although it is unknown whether this is an ability of his or just him being odd as normal.
20. 2446: He had the ability to create very large clumps of Spike proteins after receiving the COVID vaccine, although it is unknown as to whether he is still able to do this.
21. 2534: He can construct an object which can stretch and flex to at least 254 miles in length.
22. 2695: He created volcano seeds which, when planted, create a tiny volcano.
23. 2710: He created a hydroelectric dam that produces more water than passed into it.
24. 2805: He has infinite arm strength, as he is able to hold on to a balloon using one arm for at least 1500 years. He experiences no adverse affects during this time.
25. 2850: He is able to influence human thoughts at will by changing the status of his house on Google Maps.
26. 2987: He stands still for an entire 20 years, presumably without any food or water, to tectonic surf; although he only moved about a meter in that time.
27. 3046: He is able to utilize an anomalous ancestry site to figure out that he is related to long-extinct Stromatolites.
28. 3179: He is able to estimate the weight of any object that gets hooked onto a fishing rod he is holding.

Beret Guy usually displays (similar power is shown in 1388: Subduction License). So it is quite interesting that it is Cueball that has these kind of powers, especially with Beret Guy present at the table. Maybe it is because Beret Guy would never represent a geologist.

In the title text, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is a United States government reserve of oil in case of emergencies. Randall observes the actually true fact that artificial caves within hollowed-out salt domes create the spaces for the government to store this oil. The joke in the title text is that Randall claims that the salt domes that are not hollow yet are uses to store the US salt reserve. Of course this could be seen as true, but this salt is not put there by humans, but by nature, and is thus not stored there by any government.

Ordinary salt is also available in abundance throughout the U.S.[1] so there is no need for any kind of salt reserves, strategic or otherwise.Template:fact By contrast the UK does maintain an Emergency Salt Reserve[2], as part of a Strategic Salt Protocol[3], to ensure highways can be gritted during prolonged wintry weather.

Transcript

This is one of 46 incomplete transcripts: Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

[Cueball, Beret Guy and Ponytail are sitting at a table. Beret Guy and Ponytail sit patiently; Cueball is stomping on his chair, and the ground has been dented very slightly by the legs of his chair. A white column of salt has burst through the ground and is rising up, slightly cracking and bending the table in the process. There are plates of food, drinking glasses, and a salt shaker on the table. One of the glasses has fallen, releasing what seems to be wine.]

STOMP STOMP

Cueball: Just a little more overburden pressure...

Cueball: The dome is almost through the table...

[Caption below the panel:]

Never ask a geologist to pass the salt.

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Discussion

Made a guess. By me. (talk) 22:39, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Odd that Beret Guy’s not the one doing it. We’ve seen White Hat act a normal extra character before, but having Beret Guy in a comic not doing anything strange feels wrong. Intara (talk) 04:09, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Agree. Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 08:37, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

I have just mentioned this in the explanation and compared Cueball's power with Beret Guys strange powers. --Kynde (talk) 09:39, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

My reading of it is that Beret Guy does strange things because he doesn't truly understand how things work (the way that scientific consensus understands, c.f. Vacuum Energy). This geologist is doing a strange thing because he is just so good at the regular science he knows. Success through hypercompetancy, not hypernaïvity, in modulating pressure-waves (like a phased-array transmitter?) from the four chair-leg points sent through theoretically knowable layers of floor and bedrock.

It's a stretch, but given the changes needed to put Beret Guy into protagonist position (it'd be just "don't ask this guy...", not a geologist) then I think it's a perfectly valid compositional choice on behalf of Randall. (Who can do as he likes, without my trying to be apologist for him, but I'll explain my conclusions anyway.) 172.71.178.64 10:28, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

The text mentions the UK Salt reserve, used to prevent black ice on roads. I assume that US states that get sufficient snowfall also maintain reserves of salt and grit to keep their roads open. Or does it simply get too cold for ice to be of any use? -- Arachrah (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Yes, states and municipalities in the US definitely maintain reserves of salt for use in treating roads during winter weather. Such reserves are commonly stored in dome-shaped structures (often seen near highway interchanges), which I assume is part of the allusion in the title text. I don't believe this statement in the current explanation is completely accurate: "Ordinary salt is also available in abundance throughout the U.S. so there is no need for any kind of salt reserves, strategic or otherwise." This may be true at a Federal level, but having grown up in the northeastern U.S., I recall hearing of some of the smaller municipalities running low on/out of salt during especially harsh winters. CarLuva (talk) 14:25, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Agreed and fixed. Can you find a photograph of such dome structures? I've lived in areas dependent on road salting most of my life without ever having any idea what the stockpiles look like. 172.69.22.71 14:40, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Much better, thanks! A quick Google image search for "road salt dome" yields plenty of photos of them. 172.71.82.16 16:01, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Given that selection of images, I question the link specifically to "monolithic dome" in the explanation (and the hatnote on The Other Wiki's "salt dome" page) - many of those photos are clearly of structures assembled from multiple parts; some appear to be gridshells, others possibly fabricated as a set of tall of segments. - IMSoP (talk) 17:20, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Woah, my cousin told me those were for alfalfa and silage. Huh! 172.69.134.36 16:01, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

The same structures can be used for both. If you see them by a stockyard, think silage. By roads, think salt. 162.158.166.172 17:54, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Covered salt piles are relatively new. Prior to 2000, or there abouts, salt was stored uncovered piled on bare earth. Some would be lost due to rain and runoff. But salt was cheaper than salt barns. However excess salt causes environmental problems and storage losses were unnecessary. There was some gnashing of teeth when regulations mandated covered salt barns. 172.71.222.129 04:03, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Hmmm, I also see a somewhat indecent connotation between passing the salt and passing a kidney stone, in particular that the salt in the picture is being extruded through an orifice in the ground... -- 172.68.138.179 09:55, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Maybe Beret guy lended his powers to a geologist.172.68.51.204

It was Toph tier XD haha, get it? Toph! 162.158.94.21 05:29, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

How long would it take for the salt to be pushed up to the surface? 42.book.addict (talk) 18:17, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
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