3221: Landscape Features

Landscape Features

|< < Prev #3221 (March 18, 2026)

Title text: 'Well, there's speculation that it's due to a mantle hotspot.' --a geologist who's trying to cover up the fact that they didn't hear your question

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Explanation

This is one of 76 incomplete explanations: This page was created by a MANTLE HOTSPOT. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

This comic is a map of the United States, purporting to explain some of the most significant geologic/human activity in each region. For each area it names one major mechanism (plate tectonics, erosion, volcanism, etc.) which it claims is responsible for the majority of interesting formations and features.

Many of these causes are summarized in a single word answer, which doesn't do much to explain a complex landscape. A few phrases are longer but still don't actually explain much. And some areas are just labeled "geology".

The title text plays off the fact that a large part of geology is concerned with activity in the mantle, so explaining some geologic feature by saying "there's speculation that it's due to a mantle hotspot" does not give much information. Saying this would let a distracted geologist buy time while responding to a missed question. Many of Earth's seemingly out-of-place features (e.g., Hawaii hotspot, Iceland, the Snake River Plain in Idaho, etc.) form from such mantle hotspots. Thus, it's an easy go-to explanation for many of the geological features people are often most curious about.

Location	Description	Explanation
Adirondack Mountains	???	The Adirondack Mountains are made of billion-year-old rock but were uplifted relatively recently, within the last 5–10 million years. They’re still rising today despite being far from any plate boundary, forming a dome with no clear tectonic cause, thus the "???" due to an ongoing mystery as to their formation.
Most of northern conterminous U.S.	glaciers	During the Last Glacial Period, this area was covered by an ice sheet that left its marks on the landscape, in the form of moraines, eskers, glacial erratics, etc.
Appalachian Mountains	continents colliding	Geology of the Appalachians
Near Mississippi & Ohio Rivers	rivers
Southeastern U.S.	farming
Southern Florida	ongoing disputes between limestone and water	Karst topography
Southern Missouri/Northern Arkansas	geology	The Ozark Mountains, which are composed primarily of ancient limestone and dolomite, form a rugged landscape characterized by hills, caves, and springs. Prolonged erosion of these soluble rocks has produced extensive karst features, including sinkholes and underground rivers.
Great Plains	farming	The lack of other major events left the terrain relatively level, and areas were historically shaped by either herds of bison or indigenous agriculture, both limiting the growth of forests. "Farming" is likely a reference to the more recent mix of large-scale crop farming (especially staples like wheat and corn) and herding (bison replace by cattle).
Central Idaho/Yellowstone	a supervolcano	The Snake River Plain is an area of high-elevation flat plain in the otherwise contigious Rocky Mountains. It was formed by the movement of the contenential plate over the Yellowstone Hotspot.
American West surrounding Idaho/Yellowstone	geology
Immediately off of West coast up to the Four Corners	volcanoes
Eastern Washington	megafloods	Most likely a reference to the Missoula floods and the Bonneville flood, a series of floods caused by glacial ice dam failures causing massive lakes to flood large regions of present-day eastern Washington. These floods actually continued all the way to the Pacific Ocean, altering ht shape of the Columbia River Gorge and flooding much of the Willamette River in western Oregon. The comic may have simplified these to avoid bisecting the adjacent zones along the coast.
West Coast	a plate tectonic speedrun	Most likely a reference to the significant tectonic activity on the western coast of the US, caused by the collisions of the Juan de Fuca plate, Pacific plate, and the North American plate.
Desert Southwest	water and time
Northern Alaska	geology
Aleutian Islands	volcanoes	The Aleutian Islands are a continuation of the Alaskan Aleutian Range, and form part of the Ring of Fire. Most of the islands in the chain bear signs of being formed by volcanos, and many volcanic cones still exist on the islands today.
Southeast Alaska	glaciers	This part of Alaska (including Glacier National Park) and western Canada has many glaciers that are still carving the landscape.
Hawaiian island chain	volcanoes	Hawaii, including the Northwest Hawaiian Islands, and seamounts northwest of it were formed by a tectonic plate moving over a hotspot, with volcanoes erupting and forming land as it went. The entire chain can be seen here.

This map with subdivisions follows up on a number of prior (non-cursed) maps representing (supposed) geographical splits of some conversational outcome or other, such as 1407: Worst Hurricane and 2108: Carbonated Beverage Language Map.

Transcript

This is one of 46 incomplete transcripts: Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

[A small panel showing Cueball pointing toward the left and Ponytail standing to his right overlaps the top of a much larger panel containing a map.]

Cueball: What's up with this weird landscape?

Ponytail: Oh, it was caused by ...

[The larger panel shows a map of the United States, with southern Canada, northern Mexico, and most of Cuba and the Bahamas visible as well. An inset at lower left shows Alaska along with part of northwest Canada, with a smaller inset showing Hawaii. International borders and coastlines are indicated in black, and state borders are indicated in gray. Red lines divide the United States into irregularly shaped zones (the red lines indicating zones do not cross into the neighboring countries, except in the Alaska inset), with each zone being labeled with red text. Each text label begins with "..." to indicate that it is the conclusion of Ponytail's sentence. The following are the labels used:]

[Main map:]

... a plate tectonics speedrun

... volcanoes

... megafloods

... a supervolcano

... geology

... water and time

... glaciers

... rivers

... continents colliding

... ???

... ongoing disputes between limestone and water

[On the main map, the label "... glaciers" appears three times in various places in the same contiguous zone that runs from Washington state to Maine. The label "... farming" appears twice, representing two separate zones, one that runs from Montana to Louisiana and the other that runs from New Jersey to Mississippi. The label "... geology" appears twice on the main map, representing two separate zones, one that runs from Washington state to Texas and the other being a roughly circular region mostly in southern Missouri and northern Arkansas.]

[Alaska inset:]

... geology

... volcanoes

... glaciers

[Hawaii inset:]

... volcanoes

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Discussion

F1rst P0st!!! R128 (talk) 17:27, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

The ???? in New York is probably the Adirondack Mountains:

About 10 million years ago, the region began to be uplifted. It has been lifted about 7,000 feet (2,000 m) and is continuing at about 0.08 inches (2 mm) per year, which is greater than the rate of denudation. The cause of the uplift is unknown, but geologists theorize that it is caused by a hot spot in the Earth's crust.[18] A recent study has revealed a column of seismically slow materials about 30 to 50 miles (50 to 80 km) deep beneath the Adirondack Mountains,[20] which was interpreted to be the upwelling asthenosphere contributing to the uplift of the mountains.

Zzzt (talk) 17:58, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

Geology being the cause of geological events is a tautology.--Henke37 (talk) 18:26, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

It's only a tautology where the plates are separating. It's a "compressology" where they're colliding, etc. ;) 81.179.199.253 21:36, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

conterguous* 137.25.230.78 20:34, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

I wonder if we should have a category for Isogloss. (Whether isoseme or some other variation.) I added in the two others 'of this basic illustrative nature' that I remembered off the top of my head, but I think there might be more. 81.179.199.253 21:33, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

Sections to explain

I'm not a geologist, so I don't know how to answer these questions, but I will leave this template here to eventually be copied into the article:

Location	Description	Explanation
Adirondack Mountains	???
Most of northern U.S. border	Glaciers
Appalachian Mountains	Continents colliding
Mississippi river basin	Rivers
SE U.S.	Farming
Southern Florida	Ongoing disputes between limestone and water
Southern Missouri/Northern Arkansas	...geology
Central column of U.S.	Farming
Central Idaho/Yellowstone	A supervolcano
Eastern Washington	A megaflood
West Coast	...a plate tectonic speedrun.
SW	Water and time
Northern Alaska	...geology
Aleutians	Volcanoes
Hawaiian island chain	Volcanoes

Fephisto (talk) 18:59, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

...uh, why don't I just copy it into the article blank for now, actually?Fephisto (talk) 19:00, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

This page should be in Category: Comics with color 50.47.110.240 21:05, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

New here, and don't know the formatting, but the table is currently missing the Cascade and Sierra Nevada "Vocanoes" region, though it's pretty self-explanatory. 136.56.99.85 (talk) 21:29, 18 March 2026 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Got it. Fephisto (talk) 00:12, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

Also missing the “…geology” section surrounding the supervolcano. 146.115.160.214 (talk) 21:58, 18 March 2026 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Got it.Fephisto (talk) 00:11, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

I feel like comic 3141 is worth a mention here, but I'm not sure where to put it. MrCandela (talk) 22:49, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

Added to the Adirondock row. Fephisto (talk) 00:12, 19 March 2026 (UTC)
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