2752: Salt Dome

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Salt Dome

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.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by Tsunami or Tidal Wave - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

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 professional 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 (and a salt shaker can indeed be seen on their table).

Cueball also 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 is employing it to an absurd degree here.

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. However, he then makes the not-quite-absurd, but still amusing remark that in turn, the fictional^{[citation needed]} Strategic Salt Reserve simply consists of completely-intact salt domes, which obviously means they are full of salt and as such serve their function as a salt reserve perfectly.

Transcript

This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks.

[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)