Key Messages
How To Do Things You Never Wanted: Exploring Zany Possibilities In Everyday Problems
If you love zany, off-the-wall ideas and madcap adventures, then look no further than Randall Munroe’s How To Book Summary.
This collection of completely impractical solutions to everyday problems offers a unique take on the world based on math, science and history.
You’ll be taken on a journey through some of reality’s most absurd possibilities as you explore how to crash land an airplane into a submarine, use a moon to generate electricity on Mars, and even explore the universe by (almost) traveling faster than light!
It’s a truly wild ride and it’ll open your eyes to some of the crazy opportunities this world has to offer.
The Best Places To Crash Land A Small Airplane
When you find yourself in the unfortunate situation of needing to crash an airplane, slow and steady wins the race.
Your best bet is to find a freshly planted farm field and try to land the plane there.
Anything too tall or dense can flip your plane, so opt for something like cornfields until mid-June at the latest.
Alternatively, a cow pasture can also be used for crash landing – just watch out for cows!
Avoid any rainy days as well, since mud can hinder your landing significantly.
You may also be able to land on top of a train or flatbed truck that’s traveling in the same direction as your plane.
Just make sure you slow down sufficiently so that you can land smoothly on top of it and retract your wing flaps immediately after landing.
Finally, if you’re flying over the sea, look for an aircraft carrier or surfaced submarine and ask its captain to steer into the wind so that you have headwinds of up to 60 miles per hour as you approach.
Remember to keep your throttle handy so that you can take off again quickly should anything go wrong during landing.
No matter what, remain calm and don’t give up – with the right technique and an abundance of caution, even tough situations like this can still end successfully!
Building A Pool? Avoid Nuclear Bombs And Opt For An Industrial Plastic Shredder Instead
Filling an in-ground pool without a water pipeline can be quite the challenge, but it’s certainly doable.
You can get your 20,000 gallons of water by ordering 150,000 bottles of Fiji water from Amazon according to Natures Nutrition’s How To Book Summary.
Although it will cost you a pretty penny—roughly a quarter of a million dollars—it’ll still be less than detonating a nuclear bomb to open each bottle!
Alternatively, you could use an industrial plastic shredder like the Brentwood AZ15WL 15kW.
It can process 30 tons of plastic and liquid per hour so the job would only take you two hours or so.
The price tag for these machines is steep – five or six figures – but it’s still cheaper than nuclear bombs!
Digging A Hole For Your In-Ground Swimming Pool – From Shovels To Mining Excavators
Digging a gigantic hole in the ground is simple if you have the right tools.
You can start off with a shovel, which is capable of removing 0.3 to 1 cubic meters of dirt per hour.
However, if you want to complete the task much faster, you can use a vacuum excavator – it’s like a giant vacuum cleaner that sucks up dirt and even has a high-power jet of water or air that blasts through tightly packed soil as well.
If that isn’t enough for your project, then you should consider using a mining excavator.
This is an industrial tool used in open-pit mines, and it allows you to remove one layer of earth at a time while slowly working your way into the center of your hole.
With this method, it’s possible to dig incredibly large holes – just think about the central pit of the Bingham Canyon copper mine in Utah!
No matter what kind of excavation project you’re undertaking, using these specialized tools make digging huge chunks of earth out of the ground extraordinarily easy!
Lava Moats: How To Keep Burglars Out While Controlling The Temperature Of Your Home
Building a reliable lava moat is all about proper heat management.
To get the lava to melt, you need to heat it up to at least 800 degrees celsius.
But if you want your lava to glow bright orange, you’ll have to bump it up to 1000 degrees.
For a modest protection while still maintaining intense heat, 900 degrees can suffice.
You’ll also need an additional supply of energy to keep the heat constant as the lava loses heat.
However, with this comes the challenge of controlling how much of that heat enters and affects the home itself.
You don’t want your property too hot for anyone but burglars!
Thankfully, if you live near a cold body of water, you can use its massive capacity for heat storage and pump that water through the walls of your house so as not to make living conditions unbearable.
In fact, many companies such as Google follow this exact process when cooling down their data centers on coastal regions like Finland.
How To Power Your Martian Home By Tapping The Energy Of A Supersonic Wind Turbine Tied To Mars’ Moon, Phobos
It’s possible to generate electricity on Mars without relying on energy sources from Earth, with enough creativity and initiative.
This is because the atmosphere on Mars is too thin and slow-moving to power a regular wind turbine, but so far it has been possible to make use of one simple solution.
A 5,820 kilometer-long tether can be tied to Phobos, the nearest moon of Mars, allowing the tether to dangle into the atmosphere of the Red Planet.
Normally too thin for a turbine blade to rotate, this atmospheric speed offers winds with the equivalent of 150 kilowatts per square meter when hit by a high speed turbine.
While that may seem like a lot, it’s actually comparable to what goes into an average US household in terms of power usage every year.
The second step involves attaching a supersonic wind turbine – typically used in rockets and high-speed aircraft – onto the tether itself.
And Lastly, using either microwaves or batteries to transfer energy from this turbine back into your Martian home completes this innovative process.
Thanks to these three steps and a little bit of creativity, you don’t have rely on Earth-derived resources in order to generate electricity on Mars!
Go Beyond The Speed Of Light With A Clever Hack: Accelerating At 1G Can Take You Somewhere Unbelievable
Although it may seem impossible to travel faster than the speed of light, there is a clever hack that almost allows you to achieve this.
By using a 1g acceleration on a spaceship and allowing the ‘time-dilation’ effect, you can gain tremendous distance in just a few subjective years or months.
The trick is to keep continuously accelerating, so with each passing subjective year, your speed will increase exponentially.
Over time, the disparity between your perception of time and an outside observer’s perception of time grows ever more exaggerated – meaning you may have traveled billions of light-years by the time the outside universe has aged just ten trillion years!
If you are persistent and stay the course, you can indeed almost reach speeds faster than the speed of light.
How To Quickly Estimate Someone’S Age Using Marks Left By History
If you want to know when someone was born without asking, all you need is a bit of knowledge in history and science.
For instance, people who were born in the era between 1945 and 1962 have small amounts of strontium-90 trapped in their teeth due to the thousands of nuclear weapons tested by the US and USSR during those times.
This chemical got incorporated into the children’s bones and teeth as they grew up.
Moreover, if you find elevated levels of lead in a person’s teeth, they might be either post-1972 Gen-Xers or pre-1972 Baby Boomers since cars that ran on leaded gasoline released lots of this contaminant into the atmosphere around mid-20th century.
A clue for distinguishing between them is to look for smallpox vaccine scars left behind by routine vaccinations which ended in 1972.
How To Win An Election? A Look At The Unconventional, Name-Changing Strategies Of Politicians
While having a likable personality, a compelling vision of the future, excellent political skills and the willingness to do hard work are important tools when running for office, it’s not necessary to rely solely on these attributes if you have any hope of winning a political race.
Take, for example, the case of “Above Znoneofthe,” who changed his name in order to run for an Ontario provincial election.
While the effort was commendable, his trick failed as he was listed under his real name at the top of the ballot instead of being sorted by last name.
Alternatively, those who want to win an election can always resort to moving to Pennsylvania and changing their name to Bob Casey!
In fact from 1960s through today some five different men named Bob Casey have run for various state or federal office.
In a 1978 primary election, one Bob Casey ran for governor while another ran for lieutenant governor – creating quite the confusing issue amongst voters.
Despite all this opposition and mix up caused by similar names, The Real Bob Casey (the first) still won in 1986!
So even if you don’t feel you have the necessary charismas or competencies needed to run a successful campaign, it’s still possible to reach your goal with a bit of creativity – or simply a name change!
Wrap Up
Finally, it’s important to remember that although there is a host of impractical and impossible activities out there, some are still possible.
Take, for example, powering an off-grid homestead on Mars by harnessing the energy of Phobos.
However, this comes with one huge caveat: because Phobos’s orbit is steadily drawing closer and closer towards Mars, the more wind turbines that are attached to the tether will speed up the collision.
It’s vital to keep an eye on Phobos so that you know exactly when it could come crashing into Mars.
Ultimately, depending on your imagination and willingness to take risks, some outlandish activities are indeed possible.
But always be sure to watch out for Phobos!
