Pipelines
Pipelines
[Caption above the first main panel, to the left of a smaller panel to the right:] The size of the US’s Pipelines if each fluid produced or consumed in the US has to be carried by a single pipe Assuming they all flowed at the same speed of about 4 m / s Note: Many pipelines would overlap (eg. soda/corn syrup)
[There is a small panel to the right showing three gray pipes of different sizes leading out over a large hole in the ground. Only a part of the hole can be seen at the bottom left part of the panel, but it curves around indicating it is a large circular hole. The pipes are supported by small legs beneath them and from the end of all three thick liquids are squirting out and down into the hole. The first pipe is by far the largest; the liquid from it is white, but not as white as the background. The second pipe is by far the smallest squirting dark red liquid and the final rightmost pipe is in between and squirts our light brown liquid. Each pipe is labeled. The label on the smallest cannot be read properly, but from the info gained in the next panel it can be inferred for certain what it says (and this is indicated here below):] [Large pipe (white)]: Mayo [Small pipe (dark red)]: Nail polish [Medium pipe (light brown)]: Maple syrup
[Below is a large panel with a caption at the top. And below this there are twenty circles in different sizes and with different color (or even texture). Each circle is labeled, for the five smallest the label is outside, in one case with an arrow indicating where the label belongs. The rest has the label inside. The text is in black except for four of those with text inside, but with red of black color. Here the text is white. The labels are indicated by color and size, going roughly from top left in reading order based on the position and size of circles not of position of the text:]
Actual size (When viewed on a typical computer screen) [Medium green blue and white spiral]: Toothpaste [Tiny dark red]: Nail polish [Big light blue with white specks]: Windshield washer fluid [Very tiny purple]: Silly putty [Medium light green]: Shampoo [Large dark yellow]: Honey [Very small blood red]: Donated blood [Tiny black]: Vanilla [Big red]: Ketchup [Medium dark red with chunks of in different green and lighter red colors]: Salsa [Small white]: Sunscreen [Very small light green]: Personal lubricant [Very tiny gray]: LCD liquid [Medium off-white]: Mayo [Very small black]: Printer ink [Small light brown]: Maple syrup [Small light green]: Conditioner [Medium yellow]: Mustard [Large light green]: Liquid soap [Big olive green]: Olive oil
[The panel just described is indicated to fit into a small rectangle at the top left of the next panel below. There are four lines ending at the four corners of this small rectangle, two of these are going to the two bottom corners and the other two ends on the lower part of the panel just above the small rectangle. They are indicated to go under the panel and would hit the two top corners if extrapolated. The 11 largest circles are clearly seen, but most of the other circles can also be noted. The colors are the same but any features in the original circles as well as the labels are gone. The part of the black top frame of the next panel below is faded out to gray in between the section cut off by the two lines going to the bottom corners of the panel above. This rectangle indicated the increasing size compared to the first panel above.]
[Apart from the insert mentioned above, the second panel follows the same layout, but with 22 circles with even larger range of sizes. The panel is more than twice as long as the first panel. Blondie is drawn at the top of the panel just left of the middle. Her hair is close to the top, just below the line going to the right corner above. There are two medium-sized and five smaller circles to her left and one small close to her head and one huge circle to her right. Her feet are less than a third down this panel standing on top of the next row of circles. In the bottom half of the panel there is a giant circle which almost touches the left side of the panel. There are smaller circles above it and down along the right side. One last circle is to the left almost at the bottom. At the very bottom is a slightly curving line to indicate a much much larger blue circle that only graces the panel (no. 23). There is a small green fish in this water to the left of the label. Below the labels are again listed as above. One label has a foot note. But it is written directly beneath the circle in which it is referenced. So it will be written together with the label on the next line. There is also one case with an arrow used to indicate where the label belongs.]
[Medium dark gray]: Coffee [Very tiny gray]: Peanut butter [Very small gray with black specks]: Ice cream [Very small yellow with white specks]: Cheese [Large brown with white fizzing]: Soda [Tiny White]: Acetone [Tiny gray]: Liquor [Huge dark yellow]: Gasoline [Tiny White with blue and orange specks]: Yogurt [Big white]: Milk (cow) [Large light blue]: Bottled water [Small white]: Sugar [Large light gray with white specks]: Saliva [Very small light yellow]: Wine [Very small orange]: HFCS [Very tiny white]: Milk (human) [Gigantic dark gray]: Petroleum [Medium dark red with black texture]: Meat (mostly solid) [Small white]: Glass* *Solid at room temperature [Medium light brown]: Beer [Small gray brown]: Tea [Large gray]: Cement [Gracing bottom of panel light blue, with a fish inside]: Public water

This comic follows a similar idea to the what if? " Niagara Straw " from three days before this comic's release, where the entire water flow over Niagara Falls is imagined to be funneled through a straw (i.e. 7 mm diameter), with disastrous results.
In this comic Randall imagines what size pipes are necessary to carry US domestic production/consumption of various fluids if the flow rate were fixed at 4 meters per second. Randall notes that "many pipes would overlap", owing to the fact that consumption of one item as corn syrup would be due to the production of one of the others, in this case soda pop (another example, than the previous one which is actually mentioned in the comic, could be gasoline which is produced from petroleum ).
The top panel is in actual size (something Randall often jokes about, like in the very next released what if? " Eat the Sun ", where he shows part of the sun in actual size in the 2nd picture, but in this comic he actually means it). This means that if you look at the image in actual size (or measure lengths in the full size image) then the measured diameter is the diameter Randall has calculated the pipe should be, based on his data for the consumption of these substances.
In the second panel the pipes are too big for his drawing. To indicate the scale he has both inserted a woman ( Blondie ) and the top panel has been shrunk down to indicate how much larger the bottom panel is (this is similar to the link between the panels in 980: Money ). Using the size of the top panel and the smaller insert, it can be found that the scale is 20:1. The woman is 9 cm tall in the image, which makes her 180 cm — 5 feet 11 inches — in "real life". The pipe next to her for gasoline would have a diameter of 2.2 m.
Since the caption at the top mentions both fluid produced and consumed in the US it becomes very difficult to find out which number Randall uses. For instance the consumption of wine in the US and the production of wine in the US is not necessarily the same as wine is both imported and exported. Should there then be two pipes? Unlike similar comics (like Money mentioned above) there are no references for where Randall has the data for this comic.
As usual with xkcd, the absurdity — and improbability — of routing the entirety of each fluid through a single pipe at any point is the source of humor. Randall appears to assume that all of the fluids would flow at a similar speed to typical water mains (4 meters per second). This is, of course, unrealistic, given the wide range of pipe size and fluid viscosity. Running water through a pipe of that size would be trivial (such speeds are typical), but forcing a material like Silly Putty through a tube that tiny at similar speeds would be implausible. And, as the comic points out, some of the materials are effectively solids at room temperature. Many examples are just plain zany (e.g. saliva may be a reference to another what if? " Saliva Pool "). Nonetheless, the table gives a good visual representation of the comparative usage rates. Note that at the bottom of the last panel there is a much larger pipe for the tap water used by the public. This should, perhaps, be unsurprising, as water is used a far higher rate than any other substance that we produce or transport. All substances are listed below in the table .
The title text refers to a possible future based on the idea of this comic in which all the pipes with the above-mentioned fluids will actually lead into the same hole as shown in the top right panel. This hole will then be the bowl of a giant blender that mixes all these substances together to a smoothie . The future people will then just come up to this blender and get a bucket full of this mix each day. In reality, this would be an impractical method of getting all of the fluids. Setting the logistical considerations of such a setup aside, this would mean that ketchup and salsa, both intended for human consumption, would be mixed with fluids which are harmful to humans, such as windshield wiper fluid.
Note: "Soup" has been left out, and it might have been expected in this comic due to the similarity to this system with Beret Guy 's use of a "soup outlet" as an entrepreneur in 1293: Job Interview . It is probably a larger pipeline than salsa and possibly even ketchup. However, there are many different varieties of soups, and most soup is probably not bought finished, both very good reasons to not include it in the chart. But still the idea of having a soup outlet is very similar to this comic.
[Caption above the first main panel, to the left of a smaller panel to the right:] The size of the US’s Pipelines if each fluid produced or consumed in the US has to be carried by a single pipe Assuming they all flowed at the same speed of about 4 m / s Note: Many pipelines would overlap (eg. soda/corn syrup)
[There is a small panel to the right showing three gray pipes of different sizes leading out over a large hole in the ground. Only a part of the hole can be seen at the bottom left part of the panel, but it curves around indicating it is a large circular hole. The pipes are supported by small legs beneath them and from the end of all three thick liquids are squirting out and down into the hole. The first pipe is by far the largest; the liquid from it is white, but not as white as the background. The second pipe is by far the smallest squirting dark red liquid and the final rightmost pipe is in between and squirts our light brown liquid. Each pipe is labeled. The label on the smallest cannot be read properly, but from the info gained in the next panel it can be inferred for certain what it says (and this is indicated here below):] [Large pipe (white)]: Mayo [Small pipe (dark red)]: Nail polish [Medium pipe (light brown)]: Maple syrup
[Below is a large panel with a caption at the top. And below this there are twenty circles in different sizes and with different color (or even texture). Each circle is labeled, for the five smallest the label is outside, in one case with an arrow indicating where the label belongs. The rest has the label inside. The text is in black except for four of those with text inside, but with red of black color. Here the text is white. The labels are indicated by color and size, going roughly from top left in reading order based on the position and size of circles not of position of the text:]
Actual size (When viewed on a typical computer screen) [Medium green blue and white spiral]: Toothpaste [Tiny dark red]: Nail polish [Big light blue with white specks]: Windshield washer fluid [Very tiny purple]: Silly putty [Medium light green]: Shampoo [Large dark yellow]: Honey [Very small blood red]: Donated blood [Tiny black]: Vanilla [Big red]: Ketchup [Medium dark red with chunks of in different green and lighter red colors]: Salsa [Small white]: Sunscreen [Very small light green]: Personal lubricant [Very tiny gray]: LCD liquid [Medium off-white]: Mayo [Very small black]: Printer ink [Small light brown]: Maple syrup [Small light green]: Conditioner [Medium yellow]: Mustard [Large light green]: Liquid soap [Big olive green]: Olive oil
[The panel just described is indicated to fit into a small rectangle at the top left of the next panel below. There are four lines ending at the four corners of this small rectangle, two of these are going to the two bottom corners and the other two ends on the lower part of the panel just above the small rectangle. They are indicated to go under the panel and would hit the two top corners if extrapolated. The 11 largest circles are clearly seen, but most of the other circles can also be noted. The colors are the same but any features in the original circles as well as the labels are gone. The part of the black top frame of the next panel below is faded out to gray in between the section cut off by the two lines going to the bottom corners of the panel above. This rectangle indicated the increasing size compared to the first panel above.]
[Apart from the insert mentioned above, the second panel follows the same layout, but with 22 circles with even larger range of sizes. The panel is more than twice as long as the first panel. Blondie is drawn at the top of the panel just left of the middle. Her hair is close to the top, just below the line going to the right corner above. There are two medium-sized and five smaller circles to her left and one small close to her head and one huge circle to her right. Her feet are less than a third down this panel standing on top of the next row of circles. In the bottom half of the panel there is a giant circle which almost touches the left side of the panel. There are smaller circles above it and down along the right side. One last circle is to the left almost at the bottom. At the very bottom is a slightly curving line to indicate a much much larger blue circle that only graces the panel (no. 23). There is a small green fish in this water to the left of the label. Below the labels are again listed as above. One label has a foot note. But it is written directly beneath the circle in which it is referenced. So it will be written together with the label on the next line. There is also one case with an arrow used to indicate where the label belongs.]
[Medium dark gray]: Coffee [Very tiny gray]: Peanut butter [Very small gray with black specks]: Ice cream [Very small yellow with white specks]: Cheese [Large brown with white fizzing]: Soda [Tiny White]: Acetone [Tiny gray]: Liquor [Huge dark yellow]: Gasoline [Tiny White with blue and orange specks]: Yogurt [Big white]: Milk (cow) [Large light blue]: Bottled water [Small white]: Sugar [Large light gray with white specks]: Saliva [Very small light yellow]: Wine [Very small orange]: HFCS [Very tiny white]: Milk (human) [Gigantic dark gray]: Petroleum [Medium dark red with black texture]: Meat (mostly solid) [Small white]: Glass* *Solid at room temperature [Medium light brown]: Beer [Small gray brown]: Tea [Large gray]: Cement [Gracing bottom of panel light blue, with a fish inside]: Public water
