Sneeze discussions in XKCD's "What If"

[Wig_Powder]

I'm sure most of are are familar with XKCD, the stick-figure webcomic that also gets pretty scientific at times. Well, creator Randall Munroe eventually wrote a book called What If, where he takes questions, both plausible and implausible, by readers and analyzes the math and science involved to see what would happen, with plenty of his cartoons scattered throughout. I ended up reading the book because I like the comic, and while it was entertaining enough on its own, what made it really fun was that sneezing was a big point of discussion in two separate questions.

The first one is actually available to read for free on the XKCD site, asking "If you called a random person and said 'bless you', what are the odds that the person had actually just sneezed?'. Here's the link.

The other one was asking if it would be possible to get rid of the common cold if everyone in the world isolated themselves for a week or two, thus "starving out" the germs. Sadly, it's been long enough since I read the book that I can't remember the answer, but I think the conclusion was that you'd have to jump through some major hoops to make it work. It was definitely an interesting read, though, for more than one reason.

Also, one quote from that discussion has defintely stuck with me. Munroe points out that colds aren't quite as contagious as we think, since if the average number of people who caught a cold off another person was more than one, "eventually everyone would have a cold all the time". Which would definitely suck, but in a fictional context...

Anyway, I'd highly recommend checking the book out if you like math, science, or XKCD. Apparently there's a second book coming out later this year, so maybe there'll be more sneeze material. I'll have to try to track it down at some point and find out.

 

[Arvani]

Omg I love XKCD!! Didn’t know that he made a book like that and now I have to check it out. Thanks for sharing this! 

[RB]

You buried the lede. Cited in the article was this gem:

https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/194/8/1119/870795