What did the farmer say when he found three deep holes in his field?
Well, well, well, look what we have here.
this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
386 points (99.2% liked)
xkcd
8973 readers
20 users here now
A community for a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Why did the blind man fall in the well? Because he couldn't see that well.
Well done.
Well! .... this is a silly conversation!
Ah Well, moving on.
At least wish him well on his recovery.
We'll, we'll, we'll, if it isn't autocorrect
I always assumed that some poor schmuck was trying to dig a hole because he needed a hole and the fucking thing kept flooding. He was pissed until his buddy realized that they had stumbled upon a magic portal to a lake which they could use to get water from.
We've known that groundwater existed for verifiably more than 7,000 years (the age of the oldest well ever found). Springs and seeps are easily observable groundwater coming up out of the ground. I seriously doubt it was stumbled into by accident. We probably started by modifying springs for our use and then dug in other places to see if we could tap into the same source.
I'd say it's likely that wells were independently invented multiple times. Some may have been luck, others ingenuity.
The fact that people were still paying for 'professional' dowsing services as recently as 20 years ago says a lot too. Many people genuinely thought that wells needed to hit a specific spot to get water, the comprehension of how water tables work was certainly lacking.
The "This one neat trick big water won't tell you about" to "the government can't tell me not to dig my well next to my latrine" pipeline (aquaduct?) is real.
Be careful though. If you keep on digging deeper and deeper, you’ll find magma. That’s not a bad deal either, because you can use that heat to run a geothermal power plant.
Idk man I've yet to know anyone who died from drinking magma.
Fair enough. We’re going to assume it’s completely safe until proven otherwise. Vulcanologists can tell you that the viscosity can be pretty high, so there could be a choking hazard though. Further study would be needed to determine the exact nature of potential hazards.