June 22, 2022
#2636: What If? 2 Countdown explain
[The comic is a calendar that counts down to a specific date, like a Christmas calendar starting on June 2nd and ending on September 13th (2022). Each day is represented with a large square and there are 12 weeks for a total of 84 days. The days belonging to a particular month are surrounded by a thicker frame than between days from the same month. The first day of each month plus the very first day has the date given with three letters representing the month and the day number. This is written at the top right corner in a frame. All other days either only have the number for the day in the frame in the corner, or, if there are too much text on the day, no number is written. A single day has the number without the frame around it. The very last day notes what the countdown is for and there are three large stars places around the text, as well as smaller and larger dots, likely representing more stars in the entire field. All other days have text on all white background. The text represents a time that fits the time span from that day until the final day. The calendar begins on a Wednesday, and since the calendar week begins on a Sunday, there are three days missing to the left in the top row, and similarly four days are missing to the right in the bottom row as the last day is a Tuesday. Above the calendar is a large heading with a subheading below:]
Countdown to What if? 2
(Preorder at xkcd.com/whatif2 to get it at the end of the countdown)
[The date given, either as written or else mentioned if not written in comic, and then follows the text on that day:]
Jun 22
πe millidecades
23
7 megaseconds
24
e lunar months
25
60 rotations of Foucault’s pendulum in Paris
26
8 milligenerations
27
777,777 dog minutes
28
7! episodes of Jeopardy! (skipping ads)
29
5,000 repeats of 99 Bottles of Beer
30
5 baker’s fortnights (15 days)
Jul 1
√2 dog years
[Date left out on the 2nd.]
π millivics (1/1000th of Queen Victoria’s reign)
3
42 drives from NYC to LA (Google Maps estimate)
4
1,000 viewings of Groundhog Day
5
100,000 minutes
6
1/10th of Martian year
7
1,234,567 sound-miles
8
2πe seconds
9
216 beats (Swatch Internet Time)
10
1,000 ISS orbits
11
[Four musical notes are shown at the top.]
Five hundred twenty five thousand (base seven) minutes
12
1050 Planck times
13
4,000 episodes of The Office (skipping ads)
14
Four score and seven kilominutes
15
2 lunar months
16
Half a day on Venus
17
5 megaseconds
[Date left out on the 18th.]
30 microLits (1/1,000,000th of the time since the invention of literature)
19
1,000 viewings of Run Lola Run
20
One million sound-miles
21
30 Ionian months
22
One dog year
23
60 viewings of Star Wars Episodes I-IX
24
1/100,000,000,000th of the universe’s age
25
5 milli-generations
[Date left out on the 26th.]
10,000 games of 7 minutes in Heaven or 7 games of 10,000 minutes in Heaven
27
φeπ minutes
28
4 megaseconds
29
216 minutes
30
eee seconds
31
π fortnights
Aug 1
One devil’s spacewalk (666 orbits of the ISS)
2
1 kilowatt-hour per watt
3
eπ Ionian months
4
30 rotations of Foucault’s pendulum in Paris
5
e fortnights
6
πe baker’s days (25 hours)
7
One deciyear
8
7! milliweeks
9
100,000 plays of the Jeopardy! “Think” music
10
1000 basketball games (game time)
11
777 hours
12
One millilincoln (1/1000 of fourscore and seven years)
13
1,000 episodes of 60 Minutes (skipping ads)
14
All of Star Trek, consecutively
15
777,777 nanocenturies
16
One sidereal lunar month
17
6 dog months
18
ππ kilominutes
19
7 games of 7! minutes in Heaven
20
50 viewings of the extended Lord of the Rings trilogy
[Date left out on the 21th.]
A drive from NYC to LA where you keep remembering new things you forgot and have to go back 6 times
[Date left out on the 22nd.]
It’s a Small World sung at 1/10,000th speed
23
500 hours
24
√2 fortnights
[Date left out on the 25th.]
Time it would take Vanessa Carlton to walk 1,000 miles
26
100,000 breaths
27
√2 megaseconds
28
πππ πcoseconds
29 [The date is not inside a small frame as all other dates shown.]
One baker’s fortnight (15 days)
30
One baker’s dozen (13) baker’s days (25 hours)
31
300 hours
Sep 1
One million seconds
2
One nonstop bike ride from NYC to LA
3
1⁄1,000th of a generation
4
777,777 seconds
5
100 viewings of Groundhog Day
[Date left out on the 6th.]
100 games of Lincoln Kissing (Fourscore and seven minutes in Heaven)
7
One pico-universe-lifetime
8
The Baby Shark chorus for a family of 50,000 sharks
9
One centiyear
10
Cyndi Lauper’s Time After Time played 1,000 times
[Date left out on the 11th.]
Speed (1994) played at one frame per second
[Date left out on the 12th.]
F(99) where F(N) means sing all the verses of N Bottles of Beer On the wall followed by F(N-1)
13
What If? 2 release day