For real-world comparison, Tokyo Metropolis is one of the largest cities in the world (if not THE largest), and it’s east-to west length is fifty-six miles. (my reference is Wikipedia.)
I imagine Sarnoth’s public transportation system must be an absolute nightmare.
I originally was going to put a green dash line between Pohl's hands in panel 6 to suggest motion, but I thought it might come across as Pohl using crazy-black-and-green-stuff to display his point, which I don't want to suggest him doing.
And because they can travel in three dimensions the density could get hella high
Right? I wonder what that equates to in miles … cubed? Zero interest in doing more math right now, this semester is killing me.
Yeah, but unless they’ve got some kind of wacky free-floating house-capsules, they would still have to build any structures on the bottom surface, so square mileage would still be the most relevant measurement. People and vehicles (assuming some sort of mechanized submarine-type transportation) could move in three dimensions, so “road” and “sidewalk” networks would work considerably differently, however.
I was going to say buildings could be tallker, but I’m not sure how structural heights are affected by being underwater—the relative weight of building material is lower due to water being higher density, but the drag of currents might make it more difficult to build tall buildings, and doing large-scale refining, smelting, and forging underwater would be quite difficult (in part just because there’s limited area to mine the metal in the Great Lakes unless they got it from surface-dwellers) so they might be limited to stone for bulk structural material.
I would guess the structure is, the bottom is ‘urban’ and stuff above it is ‘nature’. So where we’d go ‘sideways’ from the city and have to cross it to the end to get away from civlization, sarnothi only have to go ‘up’, and the width of the city is irrelevant. So the 3D thing is still relevant.
I’m guessing we’ll find out within the next few posts whether they’re aliens or not.
The building remind me of Ponyo a little bit. Since I love that movie, I’m liking the buildings too.
Yes, the transit system must be a nightmare! But, what I’m wondering is, what about the sanitation system? How does a city that big deal with trash and sewage?
Especially one where everything’s suspended in water. Fish crap is a big issue in aquariums.
Yes! My thoughts exactly!
Still not as impressive as The City of Zion (a.k.a. New Jerusalem or Heavenly Jerusalem). If the measurements are literal and not just symbolic, it’s 1500 miles long wide and high. That’s 3,375,000,000 cubic miles big.
Oops. Posted before I mentioned Coruscant. Although in that case, the city is spread over the planet’s surface, so it’s tallest skyscrapers are still dwarfed by Zion’s buildings.
haha I relate because I am in the area.
150 miles? It would fit nicely in Lake Michigan but I still think the cold water rules that out.
Unles. . . the reason they live in a city is to provide heating in out cold climate?
Well there’s also that physics-biology-geoscience crap that after a certain depth from the surface a water body doesn’t get any colder and in the winter may be even warmer, allowing some fish to not need to hibernate so long as they stay near the floor of the water body.
They could also do magical heating too though.
His hands being where they are get the point across just fine.
And can I point out AGAIN that your textured backgrounds and the bomb-digidy? They really improve things.
That last panel. Bravo, sir.
I still think Selkie’s first flashback is the giveaway. Selkie’s mom is looking upward and waving and saying “Sarnoth” which means Sarnoth is in the air, not the water. It’s a space ark or some such.
Ooooor people telling stories from memory tend to naturally just do it in the air in front of and slightly above them.
Maybe Sarnoth came from Venus!
Can’t be, seeing how our atmosphere doesn’t outright kill them.
if it’s a democratic city i’d hate to see it’s public transportation system. I figure about 20 detroits all pushed together……*shiver*
Sheeeeeit that’s big. Wouldn’t that be bigger than the entire state of Connecticut?
My grandfather was a engineer for the federal DOT who dreamed of elevators that moved not only up and down, but side to side – without the current passengers having to get out; it’d all be the same car. He died when I was ten; obviously his dream never happened. Wonder if Sarnothi had been doing it all along… lol
It reminds me of the ecologes they described in Cthulhutech. And I dont think they are aliens I think they are sub speices like homoreptilia only this is homoamphiba or something.
Making a few assumptions about city dimensions (and maybe outright math errors), I work out that, if Sarnoth is a hundred fifty miles long (and a mile wide), and if its population density matches Tokyo, it’s got about eight hundred thirty thousand people.
*If* it’s a mile wide. Enlighten us.
I can’t believe nobody posted this already:
The territory of Sarnoth is one hundred and fifty miles in a straight line … half an inch wide.
And almost all of their agricultural space is for planting spaghetti.
The part about Tokyo isn’t quite accurate. Its one of the biggest in population, but in physical size there’s much bigger. Mt. Isa in Australia is the biggest I believe, at a bit over 300km across (186 miles)
I guess… size isn’t everything?
*ducks for cover*
You know, this reminds me of Penn & Tellers Bullshit!, specifically the episode about cryptozoology. They had this one scientist on to show why there isn’t a Loch-Ness monster with a simple demonstration about the ratio between carnivores and prey.
Bottom line, there’s not enough lake to support a city of carnivores that big. While they could make up for some of the deficiency by trade or farming, they seem doomed to starvation…
Two words; Ritualistic cannibalism.
They might eat their dead. And after a civil war, there’s a hell of a lot of dead.
Just tell us that the Sarnothi that organized the public transportation system wasn’t named “Ba’ni To” or “Musa’a Li’ni”.
Otoh, it could be a bit like an Ancient Greek ‘polis’, that is, a ‘metropolis’ (mother town) somewhere about the center, and dozens of villages around it, not a contiguously populated area.
But as floating aquatic creatures aren’t bound to a surface, they could easily go around using all three spatial dimensions. (Their traffic rules must be a nightmare to us, though.)