Modern History
by Jeff
Image text: During the week, I research my character by living in his house and raising his children.
This comic is a take on people who do war reenactments in their spare time. However, instead of modern wars, they will reenact Civil War battles or other historical battles. Because in the comic, it is "Real Time" reenactment which means that Cueball is following the soldier in real time.
Los Alamos
by Jeff
Image text: The test didn't (spoiler alert) destroy the world, but the fact that they were even doing those calculations makes theirs the coolest jobs ever.
Los Alamos is the site where the US founded a military base to test the Manhattan Project, where they tested nuclear devices and bombs. As it says in the comic, in 1945 was during World War II, when the Los Alamos site was active.
These nuclear explosions are what the three scientists are talking about in the first two frames.
And then, in the last two frames, the scientists are talking about trigonometry. People use the mnemonics SOH CAH TOA to remember the relationships between sine, cosine and tangent. The bold letters below are the contributions to the mnemonics (Thanks Wikipedia for the below).
- Sine = Opposite ÷ Hypotenuse
- Cosine = Adjacent ÷ Hypotenuse
- Tangent = Opposite ÷ Adjacent
This mnemonic can be used in its reverse, but COH SAH TOA is definitely wrong.
Even though there is no line to the word in the fourth frame, we are left to believe that the scientist on the left or Steve is the one asking about the trigonometry calculation.