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Currently on hiatus :-(
 S&W in German/auf DeutschGaia (my fantasy comic) Scarlet (my science fantasy comic) |
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![[0683] The Great Fires](/comics/2015-05-14-0683-the-great-fires.png "[0683] The Great Fires")
- Everett: I’m so excited to finally meet you, Smokey. You’ve been my hero ever since I became a boy scout in 2012.
- Smokey: Thank you, Everett. But I’m the last bear on earth who deserves your admiration.
- Everett: How can you say such a thing? If more people had listened to you, America wouldn’t have been ravaged by the Great Fires!
- Smokey: No, Everett. The one who’s responsible for all this…
- Smokey: … is me.
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o,O?
Probably referring to fires being a natural part of the ecosystem, and how ‘great fires’ are the result of human intervention in putting out the relatively smaller ones.
Why is it suddenly a postapocaliptic theme in this comics???
@ Trimutius:
My guess would be Larisa ^^
mmm the lack of woo in this comic lately is really starting to get on my nerves :/
Did larisa retaliate against something smokey did ? :p
@ Bahamuttone:
I concur.
And then, a wild Larisa appears and uses Flamethrower!
Doesn’t Smokey only warn about forest fires? He was found in a burned down city, after all.
Is Larissa just the source of all chaos in this universe?
I predict that in order to keep his job, he’s been setting fires himself, and then blaming everyone else for being insufficiently vigilant. Not only does he need to be paid more, but he’s also asking for donations to help him pass legislation on his pet issues. Basically, Smokey the Bear is Fox News.
I’m guessing this is all a comic by larisa.
Even in German comics, America is the center of everything?!
Eheheh, ah smokey, your a pathetic little drunkard aren’t you
If only Smokey had Listened when Larissa tried to explain why Fire is so Necessary to the continuance of Civilization.
@ Book Bails:
She might be, but it might not her fault. It’s possible Larissa is a agent of Chaos, chosen since before birth to keep balance against an agent of Order, possibly someone her one age-perhaps even Sandra herself or if you really love irony, Landon. That could be why they are drawn towards each other, the old ‘opposites attract’.
Chaos drives the universe forward, causing growth and change so life doesn’t become stagnant. Order strives to create routines and conserve the universe’s natural energies.
A good fictional argument is the Chaos of Magic vs. the Oan Guardians of the Universe. The Guardians banished magic as its wild, unpredictable nature drained the Universe of energy, thus leading to the entropy death of everything. But as anyone who’s read Green Lantern knows, the Guardians went too far and embraced terrible ideas to impose total, perfect order (i.e. turning the universe into one filled with non-thinking husks that only obeyed their mental commands. Everyone was still technically ‘alive’ so it’s not like they created their own ‘Blackest Night’ scenario, but it was close.
Chaos and Order must keep each other in check so the universe doesn’t loose too much energy through the former and becomes stagnant with the latter.
If Larissa caused the Great Fires, it could have been Smokey (who, as a bear, is naturally attuned to nature to a degree humans would never understand) who first discovered her and could have stopped Lar, but couldn’t as he realized this was a fixed point for Chaos-it HAD to happen at this point and at this time. Out of it could come a period of Order that would make the world a better place, but it would be hard to see by those in the present. You would need the benefit of hindsight to weigh one against the other.
Of course, the reality of the situation (more irony since this is a {awesome} web comic), but it’s fun to wonder ‘what it’.
@ Leomon:
An equally good fictional argument for chaos vs order is Batman vs Joker…neither will come out and admit it, but they need each other to complete their yin/yang….
many times over the years, Joker had the chance to kill off Batman, but he refused to do so, knowing that if he succeeded, he would have nothing to really live for…
MidoriLuna has it right. Especially out here in the West fire is an essential part of the ecosystem. That’s why both state and federal forestry agencies set controlled burns in the spring before everything gets too dry. But they don’t have the funding to do it right and enviro-wackos have hissyfits with lawyers and the air pollution control districts make it tough so our mountains now are a gigantic bomb waiting to go off. The current drought is doing nothing but make it worse.
@ Petah-Petah:
He used to, but in the last few years he’s been warning about “wildfires” instead. Specifically because not all wildfires happen in forests. The term still doesn’t really include urban fires, but wildfires can easily spread into urban areas if they aren’t stopped fast enough.
@ Plaid Wolf:
As illustrated in the “Megamind” movie. 🙂
I’m pretty sure this is a reference to Smokey’s original slogan (“Only you can prevent forest fires!”) which has since been *changed* (to “Only you can prevent wildfires!”).
In particular, regular minor fires clear out dead leaf litter and vegetation – called “mast” – from the forest floor. However, after too long without such a fire, the mast builds up to the point where *any* fire becomes incredibly hot – and hard to control. At that point, the likelihood of the fire jumping to the tops of the trees – a “crown fire” – approaches 100%, and that type of fire is incredibly fast-spreading, virtually impossible to contain… and far more damaging.
California, to give an example, is already well past this point.
Some portions of Australia, as a fascinating counterpoint, regularly have youths set fires to underbrush in the forests, and despite a considerably drier climate than California, does not share its problems with massive, damaging fires…
I wonder if this is cannon? I bet it’s just Larrissa’s dream, I am calling it now.
@ Alex Elsayed:
Oh, dear. You are terribly misled. Australia has fires that make California’s look like barbecues.
Wikipedia’s reference is fairly sober. Others are less so. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushfires_in_Australia
The guy actually kinda looks like a Policenauts character to me. This is a pretty distinctive style.
Two words: job security. How else can a bear wear overalls, carry a shovel and wear a state trooper/DI hat without everybody freaking out. Without those things, Smokey’s back to raiding campsites, dumpster diving and stealing picnic baskets … ummm … nope, that last one’s another bear and he wears a hat too.
Heh, why it gets really smoky every spring around here now. Preparation for “Fire Season” requires burning out detritus and underbrush in the off season.
It’s proven quite effective, burning out the underbrush in the off season. The settlers knew the local Native American tribe did it every spring until economic disinterest in environment decided “The Timber Must Be Saved for Maximal Return On Investment.” Which has been rather disastrous in ensuing decades when wildfire broke out. Instead of small fires, you have huge fires due to the accumulated fuel load.
Smokey Bear was a USDA wartime campaign to support that policy, an offshoot of World War II when the western states were pretty concerned about those Fire Balloons the Japanese were attempting to send over to set things on fire. In the end, it’s a bit of hubris to think you can actively fight nature, it fights pretty dirty in the end when you circumvent its empirically derived systems.
We lost a half-million acres in the last really big fire around here, the baked clay and burnt out tree roots in the Kalamiopsis reserve take quite a time to come back as opposed to relatively small local burns that leave small areas to regrow healthily.
We have three population areas that were getting hit every 5-7 years with complete evacuation due to wildland fire incursion during fire season. Since the intentional fuel reducing burns, the biggest worry a couple years ago was a piddling 10 acre fire that had nowhere to burn into and was easily subdued due to proper forest fuel management.
Healthy underbrush environments have a nice side effect as the Native Americans well knew. New brush is deer food. Old brush ruins stuff when it burns if allowed to accumulate.
@ 1OldBear:
Why Oregon ships Erickson Air Cranes (Sikorsky S-64) to Australia. I can’t imagine the size of some of those things in past years.
Hollywood would be producing some rather apocalyptic fire related movies if anything like that happened in California.
But then the Big One (Cascadia Subduction Zone quake, Victoria Island BC to Cape Mendocino, CA) has the potential for a magnitude 9+ which logarithmically starts at being 32 times more powerful than the magnitude 8 often bandied about as the maximum on a transverse fault.
He talks? Wow lol I can’t wait to see what really happened!
Smokey’s grief, it’s unbearable!
@ Wolf297:
I don’t think Larisa would willingly portray fire negatively. Fire would be the hero not the villain
Damn. I want to see where this is going.
It’s so funny for me that people doesn’t react to a talking bear. (I know, I know but… It’s just weird)
What a plot twist.
I’m not sure whether this is a Sandra and Woo plot, but it’s still a plot twist.
This is turning into one of those Kingdom in the Sky stories from Nichijou.
@ MidoriLuna:
That is my thought as well. For decades the forest service stopped all fires. There are pine trees that only germinate with a little fire. Without small fires, underbrush builds up, now we get wildfires that turn forests to ash.
This is probably a short sci-fi story Larisa has written to demonstrate how fire is good and constructive unless not given it’s due. Forest service stopping all fires created underbrush = massive wildfires later that destroy everything. Stopping fires destroyed the world!
This bear is an imposter. The real Smokey is jskiox kslu lxijlx ol xlxlfi dil d
Book Bails wrote:
Only in the heads of commenters that keep calling her name one by one… just like constant attempts to call out new barriers to break in the current story arc of Gaia:
“What is it? It’s a window. It’s a barrier against UVB! Let’s break it and all others in this town!”
“What the f//// are you doing, fanatics?!”
Told ha he was a teddy terminator
*Looks at comic.
*Checks comment made on previous comic.
*Re-checks comment made on previous comic in relation to this one.
*Googles a map of various pipelines to check fiction against reality:
http://www.eia.gov/pub/oil_gas/natural_gas/analysis_publications/ngpipeline/ngpipeline_maps.html
*Prepares Bunker.
@ Alex:
Finally, somebody noticed
MathAddict wrote:
In a comic starring a talking raccoon, and featuring other animals that talk among themselves, the weird thing would be a bear that didn’t talk.
Not to mention all the other talking bears we grew up with.
@ Trimutius:
A good question. When in need of fresh ideas, did we go with “everyone loves to watch a horrible, horrible story” thinking? It seems to be the common logic of the news media in the last several decades.
Granted, I stopped watching news for that reason. Hmm…
S&W has shown itself to be an awesome and mostly positive comic for many years now. I’ll stick around and see what happens. So long as O&P haven’t suddenly become emos on us. :S
@ Alex:
Yeah, seriously. this comic has changed. there’s nothing wrong with a few asides, but really, its about sandra and her racoon, woo!
@ Leomon:
“Chaos drives the universe forward, causing growth and change so life doesn’t become stagnant. Order strives to create routines and conserve the universe’s natural energies.”
Ah, “The Coming of Shadows” reaches Sandra and Woo. Perhaps you should talk to Commander Sheridan.
@ HN:
“Yeah, seriously. this comic has changed”
Well, it’s their comic, their muse and their choice. I don’t mind these excursions; they’re entertaining and sometimes educational.
We know Smokey if only you’d killed her when you had the chance.
Also just what he needed another drink.
I never got why they called him Smokey. I mean, smoke is what you get after a fire. But his deal is preventing forest fires, not putting them out. Shoulda called him Be-Cautious-y or something like that. 2/10 would not meet bear in streets
MawileCeyvis wrote:
They called him “Smokey” because the Original Bear Cub was actually “Singed” in the fire he survived. He smelled “Smokey”.
Oh, and because he was Named by a bunch of Firemen.
MathAddict wrote:
People SEE What they Expect to see.
have you ever seen the Psycology experiment where people are asked to watch a short movie and count how many times one character says a particular Word?
Then, after all the people who were involved have given their answers to how many times the word was spoken, they are asked to raise their hands if they know what the Gorilla was doing in the movie.
95% of the people in this experiment answer “What Gorilla? There wasn’t any Gorilla in the movie.”
Then, they show them the same movie again, and, halfway through, a man in a Gorilla suit walks across the stage behind the “main” characters.
No One Sees him.
I used to know a guy who did something even More outrageous just for Fun.
When he went out Drinking at night, he’d stand at the bar drinking his beer and casually Remove All His Clothes. I saw him Multiple Times stand around in crowded rooms, Stark Naked, drinking his beer, for as much as half an hour without anyone noticing.
Those of us who Knew what he was doing would just Marvel at the Tourists who were Oblivious.