How to Take Over the World
Practical Schemes and Scientific Solutions for the Aspiring Supervillain
(Sprache: Englisch)
NAMED A BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR BY ESQUIRE
“Comic book fans will fall hard for this delightfully daffy guidebook. . . . Exuberant, optimistic, and just plain fun, How to Take Over the World will both surprise and delight.” —Esquire
A...
“Comic book fans will fall hard for this delightfully daffy guidebook. . . . Exuberant, optimistic, and just plain fun, How to Take Over the World will both surprise and delight.” —Esquire
A...
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NAMED A BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR BY ESQUIRE“Comic book fans will fall hard for this delightfully daffy guidebook. . . . Exuberant, optimistic, and just plain fun, How to Take Over the World will both surprise and delight.” —Esquire
A book this informative should be a crime!
Taking over the world is a lot of work. Any supervillain is bound to have questions: What’s the perfect location for a floating secret base? What zany heist will fund my wildly ambitious plans? How do I control the weather, destroy the internet, and never, ever die?
Bestselling author and award-winning comics writer Ryan North has the answers. In this introduction to the science of comic-book supervillainy, he details a number of outlandish villainous schemes that harness the potential of today’s most advanced technologies. Picking up where How to Invent Everything left off, his explanations are as fun and elucidating as they are completely absurd.
You don’t have to be a criminal mastermind to share a supervillain’s interest in cutting-edge science and technology. This book doesn’t just reveal how to take over the world—it also shows how you could save it. This sly guide to some of the greatest threats facing humanity accessibly explores emerging techniques to extend human life spans, combat cyberterrorism, communicate across millennia, and finally make Jurassic Park a reality.
Lese-Probe zu „How to Take Over the World “
1. Every Supervillain Needs a Secret BaseThree may keep a Secret, if two of them are dead.
-Benjamin Franklin (1735)
Every villain needs a place to live, work, and scheme. While civilians may content themselves with a "home," an "office," or a "home office," you're going to live the supervillain dream by plotting in style and comfort from your own palatial secret base.
There are some restrictions to keep in mind when scoping out locations for a secret base. The "secret" part of "secret base" means it should be hidden, or at the very least inaccessible: you don't want meddling do-gooders easily stumbling across it. "Base" means it should be sustainable and self-sufficient, able to support you (and ideally a staff of henchpeople) for months if not years at a time. Remember, if you can't bunker down in it for the long term, then you don't have a base: you have a vacation home.
And one simply does not take over the world from a secret vacation home.
Background
First, let us dissuade you from what you're already thinking, which is this:
Obviously the best place for me to build a secret supervillain base is inside a volcano, this is easy, I don't even know why I bought this book since I know all this stuff already.
-You (currently)
Building in an active volcano is a bad idea: it can explode with little to no warning, cooking you alive as the air fills with toxic gases and rocks rain from above onto a floor that is literally lava. Even a dormant volcano means you're living inside a very visible, non-secret hole/tourist attraction.
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Your main concern here is self-sufficiency: if your base is to support you and your henchpeople without having to rely on the outside world, it will need to be a certain minimum size. The precise nature of that minimum size depends on how you answer the question of "wait, how much space do we really need to keep a human being alive indefinitely?"
Various authorities have attempted to answer this question throughout history. In the 700s CE in England, land was measured in hides, which reflected the amount of land thought necessary to support a family. Hides ranged in size from around 240,000 to 728,000 square meters (m), depending on the productivity of the land, but around the Norman conquest in 1066 CE, they became standardized at around 485,000m: slightly less than half a square kilometer. Whether families at the time included just immediate family members or also extended family is now unclear, but if you assume a small family of just four people, that works out to 121,250m of arable land per person.
Factoring in the modern farming technologies developed over the past millennium, a more recent 1999 calculation determined that a diversified and sustainable European (meat-eating) diet demanded 5,000m of farmland per person, further calculating that if you assumed a largely vegetarian diet; no soil degradation, erosion, or food waste; ample irrigation; and godlike farmers who both planted and tended to their crops perfectly, you could probably get that number down to just 700m a person. Lower numbers are better here: they help keep your base reasonably sized and have the side effect of making it easier for the rest of the world not to starve to death. That's a good thing, given that the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization's measurements of global arable land per person have been trending downward for decades: in 1970, it was 3,200m per person; in 2000, it was 2,300m per person; and in 2050, the global arable land is projected to be down to just 1,500m per person.
But even these calculations are still just estimates and educated guesses: they're not facts. Supervillains ponder and plan and scheme, yes, but they also reach a point where they
Your main concern here is self-sufficiency: if your base is to support you and your henchpeople without having to rely on the outside world, it will need to be a certain minimum size. The precise nature of that minimum size depends on how you answer the question of "wait, how much space do we really need to keep a human being alive indefinitely?"
Various authorities have attempted to answer this question throughout history. In the 700s CE in England, land was measured in hides, which reflected the amount of land thought necessary to support a family. Hides ranged in size from around 240,000 to 728,000 square meters (m), depending on the productivity of the land, but around the Norman conquest in 1066 CE, they became standardized at around 485,000m: slightly less than half a square kilometer. Whether families at the time included just immediate family members or also extended family is now unclear, but if you assume a small family of just four people, that works out to 121,250m of arable land per person.
Factoring in the modern farming technologies developed over the past millennium, a more recent 1999 calculation determined that a diversified and sustainable European (meat-eating) diet demanded 5,000m of farmland per person, further calculating that if you assumed a largely vegetarian diet; no soil degradation, erosion, or food waste; ample irrigation; and godlike farmers who both planted and tended to their crops perfectly, you could probably get that number down to just 700m a person. Lower numbers are better here: they help keep your base reasonably sized and have the side effect of making it easier for the rest of the world not to starve to death. That's a good thing, given that the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization's measurements of global arable land per person have been trending downward for decades: in 1970, it was 3,200m per person; in 2000, it was 2,300m per person; and in 2050, the global arable land is projected to be down to just 1,500m per person.
But even these calculations are still just estimates and educated guesses: they're not facts. Supervillains ponder and plan and scheme, yes, but they also reach a point where they
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Autoren-Porträt von Ryan North
Ryan North
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Ryan North
- 2022, Internationale Ausgabe, 416 Seiten, mit Abbildungen, Maße: 15,7 x 23 cm, Kartoniert (TB), Englisch
- Verlag: Riverhead Books
- ISBN-10: 0593541537
- ISBN-13: 9780593541531
- Erscheinungsdatum: 30.03.2022
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
Praise for How to Take Over the World:An irreverent romp through geeky tropes that also sends up the undying self-help genre. Who among us hasn t thought about the best way to construct a secret, technologically advanced lair from which we might conquer all humanity? North assumes we all have, and in doing so he zaps the fun back into one of pop culture s most enduring archetypes. NPR
[How to Take Over the World] is full of extremely funny, extremely informative riffs that make for an engrossing frame for very deep dives into knowledge that is esoteric, interdisciplinary, and damned interesting. Cory Doctorow on Twitter
Who among us has never dreamed of living on a secret base, riding around on a dinosaur and holding the Earth s core hostage? . . . The joy of this book comes from the straight-faced seriousness with which North approaches each scheme. . . . fun and accessible. Nature
Comic book fans will fall hard for this delightfully daffy guidebook. . . . Exuberant, optimistic, and just plain fun, How to Take Over the World will both surprise and delight. Esquire
An eclectic journey, full to the brim with North s trademark sarcasm and humor. An excellent starting point for anyone interested in learning more about cutting edge science or becoming a supervillain. Booklist
Witty and deviously delightful. I never knew reading about becoming a supervillain could feel so wholesome! Simone Giertz
How to Take Over the World isn t just an amazing how-to manual, it s a fun, insightful look into our place on the planet and in time. I found myself thinking about it for weeks after. Honestly, I think it changed my life! Chip Zdarsky, writer for Daredevil, Spider-Man: Life Story, and Howard the Duck
This book is so brilliant that it s frankly suspicious. Nobody should be surprised when Ryan North inevitably does take over the world. If this wildly entertaining, whip-smart, and hilarious book is his confession, he s more than
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capable of it. And now, thanks to reading it so am I. Elan Mastai, author of All Our Wrong Todays
I can attest that How to Take Over the World is both a) filled with actual science (including linguistics!) and b) hilarious. Gretchen McCulloch, New York Times bestselling author of Because Internet
How to Take Over the World lays out a hilarious, but totally factual, blueprint for all the ways aspiring supervillains could seize power, control minds and dominate the earth. It s a little dangerous, but all in good fun so long as Pinky and the Brain don t catch wind of it." BookPage
I can attest that How to Take Over the World is both a) filled with actual science (including linguistics!) and b) hilarious. Gretchen McCulloch, New York Times bestselling author of Because Internet
How to Take Over the World lays out a hilarious, but totally factual, blueprint for all the ways aspiring supervillains could seize power, control minds and dominate the earth. It s a little dangerous, but all in good fun so long as Pinky and the Brain don t catch wind of it." BookPage
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