Hello fellow Far Side fans!
About this community and how I post the comic strip… Many moons ago, I would ask my Dad to save the newspaper for me everyday so I could read my favorite comic strips and one of those was The Far Side. These days of course you find just about anything online including www.thefarside.com where they post several comics a day and I repost them here. Just to note, the date you see in my posts is not the initial release date, but the date they were posted on the website.
The Far Side is a single-panel comic created by Gary Larson and syndicated by Chronicle Features and then Universal Press Syndicate, which ran from December 31, 1979, to January 1, 1995 (when Larson retired as a cartoonist). Its surrealistic humor is often based on uncomfortable social situations, improbable events, an anthropomorphic view of the world, logical fallacies, impending bizarre disasters, (often twisted) references to proverbs, or the search for meaning in life… Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Far_Side
Hope you enjoy and feel free to contribute to the community with art, cool stuff about the author, tattoos, toys and anything else, as long it’s The Far Side!
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Fine print: All comics I post are freely available online. In no way am I claiming ownership, copyright or anything else. This is a not for profit community, we just want to enjoy our comics, thank you.
Caption:
“How many times did I say it, Harold? How many times? ‘Make sure that bomb shelter’s got a can opener—ain’t much good without a can opener,’ I said.”
No alt text
"Back in my day, we didn't need fancy technology! You don't need an electric can opener to feed yourself, you just need a trusty Swiss Army knife!"
Tries and fails to open a can with his Swiss Army knife
"...I'm hungry... 😩"
Fun fact, the can opener was invented more than 80 years after people started putting food in tin cans.
Must have been wild when they could finally open all those 80 year old cans!
I’m going to have to go there…how did they open cans before that?
Hammer and chisel
Mostly by ring tabs, you can still see them with corned beef tins
Pull tabs were invented in 1959 (patented in 1963). They replaced church keys, which were in use starting 1934.
The tin can was in use by the Dutch navy since at least 1772, and was patented in 1810. The can opener was patented in the UK in 1855, a good 100 years before the ring tab.
The first cans were very beefy, and instructions stated to open them using a chisel and hammer. In practice people used whatever tools they had handy. I've seen illustrations of people using guns when nothing else was available.
did they shoot the cans or use another part of the gun?
In the old painting/drawing I saw they were shooting the cans. I can't find the picture, though. I saw it years ago in an article about the late invention of can openers. I don't even know if the article was online or on paper.
Knives and other sharp tools
Funnily enough, that's also the time period the idea of "most accidents happen in your own home" really got legs.
Teeth mostly. Sometimes small shaped explosive charges.
Are we talking the crank-style can opener, or even the hook-type knife that some multi-tools have? Because the hook-type knife seems like a no-brainer that should have been figured out months after tin cans, not decades.
Probably wouldn't even have worked on those early cans. They were pretty thick, and heavier than the food they contained. The instructions usually stated to open them with a hammer and chisel.
But also, a lot of things seem obvious in hindsight.
Ultimate preppers
Obviously it's a joke for the comic, but if you're ever in a situation like this, you can sand down the lip of the can lid on a rough surface (like a concrete floor) and it will open up.
You can also smack the rolled edges of two cans together until one of them yields like an epic gladiator fight of beans vs. beans.
beans
Now you've done it....
beansbeansbeansbeansbeans
BEANS?
I heard we were doing beans again!
Be wary of metal dust, but yes.
I'll take a bit of iron/aluminum over starving to death.
Be wary does not mean don't. Just be aware of the risks and minimize exposure. Don't be dumb.
Back in the day people got lead poisoning, though.
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/canned-food-sealed-icemens-fate
A future scavenger will be happy about your noble sacrifice
Yeah this would be some great environmental lore in fallout. You find the shelter and inside are two skeletons and a ton of unopened can food. No can opener though. Evidence of a fight. Maybe a note about how stupid Harold is/was.
Not super believable tbh. Cans aren't some mysterious indestructible material.
i mean if it's in a sealed room i don't see why much of anything would happen to the cans.
iirc there's some sealing compound inside the rim which is the only thing i can imagine causing the seal to break, and other than that i don't really know any way the food would spoil
i guess maybe the metal would degrade from moisture in the air in 200 years? but i'd imagine cans are specifically made out of a resistant alloy..
the point is cans aren't that hard to open. you wouldn't get two skeletons and a bunch of unopened cans relistically.
But if you murdered your husband over forgetting a can-opener, would be kinda messed up to just eat the canned food afterwards anyways
You don't know me!