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The Issues With Large Size Type 4 And How To Fix It

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Flashlight237

Flashlight237

VS Battles
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As it currently stands, Large Size Type 4 is written as follows:

"Characters so huge that it would be easily viewable from the surface of the planet when viewed from space. These characters are usually able to generate global catastrophes and high-end natural disasters. Characters here have a size that is millions of km²."

This doesn't line up with the idea that size is seen as 3D under current standards outside our current ideals for Type 9 Small Size (although Ogurtsow's proposals sound much better as they account for the fact that we can very easily see 11-A characters on TV sets: https://vsbattles.com/threads/small-size-revision.149018/post-5612925 ) and our current ideals for Type 9 Large Size and higher. There are plenty of reasons as to why this doesn't work.

First, there's the space definition. Space is defined quite arbitrarily. The current definition for space is anything above the Karman Line, which is 100 kilometers above Earth's surface. At that height, you can see the Palm Jumeirah and all its fronds:
xUwHyxj.png

The Palm Jumeirah isn't all that big; according to a travel site, the Palm Jumeirah is nowhere near millions of square kilometers; in fact it's only 560 hectares: https://www.bayut.com/area-guides/palm-jumeirah/

Near where the ISS would be (254 miles, or 408.8 km), you can make out the structure of the Faroe Islands:

7eEJwZv.png


You can make out the distinguishable shape of each island, including Sandoy, which has an area of 125 km²: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandoy

Bear in mind, unlike GPS satellites, the ISS is inhabitable. Speaking of, at around 20200 km (the altitude of GPS satellites), you can see islands like Newfoundland, Iceland, Cuba and Hispaniola (the latter two pictured because Google Earth likes to throw clouds on the model):
yvwWkzZ.png

Even Florida is visible and its area is 65,758 km²: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida

If circles were made for each entity, this is the diameter each circle needs to be to match the size of the entities pictured.:

Palm Jumeirah-sized circle (visible from Karman Line): 2.670232471 km
Sandoy-sized circle (visible from ISS): 12.61566261 km
Florida-sized circle (visible from a GPS satellite): 289.3539113 km

And if that isn't enough, you can faintly see CYPRUS from a GPS satellite: https://prnt.sc/jugRmFherIk2

Granted you couldn't make out its horseshoe crab shape (unlike with Florida where you can see that it's a penis), but you can certainly see Cyprus. It's area is 9251 km² (equivalent to a circle with a diameter of 108.5298992 km): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyprus

Then there's the area thing. Millions of square kilometers? Let's see... Type 2 and Type 3 Large Size defines sizes with representable figures. For Type 2, it's skyscrapers, which are defined at 100 meters tall, and for Type 3, it's mountains, although Type 3 is a bit bigger than current definitions of mountains, which range from 1000 to 2000 feet depending on where you get 'em from. You would need to pull the entirety of Scandanavia off of Europe if you want a representative figure for Large Size Type 4. Now, we usually use living entities like humans, mammals, fish, and the like for size measurements. Let's use a Great Barracuda for this exercise, as it's one of the most streamlined fish out there.:




These guys can go for 60 to 100 centimeters in length. We'll use the latter figure as that corresponds to exactly 1 meter.

A barracuda is 744 px long and 109 px tall in the first picture. The barracuda's head is 90 px tall. In the second picture, the barracuda's head is 1414.6 px tall, and the barracuda is 1271.4 px wide. Let's see the proportions:

Length: 1 meter
Height: 109/744=0.1465053763 meters
Head Height: 90/744=0.1209677419 meters
Width: (1271.4/1414.6)*(90/744)=0.1087221738 meters

Looking at the barracuda lengthwise, a barracuda-sized block would have an area of 0.1465053763 m² and a volume of 0.01592838399 m³. The total area of Scandanavia; which consists of Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, is 1213720 km². That's 8.284474128*10^12 times the area of a barracuda-sized block, with each dimension being 2878276.243 times the size of the barracuda. As such, a Scandanavia-sized barracuda should have a width of 312932.44996709 meters (312.93 km). For comparison, the highest point in Scandanavia is a mountain 2469 meters tall: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galdhøpiggen

That's 126.7 times smaller than the width of the Scandanavia-sized barracuda. This means that a barracuda-sized block with Scadanavia thickness would proportionally only be 857.8050861 micrometers: only 8 times as thick as a sheet of paper. And yet, that's thinner than a flatworm, which is 1 mm thick and 8-10 cm long according to a Singapore wildlife fact sheet (http://www.wildsingapore.com/wildfacts/worm/polycladida/polycladida.htm ).

Let's also use the Amazon Rainforest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_rainforest

The forest itself is 5500000 km² in area, yet it's highest point is only 2995.3 meters high: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pico_da_Neblina

That's 3.75412844*10^13 times the area of the barracuda-sized block, with each dimension being 6127094.287 times the size of the barracuda. A barracuda with the same area as the Amazon Rainforest would need to be 666151.0101 meters (666.15 km) wide, and yet... The highest point in the Amazon would make the block proportionally THINNER. If the Amazon-sized Barracuda Block is the size of a barracuda, it would be 222.4x thinner, which equates to 488.86 micrometers thick.

Barracudas should never be sub-millimeters in width; you should know that, wiki!

That being said, a Scadanavia-sized barracuda would have 2.384500507*10^19 times the mass of a normal barracuda (9 kg for a 1-meter-long barracuda), or 2.146050456*10^20 kg. Assuming the exact same locomotion as a normal barracuda (including its swiftness), it would be going 45034661.4 m/s (based on the barracuda's top speed of 35 miles an hour, or 15.6464 m/s). This equates to 221376260454323239670809157763912804 joules from the relativistic KE calc: https://prnt.sc/XkrlK_gf23d5

That's 221376.2605 quettajoules or 52.91 yottatons of TNT. The Scadanavia-sized barracuda is more than enough to destroy Earth just by ramming into it, never mind cause high-end natural disasters. For reference, the largest recorded earthquake has a magnitude of 9.5 and let out an energy of 2.68 gigatons of TNT. Hurricanes cause wider-scale destruction than earthquakes and they let out 130 petajoules (31.07 megatons of TNT) per day.

A barracuda only needs to be 1600 meters (1.6 kilometers) long just for its proportional KE to match a Magnitude 9.5 earthquake: https://prnt.sc/DF4ldbTm3RMS

Under our current earthquake calc formulae, assuming a Richter magnitude of 5 and a distance of 20037.5 km (half the circumference) is enough to be considered a global earthquake, the earthquake would be sitting at a magnitude of 12.23: https://prnt.sc/KXQI66Y74G51

That's equal to 33.7 teratons of TNT: https://prnt.sc/hS4yfplOgSTl

Let's use this formula for large size KE: (x³m)(x*v)²/2; x is how many times larger than normal a creature is, m is the mass, and v is the velocity.

m=9; v=15.6464
(x³9)(x*15.6464)²/2=1.410008*10^23
9x³*(15.6464x)²/2=1.410008*10^23
1101.644248x^5=1.410008*10^23
x^5=1.279912279*10^20
x=10505.96721

Basing things off this, you'd need a barracuda that's 10505.96721 meters. That itself would make the barracuda visible from the ISS.

If it were a human, it'd be more like this:

m=62; v=5.55
(x³62)(x*5.55)²/2=1.410008*10^23
62x³*(5.55x)²/2=1.410008*10^23
954.8775x^5=1.410008*10^23
x^5=1.476637579*10^20
x=10810.72409

Multiply that by the average height of 5'9" (1.7526 meters) and you get the height requirement of 18946.87503 meters for a human's KE to cause a global earthquake.

As such, ideally, we should better define or break up Type 4 Large Size. The minimum requirements for visibility from space (assuming 1 arcminute as the smallest visible angle) is as such (figures done when angle is set to "Minutes" and 8 sig figs are set): https://www.1728.org/angsize.htm

Karman Line (100 km; current definition of space): 29.088821 meters
ISS (408.773376 km): 118.90736 meters
GPS Satellite (20200 km): 5875.9419 meters

As for the figures required to cause a global earthquake (Magnitude 5 at the furthest point touchable on Earth), here's what I got.:

Great Barracuda (thin organism): 10505.96721 meters (block area of 16.171 km²)
Human (often used as a base for VBW): 18946.87503 meters (cross-sectional area of 244.11 km² based on human cross-sectional area of 0.68 m²)

As for the area nonsense... Yeah, get rid of it. If you can see and make out Florida's shape from a GPS satellite, then maybe the millions of square kilometers thing should be considered a stupid idea.

By the way, I was able to distinguish 1-millimeter-tall letters on a small ruler from half a meter, which is 6.87 arcminutes. Using that figure means I can distinguish the shape of something that's 40.4 km in size if I'm on a GPS satellite.

If a new size tier is required after the Type 4 Large Size fix, I considered something like this:

"Type 5 (Lunar): At this size, the character would be large enough to be visible if he or she were as far from us as the moon is. Characters starting at X km fit this memo"

This would be as such:

Minimum Visible (1 arcminute): 111.8 km
Minimum Distinguishable (based on my ruler eyeballing): 768.8 km

So yeah, there you have it.
 
Last edited:
Flashlight237 said:
If you feel it should, then go ahead. I mainly posted it in Staff Discussions because I felt defining Large Size Type 4 is such a big change that it would warrant a full-on staff discussion more.
Click to expand...
I have no feelings one way or the other. @KLOL506 You two can talk this out.
 
I suppose if Flashlight has no problems with this being in Calc Discussion Threads, then we can shift it there.
 
I don't really care and don't want to adjust the value. As far as I'm concerned, doing so only serves to conjure work we don't need. In my view,w the best thing to do is to pick a standard (step accomplished when we defined our types) and use it ad infinitum.

To add to this: I'm fine with adjusting the flavor text to reflect reality more accurately, but I don't want to adjust what we consider the threshold for any given size category.
 
Mr._Bambu said:
I don't really care and don't want to adjust the value. As far as I'm concerned, doing so only serves to conjure work we don't need. In my view,w the best thing to do is to pick a standard (step accomplished when we defined our types) and use it ad infinitum.

To add to this: I'm fine with adjusting the flavor text to reflect reality more accurately, but I don't want to adjust what we consider the threshold for any given size category.
Click to expand...
The problem here is the threshold for Type 4 Large Size isn't even defined. As pointed out in great detail in the OP, which each of the three criterion explained and matched out, all three criteria for Large Size Type 4 directly contradict one another. Defining something means setting a clear condition rather than three hazy, heavily contradictory conditions.
 
Flashlight237 said:
The problem here is the threshold for Type 4 Large Size isn't even defined. As pointed out in great detail in the OP, which each of the three criterion explained and matched out, all three criteria for Large Size Type 4 directly contradict one another. Defining something means setting a clear condition rather than three hazy, heavily contradictory conditions.
Click to expand...
Yes, it is. It is millions of square kilometers (that is to say, two or more). This does not contradict the other conditions of Type 4: these characters are indeed easily viewable from space, and can generally cause natural disasters. I see no hold up. I did read the OP- you go over technicalities that, in my view, would be perfectly acceptable to list as Type 4. If the Amazon Rainforest were a single creature, we would assign it Type 4, acknowledging that it's highest point in one dimension is not really that much at all. Because Large Size is about more than just upwards height.
 
Thank you very much for helping out, Bambu. 🙏
 
I’m largely with Bambu on this. We can probably slightly reword the description to clarify that the required millions of square km value is the foremost aspect of it (with stuff like being easily viewable from space and causing natural disasters being wholly supplementary), but I see no need to drastically change our standards like what’s being proposed.
 
Mr._Bambu said:
Yes, it is. It is millions of square kilometers (that is to say, two or more).
Click to expand...
i personally think this is a bit of a highball - russia is ~17 million km^2, for example
like flashlight said, florida, which is visible from the height GPS satellites orbit (and if you're high up enough to see the earth as a ball i'd definitely consider it space) has an area of ~170,000 km^2 and is visible.
 
SeijiSetto said:
i personally think this is a bit of a highball - russia is ~17 million km^2, for example
like flashlight said, florida, which is visible from the height GPS satellites orbit (and if you're high up enough to see the earth as a ball i'd definitely consider it space) has an area of ~170,000 km^2 and is visible.
Click to expand...
I don't think we should adjust it solely to match smaller areas of land because we mention "visible from space". The language does not say that this is the threshold of things being visible from space, merely that things at this point most assuredly are.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is probably the core tenet of my approach to wiki policies. I don't think this is broken.
 
Mr._Bambu said:
Yes, it is. It is millions of square kilometers (that is to say, two or more). This does not contradict the other conditions of Type 4: these characters are indeed easily viewable from space, and can generally cause natural disasters. I see no hold up. I did read the OP- you go over technicalities that, in my view, would be perfectly acceptable to list as Type 4. If the Amazon Rainforest were a single creature, we would assign it Type 4, acknowledging that it's highest point in one dimension is not really that much at all. Because Large Size is about more than just upwards height.
Click to expand...
And like I said, we associate size, Large and Small, with three dimensional size despite a good chunk of our sizes being one-dimensional. We do this because fiction typically depicts the various monsters we see (ex. Godzilla) as three-dimensional creatures in size; height is just the base.

Specifying area takes away from the whole "rule of thumb" idea as, like I said, it neither acknowledges height as a baseline, nor does it assure the finality that is volume. Looking at Godzilla, we give Godzilla Type 1 Large Size as he is generally depicted as such, no smaller than 27 meters in Shin Godzilla, and we usually see him as a dinosaur with plenty of muscle mass to back him up.

thumb.php


Bare minimum of 27 meters tall (typically he goes for 50 meters), has the proportions (and thus volume) of a bipedal carnivorous dinosaur of comparable size, a rigid structure, perfect epitome of a large-sized character.

Here? We'd essentially be giving a sheet of paper that's 1500 by 1500 kilometers Type 4 Large Size because it's a 1500-kilometer sheet of paper. But what if we fold the paper or crumple it into a ball? Instant reduction to Type 3 Large Size. Why could we change the size type of a non-rigid sheet of paper instantly? Because paper's so thin you can literally compare it to a strand of your hair: https://www.uniquelycreative.com.au...-for-paper-a-paper-thickness-and-weight-guide

Not to mention so malleable that we can fold a football field-sized sheet of paper eleven times:



That makes it all too easy to change its size, and while that wouldn't necessarily need explaining, I'll do it anyway.

Going off a thickness of 0.1 mm (0.0001 m), we essentially have a piece of paper with a volume (which will be constant as I'll show you) of 225000000 m³, which is the same volume as a human with a height of 2693.269111 meters. A person that tall is considered low into Large Size Type 3.

By folding the 1500-kilometer paper eleven times like in the video linked, we bring its size down to 750x750 km on the 2nd fold, 375x375 km on the 4th fold, and so forth so forth until we get to the 11th fold where the paper is 46.875 km long and 23.4375 km wide. The paper's linear area is reduced from 2250000 km² to 1098.632813 km², yet the paper's volume (225000000 m³) remains constant. This is all assuming perfect folds and ignoring these wonderful things called creases.

Mr._Bambu said:
The language does not say that this is the threshold of things being visible from space, merely that things at this point most assuredly are.
Click to expand...

You say that as if I didn't select landmasses that most assuredly are visible from space from three different guidelines (Karman Line, ISS, and GPS Satellites). If you can most assuredly see Florida from a GPS satellite (bear in mind Florida's area is close to one order of magnitude below both our picks for what we think Large Size Type 4 is (170000 km² vs 1 to 2 million km²)), I assure you that (in regards to area) you can also see a Florida-sized cow, a Florida-sized stingray, etc wandering around the planet.

And yes, you can also argue that length is also not a factor in Large Size types with the Great Wall of China, with its length of 21196 km in total, as an example. And I get that. At the same time, that's because it doesn't have the area or the volume (the latter which is more important) to match a living creature of the same length. Plus typically we see large-sized creatures from multiple angles, which gives whatever measure for height we have some backbone. Space is just one angle. The wall might look like strands of hair if you're lucky from space, but good luck figuring out where the wall itself spiders off too when you get close enough to where you can see the wall's width from a bird's eye view.

All this while not including the other two criteria because I already wrote every detail on those in the OP and I did not want to repeat myself here.

If Large Size Type 4 is really as simple as you think it is, I would not have made this thread in the first place. You see how defining something based on a concept as malleable as area without acknowledging the proportionality of sizing a creature up or the rigidity a creature needs in its body structure could be a problem?
 
Here? We'd essentially be giving a sheet of paper that's 1500 by 1500 kilometers Type 4 Large Size because it's a 1500-kilometer sheet of paper. But what if we fold the paper or crumple it into a ball? Instant reduction to Type 3 Large Size. Why could we change the size type of a non-rigid sheet of paper instantly? Because paper's so thin you can literally compare it to a strand of your hair: https://www.uniquelycreative.com.au...-for-paper-a-paper-thickness-and-weight-guide
Click to expand...
What if we crunched and molded Godzilla into a ball no larger than 9 meters tall? Instant reduction in size!

Your point here is that paper would qualify because of its land area. I tell you that it would also qualify for its size- 1500 kilometers is sufficient. And your point remains for that consideration as well: if we crunched a 1500 long sheet of paper into a ball, it would be a smaller size. The same would be true of anything. I don't see the merit in judging things like this.

It is irrelevant if the given creature can be reduced in size. Their standard size is what matters. It's what the page documents.

You say that as if I didn't select landmasses that most assuredly are visible from space from three different guidelines (Karman Line, ISS, and GPS Satellites). If you can most assuredly see Florida from a GPS satellite (bear in mind Florida's area is close to one order of magnitude below both our picks for what we think Large Size Type 4 is (170000 km² vs 1 to 2 million km²)), I assure you that (in regards to area) you can also see a Florida-sized cow, a Florida-sized stingray, etc wandering around the planet.
Click to expand...
Sure. Not sure of your point, but sure.

And yes, you can also argue that length is also not a factor in Large Size types with the Great Wall of China, with its length of 21196 km in total, as an example. And I get that. At the same time, that's because it doesn't have the area or the volume (the latter which is more important) to match a living creature of the same length. Plus typically we see large-sized creatures from multiple angles, which gives whatever measure for height we have some backbone. Space is just one angle. The wall might look like strands of hair if you're lucky from space, but good luck figuring out where the wall itself spiders off too when you get close enough to where you can see the wall's width from a bird's eye view.
Click to expand...
Length would qualify for Large Size. If there were, say, a snake the length of the Great Wall of China, but only six feet tall, we'd still give it Large Size.

I fear your point of discussion is becoming a bit incomprehensive. At least, I have no idea what it is you're trying to say with most of this.

If Large Size Type 4 is really as simple as you think it is, I would not have made this thread in the first place. You see how defining something based on a concept as malleable as area without acknowledging the proportionality of sizing a creature up or the rigidity a creature needs in its body structure could be a problem?
Click to expand...
I think you would have, because you did and Large Size Type 4 still appears to be as simple as I think it is.

The basis for the Large Size system is largely set up to compare things to a threshold object. The world's tallest person, mountains, stars, and so on. Type 4 is in a tenuous position because it is the gap between objects most people could readily recognize the size of- many times larger than a mountain but many times smaller than a planet. Thus we fall on something country sized, which is defined by its area. It is easy to envision such a thing.

This does not create problems in our systems- how we have defined them is still concrete enough. Sure, it can lead to an odd situation or two, although some of your ideas here would be existent even if we used whatever system it is you'd like to use. I don't think that disqualifies it, though.

I stand by my conclusion: Type 4 is fine, we don't need to redefine it.
 
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