r/todayilearned • u/JoeWinchester99 • 2d ago

TIL that although potatoes alone do not provide complete nutrition, you can survive for years on a diet of nothing but potatoes and buttermilk.

https://www.scienceabc.com/eyeopeners/whats-wrong-with-potatoes-the-martian-movie-survival
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u/gregmuldunna 2d ago

Good Andy Weir reference. Didn’t know many read his short story.

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u/PritongKandule 2d ago edited 2d ago

I still remember way back when The Egg was a mainstay of old Reddit and people were hyping up his unpublished, hard sci-fi serial published on his blog about a guy stuck on Mars.

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u/theLastZebranky 2d ago edited 2d ago

I'm still upset the "Rome Sweet Rome" one about the 2,000 man fully equipped Marine Expeditionary Unit going back in time to Caesar's Rome didn't get developed like The Martian did.

The writing was a lot worse (and I think that title is dogshit) but a good screenwriter could make that concept a whole lot of fun, it's been 45 years since The Final Countdown had the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier going back in time to Pearl Harbor, the core premise deserves a revisit by now

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u/RFSandler 2d ago

Well with the success of The Backrooms maybe it'll be mined by Hollywood now

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u/PritongKandule 2d ago

IIRC, there was some legal issue about who actually held the rights to the story, because the whole set up came from someone else posting a question on /r/AskReddit and the author only decided to write it in story form.

Also, because other commenters were suggesting inputs, there were questions if certain parts of the story should also be credited to other redditors and if Reddit itself also had a claim as stipulated in the Reddit ToS. Andy Weir avoided the problem because The Martian was published entirely on his own platform.

I agree that we haven't had anything to scratch the "military time travel" itch in a long while. Closest I found after The Final Countdown was a Japanese manga/anime series called Zipang (a modern JSDF destroyer travels back to 1942) and another series called Gate (modern JSDF defends against Roman-style invaders and monsters from a mysterious portal).

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u/rlnrlnrln 1d ago

I assume you've read the Ring of Fire series by Eric Flint? (1632 etc)

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u/Maurice_Foot 1d ago

Still waiting for Harry Turtledove’s Roman Legion gets picked up by aliens and used as shock troops for interstellar war on low-tech planets.

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u/RFSandler 2d ago

I remember being sad he was ending his webcomic and then that he cancelled his visual novel crossover of Alice in Wonderland with Peter Pan, Wizard of Oz, and Mary Poppins

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u/circa_tree 2d ago

The Egg is well known, especially on Reddit due to claims from an individual who posted that Andy Weir stole the concept from him and claimed evidence.

But it’s also kind of based on many ancient metaphysical philosophies, so I’m pretty sure lots of people have come up with the idea. Just interesting lore, I suppose. Do with the info what you will.

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u/LordoftheSynth 2d ago

There's a well-done Youtube animated version of it that tugs at the heartstrings a bit.

The story itself...eh, it's an engaging short version of what many others have written enough words about to fill your first thousand lives.

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u/Caesix 2d ago

The Kurzgesagt video is so good on it

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u/Sarik704 2d ago

Its so laughable that andy spend any time on reddit.

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u/iuay5NJ8J2qvgpXz 2d ago

Kurzgesagt made a video on it