Choose which of these mass-murder victims to save.

In My Humble Opinion
1

Some of you may remember the Lazarus Engine, the ancient Atlantean artifact with the power to restore one murder victim to life at a time, but at the “cost” of killing the person who murdered the prospective revenant; it restores the subject to the exact physical state he or she was in before the murder, but must be used within 24 hours of the victim’s death. Only the person who committed the murder may be fuel for the Lazarus Engine. Put anyone else inside and they won’t be harmed, but neither will the victim be restored. Rhymer Enterprises’ R&D division analyzed the device, but as its criminal applications were sharply limited we never put it into production. But when Suzie Q–the former RhE technomage fired for being insufficiently evil–left the company under a cloud of non-suspicion, she memorized the research on the topic and eventually built one of her own. Now she has occasion to use it.

Twenty hours ago, there was a mass shooting in a shopping mall in Houston, where Suzie hangs her hat. The shooter, a pluperfect asshole, was taken alive, but not before killing four people:

  1. Holly. She was only four years old when the Pluperfect Asshole riddled her with bullets, but she wasn’t going to get much older anyway. She had some rare disease with a name as long as your arm, and her doctors estimated that she had about two years to live. (And no, Suzie does not have a cure for this disease, and though she is happy to work on one, she cannot promise to be successful.)
  2. Heather, Holly’s 40-year-old mother. She died trying to shield her daughter from gunfire. Heather was a widow with three other children, ranging from eight to twelve; she had a nice middle-class job, but had exhausted her savings caring for Holly, and there’s no life insurnace. The orphans’ nearest living relative is a fourth cousin they’ve never met living in Alaska, so they’re probably headed to foster care.
  3. Hugh, a 45-year-old physician on the lines of Gregory House. He has personally saved hundreds of lives no other doctor could have saved, and if restored to life would presumably continue to do so. Like Heather, Hugh was with his young child when the Pluperfect Asshole started shooting. He and his son started running, but as his son couldn’t keep up, Hugh let go of his hand and abandoned him to his fate. Ultimately it didn’t matter, as the Pluperfect Asshole shot Hugh dead moments after shooting his kid–who, incidentally, has survived his injuries so far.
  4. Harry, the person most responsible for the low death count in the shooting spree. Harry was in his early 30s, and on nearly every other day of his life was a waste of protoplasm–a deadbeat who lived in his parents’ basement and rarely held down a job for more than a few months. But that day at the mall, something snapped in him. Maybe he’d read too many comic books; maybe there was just a seed of goodness in his heart that had never bloomed before; maybe he just had a death wish. Whatever the reason, Harry tackled the Pluperfect Asshole as he was reloading his rifle. In the struggle the rifle was rendered unusable, but unfortunately the PA also had a hunting knife, and Harry got his throat cut. But the brief respite gave people time to run away.

And now we’re at the thread question. Suzie heard about the shooting on the news, and using methods that I see no reason to go into ferretted out the above information. She’d like to restore one of the victims, but despite her obvious genius is paralyzed by the choice before her. You and she are friends, so she comes to you for advice. Whom do you advise Suzie to resurrect?

Poll in a moment, but don’t let that slow you down.

2

Susie should resurrect Heather. She has three kids still left to raise, those children deserve a mother more than anything.

A reasonable person might want to know why the others get short shrift.

Holly only has a few years left anyway; while sad, she gets excluded since she’s a goner anyway.

Hugh, while a jerk for not trying to help his kid, doesn’t have his fate decided by his actions at the mall. Generally, I think the idea that “this one man is the only person who can save X” is overblown. (If it’s not obvious, I think the Great Person theory of History is bunk). There are other doctors that will save lives. Hugh can stay dead.

Harry misses out for the same reason. Sure, he saved a lot of lives, but it’s his actions outside of the mall that inform us on whether he should be brought back. A “waste of protoplasm” isn’t worth it.

3

I’m uncertain what you mean here. Are the others you refer to Heather’s three older children, or the other three prospects for resurrection?

4

Does the machine have the capability to determine that the perpertator was insane? By insane I mean utterly incapable of controlling their actions, not simply insane like I am.

If that’s the case I can’t think of any method of choosing except to flip two coins (or one coin twice, or any other method of randomly selecting one of four choices). Disallowing that I guess I’d go for the little girl even though that’s just an emotional response.

5

Murder is murder, do not use the machine

Revanants cannot be trusted, I saw the movie

Capt

6

Holly, the little girl, 'cause hey, more orphans!

And more orphans means more cash donations from a sympathetic public. I project that just the three surviving children of Heather would rake in a combined $102,756 in donations from a concerned public, but throw in a fourth orphan, a four-year-old with an incurable disease at that, and those public contributions skyrocket to 1.35 million dollars. Even if half of that has to go to medical care for the four-year-old until she shuffles off this mortal coil, the three remaining children will still enjoy a six-fold increase in the assets available for them.

It’s a no-brainer!

And if you question my figures, let me assure you, they were derived in a fashion which some might call very scientific. Very. Scientific.

7

That’s a difficult one, while the others have their merits I have difficulty choosing between Hugh and Heather.

So inspired by Wellanuff’s rigorous evidence-based research I shall now flip a coin to decide…flips coin…Heather it is!

8

Heather. I default to “women and children first,” and Holly loses the tie-breaker based on her imminent demise from other causes.

9

Heather will not thank you for saving her life over her baby’s.

I too default to women & children first, though I suspect Suzy will have a different opinion. But I surprised myself by voting for Hugh, the cowardly doctor. I’d have a different opinion if Suzie were confident she could cure Holly’s disease (which I imagine to be Taye-Sachs or something similar). But since Suzy is not confident about that, resurrecting either Holly or Heather seems cruel, while bringing Hugh back is more likely to be a net good than bringing Harry back.

10

I also chose Heather (yay, top choice!).

The kid was as good as dead. The deadbeat’s biggest accomplishment was to save others from this shooter. These two were easy to eliminate.

For a while I considered the doctor, however the personal nature of resurrection swayed me to Heather. Despite his life-saving, there are probably many more doctors who are almost as good as he is. The patients he saved may or may not have lived under the care of someone else, but its entirely possible to replace him with any number of doctors and get the same result.

The mom’s connection to the kids is intensely personal. No way anyone else can step in and replace her. To me, the bond between the kids and her put her over the top compared to the largely impersonal nature of the doctor

11

I, too, would usually go with women and children first, but not given these facts. Who do I choose? Not Holly; she’s doomed anyway. Not Heather; she’ll be distraught at the loss of Holly and would have a terrible life trying to care for her other three children and then losing them, too. Not Harry the waste of protoplasm; good on him for his valor this one time, but that’s not enough to tip the scales in his favor. But Hugh, though… Hugh has done good works before (personally saving “hundreds of lives no other doctor could have saved,” Skald tells us, yellowjacketcoder and YogSosoth - don’t fight the hypothetical!), however, and will now live to do them again.

So Dr. Hugh it is.

12

My order would be Hugh > Heather > Harry > Holly. First off, I saw others upthread say “women and children first”. I straight up reject the idea that women’s lives are worth more than men’s; it’s sexist and makes no sense in a world where we’re not worried about whether or not we’re going to live another generation. I would in general prefer children over adults, because they have greater life expectancy, have had less of a full life, and are more likely innocent, but I don’t think that’s a hard rule either. Now, sure, I would like to believe in a situation of life and death I’d have the presence of mind to risk my own life to save my hypothetical wife and children, but I wouldn’t be doing it because she’s a woman and they’re my children, but because I love them.

Second, regardless of who is chosen to live, we can be sure we’re saving that one, but anyone left behind by the other dead will still have those grieving them. There’s a clear emotional element here with Heather having three kids, and they’d certainly be scarred, but we really don’t know how many other people will be affected. We know Hugh has at least one child too.

Third, I don’t know any of these people or this community, so my empathy would be in a more general sense. Lives are lost and people are traumatized, but ultimately there’s other reprecussions that matter more, particularly in how much those people may have meant to the community. Imagine a situation of another situation of mass murder or a disaster. Of course we’re all greatly saddened by the loss of life, particularly when children and families are broken, but unfortunately, death happens all the time and families are always broken. We need to pay more attention to the greater scope of what a single life can bring to society as a whole.

Holly loses for a few reasons. The obvious reason is that she’s likely to have little time left anyway, so even on a purely objective comparison of life expectancy, she loses by having the shortest. In general, I would tend to put some favor toward the young, but because she’s so young, she’s also a blank slate, so we have no reason to expect she’d grow up to be something extraordinary. In short, even if she did survive her disease, he contribution to society would be roughly average.

Heather is my second choice, but she loses for a few reasons. I would be inclined to save her because she’s a parent and has other children, but considering she’d exhausted her savings, I’m unsure how much she could really help her other children, especially after losing her young child she’d been pouring so much energy and money into. In fact, regardless of whether their mom lives or dies, the family would still have a traumatic end to this situation by having their younger sister dead now. And now they’ll have charity as the children/siblings of victims of this so they probably will be as reasonably well taken care of as can happen in foster care. Since it’s a given one life will be saved regardless of whom we choose, the only extra benefit she brings is really saving her other 3 children grief. This is a good thing, but I don’t think it outweighs Hugh.

Hugh gets my vote. Yes, it sounds like he’s an asshole, but quite frankly he has the most to contribute to the rest of society. If he’s a brilliant doctor, he’s contributing more to society than any of the rest here. And, like the woman above, he’s a parent too, so he gets at least some of the benefit that she would get for being a parent.

And, at the same time, though the way it’s described here that his kid was abandoned to his fate, I’m not sure that’s the best way to look at it. If dragging his son, or carrying him slows them both down, maybe he surmissed that if he didn’t let him go, they’d probably both be dead, so it only made sense to at least try to save himself. It’s cold, sure, but I’m not sure I could fault that logic if it’s how he thought.

Further, as mentioned above, because he can save more lives, he’s potentially saving the same grief that Heather’s family might feel to potentially dozens or hundreds or other families. Why should we weigh the pain that Heather’s children might feel against the feelings of all those families that Hugh could potentially save in the future. Now, sure, just because he’s a brilliant doctor doesn’t mean that some of the cases he might save someone else wouldn’t, but I bet if he’s on House’s level, there’s be several, and he could pass on some of his knowledge to others.

He’s third in my mind, and that’s really only because he has a greater life expectancy than Holly. It’s good that he acted heroicly, but in the end, he’s not doing much to help anyone other than this one specific act. Is that enough to pass up on a brilliant doctor or a parent with three surviving children just to reward him for that action? Hell, not knowing his motivation, maybe he doesn’t even deserve to be rewarded if he was doing it because he was suicidal or nuts rather than because he was genuinely being altruistic.

13

Another vote for Heather because her surviving children need her. Holly would essentially waste the machine. Hugh’s a coward, and deserves to taste of death a thousand times, but this one will have to suffice. Harry’s done one good thing in his life, and earned his ticket to Valhalla. I won’t take that from him.

14

Does Hugh’s one act of cowardice in an extreme situation outweigh all the good he has done in his life though? Seems a bit harsh. It would be a lot for him to live with if he is brought back though, he might even be permenantly psychologically damaged by it.

15

You may have a point about Harry. It’s possible that he’d see how he died as going out on a high note. He won’t be remembered as that loser who never launched anymore; he’ll be that guy who died heroically. I give it at least 50% odds that he’d prefer that.

But I can think of an argument for resurrecting Holly; it will leave Suzy extremely motivated to find a cure for whatever ails her in the time she has left, and being both a genius polymath and a technomage she may well be able to do so. If the disease is common enough, that’ll be worthwhile even if she fails to do so in the time Holly has left.

If you’re a parent, it causes you to hold him in almost infinite contempt.

:: pauses to check original thread ::

It says in the prequel thread that persons brought back by means of the Lazarus Engine don’t recall dying or being dead, so presumably he won’t have any psychological trauma, other than that caused by the exposure of his cowardice. Which he may not have known about until that moment.

ETA: I see now that the trauma you referred to was abandoning his son to die. You have a point there, though it’s possible the guilt from that memory will make him a better person.

16

What does that phrase mean? Its not one I’ve heard before and google has failed me.

Apparently!

Yeah, thats what I meant, also given how other people will look at him now, he won’t be ‘Dr Hugh the wonderworker’, he’ll be ‘That jerk that left his kid to die’.

17

That’s not the question I’m deciding here. If there are one or more gods, whichever one has jurisdiction over Hugh will determine his ultimate fate. If not, then it’s a moot point. Buzzards gotta eat, same as worms.

I’m deciding who most deserves my one “Raise Dead” spell, and I choose the mother that shielded her child with her own body over the coward that abandoned his son.

18

I wasn’t quoting anyone or anything.

I called Harry a loser because he obviously is, as described; “a waste of protopolasm,” the OP says, who still lives with his parents in his mid-20s and can’t keep a job. Never launched means that he never truly entered adulthood; 'tis a metaphor, comparing him to a rocket.

19

You obviously never saw the movie.

That’s OK, neither did anybody else.

20

Sure, but you were pretty vitriolic in your condemnation of him. I voted for Heather as well but you could certainly argue Hugh has done more good in his life than she has done.

Ah, well thats why I didn’t recognise it, thanks.