# Sci-fi/horror predicaments you wouldn't want to find yourself in **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 15, 2005, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-horror-predicaments-you-wouldnt-want-to-find-yourself-in/317036 "2005-08-15T02:11:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2005, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-horror-predicaments-you-wouldnt-want-to-find-yourself-in/317036/21 "2005-08-15T06:44:06Z")
Many, _many_ anime situations. Where “good” and “evil” become hopelessly muddled; logic, proportion and the inviolable laws of physics have fallen slowly dead, and the victor of the great conflict of all time is just the person who screams and/or sobs the most, and he _still_ ends up dead, anyway. (Dead, vaporized, and probably heartbroken or insane.) ---
**Author:** ![parthenokinesis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/cc9497/32.png) [@parthenokinesis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/parthenokinesis)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2005, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-horror-predicaments-you-wouldnt-want-to-find-yourself-in/317036/22 "2005-08-15T06:49:02Z")
Actually, I think I would quite enjoy being trapped in Romero’s Living Dead world. I would hate being the guy who goes back in time to kill the guy who was gonna assassinate Hitler, cause the alternative is much worse. ---
**Author:** ![BMalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e274bd/32.png) [@BMalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMalion)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2005, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-horror-predicaments-you-wouldnt-want-to-find-yourself-in/317036/23 "2005-08-15T13:18:12Z")
I’d hate to be there when they cross the streams. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2005, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-horror-predicaments-you-wouldnt-want-to-find-yourself-in/317036/24 "2005-08-15T14:07:47Z")
_Brave New World/1984_. Nuff said. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2005, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-horror-predicaments-you-wouldnt-want-to-find-yourself-in/317036/25 "2005-08-15T14:13:25Z")
> [@Ranchoth](#): > > Many, _many_ anime situations. Where “good” and “evil” become hopelessly muddled; logic, proportion and the inviolable laws of physics have fallen slowly dead, and the victor of the great conflict of all time is just the person who screams and/or sobs the most, and he _still_ ends up dead, anyway. (Dead, vaporized, and probably heartbroken or insane.) It’s indeed a source of conflict, because, as a viewer, I find watching all participants in such muddled catastrophes eventually die, so they will finally _shut the fuck up_, deeply satisfying. If I were one of them, I might just hate myself enough to welcome the Psionic Robots of Atomic Doom. ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2005, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-horror-predicaments-you-wouldnt-want-to-find-yourself-in/317036/26 "2005-08-15T14:38:05Z")
> [@Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor](#): > > _Brave New World/1984_. Nuff said. :eek: On the plus side, we wouldn’t ever have to worry about where you are. Some of the predicaments of sci-fi/horror are so easily remedied, too. Like in **Alien** and **Aliens** , simply spacing the ship as soon as the creature is revealed or taking off and nuking the entire site from space, just to be sure, are such mind blowingly obvious solutions that the real horror comes from being so stupid that these things aren’t done til the end of the movie. So, I will amend my earlier fears of being in a situation where I couldn’t communicate at all tho I tried my ass of to (Kadir beneath Mo Moteh), surrounded by zombies, or being trapped in the S.O.L., to being stuck with a bunch of stupid jackweeds who perpetuate and exacerbate whatever rotton scenario we’re in by means of idiocy. ---
**Author:** ![NoCoolUserName](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5fc32e/32.png) [@NoCoolUserName](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NoCoolUserName)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2005, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-horror-predicaments-you-wouldnt-want-to-find-yourself-in/317036/27 "2005-08-15T14:56:22Z")
> [@jrfranchi](#): > > Not to interested in surviving an all out end of civ. Nuke War as per so many books and movies. Varley, John. “The Manhattan Phone Book (Abridged).” is the story you want. Maybe. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![dwc1970](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a183cd/32.png) [@dwc1970](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dwc1970)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2005, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-horror-predicaments-you-wouldnt-want-to-find-yourself-in/317036/28 "2005-08-15T15:02:47Z")
I wouldn’t want to be in a situation where every one of my family members and friends were turning up dead and brutally murdered, having nobody to turn to for support because they keep getting killed off one by one. At this point I’d just want the killer to do me in and get it over with. ---
**Author:** ![Bytegeist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@Bytegeist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bytegeist)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2005, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-horror-predicaments-you-wouldnt-want-to-find-yourself-in/317036/29 "2005-08-15T16:15:51Z")
> [@NoClueBoy](#): > > Some of the predicaments of sci-fi/horror are so easily remedied, too. Like in **Alien** and **Aliens** , simply spacing the ship as soon as the creature is revealed or taking off and nuking the entire site from space, just to be sure, are such mind blowingly obvious solutions that the real horror comes from being so stupid that these things aren’t done til the end of the movie. To be fair to the characters in these movies, I think in _Alien_ they didn’t realize at all what they were up against until the alien was large and lethal. (Though you have to wonder what the alien was eating _after_ it emerged from Kane, for it to have grown so big already by its second appearance. Did it find the Haagen Dazs stash somewhere?) Also, they were in the process of bringing home a huge freighter of valuable something-or-other (ore?), worth a lot of money to them, and which they’d spent a large chunk of their lives on. Destroying the whole ship was surely a last resort. In _Aliens_, Ripley and company didn’t know there was a _hive_ of the creatures until they were inside the complex. Plus, they were initially on a rescue mission, looking for any surviving colonists. Nuking the site at the first whiff of alien goo would have been a bit callous, and trigger-happy. By the time the rescue mission was moot, they were already trapped themselves. And of course, in any monster movies like these, there would hardly be a movie at all if the monster were dispatched in the first act. ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2005, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-horror-predicaments-you-wouldnt-want-to-find-yourself-in/317036/30 "2005-08-15T16:22:36Z")
Not destroy, space. Open the ship to vacuum while wearing your spacesuits. And Ripley’s nuke comment came after the group had determined the colonists were lost and they were discussing saving the edifice somehow. But, that’s beside the point as you are making the common mistake of picking on the example and not the statement the example is backing. You get a pass this time… 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Quercus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/7ab992/32.png) [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2005, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-horror-predicaments-you-wouldnt-want-to-find-yourself-in/317036/31 "2005-08-15T16:22:56Z")
> [@](#): > > Favourite, of course, is to wake up in the society where all other men have died out. Yeah, unless it’s in “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” in which case, well, read for yourself and decide whether it makes it into a top 10 bad science fiction destiny. ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2005, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-horror-predicaments-you-wouldnt-want-to-find-yourself-in/317036/32 "2005-08-15T16:24:18Z")
Because the main point is that I wouldn’t want to be in a similar situation in real life, not what makes a movie watchable. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2005, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-horror-predicaments-you-wouldnt-want-to-find-yourself-in/317036/33 "2005-08-15T16:31:48Z")
How about where I’m the last person on Earth and can read all the books I want, then I break my glasses? ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2005, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-horror-predicaments-you-wouldnt-want-to-find-yourself-in/317036/34 "2005-08-15T17:05:46Z")
One day I got up, went to work, and was shrunken to a miniscule fraction of my normal size. Physicians injected me into the blood stream of a living man, and his immune system turned on me. After being coated with immunoglobulins, I was phagocytosed, and spent my last, agonizing moments being digested by enzymes in the acid environment of a lysosome. Boy did that ever suck. ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2005, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-horror-predicaments-you-wouldnt-want-to-find-yourself-in/317036/35 "2005-08-15T17:14:57Z")
Possibly the worst thing I ever read was in Stephen King’s ‘The Jaunt’ where It turns out the teleportation takes an unimagainably long time, subjectively, so people have to be knocked out to use it. It’s mentioned in the story that a guy “killed” his wife by transporting her to “nowhere”, so she’ll be in the limbo or whatever possibly forever. Another bad one is in Dan Simmon’s Hyperion books where folks are taked by the Shrike and impaled on a “tree of pain” to suffer for God knows how long, maybe centuries or millenia or even forever. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2005, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-horror-predicaments-you-wouldnt-want-to-find-yourself-in/317036/36 "2005-08-15T17:39:40Z")
> [@dwc1970](#): > > I wouldn’t want to be in a situation where every one of my family members and friends were turning up dead and brutally murdered, having nobody to turn to for support because they keep getting killed off one by one. At this point I’d just want the killer to do me in and get it over with. In those stories, _you’re_ always the killer. ---
**Author:** ![lno](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a8b319/32.png) [@lno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lno)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2005, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-horror-predicaments-you-wouldnt-want-to-find-yourself-in/317036/37 "2005-08-15T17:48:07Z")
> [@NoClueBoy](#): > > Some of the predicaments of sci-fi/horror are so easily remedied, too. Like in **Alien** and **Aliens** , simply spacing the ship as soon as the creature is revealed or taking off and nuking the entire site from space, just to be sure, are such mind blowingly obvious solutions that the real horror comes from being so stupid that these things aren’t done til the end of the movie. To add to **Bytegeist** ’s comments on this, the proposal to take off and nuke the site from orbit was made after the initial encounter in the reactor room. The Marines had determined the status of the colonists, discovered that a hive was extant, and Ripley suggested the nuke. Burke tried to overrule her, Hicks exercised his authority as next in chain of command and called Ferro for an immediate pickup. So, really, as soon as they saw what the situation was, they _tried_ to do the smart thing. ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2005, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-horror-predicaments-you-wouldnt-want-to-find-yourself-in/317036/38 "2005-08-15T18:24:30Z")
> [@Incubus](#): > > Being trapped on a marooned spaceship. In a similar vein, being stuck in the middle of space in a spacesuit. Seconded. In general, being trapped in a situation from which there is simply no escape (floating through space in nothing but a suit, discovering you’ve traveled backward or forward through time with absolutely no way to return, etc) has always been the most disturbing kind of predicament to me. ---
**Author:** ![Dante](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dante/32/9673_2.png) [@Dante](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dante)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2005, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-horror-predicaments-you-wouldnt-want-to-find-yourself-in/317036/39 "2005-08-15T18:31:09Z")
> [@uglybeech](#): > > To wake up in the plot from the Cube - a maze where every other room is booby trapped with some horrific way to die. That would suck. > > Anything involving giant spiders. May I strongly suggest you don’t read [World of Mazes](http://www.readingreview.com/worldofmazes.html), by Robert E. Vardeman? ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2005, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-horror-predicaments-you-wouldnt-want-to-find-yourself-in/317036/40 "2005-08-15T18:33:54Z")
Uh, pretty much all of them? 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-horror-predicaments-you-wouldnt-want-to-find-yourself-in/317036.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-horror-predicaments-you-wouldnt-want-to-find-yourself-in/317036.md?page=3)