A fiendish madman* has abducted your loved ones† and placed them in a death trap – let’s say bound hand and foot and dropped into a tank full of sharks. Each is bleeding‡ from several cuts, the better to draw the sharks’ attention, and the sharks are all hungry. There are as many sharks as you have loved ones.**
Now the good news is that, using the MacGuyverish skill that is your birthright as a member of the Straight Dope Message Board, you have made it into the villain’s lair, overcome the henchmen, and have the means to save those you love†† most in the world. But the bad news is that your only means of doing so is a transporter – and it’s a Star Trek: Enterprise era unit, that can handle only one person at a time and nearly a minute to do so. While your mad engineering skills might in theory allow you to hack into the transporter’s controls and teleport more than one person at a time, in practice there’s simply no time to that. In other words, you have to choose whom‡‡ to save first, knowing that you are by definition risking the lives of the others.
Do you know whom you’d pick for that first transport?
Poll in a moment, but you needn’t let that momentary absence slow you down. The results will be public. Management is providing lemon meringue pies to anyone who wishes to throw one at my face for that reason.
Who is totally not me.
† Defined as your parents, siblings, spouse/significant other, children, and closest friends.
‡ Which proves I’m not the fiend behind the trap. Rhymers don’t assault women except in self-defense, and children not at all. Well, actually the first part is only true of male Rhymers. You do NOT want to piss off my baby sister. Girl can hit.
** There’s no point to these asterisks. I just like footnotes.
†† Yes, I realize some of you don’t love anyone. I am going to take a moment to feel sorry for you.
‡‡ Or should it be who? Lemme think. Yeah, it’s gotta be whom because it’s the object of a preposition. Now if only I could master the lay-lie thing, I’Il be set. Also, can one of you explain exactly when I should use that and when I should use which?
The bound hand and foot thing concerns me. If I start trying to beam them out one at a time, at over a minute each, somebody is going to drown. If everybody is floating, I’ll just kill the sharks and rescue everyone at my leisure.
The option abut killing the bad guy afterwards is moot, as I’d have already taken him out.
Lessee here…wife, brother, parents…and I guess I gotta save brother’s wife, too. 5 people, 5 sharks. The decision will probably come down to who I can reach first. And whether I can get clean shots on the sharks. Gonna have to shoot em point blank…but I will act decisively. No hesitation. There will likely be time enough for remorse later if someone doesn’t make it.
I didn’t write so in the OP, but I think it’s implicit that you don’t have any bullets [del]left[/del] available, or other means of killing the sharks, just as it’s implicit that you don’t have kryptonian super-powers which would render the entire dilemma moot.
I also think removing the sharks via transporter is ill thought. Obviously they’re going to be big suckers, and you have a primitive transporter. Beaming one onto your pad means you then have to clear the pad to make room for the next. That’s gonna add several minutes to each cycle.
Lastly, killing the bad guy first implies that you’re – well, confused about your mission objective. Your aim should’ve been to DISABLE the bad guy however is quickest, not to make sure he was dead. Time enough to remove his head once you’ve saved those you can.
Save your mother. A moment’s consideration will reveal that the cats are almost certainly dead already; I can’t believe they wouldn’t drown faster than humans, and I’m certain they’d lack the self-control to try not to thrash.
Since the dastardly fiend is obviously doing this to fuck with your head, he probably won’t have bothered with people you just like anyway. I mean, wife versus work buddy is not a hard choice.
Skald - I would match Caelan pissed off over any shark alive. By the time I got back from saving deedeeknowit, Caelan would have turned that shark into a hundred pounds of sushi and fashioned me a pair of boots and a belt to boot (so to speak.)
I’m in harms way without plenty of ammo?
You sure you’re from the South?
Shooting him in the head is the quickest way I know to disable anybody. I can double tap him faster than you can name the author of The Lord of the Rings. Probably faster than you can say the second “R”.
Wasn’t something like this actually Wesley Crusher’s Kobayashi Maru test?
Anyway, I’d rescue my wife first. She’s older, a poor swimmer, has arthritis and she’s probably already hurting pretty badly from having been tied up.
My three kids are all good swimmers (or, as they’d be tied up, they tread water well), but the dog is particularly attached to my daughter, so he’d probably block her from the shark attack. That cuts my next decision down to my two sons.
Tough call. I’m tempted to save the one who’s done a better job of paying off his student loans, but the other one has a live-in girlfriend, so I guess I’d better get him next.
That’s wise. And I wasn’t actually asking people (or expecting them) to actually specify whom they would save first. I was interested in whether people think they’d be able to choose, which is a slightly different question.
It is not true that I have digitally altered pictures showing Cecil in bed with Nancy Grace, and I will sue anyone who says otherwise.
The people who would be my first, second, and third choice (and yes, I have an order in mind) don’t actually technically fall into any of the categories you’ve defined as vulnerable. I’m not entirely sure about 4 and 5, though (or 1 and 2, in the categories as precisely so defined).
On the other hand, a transporter could probably operate a lot more quickly if you don’t care about bringing the subject in alive.
My loved ones would probably be my parents and younger sister. Of those three, sis gets saved first - no hesitation, and while I’d deeply mourn my parents if they died as a result, I doubt I’d have any trouble believing I’d made the right choice. For that matter, my parents would probably insist I rescue my sister first, assuming they had breath to speak.
After that, Mom, then Dad - Dad would insist upon going last.
I would feel terrible after the initial choice. Because my parents are both ill and elderly, and I love them dearly, but it wouldn’t make sense to save them ahead of my sibling and best friends, and they are the kind of people who would understand that. But man. Condemning mom and dad to be torn apart by sharks while they’re immobilized? Awful!
I voted for “I know exactly whom I’d save first. I wouldn’t hesitate or feel bad afterwards”, but should have picked "I only love one human being, so for me the choice is easy" - at this point in my life there’s no one close to me still alive but my brother.
I voted for the first poll option, though upon reflection I might feel a little bad about it afterwards.
I save my mother first. I could rationalise it by saying that she’s the smallest and the weakest swimmer (for as much as that’s worth when everyone’s tied up), and that she’s a nurse so I’d want her around to tend to the others as they transport in, but really, it’s just because she’s my mum. Second will be either my sister or my girlfriend. All things being equal, I’d choose my sister because she’s younger. But my girlfriend has the worst luck of anyone I’ve ever known with accidents and injuries, so if two sharks are having a tug of war over her, she can go before my sister. Fourth is my brother, fifth is my father. It took me only seconds to decide on this order.
