Bad science in fiction Hall of Shame

[ARS]

About the walking dead (and any zombie movies) if you can make a virus/ plague/ parasites that can reanimate the dead into flesh-eating living corpses that can only be put down by shooting their head (and their brain), one thing that always wrong is that the decaying, rotten corpses is as viable as fresh corpses to be used as a zombie, even though in real life, to make body move, you can't just have a living brain, you need living muscle. A virus might make the brain alive, but a limb with destroyed/ decaying/ rotten/ absent muscle won't move at all, period

[YNM]

44 minutes ago, ARS said:

... if you can make a virus/ plague/ parasites that can reanimate the dead...

It probably only a temporary stasis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiocordyceps_unilateralis

[kerbiloid]

3 hours ago, ARS said:

if you can make a virus/ plague/ parasites that can reanimate the dead into flesh-eating living corpses

The most realistic and detailed idea of zombie-virus I've ever met was in Andrey Cruz book series about zombocalypse (not sure if is translated in English).

Brief plot.
A special biolab _{(you won't believe!)} was researching virus-like agents superagressive to other kinds of viruses and microbes, but neutral to the human body and even helping it to repair cell damages.
As the virus wasn't trying to harm the body, the immune system was ignoring it. And other viruses and microbes were its competitors.

Once they got an overeffective strain of this virus, and after some dramatic events it has spread outside the laboratory contaminating everybody.
(Except the pure herbivorous _{because heroes need something to eat} and pure predators _{because kitties are cuties}.)

So, on one hand every living being (mammal?) received a steel-strong health (because the virus in their bodies keeps killing other viruses and harming microbes, protecting the body and its friendly microbes) and forcing the wounds healing.
On another hand if a being falls dead (for any reason), the virus keeps trying to repair it, and here we get a body with a damaged brain, agressively reacting on people, slowly physically degrading, eating somebody available.  And a walking incubator of this virus. If it bites somebody, then chemical interaction of high-concentrated virus in saliva and lack of fresh air quickly overinfect the bited person and cause lethal consequences, Then the bitten person in turn stands up, semi-repaired by the virus.
That's why the bite is deadly, while splashes are not. Fresh air killed the virus immediately.

Their metabolism is slowed, and they mostly stand still and don't spend much energy. This allows them to stay in stand-by mode for months..

To make fast zombie, author introduced "morphs": a mutated zombie which had eaten a zombie.

Edited April 25, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Nikolai]

5 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

The most realistic and detailed idea of zombie-virus I've ever met

There's a line somewhere between back-engineering what you want the results to be (I want zombies with properties X, Y, and Z; what kind of virus can I posit that will grant those qualities?) and reasonable extrapolation of reality (This is what viruses are known to be capable of; what scenarios are possible given those known facts?), and from your description, this work seems firmly to be on the side of the former -- which, if I'm being pedantic, I wouldn't call "realistic".  Logically consistent, perhaps, and that's fun in its own right, of course (I like time travel tales that try to be logically consistent, for example, though they could never be termed "realistic").  And I personally probably wouldn't care one way or the other about these categories while actually consuming the entertainment.

But some people -- especially the sort of people who would put up a "Hall of Shame" like this one -- seem to come down pretty strongly in their preference of hard science fiction, and the difference to them between the two categories above might be very important.  Just one of those endlessly fascinating quirks of the human psyche, IMHO.

[kerbiloid]

5 minutes ago, Nikolai said:

wouldn't call "realistic".  Logically consistent,

Yes, that's the right term.

[DAL59]

12 hours ago, Gargamel said:

nd what about the guy wearing it?

Not a problem for them.

It goes like this:

Outer insulator

Outer Conductor

Middle Insulator

Inner Conductor

Inner Insulator

When the bullet hits, it forms a bridge between the conductors, vaporizing the bullet.  

12 hours ago, lugge said:

A movie about an unmaned suit army would be boring

Imagine countries and groups around the world mass producing suits, causing a new arms race.  That could be a good movie!

[magnemoe]

5 hours ago, Nikolai said:

There's a line somewhere between back-engineering what you want the results to be (I want zombies with properties X, Y, and Z; what kind of virus can I posit that will grant those qualities?) and reasonable extrapolation of reality (This is what viruses are known to be capable of; what scenarios are possible given those known facts?), and from your description, this work seems firmly to be on the side of the former -- which, if I'm being pedantic, I wouldn't call "realistic".  Logically consistent, perhaps, and that's fun in its own right, of course (I like time travel tales that try to be logically consistent, for example, though they could never be termed "realistic").  And I personally probably wouldn't care one way or the other about these categories while actually consuming the entertainment.

But some people -- especially the sort of people who would put up a "Hall of Shame" like this one -- seem to come down pretty strongly in their preference of hard science fiction, and the difference to them between the two categories above might be very important.  Just one of those endlessly fascinating quirks of the human psyche, IMHO.

Note that mind controlling parasites exist in insects. An parasite who force an ant to climb up an straw to expose it self to birds is one common example. 
Some studies indicate that cats has an parasite who make prey want to be close to cats, this might work on humans to even if we are servants rater than prey. 

The base problem with zombies is extremely lowered intelligence / hard mind control by parasite. 
You fortify or redraw and remove or destroy food sources in area. then you start probing the area with stuff like armored cars with heavy machine guns 
Aids is far more dangerous. 

[Gargamel]

This one of my favorite threads.   It's like a tiny room full of drunk angry nerds all trying to be heard on different topics.   Go us!

[KerikBalm]

8 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Note that mind controlling parasites exist in insects. An parasite who force an ant to climb up an straw to expose it self to birds is one common example. 
Some studies indicate that cats has an parasite who make prey want to be close to cats, this might work on humans to even if we are servants rater than prey. 

The base problem with zombies is extremely lowered intelligence / hard mind control by parasite. 
You fortify or redraw and remove or destroy food sources in area. then you start probing the area with stuff like armored cars with heavy machine guns 
Aids is far more dangerous. 

I'd say the best virus of the zombie genre is the one from 28 days later... they aren't zombies per se, just "infected". They all die just as easily as normally humans, and will eventually starve to death. 

They still have major issues: the virus replicates way too fast to cause people to "turn" moments after infection - that sort of speed is not possible, given that number of doublings required, and the limits on doubling time imposed by protein synthesis and DNA/RNA replication.

While the average human can go weeks without food, we'll die in a matter of days without proper hydration.

As to Kerbeloid's virus:

Quote

 virus-like agents superagressive to other kinds of viruses and microbes,

A virus isn't going to do anything to another virus. Viruses can only infect living cells, and viruses by definition, are not living cells.

"Microbes" are very very very very diverse, so a virus that can infect a wide range of those would be like HIV also being able to infect a plant and a mushroom... ad you want it to infect humans to? They aren't even the same domain of life. No, just No.

Quote

even helping it to repair cell damages.

Umm... no, viruses won't do this, they are just delivery systems for genetic material that encodes for delivery systems for additional genetic material. They are for the most part metabolically inert, they won't help repair anything. At best they can be used for gene therapy to deliver a set of genes that are better for repairing cell damage (but this requires the cell to not be too badly damaged in the first place to even make use of the genes)

Quote

On another hand if a being falls dead (for any reason), the virus keeps trying to repair it, 

Physics says no... if its heart stops pumping blood, then the cells will be deprived of needed nutrients, and the cells will die... Unless the cells canabilize nearby cells for energy, in which case the body would just basically decompose into a pile of amoebas

 

[ARS]

4 hours ago, Gargamel said:

This one of my favorite threads.   It's like a tiny room full of drunk angry nerds all trying to be heard on different topics.   Go us!

What a sight to behold, eh? That's humanity for you

 

[kerbiloid]

3 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

As to Kerbeloid's virus:

Not mine. I just quoted the book series.

But in whole you are right, zombies just raise from the dead.

[KG3]

5 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

I'd say the best virus of the zombie genre is the one from 28 days later... they aren't zombies per se, just "infected". They all die just as easily as normally humans, and will eventually starve to death...

Physics says no... if its heart stops pumping blood, then the cells will be deprived of needed nutrients, and the cells will die... Unless the cells canabilize nearby cells for energy, in which case the body would just basically decompose into a pile of amoebas

 

  Zombies as depicted in most genre do seem to violate at least a couple of the laws of thermodynamics.  However maybe the zombie's cells revert to an anaerobic type of metabolism which could keep them alive without oxygenated blood.  I've also noticed that the zombie's bones seem to become weak and brittle over time.  Maybe it's because nutrients like calcium leech out into surrounding tissues.  They also seem to eat anything that moves.     

[Nikolai]

16 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Note that mind controlling parasites exist in insects. An parasite who force an ant to climb up an straw to expose it self to birds is one common example.

Yes -- yes, they do.  I note that "induce organism to climb nearby vertical object" is a lot less complicated than the tasks we ask zombies to perform in tracking prey (especially when we're talking about an organism that will regularly climb vertical objects in search of food under certain circumstances anyway).

17 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Some studies indicate that cats has an parasite who make prey want to be close to cats, this might work on humans to even if we are servants rater than prey.

Toxoplasma gondii simply causes the rat it infects to become less averse to the smell of cat urine, increasing the chances that that rat will be preyed upon.  It doesn't generate a desire to be close to cats.  And again, it's a rather long road from this to behavior as complex as prey tracking.

If you want to posit a human parasite that causes us to become irrationally angry in the presence of certain smells, for example (vaguely like The Screwfly Solution), and thus manipulate our behavior, that's reasonable given what we've seen.  Turning humans into zombies, though?  You'd have to alter an awful lot of behavior, it seems to me, and simultaneously alter an awful lot of our rather intricate and interconnected biology in a way that's kind of unprecedented from an observational standpoint.

[KerikBalm]

2 hours ago, KG3 said:

However maybe the zombie's cells revert to an anaerobic type of metabolism which could keep them alive without oxygenated blood.

They'd exhaust their supply of gluvose rather fast. One is that glycogen/glucose stores would be gone really fast, in a matter of hours, 2 is that since blood isn't flowing, there;s going to be even more limited stores of that. Glycogen is only stored in certain tissues. Without a beating heart, how are other tissues supposed to be supplied? Keep in mind that aerobic respiration produced 16x more ATP than anaerobic fermentation (per molecule of glucose).

Even with a lot of respiration, one can easily exhaust one's supply of glycogen in a matter of hours (like running a marathon), not to mention the lactic acid buildup. Fat stores are completely useless as energy reserves, because there is no anaerobic pathway for ATP production from fats/lipids.

So anaerobic: 1/16th of the energy of limited glycogen stores are available, only in localized areas since blood isn't flowing

Aerobic: Full utilization of glycogen stores is available throughout the body, full utilization of fat stores. You can "refuel" by eating, because a functioning circulatory system will enable food that goes in the stomach to supply nutrients to the whole body.

If the heart isn't beating and they don't breath... physics says No.

Maybe you want to say that they rely on passive diffusion... in which case... well then the available energy output is ridiculously low, and they won't even have a high enough metabolism to shamble.

Zombies just won't work. If there is a zombie apocalypse, it must be supernatural in nature... at least if the zombies are dead/undead.

That said... I do like the genre and find it entertaining. I prefer when they leave the cause rather vague... if they try to come up with a sci-fi explanation, it more likely than not will be stupid/detrimental.

I potentially see a super-soldier serum gone wrong though... if we posit that the "virus" causes large changes to internal anatomy, like growing a secondary heart/circulatory system, redundant organs, compartmentalized lungs, perhaps thick bone armor around the chest area (perhaps altered bone composition to be closer to ceramic ballistic armor?), so that the "infected" are hard to kill without headshots like conventional "undead" zombies. Throw in some BS about a metabolic or enzyme deficiency that was meant to keep them under control (like ketracel white from star trek DS9's jem'hadar, or the amino acid deficiency they gave the dinos in Jurassic park... although the first film only mentioned it in passing IIRC, and then it was dropped)... but then the "zombies" can actually get the nutrients/enzymes/whatever by consuming human brains/pancreas/misc flesh...

But this would all be rather contrived to get a zombie because the author wants a zombie, like @Nikolai was mentioning

[sevenperforce]

On 4/24/2018 at 5:11 AM, p1t1o said:

What the visual effects supervisor had to say on the dark elf spaceships from Thor:The Dark World, brace yourself:

According to Visual Effects Supervisor Jake Morrison, the Harrows, the spaceships used by the Dark Elves, are powered by black holes: "A black hole pulls in all directions. You stick a box around it, but if you poke a hole in one side of the box it would pull in that direction. So effectively, if you strap a craft around that, you have a propulsion drive, which is kind of an impulsion drive."

Impulsion drive.

That is...very very amusing.

[sevenperforce]

On the topic of zombies, one of the silliest things I've seen was the "cure" in Brad Pitt's World War Z. If you haven't seen it, it's a typical high-energy zombie flick, with SUPER fast (like, twice as fast as a human except when plot armor requires them to be only as fast as a human) zombies that turn within seconds. The protagonist travels the globe looking for a way to survive and fight back as the whole world basically gets infected. 

During his travels, he witnesses something strange -- occasionally, the racing zombie horde will completely ignore certain people. Over time, he realizes that the people they ignore are all terminally ill. The reason for this, the film reveals, is that the zombie virus can recognize that those people are terminally ill and thus are of no use in propagating the virus. 

The silliness is obvious. First of all, the idea that a virus could so thoroughly hijack a human's senses that it could recognize things like cancer in another person and thus ignore them? That's just ridiculously silly. Especially because this happens automatically. People who are terminally ill are essentially invisible; the zombies treat them like inanimate objects. It has an almost telepathic hive-mind quality.

But, even sillier, zombies are dead people. All the zombies are already dead! Why would they turn down a terminally ill victim?

The climax of goof occurs at the end of the movie, when Brad Pitt realizes that all he needs to do to walk among the zombies unharmed is to ingest a lethal-but-curable pathogen. He happens to be in some European CDC at the time and so he asks them if there are any diseases that are 100% lethal if untreated but 100% curable with a simple antidote, and they tell him which ones there are, and so he gulps a vial of some deadly virus and sure enough the zombies immediately ignore him.

 

[Bill Phil]

7 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

On the topic of zombies, one of the silliest things I've seen was the "cure" in Brad Pitt's World War Z. If you haven't seen it, it's a typical high-energy zombie flick, with SUPER fast (like, twice as fast as a human except when plot armor requires them to be only as fast as a human) zombies that turn within seconds. The protagonist travels the globe looking for a way to survive and fight back as the whole world basically gets infected. 

During his travels, he witnesses something strange -- occasionally, the racing zombie horde will completely ignore certain people. Over time, he realizes that the people they ignore are all terminally ill. The reason for this, the film reveals, is that the zombie virus can recognize that those people are terminally ill and thus are of no use in propagating the virus. 

The silliness is obvious. First of all, the idea that a virus could so thoroughly hijack a human's senses that it could recognize things like cancer in another person and thus ignore them? That's just ridiculously silly. Especially because this happens automatically. People who are terminally ill are essentially invisible; the zombies treat them like inanimate objects. It has an almost telepathic hive-mind quality.

But, even sillier, zombies are dead people. All the zombies are already dead! Why would they turn down a terminally ill victim?

The climax of goof occurs at the end of the movie, when Brad Pitt realizes that all he needs to do to walk among the zombies unharmed is to ingest a lethal-but-curable pathogen. He happens to be in some European CDC at the time and so he asks them if there are any diseases that are 100% lethal if untreated but 100% curable with a simple antidote, and they tell him which ones there are, and so he gulps a vial of some deadly virus and sure enough the zombies immediately ignore him.

 

The book is so much better. Considering that it has underwater mechs fighting zombies, Iron Maiden music used to attract zombies, zombie hordes visible from space, and so much more cool stuff, that isn't surprising. Okay, diving suits and not mechs, but still. Also, the cure in the book is actually faked. No free lunch, the only way out is through.

It's also an actual war, with logistics, tactics, and strategies that come into play, eventually liberating most of the world, with the occasional unthawed zombie still around.

Still not entirely scientifically accurate, but it makes sense how they deal with the zombies. There's a huge "battle" where everything hits the fan, and it turns out modern warfare isn't effective against zombies. It's also more focused on the aftermath and consequences of a zombie outbreak than the actual outbreak. 

Edited April 27, 2018 by Bill Phil

[StrandedonEarth]

The only thing I've read that comes close to a plausible zombification is Dean Koontz's Midnight (1989). It's not actually a zombie story, but the former humans in the book may as well be zombies. The basis of it is that someone creates a self-replicating electronic "bug" which reinforces a person's immune and healing mechanisms. It also lets them mentally become whatever their brain thinks it should become (mostly some sort of feral killing beast; some manage to meld with computers). There are two ways to kill them: "Take out the processor" (kill the brain which commands the body) or destroy the pump (demolish the heart, because if it can't pump the body can't repair itself. Otherwise the body could heal itself extremely fast. But they are not actually undead, and once dead they stay that way.

[p1t1o]

8 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

The book is so much better. Considering that it has underwater mechs fighting zombies, Iron Maiden music used to attract zombies, zombie hordes visible from space, and so much more cool stuff, that isn't surprising. Okay, diving suits and not mechs, but still. Also, the cure in the book is actually faked. No free lunch, the only way out is through.

It's also an actual war, with logistics, tactics, and strategies that come into play, eventually liberating most of the world, with the occasional unthawed zombie still around.

Still not entirely scientifically accurate, but it makes sense how they deal with the zombies. There's a huge "battle" where everything hits the fan, and it turns out modern warfare isn't effective against zombies. It's also more focused on the aftermath and consequences of a zombie outbreak than the actual outbreak. 

The book is WAY better.

I especially like the solution that is presented -  

Spoiler

a large group of people well stocked with ammo can calmly eliminate hundreds of thousands of zombies, the limit being how long you can stay awake pulling a trigger and how big the piles of bodies get.

 

[DAL59]

1. Build a swarm of drones

2. The zombies are defeated

[kerbiloid]

1. Find a quarry (or any another deep/high cliff).
2. Hang a loudspeaker in 2 meters behind the edge.
3. Loop Rammstein.

P.S.
Nothing to add to zombie theme after Z Nation masterclass.

Edited April 27, 2018 by kerbiloid

[p1t1o]

I'd like to see a story about a planet that has totally succumbed to a zombie infection, 100% conversion, after fatalities. Then at some point, a zombie is infected with a virus that "humanifies them" and can be spread via contact (or whatever) to other zombies. A reverse zombie movie. Near the end, you might have a huddle of zombies taking shelter in a basement, one of them notices a patch of healthy skin on another and, terrified, they all crowd away from them and the "waker" is like "FUUUUUUUU(DGE), WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUU(DGE)" and in the final moments, the last zombie looks out of the basement window and the street outside is covered with pink, naked humans, moaning and groaning as they come to terms with their new existance. 

OK it needs work, but there something there

Edited April 27, 2018 by p1t1o

[Just Jim]

4 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

I'd like to see a story about a planet that has totally succumbed to a zombie infection, 100% conversion, after fatalities. Then at some point, a zombie is infected with a virus that "humanifies them" and can be spread via contact (or whatever) to other zombies. A reverse zombie movie. Near the end, you might have a huddle of zombies taking shelter in a basement, one of them notices a patch of healthy skin on another and, terrified, they all crowd away from them and the "waker" is like "FUUUUUUUU(DGE), WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUU(DGE)" and in the final moments, the last zombie looks out of the basement window and the street outside is covered with pink, naked humans, moaning and groaning as they come to terms with their new existance. 

OK it needs work, but there something there

I like it!!!

Needs some polishing, but the potential is there... Write it!!!  

[kerbiloid]

In Z Nation some of them can could bite zombies and make them unzombies.
In Van Helsing series same theme with vampires.

[insert_name]

Zombies would not be a significant threat militarily speaking. An unarmed,  uncordinated, and uninteligent army would get blown away by modern combined arms.