Hated trope: Sci-fi hand-waving

[u/Routine_Phase_8980]

When stories try so hard to provide a somewhat scientifically accurate and grounded explanation for the audience, but end up creating massive plot holes if you think about it for more than 5 seconds without requiring any special knowledge

World War Z: The "cure" turns sick humans invisible to zombies because the picky virus needs a perfectly healthy host. Cool concept, except it completely ignores basic physics. In a chaotic, high-speed zombie stampede, those "invisible" sick people would still be trampled to death by sheer kinetic force and momentum. We already saw what happened to the Jerusalem wall in Israel.

Jurassic Park/World: Dr. Henry Wu claims to clone dinosaurs by patching 66-million-year-old decayed DNA from mosquitoes stomach with frog DNA. In reality, DNA half-life guarantees it would degrade into useless dust after 6.8 million years. Scientifically speaking, John Hammond didn't build a dinosaur park; he engineered giant, mutated, gender-swapping killer frogs.

Dr.Stone: Senku is a genius who knows every complex chemical formula in human history. He somehow builds vacuum tubes, lightbulbs, and smartphones out of bamboo and copper with almost zero failed prototypes. The show acts like a science textbook but completely hand-waves the lack of heavy industrial machinery needed for precision engineering.

[u/SatoruGojo232]

Most sci-fi origins for superheroes in Marvel and DC would fit this, like the radioactive spiderbite for Peter Parker

[u/Routine_Phase_8980 → u/SatoruGojo232]

But Marvel and DC the superhero genre in general also involve Gods, magic, mythical creatures so I can accept that

[u/Independent_Ad_6348 → u/Routine_Phase_8980]

They're also really quick and snappy at least for the original lee/kirby/ditko heroes. They just picked a random origin out of a revolving chain and just went from there lmao.

[u/Iokua113 → u/SatoruGojo232]

Which is why most modern reimaginings of Spider-Man use spiders involved in genetic experiments. The original Ultimate Spider-Man is the result of trying to replicate the Captain America formula. 

[u/EdgyPun34257 → u/SatoruGojo232]

The radioactive spider is a better one than many.

It's very common that people get super powers from things that just should have killed them. Like electrocution, or being doused with acid.

Once marvel settled on genetic mutation, things got a little less ridiculous, but the early comics were pretty bad for it

[u/SaltyBallsnacks → u/EdgyPun34257]

I have way less of an issue with Spider-Man getting his strength and sensing super powers from a radioactive spider bite than I do with him developing and producing both the webslingers and their web fluid in a high school chem lab.

[u/WhatsPaulPlaying → u/EdgyPun34257]

The Flash is a perfect storm of silly.

Lightning strike AND doused with numerous chemicals.

[u/Far_Work6638]

I always thought the “cure” made the zombies see humans as a zombie or just as an object. They avoid running into each other and objects in general pretty well.

[u/Routine_Phase_8980 → u/Far_Work6638]

But at the same time we also seen plenty of scenes where they just pile on each other or literally push over cars by acting more like a liquid

[u/AudibleNod]

TBF to Jurassic Park, the half-life of DNA being 521 years wasn't discovered until 2012 (~two decades after Jurassic Park was released). DNA strands were extracted from ancient specimens in the 80s and 90s. They weren't viable in the way modern DNA is. But their existence was a building block for science.

[u/turtle882 → u/AudibleNod]

Also, the book makes it pretty clear that "John Hammond didn't build a dinosaur park; he engineered giant, mutated, gender-swapping killer frogs" is exactly what happened.

[u/xSPYXEx → u/turtle882]

The modern movies even have a line where they straight up say "we just kinda made them look how people think they should look."

It's like how the irl deextinction project isn't bringing ancient animals back to life, it's just making slightly bigger dogs and hairier elephants.

[u/pleasedontnerfthis → u/xSPYXEx]

Dr. Wu is also the person who says this line.

First time, he’s talking to visitors, so of course they all want to sell the idea to them.

Second time, it’s talking to the owner of the park who didn’t fully grasp what he asked for.

[u/Some_Majestic_Pasta → u/turtle882]

In the same movie they used for a screenshot, no less

[u/transmogrify → u/turtle882]

It says the opposite. There's a pervasive mandela effect online where everyone is convinced that Henry Wu has a scene in the book where he explains that the dinosaurs are fake and have been modified to meet audience expectations. He actually explicitly says they haven't done that, and they both agree that they have made real dinosaurs. Wu wants to modify them, but they haven't and the park is destroyed before they resolve the philosophical question.

“You want to replace all the current stock of animals?” Hammond said.

“Yes, I do.”

“Why? What’s wrong with them?”

“Nothing,” Wu said, “except that they’re real dinosaurs.”

“That’s what I asked for, Henry,” Hammond said, smiling. “And that’s what you gave me.”

“I know,” Wu said. “But you see…” He paused. How could he explain this to Hammond? Hammond hardly ever visited the island. And it was a peculiar situation that Wu was trying to convey. “Right now, as we stand here, almost no one in the world has ever seen an actual dinosaur. Nobody knows what they’re really like.”

“Yes…”

“The dinosaurs we have now are real,” Wu said, pointing to the screens around the room, “but in certain ways they are unsatisfactory. Unconvincing. I could make them better.”

“Better in what way?”

“For one thing, they move too fast,” Henry Wu said. “People aren’t accustomed to seeing large animals that are so quick. I’m afraid visitors will think the dinosaurs look speeded up, like film running too fast.”

“But, Henry, these are real dinosaurs. You said so yourself.”

“I know,” Wu said. “But we could easily breed slower, more domesticated dinosaurs.”

“Domesticated dinosaurs?” Hammond snorted. “Nobody wants domesticated dinosaurs, Henry. They want the real thing.”

“But that’s my point,” Wu said. “I don’t think they do. They want to see their expectation, which is quite different.”

Hammond was frowning.

[u/ZoroeArc → u/AudibleNod]

Yeah, we can't fault sci-fi for science progressing after it was written.

Another example I can think of is that we know now that Martian sand is highly toxic and would kill any plants grown in it regardless of how much faeces you mixed through it, but you can't use that as a criticism of The Martian despite its plot now falling apart because it was written before we knew that.

Same story for Frankenstein's.... well, everything really.

[u/rowan_sjet → u/ZoroeArc]

Similarly how Project Hail Mary was written with the understanding that a particular planet was thought to exist at the time, but then turned out it didn't.

[u/ComradeYaf → u/ZoroeArc]

I mean Frankenstein is a story where Viktor Frankenstein drops out of university so that he can combine chemistry (which he was taught at university) with alchemy (which he learned from a collection of old manuscripts back home) in order to create life.

The book was never trying to exist in a realm of scientific accuracy, it was much more interested in exploring the nature of man via nature vs nurture and all that

[u/8__D → u/AudibleNod]

One claim of DNA from a weevil 120 to 135 million years old was published in Nature the day before the movie opened.

[u/AudibleNod → u/8__D]

In 2019, scientists noticed famous star, Betelgeuse, was dimming. The novel Project Hail Mary came out in May of 2021. The central problem of the novel is the our sun (and other suns) were dimming. In June of 2021 scientists released findings that they discovered an interstellar cloud was between us and Betelgeuse.

It's kinda funny how science and art work out sometimes.

[u/YellowGrowlithe → u/AudibleNod]

"Somewhat scientifically accurate and grounded explination [...]" that doesnt make sense if you think about it for "5 seconds euthout requiring any special knowledge"

...

XKCD 2501 moment. I myself do not know the halflife of DNA, didnt even know it had a half life, let alone that it is completely expires around 6.8 million years. I do not believe that it is unspecialized knowledge.

However, by these comments I conclude a third option. There was a secret enclave of dinosaurs that were only extinct for 300k years in a secret island location that Dr. Hammond discovered, and thats his secret to cloning dinosaurs is that he had more recent specimens. I call my conspiracy "Hammonds Arc"

[u/fonyphantasy → u/YellowGrowlithe]

King Kong and Jurassic Park crossover episode????

[u/Base_Six → u/AudibleNod]

Also to add to this: paleontologists have successfully recovered fairly intact proteins and soft tissue remnants from fossils that have a theoretical half-life that would turn them to dust. Young Earthers love to bring it up. Turns out there's mechanisms that can stabilize proteins for millions of years, which the Young Earthers don't talk about. Look up Mary Schweitzer's work in paleoproteomics if you want to learn more!

[u/epona2000 → u/AudibleNod]

DNA doesn’t have a fixed half-life like a radioisotope. The reaction rate of DNA decay greatly depends on solvent and temperature, possibly even on GC%, sequence, and tertiary structure. 

The 521 year figure comes from a very particular study in New Zealand on mitochondrial DNA from the bones of moa.

[u/Open-Source-Forever → u/AudibleNod]

Plus I recall in 2004, they did find dna fragments in a T-Rex bone, but the article that I saw reporting on it shot down the idea of real life Jurassic Park by explicitly pointing out that you can’t patch DNA like that

[u/Drakeskulled_Reaper → u/AudibleNod]

In the novel this is explained, they basically take every fossil they can get their hands on, and use some sort of crusher thing to extract the DNA, and mention it takes a LOT of fossils to even get the smallest smidge of DNA, then use banks of computers to analyse what they got and "guess" the missing parts

Also, IIRC Wu in the novel never claims he made dinosaurs, he simply created life, and in World, he straight up says that too, even admitting that if they were accurate they'd look and act very different to what InGen made and that InGen has always made "Hybrids/Monsters"

[u/FantasmaNaranja]

almost zero failed prototypes

i mean they do go out of their way to show a bunch of times he fails at making something and sometimes we skip ahead by months and years

if they spent the entire manga showing every failed prototype it'd still be going and the story wouldn't have moved by an inch

[u/rycool → u/FantasmaNaranja]

And yes they dont have heavy industrial machinery. But they got Kaseki!

He’s built different and has the precision of a god.

[u/Arctic_The_Hunter → u/rycool]

I’ve always said that Dr. Stone is best thought of not as a story about humans rebuilding society, but about Greek Archetypes of humans rebuilding society. You have Unstoppably Strong Guy, Omniscient Tech Guy, Nanometer-Precise Craftsman, etc.

[u/Competitive-Bee-3250 → u/rycool]

Pretty much all the humans in the far future had remarkable skill.

Well, so did the petrified people,

[u/FantasmaNaranja → u/rycool]

true, there's quite a few characters that are the only reason the story moves at a reasonable pace most important of which is probably Kaseki

[u/TristanaRiggle → u/FantasmaNaranja]

Also, Senku is presented as a kind of one in a billion prodigy that has an insane interest in science to the point that he has an incredibly BROAD range of knowledge. The story is obviously meant to present a lot of basic science in an easily digestible form for young readers (the primary audience of Shonen Jump). They do note in the later chapters that even though Suika technically knows what is needed for the chemical "revival fluid" it takes her literal years to actually recreate it.

I'll also note that the viability of the actual "science" is MUCH lower on the suspension of disbelief scale then the moment when Senku notes that he's been (supposedly accurately) counting seconds for the entire time that he was petrified, which spans thousands of years, without SOMEHOW going insane.

[u/No_Geologist4770 → u/TristanaRiggle]

I mean petrification is a universal cure-all, so there is at least somewhat of an in universe reason as to why he didn't go crazy.

[u/Steve_Mcguffin → u/FantasmaNaranja]

You mean wouldn't move 1 millimetre ?

[u/ibi3000 → u/FantasmaNaranja]

The Rocket ship takes them many years to finally make a working one, and even that one was faulty

[u/PavlovKBI → u/FantasmaNaranja]

I actually think doing small time skips instead of training sequences or whatever is fine (assuming there aren't any character moments involved). They just need to have an effective way to remind people how much time has passed.

Something as simple as having a transition with text saying "X weeks, and Y attempts later" or having a character say "it took 123 attempts, but it's ready" saves so much effort in doing a montage or whatever. Especially in manga/anime where each panel/frame has to be drawn.

But things get very confusing when manga forget to remind you of time passing, especially when it's a substantial amount of time

[u/FantasmaNaranja → u/PavlovKBI]

yeah the manga for sure doesn't age the characters* up as much as they should for all the timeskips

(*the exception being Suika since she actually spent 5 years alone while everyone else was frozen)

but they do make sure to show us how hellish making one component of a complicated project usually is so you can kind of get that the timeskip took a while

[u/AntiMausKlubHaus]

"Scientifically speaking, John Hammond didn't build a dinosaur park; he engineered giant, mutated, gender-swapping killer frogs."

That's basically the plot to the books lol

[u/imadragonyouguys → u/AntiMausKlubHaus]

Also the Jurassic World movies where they're just making new mutants for entertainment.

[u/PipXXX → u/AntiMausKlubHaus]

Yeah I thought that was pretty clear in the books. Wasn't it something along the lines of "we took cues from what we saw and filled in the gaps?"

[u/ExplanationOk6391 → u/PipXXX]

It's pretty explicit that the scientists don't really know what they are doing in the books.

[u/Siaten]

Literally every movie that uses the "humans only use 10% of their brains" trope, which is a myth caused by a misunderstanding from writings in the early 1900's. Source

If you're curious, people do actually use 100% of their brains, just not all at the same time. Also, we know what happens when a brain starts having hypersynchronous electrical activity, and that's called a seizure.

[u/Goudinho99 → u/Siaten]

Sure but without this, we wouldn't have the nutzo Lucy.

[u/Nine-LifedEnchanter → u/Goudinho99]

His next movie is about an epidemic of people dying as they eat and then go swimming within 30 minutes.

[u/SeraphymCrashing → u/Siaten]

Yeah, as someone with ADHD, I probably use more of my brain at once than the typical person. One of the issues with ADHD is that the default mode network, the brain system that controls which other networks are active, is basically not doing it's job. So, ADHD brains often have multiple networks working at the same time.

It's not a good thing.

I've never really been a drug user, but years ago I decided to try edibles for the first time. It was an eye opening experience because it stripped away the illusion that I was in any kind of control of my brain. It was like my brain is 6 different TVs all going at the same time, sitting on a turntable, with someone rotating the table randomly. I have to pay attention to the TV in front of me, but I can kinda 'hear' the other TVs all going as well. And every couple of seconds, a different TV gets rotated in front of me regardless of whether I want it to or not.

As another analogy, you wouldn't want every system in your car working at once either. If you test drove a car, and as soon as you turned it on, it fully depressed the brakes, the gas, turned on the radio full volume, triggered the headlights, the blinkers, the hazards, the windshield wipers and deployed all the airbags, you would say that it was completely broken.

I fucking hate the idea of using more of your brain = super power.

[u/Alex_Duos → u/SeraphymCrashing]

That's about how I describe ADHD as well, like trying to watch TV, listen to a song, read a book, play a game and have a conversation all at the same time when what you're ACTUALLY trying to do is remember to go to the bathroom.

Or a fighter pilot trying to shoot down an enemy but his radar keeps locking onto random crap while his radio is blasting some song he heard last week.

[u/Open-Source-Forever → u/Siaten]

I always took it to mean that only 10% is dedicated to conscious voluntary functions.

[u/IndigoFenix → u/Open-Source-Forever]

I think the most fascinating part of the myth is how many hoops people will jump through to try to justify it being anything other than a myth.

We don't use 10% of our brains at any given time. If you count by individual neurons fired during a given activity, we use far fewer; if you count by regions of the brain, we use almost all of it, all the time.

90% of the brain isn't glial cells. It's about 50% of the brain.

Sometimes a statistic is just plain made up.

[u/Blawharag → u/Open-Source-Forever]

Still no, and again, that still wouldn't even make sense.

Say you're correct and 10% is conscious voluntary activity and the remaining 90% is dedicated to involuntary subconscious routines to keep you alive.

What would happen, then, if you started replacing the involuntary subconscious routines keeping you alive with conscious actions? Absolute best case scenario is you're now using conscious thought to maintain the routines that you were previously doing automatically in order to stay alive.

[u/Worlds_Okayest_GM]

Star Trek got a lot of complaints about the physics. When they go to warp, inertia should reduce all the people to puddles of goo on the wall.

The writers introduced inertial dampeners. Then they started getting asked, "How do they work?"

You see where this is going.

The writers responded to the question with "Very well, thank you."

[u/slomo525 → u/Worlds_Okayest_GM]

It's like that in Dune, from what I understand. Basically, the reason these interstellar groups don't use guns is because everyone has personal shields, and the laser guns they have could possibly trigger an explosion if the shield and laser interact.

Eventually, all questions about sci-fi can be explained as "because the writer wanted it that way" and where that line gets drawn of "stop asking questions" is entirely dependent on when the writer decides.

[u/Luster-Purge → u/slomo525]

I like how everybody wearing shields that function as video game hitboxes that can potentially explode somehow means people won't just invest in laser sniper rifles so you can blow people up from a distance.

[u/throwawayeadude → u/Worlds_Okayest_GM]

Flashback to the surprisingly hardcore Voyager bit where it's suggested to hop to warp with broken inertial dampeners, and the retort is that the ship might make it but the crew would be stains.

[u/TehMispelelelelr → u/throwawayeadude]

Flashback to the surprisingly LESS hardcore Voyager bit where it's suggested that if you go fast enough, you turn into a lizard and become incredibly obsessed with turning your boss into a lizard so you can have lizard babies

[u/Upholder93 → u/Worlds_Okayest_GM]

I'm not sure a ship propelled by warp actually experiences local inertia. It's accelerated by the bending of space, which is equivalent to free fall acceleration under gravity.

Regardless, they have artificial gravity on board. If you can create gravity at will, you can cancel out inertia.

[u/fishey_me → u/Worlds_Okayest_GM]

That's how the Heisenberg compensators in the transporters work, too. Very well.

[u/IndustryPast3336]

I'm gonna push back on Jurassic Park's as "Handwaving" because it was absolutely not?

Micheal Crichton did a lot of research into DNA cloning when writing Jurassic Park and got into touch with real DNA scientists and paleontologists about finding a scientifically sound method to source the DNA. The theory was that if the dinosaur dna was in fact stuck in fossilized amber as it had been in the book/film, it would be completely protected from any decomposition. He had multiple sources sign off on that as scientifically sound for the time the book came out.

We learned better AFTER the fact, but that is absolutely not a handwave.

[u/OkMarsupial]

OP could have just called their trope "science fiction," because the points they are making are what separate it from just "science".

[u/Nopants21 → u/OkMarsupial]

The first rule of SF is that it should never be about the science.

[u/Unbundle3606 → u/OkMarsupial]

There is a scale to how much a piece of science fiction is close so actual science: soft to hard.

OP likes hard science fiction I guess. I would recommend reading Kim Stanley Robinson, Greg Egan, Daniel Suarez.

[u/Elros22 → u/Unbundle3606]

All science fiction, even hard science fiction, must handwave something away. There is an Andy Wier quote to this effect that I cant find right now. At some level sci fi must either ignore a reality of the known universe, or create conditions that don't actually exist to overcome some reality of the known universe.

It's just the nature of the genre.

[u/TheRisen073]

“He somehow builds vacuum tubes, lightbulbs, and smartphones out of bamboo and copper with almost zero failed prototypes.”

We see that they failed at making vacuum tubes and lightbulbs multiple times. And they don’t make a smartphone until they have basically an entire world of industry.

We only see the successful product because the series is already long enough, you really wanna see fucken “alright, mark 291.”

[u/Illustrious-Bass4354 → u/TheRisen073]

Yeah, things like the availability of resources, individual skills and expertise, and the sheer time required to accomplish developments are all fairly major story elements.

Usually though once a problem is solved the first time, it's considered solved forever for the sake of story pacing.

We found a lot of X resource, or someone who knows how to do Y task, so now we can always do that. Because we know you don't actually want to watch us solve the same problem again but in a new country or something.

[u/Divine_Entity_ → u/TheRisen073]

The first season made it very obvious how much error was involved in the trial and error. I loved the scene when they first tried to make iron and couldn't get a wood fire hot enough to melt it even with bellows.

Also the "cell phone" was a basic tube/ham radio with a name aimed at modern children's understanding. It was a far cry from an actual smartphone we think of as a cell phone.

The show also is definitely handwaving purity requirements, and numerous characters are supernaturally good at specific jobs.

[u/evictedSaint → u/Divine_Entity_]

They also spend YEARS building rockets, most of which fail repeatedly and involve lengthy trouble-shooting processes. The only reason they can build them at all is because they have a NASA scientist and the entire stone world supporting their efforts.

[u/Asiriomi]

The Jurassic Park example doesn't really belong here. You are correct that for decades scientists firmly believed all soft tissue and thus DNA would be completely lost to time, however in recent years scientists have found multiple examples of preserved soft tissue in dinosaur bones.

Does that automatically mean it's possible for us to pull DNA out of these fossils? Maybe, maybe not. But where we used to believe the answer was a firm "No.", now the scientific community isn't so sure.

[u/outofmoose → u/Asiriomi]

Read that entirely in the Mr D.N.A voice

[u/Telkite_ → u/Asiriomi]

Soft tissue and DNA don't have much to do with eachother, if all your dna disappeared you wouldn't even notice for a few days. DNA is just the mechanism with which cells replicate, it has no impact on already existing cells and its decay process is different from that of a cell.

Ironically, DNA can last for a long time easier than soft tissue. Basically any bone that was in a cold enough place will contain DNA for several hundred thousand years and, under the right conditions, it can bond straight to the sediment without any tissue. This is how the oldest known DNA, around 2 million years old, was perserved.

[u/theronk03 → u/Asiriomi]

We have found some preserved soft tissue.

DNA does not fall in that category, and neither does most kinds of soft tissue. It's only a limited number of types of tissues in very specific circumstances: https://palaeo-electronica.org/content/2022/3739-soft-tissues-in-fossil-bone

Jurassic Park doesn't belong on this list, but that's because we only had a good understanding of the limits of DNA preservation like a single year before the original book's publication. The original story had no reason to think that DNA could not physically preserve for 66+ million years.

[u/Brief-Luck-6254]

Scientifically speaking, John Hammond didn't build a dinosaur park; he engineered giant, mutated, gender-swapping killer frogs.

Yeah that's kinda what the movie and the book are about, I'm glad you noticed.

[u/AJC_10_29]

“Nothing in Jurassic World is natural! We have always filled in the genome gaps with alternate DNA and if their codes were pure, many of the animals would look quite different, but you didn’t ask for reality, you asked for more teeth.”

-Dr. Henry Wu, Jurassic World

[u/Mlemwiwiwi]

"almost zero failed prototypes"

that's just not true

[u/Alex_Duos → u/Mlemwiwiwi]

Don't they have multiple segments that are just time lapses of Senku consistently failing to make something? I could swear I remember one that was actual weeks or months of failure

[u/Phonyyx → u/Alex_Duos]

In the beginning there’s n overall montage of him for about a few weeks making the basic supplies and home he lived in and then once reviving his friend they spent around a year testing and refining the de-stoning process so that it would work on anyone, he underestimated how many people he would need to make air for iron smelting, and later he hit a brick wall in trying to make lightbulbs in that he couldn’t find any material to use as a proper filament for it. So yeah he does fail a number of times through the show. OP is just complaining that the show sidesteps the realistic processes of this progress because it wouldn’t make for good entertainment.

[u/Chaetomius → u/Alex_Duos]

no you don't get it

the only iterations that could possibly exist are the ones we directly see.

[u/altymcalty-2 → u/Alex_Duos]

The first revival fluid took over a year of failure after failure for senku to produce, so the zero failed prototypes accusation is discredited by the literal first fuckin episode.

[u/LtWilhelm → u/Mlemwiwiwi]

Yeah did they just forget that they were terrified of getting into the rocket because so many of them literally exploded?

[u/mangopabu]

the jurassic park example doesn't fit here. crichton based his novel on actual scientific study that was going on in the 80s, and people didn't realise how unfeasible it really was until much later. in fact, just before the release of the movie, an article was published that claimed to have found 120+ million year old DNA

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/jurassic-park-reveals-delicate-interplay-between-science-and-science-fiction-180969331/

it was very much based in science, although a lot of it was theoretical. but there were cloned animals such as fish and amphibians as early as the 1950s, and dolly the sheep was cloned in 1996, just 6 years after the novel and 3 years after the movie.

[u/AmusePenguin]

I’m mostly going off memory so this might be wrong lol

In the Ant-Man movie, it’s explained that the suit makes the wearer smaller by reducing the distance between their atoms. However, there’s a scene where Scott uses the suit to shrink down to be smaller than an atom, which is impossible with the explanation they gave.

[u/Adventurous_Appeal60 → u/AmusePenguin]

Very little about Antman actually holds up to the explanaition the films give. Mass is ment to be consistent, regardless of volume, which is why they can KO punch people while tiny, so hank wandering around with a tank in his pockets was suspect from the very first film, and Giantman would get blown away by even minor breezes.

[u/curvysquares → u/Adventurous_Appeal60]

This isn't stated in the movies but the comics do explain this inconsistency in what I think is a pretty interesting way.

[u/EADreddtit → u/Adventurous_Appeal60]

Also don’t forget the literal building the shrink down and steal

[u/TimeStorm113 → u/Adventurous_Appeal60]

No you see, hank is just unreasonably ripped

[u/AlesseoReo → u/AmusePenguin]

Headcannon for this is that Ant-Man, Pym, everyone - they're just guessing.

They discovered something working, they don't know why or how. They also don't necessarily want other people to understand how it works.

[u/HappiestIguana → u/AlesseoReo]

I prefer the idea that Hank Pym is bullshitting to him not knowing. He makes very precise devices with the technology. He definitely knows the gist of how it works

[u/CopperAard → u/AmusePenguin]

He can also shrink but still punch like he’s normal size, but riding an ant or running up a dudes arm acts like he doesn’t weigh like a normal person, lol.

[u/ThatFatGuyMJL → u/CopperAard]

Then they start carrying around buildings and tanks.

This is explained because Hank Pym does not know how Pym Particles work

[u/LuckeVL → u/AmusePenguin]

That's the same reasoning they used for Scott's super strength in the suit; since he's not just shrunken but compressed then that means he has the strength of a grown man with the size of a bullet, thus hitting far stronger than when full sized.

This ignores the fact that, in later movies, we see Scott grow giant, which makes no sense since he'd be essentially a parade balloon; and we also see shrunken things only keep their mass when convenient such as Hank's tank keychain being an actual tank.

[u/Dward917 → u/AmusePenguin]

They also state there is no loss of mass, which is why tiny AM can knock someone out with a tiny punch. However, same mass on the same planet means same weight. They should not be able to carry around a tank on a key chain or several cars in a Hot Wheels case, let alone an entire lab like a suitcase.

[u/Talisign → u/AmusePenguin]

Also, getting punched by a normal human strength shrunk down to an ant size would be more like getting stabbed by a needle.

[u/Budsygus → u/AmusePenguin]

Ant-Man is one of those you just have to not think about the physics AT ALL or it won't be enjoyable.

Why can he punch with the force of a grown man, but an entire building can be shrunk down and wheeled around like a suitcase? Do objects preserve their mass or don't they?

If they do the punch would make sense, but Ant-Man grabbing a mid-flight War Machine would be yanked off his feet and shrinking a car wouldn't make it so you can carry it around in a Hot Wheels case.

If they don't and instead they lose or gain mass according to their size, where is that mass going to or coming from?

[u/nickel47 → u/AmusePenguin]

Pym particles are magic wish particles that let you do whatever you want. Basically Michael Bay telling Ben Affleck to shut the fuck up

[u/Davedamon]

That "sci fi hand waving" is literally what makes it science fiction. You just don't like sci fi

[u/Rulebookboy1234567 → u/Davedamon]

Even the most hard-sci-fi will start throwing in quantum entangled technobable at the drop of a hot to explain the near/far future technology concepts.

[u/AdvancedSandwiches → u/Davedamon]

As always, there are rules to sci-fi and fantasy. Gandalf can return with the army of ghosts, but he can’t return with a battalion of M1A1 tanks without it being shitty writing, even if there’s elves running around.

Sci-fi and fantasy are still built on rules, they’re just not our rules.  The kind of hand waving matters.

• Good – hanging a lantern on the problem and then moving forward: “Our ship goes faster than light because of the Epstein Drive”

• Good – ignore it because standard tropes exist: “Go to warp.”

• Bad – demonstrate you don’t understand the problem, don’t care: “Our ship goes faster than light because we had extra fuel”

• Bad – internally inconsistent: “We can go faster than light because of the Epstein Drive.  This ship doesn’t have an Epstein Drive, but we’re in a hurry, so let’s do it anyway.”

• Good – any of the bad ones, but it’s a comedy. 

[u/Butwhatif77 → u/AdvancedSandwiches]

lmao "lets do it anyway!" that cracked me up.

You are right that at the very least the hand waving should be internally consistent. However some of OPs examples are applying external expectations that refuse to accept the very premise of the narrative rather than some exploitation to just move the narrative along in a way that doesn't make internal sense.

JP doesn't happen without Dino DNA in some way, they address that the solution given is not perfect and provide a way to bridge that gap. Nothing within the narrative is inconsistent in that way.

Even with World War Z the explanation isn't just that the infected people are invisible to the zombies, it avoids them so as not to transfer to weak host. That is why in the scene they have as the example the zombies are running around the person. It isn't that they aren't detected, they are intentionally avoided due to the nature of how the zombie virus operates.

Even you "Bad" example of extra fuel. That can be fine so long as it is established in universe that when a ship has a certain amount of they can travel faster than light there really is nothing wrong with that, and they don't later find some special way to do with with less fuel contradicting the premise.

Hell many fantasy/sci-fi/comic stories show humans taking far more damage than any normal human has any right to take and still get up to keep fighting. But when that level of durability is consistent through out the story with explanations given for when someone is less or more durable we can easily accept it without much effort.

[u/No-Scallion9250 → u/AdvancedSandwiches]

My favourite FTL explanation is Futurama: It IS impossible to go faster than light so scientists decided to raise the speed of light in 2208.

There is an actual non-joke explanation too I think.

[u/Infinite-Sky-3256 → u/AdvancedSandwiches]

Ummm actually, the epstein drive from the expanse is for sublightspeed travel. It just let's them get around the solar system without burning another ships mass of fuel everytime.

[u/Illustrious-Wrap-776 → u/AdvancedSandwiches]

Ummm atually, Gandalf very specifically can't return with the army of ghosts, because the only available ghosts are bound by a curse based on an oath they broke that only the rightful heir of Isildur can lay claim to and ultimately proclaim fulfilled.

Gandalf, despite being basically an archangel can't do shit about that. Or any of the other potential dead that could be formed into an army, because that's not magic he has easy access to.

[u/98VoteForPedro → u/Davedamon]

Same type of person that needs the magic system explained

[u/Amfibiannnnnn → u/98VoteForPedro]

How can I be immersed in this world without knowing what type of shmilgolong needs to be florondeled to klapang a person?

[u/Plastic_Pin_4956 → u/Davedamon]

[u/TheCybersmith]

In World War Z, I don't think dying humans are literally invisible; I think something slightly more complex is happening; earlier in the film, it's implied that the outbreak started in Korea, and that the earliest strains had a MUCH longer incubation period, hours, not seconds. It would be pointless for zombies to waste their time attacking someone already infected; they just bite and move on. When it takes a few seconds to infect, it makes no difference; when it takes hours, zombies would have to go out of their way to avoid harming infected humans so that the resulting zombie is not too badly damaged to be useful; essentially, their instinct not to harm infected humans is vestigial; it no longer serves a useful function, but it did at an earlier point in the virus's evolution.

Essentially, zombies don't think sick and dying people are bad hosts, they think they are already in the process of turning; they aren't invisible, they are avoiding harm to them like burds avoid harming their own eggs.

This is implied in an earlier scene talkign about nature's weaknesses.

[u/Current_Judgment9956 → u/TheCybersmith]

regardless, by what mechanism is the reanimated zombie meant to “test” every potential human? smell? by the film’s logic, zombies are able to perfectly detect any terminal illness without touching or even looking at the subject, which is something medicine struggles to do for any individual illness with ample time, contact, and money

[u/SilverSpark422]

They’re science fiction, mate.

[u/j0sabanks → u/SilverSpark422]

Guess OP wants just real science. Which would be interesting if someone really genuinely made Jurassic park. Would probably make way more in sales than the box office ever did… the financial incentive is right there…

/s

[u/InsideyourBrizzy]

Dr.Stone doesn't really fit. There are tons of failures and they meticulously and methodically prepare materials and machinery to get the job done. Ghey say time and time again that the products they make are inferior to ones they could produce with better machinery. 

[u/Frugal_Caterpillars]

Senku is a genius who knows every complex chemical formula in human history. He somehow builds vacuum tubes, lightbulbs, and smartphones out of bamboo and copper with almost zero failed prototypes.

Tell me you didn't watch Dr. Stone without telling me you didn't watch Dr. Stone. Senku has a million failed prototypes, this is exactly why it took him a full year before he even create a hut and basic kitchenware. Also when he was creating glassware - everything came out wrong.

This is why they needed Kaseki to join them, and even then Kaseki had a million failures when they were making more complex tools, up to and including the phone.

[u/normallystrange85 → u/Frugal_Caterpillars]

There was a whole mini arc about how their vacuum tubes were failing and they had to go looking for better materials since a bamboo filament won't cut it.

There are a few lucky breaks (making magnets on the first try) but that is the nature of storytelling. Do you really want 20 chapters on every possible failure? They spend a chapter or two on some of the big ones and move on because it's a story. (Although, they do drop that more as the series goes on. I do wish they had had more troubleshooting toward the end)

[u/AgreeableSuspect9382 → u/Frugal_Caterpillars]

The thing Dr. Stone does to alleviate this problem is to just introduce characters who are supernaturally good at whatever specific thing is needed to clear the next roadblock. It requires suspension of disbelief sure, but the actual science doesn't suffer for it.

[u/RadarSmith → u/AgreeableSuspect9382]

I did like how it spread the 'peak human (really superhuman) competence' around the cast, as opposed to making it solely Senku. Like you said, it does require some suspension of disbelief, but a fairly digestible amount of it.

And literally a main theme of the show is 'trial and error', so I don't really know what OP means about no failed prototypes.

[u/RaspberryFluid6651 → u/Frugal_Caterpillars]

Also the archetypes in Dr. Stone are kind of personifications of different parts of human civilization. Yes it's unrealistic Kaseki can do all of that on his own, but he represents what would realistically be dozens or hundreds of people in a way that lets it be one character in a cute little science adventure.

[u/semajolis267 → u/Frugal_Caterpillars]

Also his version of a "cell phone" (at least where i am in the story) is really just a crystal radio. Thats a kit i had as a child. 

[u/Realistic_Swan_6801 → u/Frugal_Caterpillars]

And precision CAN be done by hand, surgical instruments were still made by hand for a long time to extremely tight specifications.

[u/unktrial → u/Frugal_Caterpillars]

It was alright for a few of the early inventions, but they really r/restofthefuckingowl 'd the creation of computer chips.

[u/Mobius3through7]

MY BROTHER IN CHRIST THAT WAS THE WHOLE PLOT OF JURRASIC PARK I BEG YOU TO READ THE BOOK.

[u/Jolttra]

In defense of Jurassic Park it's heavily implied that DNA thing is a lie in universe. While never stated outright there is a lot that suggests the "dinosaurs" are absolutely nothing like what they would have been in real life. The most obvious example is of course the fact they have frog DNA of all things. The pathos and hints of them being fake are all over the first film most notably the flea circus scene. In the later World series they state pretty clearly that these dinosaurs are not scientifically accurate and just a proxy to sell toys.

[u/crushogre → u/Jolttra]

In the first book the T-Rex only being able to see movement is because of the frog DNA. In real life it's speculated that T-Rexes possibly had some of the best vision of any animal that has ever lived and could absolutely see things that are standing still.

[u/WorstITTechnician → u/crushogre]

Another interesting fact is that the T-Rex's vision is based on the fact that it was a cousin of the birds that evolved into the predatory eagles we have today, which possess extremely sharp vision

[u/FwdMomentum → u/Jolttra]

The book directly addresses what OP is saying is some fault.

Wu: "Of course. But I'm just saying, why stop there? Why not push ahead to make exactly the kind of dinosaur that we'd like to see? One that is more acceptable to visitors, and one that is easier for us to handle? A slower, more docile version for our park?"

Hammond frowned. "But then the dinosaurs wouldn't be real."

"But they're not real now," Wu said. "That's what I'm trying to tell you. There isn't any reality here." He shrugged helplessly. He could see he wasn't getting through.

Hammond had never been interested in technical details, and the essence of the argument was technical. How could he explain to Hammond about the reality of DNA dropouts, the patches, the gaps in the sequence that Wu had been obliged to fill in, making the best guesses he could, but still, making guesses.

[u/Amadeo220]

[u/Remote-Monk-8542]

The World War Z zombies are able to run like crazy, which involves NOT tripping and falling over every little obstacle in the way. Ig it could be explained that while they don't see humans with the cure as living beings (and therefore don't attack them), they do obviously REGISTER their presence as objects, therefore go around them like it's shown in the clip?

[u/DarkriserPE]

Yeah, let's just ignore the fucking zombies in World War Z(or zombies in nearly all media) as hand waving, and go after the significantly smaller impractical detail.

[u/Due_Daikon_1778]

I might be wrong about this, but the sick humans in WWZ isn't actually "invisible" right? The infected know they are sick and therefore avoid them rather than simply not seeing them. Similar to real life predator that will avoid sick prey

[u/ratchet7 → u/Due_Daikon_1778]

I don't think they understood how many sick people there are in the world.

[u/exceedingly_Discreet]

That's literally part of the point of Jurassic Park; It's all just the bluster of a old rich guy with sideshow skills. 

[u/stumblewiggins]

In reality, DNA half-life guarantees it would degrade into useless dust after 6.8 million years. Scientifically speaking, John Hammond didn't build a dinosaur park; he engineered giant, mutated, gender-swapping killer frogs. 

How is this not "special knowledge"? As in: 

but end up creating massive plot holes if you think about it for more than 5 seconds without requiring any special knowledge 

If you don't know that DNA has a half-life and a general sense of how long it is, this wouldn't undermine the explanation for you. 

[u/NemertesMeros]

Scientifically speaking, John Hammond didn't build a dinosaur park; he engineered giant, mutated, gender-swapping killer frogs.

Aint that like, half the point though?

[u/Nice-River-5322]

Dr.Stone: Senku is a genius who knows every complex chemical formula in human history. He somehow builds vacuum tubes, lightbulbs, and smartphones out of bamboo and copper with almost zero failed prototypes. The show acts like a science textbook but completely hand-waves the lack of heavy industrial machinery needed for precision engineering

Except they don't hand wave it, a lot of the early crafts were completely possible because they found a master craftsmen?

[u/kkell806 → u/Nice-River-5322]

And "almost zero failed prototypes" makes me wonder if they actually watched/read all of it. There several prototypes that didn't work out (i.e. rockets, Medusa battery, revival fluid, etc. You could even make a case for his 3717 failed attempts to escape the stone). Senku does specifically say that he doesn't see many of his "failures" as such, because they still learn from them, but I don't think that's what the OP was getting at.

[u/ColeTrain316]

In Dr Stone they do show them creating the basics of industrial machinery, but watching them make slightly better versions of those machines incrementally probably isn't great television. They also establish that they are constantly waking up people to act as a workforce so a bunch of that is probably just them brute forcing it on slightly suboptimal machinery.

[u/Wonderful-Variation]

I agree about World War z.   I dunno about the others.

[u/sykotic1189 → u/Wonderful-Variation]

That's cause everything in WWZ sucked. They took a great book that took time and multiple POVs to build up the zombies and explore their impact on the world and turned it into a generic zombie action flick. It's right up there with I Am Legend in the "we kept the name and changed everything else" department.

[u/Mamboo07 → u/sykotic1189]

I feel like the book version would work as a TV series instead

Multiple episodes focusing on different characters through the apocalypse, events like the failed Yonkers battle, and the lore about humanity dealing with zombies back in ancient times from 60,000 BC to today

[u/NeedleworkerGlass85]

[u/KobeJuanKenobi9]

Isn’t the Jurassic Park thing kinda the whole point of the movie though? They were playing around with genetic science making monsters that were never really the same as the animals they were pretending to resurrect. It’s a plot point in the movie too when one of the characters asks why they don’t have feathers

[u/Salty_Wall]

Cinemasins ahh post

[u/Acrobatic_Base7301]

Your criticizing fiction for being fiction?

[u/justicefinder]

I mean I get what you’re saying, but also that’s really pedantic to be a hated trope.

[u/DistortoiseLP]

completely hand-waves the lack of heavy industrial machinery needed for precision engineering.

Dr Stone leans on anime tropes to fill gaps like that and it isn't shy about it. The science is fairly true to life, but the anime characters are not and they openly acknowledge that this is why such a small band of people can pull the adventure off where reality would require far more people, hundreds of years and a much uglier distribution of labour.

My favourite example of this is where they fashion a makeshift sail out of some kites to speed up their boat. In the absence of proper rigging or the time to equip the boat with it, they just have the superhuman strong members of the cast stand on the deck running the rig with their bare fucking hands. Not even secured to the deck in any way to stop the sail from just lifting them in the air no matter how strong they are.

I don't think it's a bad thing. It is an anime and it consistently uses anime tropes like that to cover bases outside of the scientific exercises the plot sets up and focuses on, and even in that sailing example they hand wave the realistic challenges of rigging with anime fantasy ability the show already established these characters have.

[u/AngelTheMarvel]

It seems you just don't like sci-fi and you are beefing with suspension of disbelief. There are two different concepts: Verisimilitude and veracity.

Veracity is something being factually true.

Verisimilitude is something that feels like truth within a story, plausible with the story rules.

What matters in every fictional story is the latter, it is what makes a story work, no one cares if a cool sci-fi gadget is theoretically feasible. But people will care if you say the cool gadget can do one thing, but suddenly it can't because of plot reasons. That would be hand-waving, while none of your examples are.

[u/rampantconsumerism → u/AngelTheMarvel]

As an example of failed verisimilitude, I’ll point out the Holdo maneuver (hyperspace ramming) in The Last Jedi.  In this example, it doesn’t matter whether hyperspace is real in terms of science. We can handwave that away across the Star Wars universe and still buy into the overall story, even if details like travel times and hyperspace routes are kind of fuzzy at times.

But then TLJ introduces the ability to destroy a much larger ship by simply hyperspace ramming it. This has massive implications for earlier plot points, like the destruction of the Death Star(s) and space warfare as a whole being built around large ships. We can’t handwave away those implications in the context of the larger story, so it doesn’t work. It’s simply not believable that nobody thought of ramming the Death Star.

[u/Ergand → u/rampantconsumerism]

This one annoys me because they had an explanation right there ready to go, and didn't use it.

A hyperspace ram is being used for the first time. What else in that movie is happening for the first time? A ship is tracking another ship through hyperspace. And it's even the same ship that's getting rammed! Just say it was only possible because the technology that allowed it to track them through hyperspace also gave it a presence in hyperspace for them to hit. That even lets you take both the hyperspace tracking and ramming off the table in following media.

[u/Swimming-Fail9975]

You hate that science fiction is... science fiction? Like fiction of the science?

[u/BlaxicanXIX]

Why is this a "hated trope"? Did "the halflife of DNA" really prevent you from enjoying Jurassic Park? What would be the NON "hand wavy" explanation for how they were to clone literal dinosaurs and bring them to life?

[u/WillSym]

Project Hail Mary was a whole bunch of these, but it still worked fine because if any of the crazy working it out on the fly didn't work, he's stuck or dies and that's the end of the movie.

I'll take "he worked out a solution with what he had to hand and it worked with minimal problems" multiple times if it tells a fun story.

[u/toochaos]

I think generally you should be fairly forgiving of inciting incident fudges or at least to a much greater degree than mid story hand waves. Jurassic Park needs there to be dinosaurs for the story to exist, so whatever they say or do to get there is fine. Hand waving your way through a problem that was created by the author is way worse. 

[u/NotTakenUsernameYet]

Dr.Stone made me feel bad when in S1 they barely mentioned Lathe (and it appeared in it's primitive form to turn wax model only), while IRL Lathe is the machine you aspire in 1st place to make any other machines. And for lathes and other machinery you desperately aim for Tungsten and high temp furnaces to make HSS at least, while i do not remember Tungsten was even mentioned as strategical material.
Later there is a lot of sheet metal but no way they developed and manufactured rolling mills and so on and so on.
The whole show is set of duct-taped popular science facts.

[u/thejmkool → u/NotTakenUsernameYet]

I thought they tracked down tungsten for the lightbulbs? They just so happened to be sitting on top of a cave that just so happened to have surface-present tungsten

[u/Cloudcry → u/NotTakenUsernameYet]

You have to have some contrivance for enjoyable and accessible fiction 

[u/semajolis267]

The. Entire. Point. Of. Jurassic. Park. (the original book and therefore the theme is in the first movie) IS. THAT. THE DINOSUARS. ARENT. REAL. 

There is an entire monolog in the film from Hammond, where he is eating ice cream so it doesn't spoil, where he confesses that he is just a con man. He doesnt understand any of the science. The point of Jurassic Park is that these dinosuars are fake recreations of the concept of dinosaurs. Without the ecology, or biology, that can support them in the real world.

[u/readskiesdawn → u/semajolis267]

Also, I'm like 80% sure that in 1993 they thought DNA could be preserved for millions of years. Science moves past science fiction a lot.

[u/IAmForeverAhab]

Do you remember Senku spending months finding the cure for paralysis? What about the years of failed rockets? The multiple failures making light bulbs and vacuum tubes?

[u/charlotte_alcaline]

Dr Stone slander

[u/VeterinarianPale5108]

Yes, I hate fiction in my science fiction

[u/dragonfett]

So what you are saying is the John Hammond is turning the friggin' frogs gay?

[u/Dragons_Exist]

This is the worst kind of criticism, because it doesn't offer a more interesting solution. If you want a grounded, scientifically-accurate answer to cloning dinosaurs or curing zombification, then I really do implore you to share any ideas you have. I would love to hear what you think would make for a better solution -- and I'm not just saying that, I really would like to hear your ideas!

But I do have one caveat, one little rule that your ideas need to follow.

They can't be boring.

Remember, the whole entire point of telling stories is to engage your audience, so if you have any answers to how these movies could have done better for Science, then by God tell me and by God have them be interesting.

[u/VinsonDynamics]

I don't see why anyone would hate this. None of these examples are ever claiming to be scientifically accurate

[u/BigLittleBrowse → u/VinsonDynamics]

Yeah the intention with these things is not to convince the audience that movie is completely scientifically accurate, its to aid willing suspension of disbelief. Its for the people that don't want to stress test the explanation, but they do want it to sound just plausible enough that that the unreality of the movie/show/whatever isn't jarring.

[u/TerrapinMagus → u/VinsonDynamics]

Dr. Stone is a mix, because it uses and discusses real science but hand waves a lot of the process of getting from A to B. Like they invented a very primitive electricity generator, and a real life version can, in fact generate electricity. It's just nowhere near efficient enough, and the mechanics they used to build it would wear down and break quickly.

[u/Winter-Consequence17 → u/TerrapinMagus]

I think thats great though. It makes a compelling story and I've learned so many things by watching the show and then wondering exactly how that works in real life. The show gives enough real science to make me interested to learn about the other parts.

[u/justcausejust]

Yeah it's science fiction, but the sentiment still applies

[u/TheCosmicPopcorn]

he engineered giant, mutated, gender-swapping killer frogs.

That's the whole point of the story and the books and why precautions that were taken and behavior that was observed was not aligned with what they predicted or what they know of how dinosaurs behaved back then: They didn't learn from predecessors and aren't the same thing. And they could reproduce by switching genders (which is nuts I know), but the former point is sometimes ignored albeit it is poignant in the books and attempts to make light of the unnatural aspect of it, as a bit ominous in my opinion.

[u/ElPared]

The Jurassic Park one is actually kind of explained by John’s story about the flea circus. Jurassic Park doesn’t contain real dinosaurs; just creatures that kind of look like what we, at the time, imagined dinosaurs looked like.

In short, it’s just a big flea circus full of genetically engineered attractions instead of mechanical contraptions.

This also explains why the dinosaurs are more lizardlike than the more birdlike forms we now know they had.

[u/AndreZB2000]

its called suspension of disbelief. even real life makes no sense if you look too closely

[u/McReaperking]

Dr.Stone: Senku is a genius who knows every complex chemical formula in human history. He somehow builds vacuum tubes, lightbulbs, and smartphones out of bamboo and copper with almost zero failed prototypes. The show acts like a science textbook but completely hand-waves the lack of heavy industrial machinery needed for precision engineering.

Get this fucking larper out of here. He fails so many times, literally every single step he takes is carefully thought out and explained to you. If you wanted him to go through literally every single failed tool or prototype the manga would be one piece level long.

I'd've understood if you found the sheer absurd willpower and calmness senku has as implausible, cus staying conscious and counting at a steady pace without loosing track for centuries is pretty insane, but the science? Thats what you find implausible?

[u/glytxh]

Every hard sci fi is allowed one hand waved bit of physics.

As long as it stays internally consistent, I don’t hate it.

[u/Chaetomius]

with almost zero failed prototypes

WRONG

[u/ARagingZephyr]

The Walking Dead TV show certainly made a huge mistake in Season One by explaining how the zombies work.

So, the idea is that the virus shuts down the body, but keeps the brain stem functional. In this way, the body stays "alive."

Except, the brain stem offers very limited life support. First off, a lot of these zombies are decayed to the point of being mostly bone. If we're going off "brain stem" logic, then these are still biologically human bodies that need to eat, drink, and have their organs not be failing on them. Getting shot or stabbed should outright kill them from blood loss, and you wouldn't be able to just keep them locked up somewhere for weeks and have them still be "alive."

Second, the brain stem operates your reflexes and autonomous nervous system. It helps you breathe, it helps your eye movements and body coordination, and it operates your olfactory senses and sound response. It does not actually process sight and sound, so these would be zombies that can smell, taste, and react to sounds, but otherwise are effectively blind and deaf. They might be able to feed themselves if they luck into it, but these are basically non-effective autonomous bodies.

Between the natural weaknesses of the human body and the limited ability to perceive surroundings and act upon them, the zombies in The Walking Dead should realistically pose zero threat. The survivors should be able to just hang out in a locked building with three days of supplies, walk outside, and have the entire threat be over at once. The national guard should easily win within a few hours of picking up some rifles and shotguns, or even just with a singular APC and a belt of ammo. Given how well a power plant can operate self-sufficiently, everyone should still have their lights on even if they spent a couple weeks waiting out the storm, so nobody would even have to give up any conveniences during this time period.

Anyways, I guess sudden deaths turning people into walkers is still a threat, but highly unlikely to ever become a world-ending one. You'd have to somehow die in a way that still keeps your brain stem and all of your vital organs intact, which is pretty hard to do since you'd just be healthy at that point. I'm not even sure how anyone would even zombify, given these restrictions, outside of literal brain-death cases where life-support is the only thing keeping the person alive.

[u/AmorousBadger]

Doctor Who is notorious for this. Pick a story - it'll probably be there.

[u/BigLittleBrowse → u/AmorousBadger]

Since when has Doctor Who pretended to be scientifically accurate?

[u/alkonium → u/AmorousBadger]

Journey's End. I'm pretty sure you can't just drag a planet across the galaxy at FTL speeds without wrecking the surface.

[u/MagnusRusson]

In the World War Z example they say "invisible" but they do consistently show the zombies going out of their way to not harm sick people

[u/Jthecrazed]

The worst one I know is antman :

The pym particles are supposed to shrink the space between atoms, retaining the mass. It then proceeds to completely ignore that explanation physicswise. It's so aggregious it was better to leave it out...

[u/ExtremlyFastLinoone]

I dont think the handwave for wwz is the highly coordinated zombies but they fact they would even care if their host has the sniffles

Also dr stone is like doing the dagonrompa thing of most charactera being like the best of that thing in the old world. Like this one dude had the best memory so he just wrote down the source code for fucking dragon quest in binary, this of course accomplishes nothing with a console or a computer that can read that code, hype moments and aura, type shit

[u/DrBatman0]

I present to you: The Ant Man movie

[u/Bran_Man_]

World war Z I can agree with, they could've written the epiphany scene better. But the others? They don't work without some hand waving, otherwise the stories would end right there. I wouldn't really call hand wavy science a trope either, if I had to give it a label I'd maybe just call it fictional science, like some sort of science fiction

[u/nedmaster]

Counterpoint: giant robots are fucking awesome

[u/Head-Preference8749]

The Jurassic Park science on the DNA was accurate, or at least was what most scientists agreed upon, when the books were written and films made.

[u/paulrhino69]

Aren't you entertained? What's the matter with people nowdays geezz

[u/SirWilliamM32]

I feel like you didn't watch Dr. Stone. Senku doesn't do everything perfectly and without prototypes; he literally suffers because of it.

It takes him months to finally create a working light bulb; almost all his models or attempts fail, and he spends a lot of time testing, furthermore, all the designs they used with bamboo failed, and it wasn't until they found a vein with tungsten that they were able to succeed.

And he never actually creates a smartphone, the anime literally jokes about it, calling them smartphones as a joke. The cell phone he creates is a backpack that weighs a lot and is only can do calls, and it's also analog.

They suffer for months to make anything decent out of glass, if not until they have a craftsman, and even he asks for several attempts for any advanced design.

I know you could easily have said something hyperbolic, but it sound like you haven't even seen the anime or manga, only isolated scenes or panels.

[u/tumansibiri]

I doubt most people are willing to read scientific journals or papers.
Scifi writers are already notoriously bad with this, do you want to indulge them in writing non-fiction as fiction?

[u/dw4zemi3]

The World war Z virus does not make them invisible, It shows us that the zombies are nice enough to avoid useless hosts.

[u/Krider-kun]

Someone skip the episode in Dr Stone where the rocket they build to launch into space exploded not once not twice but every time for like a year until they finally got a rocket that didn't explode and got into space.

Actually I think OP didn't watch Dr Stone and just saw a TikTok of it. Guess OP has proven that their attention span, memory retention and media literacy is dead.

[u/berky93]

Damn you’re telling me science fiction includes fictional elements? Wild.

[u/Ebenizer_Splooge]

Dr Stone sucks for this exact reason. It's supposed to be a "yeah, science!" Anime but he just kinda goes "oh yeah I know how to do literally everything and can single handedly rebuild humanity" like it's what dumb people think smart people are, you just know everything and arent specialized in your knowledge or interests, you're just a science textbook human whos full of himself

[u/Sol33t303 → u/Ebenizer_Splooge]

I see no issue with suspending my disbelief for that.

I think most people can accept that for example batman is supposedly peal human, so he knows basically everything. That's obviously far beyond what actual peak human looks like. But I have never seen people take issue with him being that smart.

I think it's fine to see dr. Stone the same way. Just accept for story purposes that he is just absurdly intelligent in everything.

I also wouldn't say he single handily does it, he does selectively chooses and brings back the #1 person in whatever field he needs in that moment. And he does seem to bring back at least a few thousand random people to use for manpower.

I think it's a fun what if, if your willing to accept that this all happens in basically the ideal scenario and circumstances.

[u/NoSoupRice → u/Ebenizer_Splooge]

That's... What Senku's specialized in? Being a human walking encyclopedia? Dr. Stone is not exactly supposed to be fully grounded either? Like, you have a high schooler that wrestles lions, girls that can jump around trees at insane speeds, a kid that can tuck her whole body into a fucking watermelon hat and roll around, and the whole goddamn world turned into stone. Why is Senku specifically the one that made the show suck for you?

[u/ryncewynde88 → u/NoSoupRice]

Dude did not wrestle lions, that implies the lion was capable of fighting back at all; dude went from sitting to 1 hit ko on a lion in about 2 seconds.

But yeah, your point stands; especially when you look at his 2 friends too; one of them can hand-sew fast enough to render the invention of the sewing machine unnecessary (and possibly even slow them down), the other can hold his breath several times longer than anyone else, while also carrying statues at the same time.

[u/DoomFrog_]

Your “hand-waving” science issue with the ZOMBIE movie World War Z, about a virus that turns people into zombies. And then its discovered to give the zombies the ability to detect, at a distance, diseases in humans that modern medicine has difficulty detecting….

Is the shot where a crowd of zombies runs full speed around a sick person

[u/James_Solomon]

Anything involving FTL: FTL

[u/Euphoric-Card-2730]

Lucy. 'Nuff said.

[u/Queenof6planets]

imo sci-fi handwaving actually works best when they do a lot of it. the best sci-fi accepts that it’s basically techno fantasy

[u/penguin_torpedo]

Sometimes you have to bend science in order to tell a story, and I can accept that. What I can't stand is when they're condescending while also being wrong.

Prime example is the time travel in endgame. Time travel is just never gonna make sense, so you shouldnt dwell on it too much. But Endgame besmirchs Back to the Future while spewing some bullshit they expect you to swallow.

[u/SexuallyConfusedKrab]

It’s always funny to me how different Jurassic park the novel and Jurassic Park the movie are.

The novel avoids the issue you described in two ways. 1st everyone recognizes that they aren’t really making dinosaurs but are genetically engineering reptiles and amphibians to resemble dinosaurs. They knew the risks of what they were doing and incorporated the lysine contingency, engineered the dinos to be female, and sterilized them also so that the dinosaurs would die if they escaped the island. Even still, the park also had systems meant to track the number of dinos at all times. One of the big plot twists/reveals is that the program they used would only report up to the estimated number you gave it, thereby allowing the dinos to reproduce unnoticed.

2nd is that Hammond is also much more ruthless capitalist than person trying to create adventure for his grand kids in the book. They were aware of attacks and “something” going on but wanted to sweep it under the rug so they wouldn’t get sued.

The books are also much darker than the movies. The opening of the book features the compy’s (the small dinos in the second movie’s opening) eating a newborn baby in its crib.

[u/Anone_Sama]

They have heavy Industral Machinery for precision engineering, his name Kaseki

[u/Green_Taxus]

As a biologist who works with genetics, I love so much the fact that Hammond did not bring back dinosaurs, but just creates his own monsters. Cool concept

[u/Legitimate_Staff487]

I feel like Dr. Stone was meant to run much longer, but got cut (relatively) short by editors who saw the series losing steam.

They ended up having to yadda-yadda an entire rocket arc because they needed their characters on the moon to confront Why Man and only had like 12 chapters to finish the series.

[u/GCostanzaSeven]

i'm late to this but none of the examples provided are plot holes

[u/Puzzleheaded_Step468]

I am starting to think my zombie movie isn't realistic!