[HN Gopher] The Biology of B-Movie Monsters (2003)
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The Biology of B-Movie Monsters (2003)
Author : cainxinth
Score : 55 points
Date : 2025-03-28 13:40 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (fathom.lib.uchicago.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (fathom.lib.uchicago.edu)
| anthk wrote:
| Now to the same with Pokemon, 1st and 2nd gens. There are tons of
| 'monsters' with real life counterparts, such as electric eels, an
| iron shell based snails (living on boiling, geisers?) and so
| on...
| pvg wrote:
| I would totally read a Cryptobiology/Public transit/Self-help
| piece titled _Take The Electric Ell_
| anthk wrote:
| "eel", sorry.
| pvg wrote:
| Ell worked pretty well too!
| mikestew wrote:
| There's still time to edit your post. Look for the "edit"
| link in the header of your post.
| yesfitz wrote:
| Always (usually) fun to read an expert talk about their field as
| it crops up in unusual places, at least when it's done without an
| ego. I've avoided the YouTube clickbait "real bank robber reviews
| movies" videos, but maybe I shouldn't.
|
| Meta: Unfortunately, even the earliest snapshot of this page on
| the Wayback Machine doesn't contain working images:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20040624122432/https://fathom.li...
| Renevith wrote:
| If you're looking for some good quality "expert reviews their
| field as represented in movies" videos without too much
| clickbait, Vanity Fair has a long playlist of them that I
| enjoyed:
| https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZ2lDrDpOLrusAYQFq2yVHf...
| api wrote:
| Now do space opera!
|
| The Expanse is probably the most realistic of fast-paced battles
| in the stars space opera, and I've seen analyses that show that
| the Epstein drive is at the edge of what physics would _possibly_
| allow. But those UN, MCRN, and Belter ships would need something
| you don 't see at least in the series (or described in the
| books): heat sinks. They'd have to have radiators or they'd melt.
| Even if the drive was insanely efficient (like >90%) it would
| still generate hundreds of megawatts of heat at those power
| outputs. I suppose you could cool with propellant, but that would
| greatly reduce your specific impulse. To jet around the solar
| system like that would require very high specific impulse,
| meaning tiny amounts of propellant emitted at relativistic
| velocities.
|
| Speaking of propellant velocity: those Expanse fusion rockets
| would not look like blowtorches. They'd look a bit more like the
| "laser beams" depicted here -- rocket plumes that look like
| straight lines because they're made of particles accelerated to
| like 3-5% 'c': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8vh2ER3ao4
|
| Edit: ... and one more big inaccuracy: a torch rocket is also a
| death ray that would be horrifically effective even at very long
| range. The scenes where "they're trying to burn us up with their
| drive plume" would have to take place at much longer range or
| they'd just be dead. If you were near a ship all you'd have to do
| is flip around to hose your enemy down with X-rays and
| superheated plasma. You'd also _never_ fire up one of those
| things anywhere remotely near a space station like Tycho unless
| you wanted to at least give everyone on board cancer. You 'd have
| to use conventional rockets to get well clear before turning on
| the fusion drive.
|
| No space opera I've seen gets this right. Any sufficiently
| powerful space drive (fusion/antimatter torch, let alone warp
| drives) is a weapon of mass destruction. Does Star Trek ever even
| examine what happens if you point the Enterprise at a planet and
| say "warp 9, engage!"? In The Expanse if the belters wanted to
| stick to Earth and Mars they could do simpler things than
| throwing stealth rocks if you really think about it. Those drives
| would be insanely deadly in many different ways.
|
| It's one of the reasons I think war in space is gonna be rare. If
| it happens it's basically mutually assured destruction (MAD)
| given the power involved. Even a chemical rocket can generate
| velocities that make an impact have a yield comparable to a small
| nuclear device.
|
| For All Mankind is _almost_ space opera and is probably the most
| realistic.
| thrtythreeforty wrote:
| _A Deepness in the Sky_ alludes to this, if I recall -
| something about it being bad for your health to be around a
| starship 's torch, but I forget the details, and anyway it's
| never a plot point, just world building.
| chuckadams wrote:
| The color text in Mass Effect goes a bit into the heat sink
| issue, in that the stealth systems on the Normandy couldn't
| remain active indefinitely, since it would cook the occupants.
| Never comes up in game since flying the ship isn't really a
| mechanic, it's just a cutscene. Would have been neat to have a
| scene where everyone is slowly baking while hiding from the
| Reapers. Probably even got written and didn't make the cut.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| I'm working on a story that gets... closer! At least, using
| star drives as weapons and the general MAD dynamics that
| produces are relevant to the plot. Also pervasive use of self-
| replicating bots as tools. No mention of radiators, though.
| They could be there in the background, I guess.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| More generic space-opera problems:
|
| Flying through an asteroid field looks a lot like flying
| through empty space. They aren't that close together, or they
| would pulverize each other into dust (and also coallesce into
| planetoids).
|
| Entering the solar system of Sol doesn't involve close flyby's
| of any planets. Realistically, until you got close only Jupiter
| would even be visible on your video screens (everything else
| would look like stars - dots of light).
|
| Laser _anything_ doesn 't involve bolts that flash; for that
| matter, laser light isn't really visible from anywhere but the
| path (unless you have smoke machines filling your universe).
| One ship shows a glimmer at the exit port (mostly from excess
| heat); the other shows a glowing meltdown point L/c seconds
| later. Very unimpressive to observers.
| yencabulator wrote:
| Larry Niven's books have lots of mentions of drive torches
| being "accidental weapons" that those in the in the know know
| to be such.
|
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WeaponizedExhaus...
| pmags wrote:
| LaB was my PhD advisor! A thoughtful, creative, and curious
| scientist and a teacher extraordinaire.
|
| For a slightly longer form take from Mike on B-movie monsters
| see:
|
| LaBarbera, M. 2013. It's Alive! The Science of B-Movie Monsters.
| Univ of Chicago Press.
| https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo178413...
|
| For more about Mike and his impact on the biological sciences at
| the Univ of Chicago see: https://mag.uchicago.edu/science-
| medicine/life-aquatic
| damnitbuilds wrote:
| I always thought that the Hulk running fast and landing too
| gently makes him appear too light:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzceykTiwjs
| ViktorRay wrote:
| The camera does shake when he lands to give the impression of a
| hard landing.
|
| He probably should have also had a crater or something show up
| on the road when landing. Maybe that was a limitation of the
| CGI of the time though. If so maybe the camera shaking was a
| way to deal with that CGI limitation in order to make the Hulk
| seem like he had weight.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| You can see similar issues in the recent American Godzilla
| movies. In the first one, Godzilla seems huge and heavy. In the
| later ones, they keep making it faster and more agile and the
| result is that it seems light and small (and extremely fake) no
| matter how many buildings fall over or ships get sunk.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| I often think this when there's meant to be a big heavy thing
| moving around. I think it's one of my problems with Pacific Rim
| 2 vs the first film. In the first film, the robots were slow
| and heavy, in the second they were nimble and didn't have any
| of the weight behind them
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| The new director started somewhere how he did not like how
| big and bulky the original robots were. Which was the entire
| point of the movie! They are beefy tanks. It felt as real as
| you could imagine building sized robots to be.
| medymed wrote:
| Zombie physiology also seems a stretch---how do organisms with so
| many open and often bleeding dirt-covered wounds maintain
| hemodynamic stability in the face of inevitable septic shock
| and/or blood loss? A movie where a virus just makes infected
| people seem normal and very friendly but want to furtively bite
| other people to spread disease and then have delayed onset
| terminal sickness, like a subtle version of rabies, would be
| terrifying and more plausible.
| jhbadger wrote:
| The "original" (in the non-Vodoo sense) zombies shown in George
| Romero's "living dead" movies made no claims that the undead
| were scientifically explainable -- it was later movies like 28
| Days Later that tried to rationalize them as infected, living
| people, to their detriment, I think.
| gwd wrote:
| In "World War Z" (the book), the scientific "questions"
| regarding how the zombies work are brought up but not answered.
| For instance, in the book, the zombies freeze solid in winter
| and when spring comes thaw and just start going again. The fact
| that ice crystals normally rupture cell membranes is brought up
| as a question of how this is possible; but no attempt is made
| to answer the question, because that's not the point of the
| book.
| cainxinth wrote:
| Wood frogs can survive freezing solid. Their liver produces
| glucose to flood all cells, prevent cell freezing, and
| protect against dehydration. Ice forms around cells and
| organs but not inside them, preventing lethal damage.
|
| https://www.nps.gov/gaar/learn/nature/wood-frog-page-2.htm
| IAmBroom wrote:
| In Demon, the third in John Varley's Gaia trilogy of sci fi
| books, the (alien-manufactured) "zombies" were animated by
| colonies of worms that fed on the soft tissues of the corpse,
| and simply replaced the actions of the lifeless muscles. They
| thus had very human outlines, and if anything, far more
| horrifying looks than half-rotted corpses.
|
| They also didn't last very long; they were meant as disposable
| remote-controlled troops.
| hnlosers wrote:
| It is a metaphor for disease. Engineers will waste ungodly
| amount of time on the logic, while making yourself come off
| very uncultured and "stupid" for not understanding
| storytelling. I guess that is expected when half of you aren't
| even from the country you are working in and lack culture.
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| lmao damn get his ass
|
| You're not wrong per se, but you are in comments of an
| article about applying rigorous scientific analysis of
| "B-Move Monsters" in exactly the way that you're criticizing?
| This is kind of the most appropriate place for someone to
| bring up this kind of thing, maybe go back to the comment
| section of a cinema sins video if you want to dunk on nerds
| for being too nerdy about art
| bediger4000 wrote:
| I worked as a stress analyst in aerospace for a while. Lots of
| good insights here about buckling of thin walled structures, with
| respect to arthropods and how to attack giant arthropods.
| wrp wrote:
| I highly recommend the books by Mark Glassy, _The Biology of
| Science Fiction Cinema_ and _Biology Run Amok!: The Life Science
| Lessons of Science Fiction Cinema_.
| hydrogen7800 wrote:
| The first section about "The Incredible Shrinking Man" reminded
| me of "Life At Low Reynolds Number", with the concept of
| "scaling".
|
| >It helps to imagine under what conditions a man would be
| swimming at, say, the same Reynolds number as his own sperm.
| Well, you put him in a swimming pool that is full of molasses,
| and then you forbid him to move any part of his body faster than
| 1 cm/min. Now imagine yourself in that condition: you're under
| the swimming pool in molasses, and now you can only move like the
| hands of a clock. If under these ground rules you are able to
| move a few meters in a couple of weeks, you may qualify as a low
| Reynolds number swimmer.[0]
|
| [0]https://cooperlab.wustl.edu/PracticalAdvice/Purcell%201977.p..
| .
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