Misleading things on TV that can nlead to real world injury or death
zeez
Television Is Trying To Kill Us
People will wait to call the EMS because the EMS providers will insist
on interrupting the game to get information. Grandpa will be just fine
for another hour and a half because (and I quote) "those neurosurgeons
can just turn him back on, you know, like in that movie?"
— A medic trying to remain sane
Fiction is not reality. While fiction rarely shows the negative
consequences of a trope, reality is not as forgiving. Every trope here
can have serious if not fatal repercussions in reality if they are
played straight. These may originate as a case of Reality Is
Unrealistic.
Tropes:
* All Animals Are Domesticated: No, your children cannot play with
the bears. (Someone really did ask a park ranger about this — imagine
if they hadn't.)
o You don't have to imagine
* All Natural Snake Oil: "Natural" doesn't mean "good for you".
Lots of poisons are natural — arsenic, hemlock, cyanide. Then there
are the substances that are natural and good for you, unless you get
too much — check out this chart of the effects of too much of the
common vitamins everybody needs.
o Not to mention that relying on snake oil in the first
place means not getting real treatment.
* Almost Lethal Weapons: There's a reason why weapons are weapons
in Real Life. Namely, a weapon is defined by its ability to cause
great harm, especially lethal damage, to another organism (such as,
say, a human being.) Even "nonlethal" weapons such as tasers or
beanbag/paintball/BB guns can kill someone under the right
circumstances and can cause major, permanent injuries to the target
and/or innocent bystanders. Tasers and similar weapons are actually
now referred to as "less-lethal" rather than "non-lethal."
o Blanks can kill under the wrong circumstances. Blanks make
the flash and bang of a real round using the same gunpowder, resulting
in the same explosively expanding hot gases emerging from the barrel.
In other words, blanks count as a melee weapon. Note the case of
Jon-Erik Hexum.
o In 1384, Perrin Le Roux was accidentally killed by a wad
of paper fired from a cannon (used as a prop in a play) which struck
him. The velocity of the projectile, Le Roux standing closer to the
cannon than was allowed, and the fact the projectile hit him in the
eye led to his death a few days later, in spite of the seemingly
innocuous object that struck him.
* British Royal Guards: As that page will clearly tell you,
mocking the guys who are dressed funny carrying assault rifles with
fixed bayonets, will get you in a lot more trouble in real life than
it will in fiction.
* Concealment Equals Cover: Not everything one can possibly be
inside or behind has enough mass to stop bullets. Not even walls,
ceilings, car doors, or tables. Well, regular car doors at least -
police cars are made to withstand bullets, but you're probably not a
cop.
* Cool Clear Water: Just because water is clear doesn't mean it is
safe to drink. Dangerous microorganisms or naturally high levels of
toxins could still be present.
o If the water is perfectly clear then there is probably
some pretty good reason why nothing lives in it.
* Cool Pet: Fictional depictions of heroes (and occasionally, real
life figures) with powerful exotic pets sometimes inspire people to
acquire them in real life. Contrary to such fiction, keeping a pet
bear, tiger, cobra, ape, etc., is often an extreme strain for both
owner and pet. If the owner isn't gnawed on, that is.
* CPR Clean Pretty Reliable: CPR is a demanding, tiring, and
temporary stopgap before advanced medical aid becomes available. Once
you start CPR, you cannot stop until trained help arrives or you are
physically unable to continue-none of the ten pumps and a declaration
of "It's hopeless!" you often see on TV. You're also likely to break
ribs and force air into the stomach (causing the person to vomit at
the first opportunity). Disease transmission is possible because of
the direct mouth-to-mouth contact-there are barriers available at
medical supply stores to prevent this. All these factors make the
people who perform CPR more heroic than portrayed in fiction.
* Electric Slide: Touching a high-tension power line will kill or
severely injure you. Power lines are not ziplines or ropes, and cannot
safely be climbed on, held, or otherwise handled while live, not even
with rubber gloves. People who work with high-voltage power lines use
special techniques to avoid getting killed or hurt. Always assume a
power line is live and treat it accordingly. Unless you're
superhuman/not human, in which case, you're cool.
* Everybody Smokes / Smoking Is Cool / Smoking Is Glamorous: One
or more of these is sometimes the (or one of the) reasons people start
smoking. Tobacco-related cancers, heart attacks, and other health
problems, asthmatic children, and a sizable percentage of fire-related
injuries and deaths are the results. *
At least Anvilicious stories about drugs completely fucking up
the lives of anyone who so much as touches them will probably save the
lives of people who take them seriously. These tropes... well, do
pretty much the exact opposite.
* Every Car Is A Pinto: Rarely does a car go up in a dramatic
fireball, the fact that a car didn't does not mean the crash wasn't
dangerous. Deaths in a car accident tend to be by trauma, particularly
when an unbelted driver or passenger is thrown through the windshield
or out of a window.
* Grievous Bottley Harm: Attempting to break a beer bottle and
wield it as a weapon usually results in a hand full of broken glass
and a number of stitches. Smacking the target with an unbroken bottle,
on the other hand...
* Guns In Church: Open carry laws vary enormously by location, and
so do concealed-carry laws. Assault with a deadly weapon and/or
brandishment laws are far more common. Carrying a firearm or other
weapon in some places may lead to arrest or even being killed by
someone else, and displaying a weapon ready for use/in a threatening
manner is against the law in most places and, in some contexts,
suicidal.
* Hard Head: In television being knocked out cold by a blow to the
head rarely has long term repercussions. In real life brain damage is
often the result. As a matter of fact, if someone has been knocked
unconscious or even dazed by a blow to the head, they should be taken
to a hospital IMMEDIATELY and evaluated for concussion, subdural
hematomas, and other traumatic brain injury.
* Hollywood Heart Attack: Heart attacks don't always display the
same symptoms. Hollywood Heart Attack can lead people to misdiagnose
and downplay a real heart attack. For example, jaw pain and flulike
symptoms is a common combination of heart attack symptoms most people
ignore. Any pain in the jaw or arm, alone or in combination with other
symptoms, should be treated as a suspected heart attack. Same goes for
stroke, which also often presents in less dramatic and sudden ways
than a collapse.
* Jammed Seatbelts: Fear of being trapped in a wrecked car
increases the chances of someone not wearing a seatbelt. Not wearing a
seatbelt increases the chances of being flung head first through a
windshield, which is a far more common cause of death unless you're in
a Pinto. Seatbelts and shoulder belts do jam occasionally (or worse,
melt), but nowhere near as often as they do on TV or in the movies,
where it is only to add some suspense to the situation. There are also
widely available tools that allow for quick-cutting of a seatbelt [and
smashing the car window for a quicker escape].
o That said, there is one valid reason for driving without a
seatbelt - if you're on an ice road or similarly weak water crossing,
and the risk of being submerged is higher than the risk of hitting
anything (as in, there are no other vehicles on the road). Even this,
though, is not due to Jammed Seatbelts. It is due to the need to crawl
out the window/top fast in the event that the road gives way and
undoing a seatbelt would take valuable time.
* Law Of Inverse Recoil: Hold that gun properly, kids! Improper
usage can lead to getting knocked on your ass, quite literally, or
dislocating a shoulder in the worst cases.
* Magical Defibrillator: Defibrillators can only restore rhythm to
an erratically-beating heart: shocking a flatline almost certainly
won't start their heart again. There are other techniques (and
gadgets) to try.
* Magic Plastic Surgery: The results of plastic surgery on Reality
TV as well as in entirely scripted productions are very much stacked
toward successes, whereas plastic surgery in Real Life has a far more
varied range of outcomes. It's surgery: there will be scars. They may
be relatively small, and the surgeon has some degree of control over
where they are, but it bears repeating: there will be scars. Also,
plastic surgery is as serious as any other kind of surgery in Real
Life, so the risks of death and serious injury are present, and
recovery can be just as or more painful and difficult as it is from
other procedures - something not often shown in the TV version of
plastic surgery.
o It's actually worth mentioning that if you don't see
scars, it just means that the plastic surgeon is good at it, and quite
possibly also that the person has very good genes & was careful to
follow the instructions on how to minimize post-op scarring.
* Only A Flesh Wound: Injuries that don't include vital organs can
still result in death from blood loss, infection, or permanent
debilitation. Also, as noted above with plastic surgery, there will be
scarring from just about any mildly serious injury - or even minor
ones. Yes, people have died of extremely minor and embarrassing
wounds.
* Organ Theft: Fictional accounts of innocent victims' organs
being stolen, via force or by corrupt doctors who lie about comatose
patients' odds of recovery, squick some people out so much that they
fear to give consent for legitimate organ harvests that'd save lives.
* O Ring Orifice: The human vagina and anus have their limits, and
just because you've seen it in porn (especially Hentai) does NOT mean
it can be inserted into a human without causing injury or death.
There's a reason sex toys are (usually) smooth, anal sex toys have
flanged or flared bases (this prevents an embarrassing Noodle Incident
at the ER as well as death and injury!), lube is usually a very good
idea, and all sex toys should be properly cleaned before use and
between uses.
* Put Down Your Gun And Step Away: Not a good idea in a real
hostage situation. In fact, as the article mentions, real hostage
negotiators are told in training NEVER to do this.
* Reckless Gun Usage: Many works portray a cavalier handling of
guns that goes completely against safe handling of a firearm. Safe
firearms and explosives handling is NOT something that can be learned
from media portrayals!
* Soft Glass: Nope. Normal glass can be far harder than you'd
think, and breaks with nasty sharp edges besides - if it does break.
Punching, kicking, falling, being thrown, or running through glass, or
having it land on you in a disaster will most likely severely injure
you. Safety glass is designed to break in a manner that leaves no
sharp edges. Still, the impact alone can cause injury.
* Soft Water: A fall into water can hurt just as much as a fall
onto land, at least from some heights. The depth of water can be
deceptive — a fall into shallow water isn't much different than a fall
unto the surface that's under the water (rocks, gravel, sand, mud) The
position you hit the water in makes a difference in the likelihood
you'll survive or not (hint: dive as if you were at attention).
Finally, while you may survive a fall onto water, you may not be in
shape to swim due to injuries or concussion. The safest surface to
fall onto is a padded surface of some sort, next best is soft dirt or
lawn. (Remember to roll.)
* STD Immunity: USE A CONDOM - And don't think they're impervious,
either.
* Steel Eardrums: If you are around a lot of loud noise and don't
use some sort of hearing protection (anything from explosions and
firearms to loud music counts), you will eventually suffer from
hearing loss. Even working in a factory with noises that don't seem
like they are very loud doesn't mean you shouldn't wear ear plugs.
Prolonged exposure (like years of work) can still lead to long term
damage. If a blast is strong enough, it can even rupture the eardrums
on the spot, causing immediate deafness. A more powerful blast can
kill simply due to irreconcilable pressure differences, without
leaving any external signs of injury. And, of course, there's boxing
someone's eardrums.
* Tap On The Head: A blow to the head is more likely to kill or
lead to long term injury than temporary unconsciousness. At best,
you'll get a concussion.
* Suck Out The Poison: Trying to suck the poison out of a
snakebite wound is highly ineffective in almost every case, and will
often increase the victim's risk of infection and the first-aider's
risk of poisoning. Some say it's only to be used as a very last
resort, but most guides suggest you don't do it at all.
o Same goes for tourniquets or trying to bleed the area. In
fact, the human body seems to be pretty fantastic at regulating its
own detoxification, swelling and constricting vessels just the proper
amount to prevent as much spread of poison to other regions as
possible without leaving so much at the source that it kills off all
the tissue. Simply put, if you don't have some anti-venom lying
around, leave the darn thing alone.
* Worst Aid: If all you know about first aid is what you've seen
on TV, you probably aren't the best person to administer it.
* You Can Panic Now: Where Moral Panic goes, sometimes deaths and
injuries follow.
o Kinda like this page.
* You Fail Gun Safety Forever: Don't do what the "experts" on
television do with guns. It will get you shot. It's possible to
"Gunsling" but you'd really not want to try with loaded guns or live
ammunition.
--
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Moco feeds Chris tater tots!
aemeijers
> http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TelevisionIsTryingToKillUs
>
(snip)
> * Concealment Equals Cover: Not everything one can possibly be
> inside or behind has enough mass to stop bullets. Not even walls,
> ceilings, car doors, or tables. Well, regular car doors at least -
> police cars are made to withstand bullets, but you're probably not a
> cop.
Uh, no. Other than up-armored vehicles for special applications, police
car bodies are no more bullet resistant than what any civilian can buy.
Only armor in a typical police vehicle is the occasional knife-stop
plate added to the back of the driver's seat. Also available in the
first cousin to a police special, the taxi-cab special.
--
aem sends...
Kickin' Ass and Takin' Names
wrote:
Other misleading things on TV that can lead to death, serious injury,
or permanent stupidity:
-- Fox
-- Glenn Beck
-- Hannity
-- Sarah Palin's show