r/TopCharacterTropes • u/MammothPenguin69 • 16d ago

Hated Tropes Stupid Contrived Survival Stories

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  1. 12 Feet Deep - Two idiots decide they absolutely positively MUST go swimming in a pool after it's closed. An incredibly contrived sequence of events happens so they get stuck in a pool. So the movie can happen.

  2. Frozen (not that one) - Three idiots decide they absolutely positively MUST get on a ski-lift after it's closed. To the point of bribing the operator who for some stupid reason doesn't say anything. Do the movie can happen. Also, Wolves are not that aggressive. They are typically shy and avoid humans.

  3. 47 Meters Down- Arguably the most believable scenario on this list. It's still really stupid.

  4. Fall- Two idiots decide to climb an abandoned radio tower without proper equipment that would make escaping their predicament trivially easy. Stop me if you've heard this one before

so the movie can happen.

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u/melvoriim 16d ago

Open Water 2: Adrift: Everyone jumps off a yacht for a swim without lowering the ladder first, leaving a baby alone onboard while six adults are trapped in the water. The entire movie happens because nobody remembered the boat has really high sides. So the movie can happen.

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u/MammothPenguin69 16d ago

So about that. People jumping off a yacht in the middle of the ocean and forgetting to put down the ladder is the only one of these scenarios I have ever heard of actually happening.

607

u/2Beauty 16d ago

If a life-saving mechanism isn’t idiot proof, then people will die because of it.

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u/NCC_1701E 16d ago

And every time we invent better idiot proof mechanism, universe somehow manages to invent better idiots.

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u/Stillwater215 16d ago

One of my favorite statements, regarding the challenge of the design of bear-proof trash cans in Yellowstone: “There’s shocking overlap between the smartest bears and the dumbest humans.”

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u/Demoniac_smile 16d ago

Didn’t Einstein say something along the lines of “two things are infinite: the universe and the human capacity for stupidity, and I’m not so sure about the universe”. Regardless, that shit is true.

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u/Revolutionary_Lead28 16d ago

Which both continues and halts progress all at once

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u/rudeangryletters 16d ago

I believe it’s called Risk Homeostasis- it happens when knowing there are protections causes one to take riskier behaviors- i recall there was a study in Munich where cabbies with ABS brakes accelerated faster, cornered at higher speeds, etc. Admittedly I do not know if that study was ever duplicated. If boats had automatic ladders , perhaps people would swim in riskier situations - swim solo, swim at night, swim in poorer conditions, etc.

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u/Vaya-Kahvi 16d ago

Risk Homeostasis, neat term, I've heard of the phenomenon with traffic lights, some intersections get safer without lights because people are more attentive that way. 

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u/SirAquila 15d ago

Idiot Proof just means some idiot will proof you wrong.

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u/tsh87 16d ago

This scenario doesn't even take being an idiot, it's just getting caught up in the moment.

It's a strong argument for always having staff on board though.

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u/IamTheCeilingSniper 16d ago

I honestly don't get why there isn't another ladder that doesn't need to be deployed. Just a simple set of bars attached to outside of the hull somewhere. It would be slippery at the bottom but it's better than not having any way to get on the boat.

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u/FPSCanarussia 16d ago

My family owned a sailboat once, and the ladder could be deployed from the water.

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u/Miami_Mice2087 16d ago

my uncle's small speedboat had a platform at the water level you could scramble onto if you really needed to. but a yacht is so much bigger, it would be dangerous to always have something at water level when docking

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u/michael0n 16d ago

During vacation we saw a big yacht, they had a parapet around the boat. Nowhere to catch on if you don't throw some rope in the water first. When it turned we saw that there were climbing holes on both sides on the back. The movie really had to skip on all safety measures to make it work.

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u/worfcrimes 16d ago

smh it's like you WANT the creature on your boat 

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u/tsh87 16d ago

Yeah or a button or mechanism that can be pushed or pulled.

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u/SagaSolejma 15d ago

Oh so you want deep ones on your boat? Because thats how you get deep ones

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u/Honkert45 14d ago edited 14d ago

The real answer is that nobody expected this ladder to be a safety critical item, because the sailing world has assumed people to have a basic common-sense understanding for how incredibly dangerous it is to go overboard on the open ocean.

People will straight up buy industrial climbing harnesses to bolt themselves to the cockpit with to avoid this situation altogether. And even if people absolutely can't keep themselves from having a swim, the norm is at the very least to have one person to remain on board to keep watch, and help those in the water, if necessary.

TL;DR:

The ladder isn't the problem. The people in the movie just don't realize how nigh-on suicidal their behaviour is.

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u/MrKimimaru 16d ago

Yeah, you should realistically always have someone on board, whether it’s staff or not. Even anchored boats can float fairly far away, and it can happen a lot quicker than you’d expect, especially when you’re in the water distracted.

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u/SammySoapsuds 16d ago

They had a baby on board. That baby really let them all down by not lowering the ladder smh

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u/speckledcreature 15d ago

The mother wanted to stay onboard but the host threw her in the water. All his fault.

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u/AreYouThereSagan 15d ago

The baby was trying to kill them for the insurance money.

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u/FrenchFryCattaneo 15d ago

Eh that part is realistic babies are dumb as hell

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u/TheMostKing 15d ago

Fucking baby.

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u/JMer806 16d ago

If it’s the movie I’m thinking of, I think that there were two people on board and one threw the other off as a joke, and the person going overboard grabbed the shirt or something. So it wasn’t intentional.

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u/therealwhoaman 16d ago

Especially with a baby aboard!

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u/Zeerola 16d ago

One woman (I think the baby's mom) wanted to stay on board, one of the men (maybe her boyfriend) throws her in the water as a joke.

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u/Honkert45 14d ago

I haven't watched the movie, but I actually, legitimately, think these people are victims to social media. Hear me out:

Owning and operating sailboats like this is not exactly intuitive. So normally people who want to do this get the required knowledge through some kind of community, like a sailing school, or their parents who introduced them to the hobby.

And in doing so, they would absorb a lot of safety-critical knowledge, like for example how incredibly dangerous it is to go overboard on the open ocean, that is kind of assumed as common-sense in the world sailing, before they are ready to have a go at it themselves.

But in this day of social media, google, and internet tutorial, it's actually possible for people from far outside of this world, to get exposed to it, and get the required basic knowledge on how to try it, while completely bypassing the community.

So, that's how they'll end up in a boat, have a rose-tinted vision of the open ocean, and are clueless about the dangers, safety considerations, and best practices, because social media has given them an idealized, fairy-tale version of the ocean, and tutorials have taught them how to get there while bypassing the people who actually know what they're doing, and could've told them how dangerously they were behaving.

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u/ChristyUniverse 10d ago

This is why some boats have the ladder nailed to the side