Stupid Contrived Survival Stories

[u/MammothPenguin69]

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.

[u/szthesquid]

I read the book. Other than a pretty wild case of wrong place wrong time, the author went out of the way to make the premise as plausible as possible.

• sperm whale is one of the only whales capable of swallowing a human (has to be unusually big whale and small human, but possible)
• it's an accident while hunting its actual prey, a struggling, fighting giant squid
• the tight space, crushing muscles, limited air supply, complete darkness, stomach acid, multiple digestive chambers are all accounted for and the source of all the tension and problems

Where it really lost me was the pseudo-religious near-death-experience of the character's missing dead dad helping him out and also maybe the dad is the whale.

[u/Ajibooks → u/szthesquid]

Whale dad says: "Oh no, not again."

But thank you for the info. I have been curious about this movie but not curious enough to read the book.

[u/UncommittedBow → u/szthesquid]

Devil's advocate, it's hard to make a story about someone getting swallowed by a whale, and not have even a slight religious moment. It's literally the story of Jonah, after all.

[u/butyourenice → u/szthesquid]

I listened to the audiobook. I just didn’t have enough daddy issues to be pulled in. How do you make exploding your way out of a fucking whale boring?

I’ll still watch the movie, though.

[u/zhibr → u/szthesquid]

How does he get out?

[u/MalkavTheMadman → u/zhibr]

Huge spoilers.

After the whale beaches itself dying (it is attacked by a pod of Orca and dies from its wounds) He manages to force an explosion using the natural gasses in the whales digestive tract, the last of the oxygen in his dwindling tank (sparked with an old battery he had grabbed to fill out his dive weights and a discarded brillo pad the whale had swallowed), blowing a hole in the side of the dead whale while also blowing off his own hand.

[u/spawn3887 → u/szthesquid]

Yeah that book stunk.