Kill Bill vol. 2 describes a deadly technique. You're punched (touched?) in five places on your body. Then, after you start walking, your heart explodes after 5 steps. No, I don't want to ask if this is for real.
Instead, I'd like to ask you this. After you're punched, you're apparently pretty much okay until you start walking. So assume this happens to you. What do you do? Do you get up and walk, knowing death is inevitable? Would you be strong enough to do this? Won't the fear paralyse you?
Or do you endeavor to spend the remaining years of your life sitting down? How long will you be able to do this? How much effort and energy would it take to always remember that you cannot get up and walk?
And then again - would walking be an act of courage? Or maybe you'd take it to be an easy escape from the otherwise unbearable life?
Posted by Ayelar (Member # 183) on :
I'd get a wheelchair. One of those cool Dean Kamen ones that can climb steps.
Posted by Danzig (Member # 4704) on :
I could definitely spend the rest of my life in a reclining position.
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
Oh, just in case, I don't mean life when you cannot walk is unbearable. Life when you can walk, but have to constantly remember not to, is.
Would you be able to keep yourself from dream-walking?
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
Stand up and walk.
Posted by Troubadour (Member # 83) on :
^ |
What she said.
Posted by Beren One Hand (Member # 3403) on :
I'll get me one of 'em Amazon woman to carry me around.
If I were a girl or a Hobbit, Aragorn.
Posted by Anna (Member # 2582) on :
What Ayelar said. I love life, thank you. Maybe I would have my legs cut to be sure I don't walk in my dreams. EDIT to add : maybe I would just attach my shoes together to be sure not to walk. I mean, if I have my legs cut and ten years after they find a way to cure the heart disease, I would look stupid.
[ April 28, 2004, 08:24 AM: Message edited by: Anna ]
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
I've got a lot of people in my life that don't want me to die. And I have faith that if this thing were possible to do, there must be someone in the world who knows how to undo it.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Hm. I'd recline until someone figured out what caused it, and then either have them fix it or amputate my legs.
Posted by Yebor1 (Member # 1380) on :
I vote for not pissing someone off so much that they have to do that to me in the first place.
TomD If one of you burns knows this technique, your in trouble.
Posted by Anna (Member # 2582) on :
Good reflexion, Yebor. Everyone should try this. But, hey, there's always a few mad people who would do that only for fun.
[ April 28, 2004, 12:51 PM: Message edited by: Anna ]
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
I'd not walk, because the body should be able to heal itself eventually and I'd prefer to stay alive.
AJ
Posted by MyrddinFyre (Member # 2576) on :
See, I wouldn't have realized what happened to me so I'd just get up and start wandering around. (Wouldn't last too long but yeah)
And I'd totally volunteer to carry Beren around Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
I guess what would really happen is I'd say to the perpetrator "you'd do something that horrible and then expect me to take your word for it that you're telling the truth?"
I haven't seen the movie, so I guess it's not spoiling it for me to speculate that this is a ploy for some bad guy to get away. You can either kill yourself and maybe kill them, or try to live and fight another day. Kind of like what Petra faced when Achilles opened the airplane door.
I'm just trying to figure out who on earth would take the five steps.
Stargate, your answer seems at variance with what you said in the Italian thread with the guy who defied the kidnappers.
Posted by Da_Goat (Member # 5529) on :
I'd get out my cell-phone, which I never leave behind.
I'd call my family and friends and give them my maybe-farewells. Maybe I'd also have somebody come near me so I could narrate my will to them.
I'd call a hospital, explain my situation, and ask if anything could be done.
If not, I'd stand up, tell everybody standing within an unsafe distance to back up, and walk.
If they can come with a wheelchair or something, I'd use that, and then I'd do something to make walking impossible for me. I don't think I'd have the will-power to break them or cut 'em off, but maybe I could somehow tie my butt down with bricks.
Posted by xnera (Member # 187) on :
I have not seen the movie, so I don't know how this scenerio is used. But I'm fascinated by it. I mean, why walking five steps? When I first read it, I immediately thought that the punches did so much damage to the body that any extra extertion (walking, or moving your arms, or whatnot) would cause death. But from the comments it sounds like it's just walking that would cause it. Interesting.
Me, I'd think I'd want to live, so I would try not to walk. The problem with that is that for someone who's walked all their life, walking becomes an intuitive gesture. It's muscle memory. In this instance, I am not incapable of walking because of paralysis or because I'm tied to a chair or something; I'm only prevented from walking because of my will to live. But then one morning wake up all groggy and forget about your predicament, and you stumble your five steps and die. What a terrible situation.
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
Da_g, I hadn't thought of the heart exploding in a destructive way. I guess it really would seem to involve some crazy deal with a villian.
I guess the theoretical basis is that in Feng Shui there are five elements that correlate to accupuncture meridian systems. Picture a pentagram. The top point is Fire/heart. At 3 o'clock is Earth/spleen. At 5 o'clock is metal/lung. (iron lung! ha ha ha). At 7 o'clock is water/kidney. At 9 o'clock is wood/liver.
The outer circle is the creating cycle. The lines of the star are the controling cycle. So wood feeds fire, but contains earth. Fire feeds earth but controls metal and so forth. I guess by screwing up the alignments of these meridian relations it could, in theory, be bad. But it seems like walking backwards might work.
I know, I'd light a flare, step forward, step back, turn 3 times and jump forward.
You know, in Tomb Raider 2 if you do that but forget the flare you explode.
Posted by skillery (Member # 6209) on :
There are a couple of judo holds that leave the victim messed up.
I pissed off a rather large native Japanese missionary in the missionary apartment one day. He put me in a hold that left me walking, bent over like a shrimp, for a week.
Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
Picture this.
You immiediately crawl to safety, hire a motorized wheel chair, and prepare to spend the rest of your life without walking.
Then, around 3am a week later, you get the urge to use the facilities. A quick jog to the bathroom is habitual. Half awake you don't realize what your doing til four and a half steps later.
Posted by Space Opera (Member # 6504) on :
I would just roll everywhere. Preferably I would start on top of a big hill.
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
I think doing something to totally immobilise you would be a must. I mean, I'd completely forget about this every other day.
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
So handcuff your feet together. I'm pretty open minded but I don't see how walking five steps is so fatal. And as for going to the bathroom in the middle of the night, a catheter is not that big a deal beside being chair bound for life. But this seems a really unpleasant line of conversation if no one wants to present more particulars. As improbably as the five punches are, the idea that it can't be undone seems more improbable. Again, why on earth would anyone take the five steps?
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
Because they'd lose their honor if they didn't?
Because they are rebels?
I have no idea.
Is taking the five steps an act of courage?
[ April 29, 2004, 03:14 AM: Message edited by: Kama ]
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
Or because you'd really believe there is nothing to be done. That you are meant to die. That you are expected to die.
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
I'd dance.
Posted by Beren One Hand (Member # 3403) on :
Up pretty early for a man on vacation. Posted by Anna (Member # 2582) on :
That's a beautiful answer Chris Posted by Vána (Member # 3262) on :
I don't know what I'd do - maybe it would depend on the situation.
But I really believe that in the movie, walking was the brave and honorable thing to do. It went a long way in redeeming that character, I think. (I won't be more specific 'cause of spoilers, obviously.)
Posted by Chaz_King (Member # 3184) on :
I would bust out the cell phone, dial 911, and then call 411 to call all of the martial arts masters I could find
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