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PaperclipPerfector  13d ago (text post)   2525 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for April 18, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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My incredibly off-topic comment justifiably saw no response, but it reminded me of one question.

Imagine you’re on a flight where somebody tried to smuggle murder hornets and they got loose. Only three people were immune and survived: you, and a basement dweller who spent thousands of hours in MS Flight Simulator including the plane model you’re on, and a real fighter pilot who has never flown a commercial plane ever. They look at you to decide who will be landing the plane. Which one do you choose?

Imagine you’re on a flight where somebody tried to smuggle murder hornets and they got loose. Only three people were immune and survived: you, and a basement dweller who spent thousands of hours in MS Flight Simulator including the plane model you’re on, and a real fighter pilot who has never flown a commercial plane ever.

I find it very suspicious that two thirds of the people who just randomly happen to be immune to the murder hornets are both somewhat experienced with planes. The likeliest scenario is that they are both part of an operation to steal that plane.

Of course, given that, I have to wonder about myself. Did I survive because I was also part of the plot? The two others seem to have covered landing the plane at its new destination, so what exactly was my part in all of this? Did I bring the hornets on board? So many died. Why did I do this?

The best way to redeem myself is to make sure that their bloody operation will not succeed. My biggest asset for that is that my two co-conspirators are still believing I am on their side. At the moment we are still over the middle of the ocean, and both of them just went into the cockpit to set a coarse for Havana or Mogadishu or whatever.

I think about sabotaging the emergency oxygen system and then blowing out a door. I find a connected oxygen cylinder, but then I begin to wonder. What if the cockpit has a separate, redundant life support system? Ambient pressure at commercial plane flight levels is low, but not zero. And the cabin pressure is also not sea level. Also, they closed the cockpit door again, so I can't really count on explosive decompression to take them out. And probably whoever had to design the doors had the secondary objective of making sure that they are not easily opened while there is a pressure differential. Or I would just get blown out of the door without taking both of the other conspirators out. And if anyone can hang on to consciousness in hypox.. anox.. in low oxygen conditions while their plane does a free-fall descent of a few kilometers, then it is probably a fighter pilot.

I look at the painful stings all over my hands. At least I can't see my face, but my left eye it totally swollen. The antidote kept me alive, not comfortable. I wonder about what hellish species that is which can take out a hundred people in minutes. Some were only stung once or twice. Should stings lead to anaphylaxis and death with such certainty? Are they GMO and producing botox or something?

What happens with the hornets after the plane is landed? Am I looking at some Alien scenario? They are likely not an x-risk, but the span between erasing some 500 QALYs and x-risk is pretty large. How do hornets even reproduce? Probably nests with a large number with individuals, so they have a queen?

Nah, the tail end is simply too dreadful, new priority one is to make sure that none of these bloody beasts escape.

I consider my options. While cabin pressure is maintained, the hornets are trapped in here with me. If the plane lands without damaging the hull too much, I can tell radio the authorities and tell them to build a tent around the plane and fill it with some insecticide. Still hinges on me taking over the plane and making a non-catastrophic landing.

The safest way to destroy the hornets would probably be a controlled watering at Point Nemo -- where we put our space junk and dread Cthulhu lies. Even if there is a hull breach during impact, the hornets are probably not able to fly hundreds of kilometers over the sea. Unfortunately, we are nowhere near it. Landing in some smaller pond will kill the hornets only if the plane remains sealed until it sinks. The other obvious choice is rapid deceleration followed by a fuel explosion. What are the odds of the tail part breaking off and not being caught in the fireball? How reliable is the acceleration to kill these big ass hornets?

Anyhow, this brings me back to having to disable the other conspirators to take over the plane. The bigger danger by far is the fighter pilot. He may not have a ton of training in close quarter combat, but he is a lot fitter than I am. The basement dweller is closer to a fair fight -- not that I plan on giving him one.

That oxygen cylinder I found will have to serve as a blunt weapon. And it's contents could help me prepare a distraction. The third corpse in first class I check smells like a smoker, and indeed he has a lighter in his pockets, as well as a pack of cigarettes with a label "SMOKING KILLS", not that he has to worry about that now. Just as I have picked the ideal location for my little fire, I notice that one of the passengers does not have the swollen face of the others. Yes, she is not moving as the hornets crawl on her, but she is very faintly breathing. Shit, what now?

My understanding is that the division of labor in an emergency is for the co-pilot to take the controls and the captain to manage comms and the checklist(s), the reason being that experience and a (hopefully) cool head are more valuable for the latter tasks. So, I'd have the sim pilot take the controls and the fighter pilot take the radio and checklists.

I've always wanted to land a plane.

Serves them right for putting you in charge really.

Imagining your eyes widening like a child opening a present as you say it and the dread they would feel in that moment made me laugh my ass off, kudos.

I'm not terribly frightened of this hypo. Either, or both, or neither I'll do it myself just for the story. Landing a plane isn't really THAT hard. It's reasonably difficult to do perfectly every single time, without damaging the plane or anything around the plane. I would bet the median mottizen could land an airliner with no serious injuries or fatalities with 98% success or better with radio guidance.

IIRC there has, quite literally, never been a talk down landing that hasn't succeeded.

Wow so this hypo is very much in Man Or Bear territory of stupidity?

Yeah, funniest case scenario, I'm sure each of those three hypothetical characters could successfully be told how to hit the Cat III autoland button.

Fighter pilot.

Resilience to stress is more important than excellence. Both of them can fly a plane. Only one of them knows how to keep his cool in stressful circumstances.

The MSF guy, with pilot as copilot.

Can I choose a team of the hornets?

...what's the delta between the transferability of MS Flight Simulator skills versus a fighter jet? I have no idea. I'd probably go with the fighter jet pilot, on the assumption that MSFS is sufficiently streamlined that it transfers less.

Your average fighter pilot has probably flown maybe a half dozen other aircraft types too: you don't go straight from a simulator into a jet.

...I doubt that. Last I checked MSFS was for those guys who loved having all of the bullshit on a plane down to the last button. That was a decade ago..

XPlane or Prepar3d are better as instrument trainers, but you can still get MSFS to the point where it can be blessed for BATD purposes (effectively, can clock a limited number of hours on it as a pilot). The biggest worry I'd have is that they are still buttons; even high-end yokes tend to be horribly unrealistic when it comes to physical feel, and many parts don't really have good physical equivalents even if you're willing to pay an arm, leg, and first-born child.

In normal conditions a pilot only really has to manage the aircraft in the sense of a checklist, where there's literally very exact steps involved for procedure at every point in the process, but high crosswinds, bad visibility, (very) low fuel levels, equipment failures/non-ops on aircraft or ground, or particularly annoying airports can make that less true. In those situations, being able to identify the feel of different types of whole-aircraft movement go, or knowing how to count off time properly in your head under stress, or how to handle procedures that aren't covered in flight simulator work could be more relevant.

I don’t want to be a dick, but you’re a brand new account and the only two responses you’ve gotten (within minutes of each other) are usernames I don’t recognize that were each created within a week of this website’s creation.

Does that seem weird to anyone else?

We notice the influx of new posters and we often have suspicions about new accounts.

That said, it's not conducive to actually drawing in new members if people start publicly accusing every new poster with a hot take of being a bot or a sock or a troll.

You can report suspicious accounts. But even when we're fairly sure someone is a returning alt we usually don't take action immediately if their behavior doesn't immediately throw red flags.

No. What would be the purpose of this conspiracy? You can't just throw these aspersions into the wind, make it interesting.

And I'm gonna go with the basement dweller. I had almost the exact hypothetical situation happen to me last month. My brother had received a small, remotely controlled airplane toy, but he couldn't keep it in the air for more than 15 seconds, even though he can jump higher than me. Thanks to my extensive experience watching youtube videos on airplane crashes, I just leveled the wings and stopped giving it gas when the AoA was too high, and voila, stall averted and everyone saved.

Many troll accounts that have already been banned were dormant usernames that were registered in September of 2022. There's no need for a conspiracy.

I take it I was being a dick.

I mean, mollie the mare has 200 comments, it's not a dormant troll. And two accounts posting within 2 minutes of each other is well within the realm of innocent events. The worst troll here, post-nazi-insider-spat-and-delete-guy, uses new accounts that date from the time his last one was banned, so if he ever used them, he's out of prime dormants.

I mean, mollie the mare has 200 comments, it's not a dormant troll.

I appreciate you posting this. Pretty rich for a guy with their posting history hidden to accuse someone else of being a troll. I don't post as much as the more prolific users of the forum, but it would have been trivial to check if I was a sleeper account.

I sincerely recommend you also hide your post history. I think it’s bad the mods disabled the option for newer accounts.

We seem to have some new faces around. 4chan refugees?

Fighter jock, so very hard. There's a reason "flying by the seat of your pants" became an expression. Even the very best simulators don't match the actual experience of putting a plane back on the ground safely. Also a commercial jet is much much harder to crash than a fighter jet which, by design, trades stability for agility.

The biggest issue would be a lack of familiarity with the controls. Put simulator guy/gal in the co-pilot's chair so they can point out where the appropriate dials and buttons are and you should be fine. Aside from being in a plane full of corpses and murder hornets anyway.

You are imo wrong.

Fighter jets are far smaller, have greater power reserves. I remember playing flight sim and the biggest thing I could ever land successfully was a Learjet. In a big plane everything you do ..lags? More... It's hard.

Maybe a pilot would get used to it, but a guy who has done it in Sims seems like a safer bet.

I'm not sure why you'd consider the very real performance difference between a fighter and commercial jet to be prohibitive but think the much, much larger difference between a sim and real life is just fine.

.. larger ? Good sims model the planes accurately. A big jet vs a small jet is a great difference in handling. I think a fighter pilot would be able to land a passenger jet but I think the experienced sim enthusiast would be more likely unless he never flew large planes in a good sim.

Yes, larger. Try doing a loop in a simulator then do one in real life. Even the very expensive sims that airlines and the military use can't 100% replicate the feel of real flight. A PC and desk chair certainly aren't going to do it.

You try to avoid such wild maneuvers with liners.

Iirc, no one has ever flown a loop with one, but one pilot performed a barrel roll at a lower altitude with a 747 in view of corporate onlookers.

You also try to avoid killing off the entire flight crew yet here we are.

Regardless, the point was that physical sensation is an integral part of the piloting experience and it's not one you'll get from a desktop sim. Replace looping with strong turbulence if that makes you feel better.

Conditional on:

  • The plane being capable of autoland
  • The MSFS model near study level
  • There is a CAT III runway within range with ample fuel reserves and favorable weather
  • The real fighter pilot has only ever flow fighters and fast jet trainers (No you're in a 737 and he's flown a P-8 Poseidon)

The basement dweller. Otherwise the fighter pilot. In the first case everyone will probably walk away with quite a story to tell. In the second everyone will probably survive, but there might be some injuries and the plane is probably going to be totaled.

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