Plot Problem - Rapid Muscle Gain

[gadgetmind]

Are you keen to invent something new? If not, why not use something that exists now?

Site enhancement oil - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It doesn't make muscles stronger, it just bulks them up. Dunno if this is good enough for your plot.

Ian

[gadgetmind]

Originally Posted by Boneman

Never let reality get in the way of a great story!

I read a lot of stories that would have been great if they hadn't played quite so fast and loose with reality. If you don't take it seriously, why should the reader?

Ian

[jastius]

there's this stuff that athletes are being tested for and apparently its hard to trace. In about three weeks it can have a fit person looking like charles atlas. Its a drug that is used for people with muscular dystrophy and is given along with that oxygen uptake accelerator used by high altitude climbers. I can't remember the specific names though but I remember reading about them in an article and thinking they sounded like a science fiction gimmick when they were science fact.

[Grinnel]

Perhaps you can have the whole thing done with some sort of hypno-therapy. Some theories into why some people can lift cars in life-or-death situations and why monkeys are five to seven times stronger than their equal sized human counterparts is that we simply think too much.

A mother can lift a car off of her child because she doesn't stop to think about it, she just does it. Most people would think the feat is impossible, therefore they can't do it.

A chimpanzee can perform amazing feats of strength simply because they don't take the time to think they can't. Some people can be hypnotized into doing things that are physically impossible (getting into an ice bath without gasping or shivering if they believe it's a nice warm bath)

Whether or not the theories hold water is irrelevant; you can use the idea as a basis to program or hypnotize your character into feats of strength with (or ignoring pain/stress in) his left arm, at least for a period, though he may have to pay a price later.

[Boneman]

Originally Posted by gadgetmind

I read a lot of stories that would have been great if they hadn't played quite so fast and loose with reality. If you don't take it seriously, why should the reader?

Ian

because we're writing fantasy and science fiction that's speculative - as long as the reality you invent is believeable (not provable, not grounded in today's science, not the reality we know...) then it works. Look at what was reality a hundred years ago, and then imagine reality in a hundred years. The work being done today with regenerating limbs can easily be extrapolated into a future where muscle could regenerate in 4 days and be incredibly strong. But if the reader thinks: 'huh, that's not real because it's not done today,' should they be reading SciFi and Fantasy at all?

[jastius]

I was once watching a PBS show and the host was questioning a historian as to the veracy of the historical claims made for the acts of the Saints. The reporter asked if they were ascribing the reports as a type of mass hysteria or made up magic tricks, or simple overstatements; and the historian said something very interesting. The historian stated that people then did not have science to tell them that they could not do something. That anything was actually impossible to do. The historean said that because no one told the individuals involved that it was impossible, the the people there existed the possibility of preforming such acts. they in effect created their own reality. That today it is the reality of science we ascribe to that dictates our limitations upon ourselves. Because the people then did not have any reason they could not do these things, they just did them anyways; similar to the increased capability found under hypnosis today or in times of great need...
I realize that its a sort of "the bumble bee doesn't know it can't fly, so it flies anyway" sort of thing,
[famous quotation: laws of aerodynamics state a bumblebee does not have the aerodynamic capacity to fly- but since the bee never studied aerodynamics, it goes ahead and flies anyways]
perhaps what we believe to be true as our ultimate capacities for endurance will be far from what they truly are. Think about it. Your weight watchers and science suggest that it takes about a year to lose thirty pounds or so. ( sixteen weeks in a year, at two pounds a week) but every sports season chubby idle pro atheletes are whipped into game shape, some dropping as much as fifty pounds in a few short weeks. are they losing muscle? no, these blokes gain muscle like crazy. Are they weak and enervated from the physical stress of such weight loss and conditioning? um can we un-enervated bystanders play a 90 minute half?
I really believe that our understanding of physical capacity is rudimentary at best.
anyways the report I referred to in the previous post is in Macclean's magazine; a Canadian weekly news-magazine.