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- [Narrator] Hello, and welcome to Illogical Conclusion,
a show that asks a baffling pop culture question
and brings it to a rational answer
no matter how exhausting far up the clown hole
we need to go.
Today's query is
(pencil writing)
The HBO show Westworld is about a futuristic island park
designed to quell mankind's eternal thirst for shooting
and/or boning cowboy robots to piano covers of Radiohead.
The centers around having realistic but non-lethal firearms.
Through a vague technology, bullets in Westworld
ping off of the guests while penetrating the robot hosts.
Right away, there are two easy explanations
for how this work in real life.
Those are: one, the bullets are going
at a lower velocity speed than real bullets,
and the robots either have weaker skin
or squibs simulating a gunshot,
or two, only the guests have real guns,
while the hosts have nonlethal ones.
However, the later episodes of the series
make both of these impossible.
Hosts engage in activity proving their skin
to be (bleep)-worthy levels of durable,
going so far as to show one of them
physically remove a bullet from their body.
We also see guests and hosts occasionally swap weapons,
meaning that the guns are interchangeable,
and so we logically have to conclude
that the bullets themselves are special.
(pencil writing)
This is further corroborated by
the supplementary fictional website
explaining that their guns feature low-velocity technology
similar to paint balls.
Out of universe writer Jonah Nolan
has confirmed that the bullets are called simmunitions,
which are a low-velocity, nonlethal ammunition,
but, if the guests and hosts are routinely swapping guns,
it means that the bullet we see
lodged in one of the robot characters
is the same type of bullet that bounces off guests,
not to mention these bullets
will also damage inanimate objects in the park,
and so all of that means these simmunitions
have to do two things:
one, know the difference between
organic and inorganic matter,
and two, quickly decelerate to a nonlethal velocity
when it senses the target is living.
Now, let's deal with that second one first.
If the nonlethal setting of these bullets
feels similar to a paint ball impact,
that would put them at about 86 meters
or 285 feet per second.
This is a safe assumption considering that this velocity
is right on the edge of what is considered nonlethal.
It also happens to be the same speed
as an experimental crowd control projectile
called the POGO Jet.
But, unlike Westworld's bullets,
the POGO Jet is designed to slowly burn
its propellant in order to maintain
a constant and non-killing speed over a long distance,
creating an incapacitating round that, when fired,
remains effective for both long and short range.
The bullets on Westworld need to toggle
between two different velocities,
lethal or penetrative, and nonlethal.
If the lethal speed is the same as a regular bullet,
that would mean Westworld simmunitions could slow down
or speed up to 5,000 feet per second.
That's faster than the speed of sound,
and it would have to do this in mere nano-seconds
after identifying its target.
That is amazing.
Obviously, we're talking about a sci-fi show,
so that's not outside the realm of the story,
but here's where it gets weird.
(tech music)
The park's fictional terms and conditions
specifically state that their safeguards
regarding bullet velocity are proprietary
to their parent company,
and that means Westworld is manufacturing
these bullets themselves, all of them.
If Westworld has at least 1,400 guests
and those guests fire a very conservative 20 bullets a day,
well that adds up to 28,000 pieces of simmunitions.
That comes to over 10 million bullets a year
being manufactured for pew-pew-bull(bleep) cowboy fights.
This is where we draw our illogical conclusion.
(pencil writing)
(tech music)
The scientists of Westworld have invented
a type of ammunition that would revolutionize war
as we know it, bullets that can detect targets
and drastically change their velocity on command.
There's no telling what else they might be able to do
if applied to various tasks,
and they are using this technology as a footnote
in their rowdy hat sex party,
or a more horrifying theory.
Westworld's parent company Delos
has a weapons manufacturing division and is using their park
as an unofficial testing site for prototypes.
It would explain the sketchiness of the company in the show
and why they would build robots in the first place.
What it wouldn't explain is why a large arms dealer
would feel the need to build an amusement park.
That's like if Lockheed Martin opened a traveling air show
to test their new F35 jets.
It's not safe, affordable, or discreet.
It's insanity, it's an insane thing to do.
This show is the symphony of a mad man,
and that's how those goddamn bullets work.
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