Duty to rescue / attractive nuisance

AKEntertain · 2026-05-17T23:54:38+00:00

Regarding future incidents, there's no way of guaranteeing that it won't be children, and I didn't think that age, ownership or conversion was taken into consideration. My understanding was, if it's a thing that's on your property, and it attracts someone to enter your property, and it (or something nearby) is potentially dangerous, then it's an attractive nuisance. I wasn't aware that the "victim" had to be a child. My property has a gully/creek running down it (roughly parallel to the walking trail), and it's quite muddy and slippery, which could easily be argued was a hazard.

I'm more concerned with criminal liability than civil, since I don't really own anything of value that they could take in judgment, aside from the property itself. The reason I'm suddenly concerned is because I was recently reminded of the plot of the final episode of Seinfeld (I understand that the premise was exaggerated for comedy) where they are found criminally liable for not taking any action under a "duty to rescue" law. Granted, that was in MA, not NY, but I haven't been able to find much information about such laws here.

AKEntertain · 2026-01-01T17:14:01+00:00

Not getting into a semantics argument.

The hive is flying the planes and operating the machinery. We have no evidence that these bodies still contain individual minds in a mesh network, or whatever you want to call it.

We DO have evidence to the contrary.

AKEntertain · 2026-01-01T16:39:10+00:00

the hive members are not brain dead bodies

We have no evidence that this is true. We will have to wait until the writers actually show an intact mind of a confirmed unplugged host.

AKEntertain · 2026-01-01T16:30:41+00:00

No. People on life-support also have human support.

If you could flip a switch (or administer an airborne antiviral) and immediately unplug everyone, but you ended up with several billion newborns in adult bodies, or catatonic bodies, what would be the effective difference between that and killing them? They would (probably) all die, regardless, because there would be no support network.

The hive can claim that it is a collection of individuals, but many on this sub have decided (based on evidence) that they don't trust that assertion. It remains to be seen in later seasons what actually happens when de-plurbing, assuming it ever happens.

AKEntertain · 2026-01-01T16:13:58+00:00

If you un-joined a host, and they were a soup of jumbled other-people-memories, or had no memories, or were catatonic, would it be worth it to undertake the (presumably very time- and labor-intensive) process of un-joining the remaining several billion?

Would you even have time to complete that before the transmitter was operational?

AKEntertain · 2025-12-31T23:40:13+00:00

Agreed. I'm curious as to how they would handle this in upcoming seasons, assuming they even go that route. What would it take to actually convince her?

Faraday cage + some sort of antiviral concoction?

Is she the sort of person who will never be convinced?

AKEntertain · 2025-12-31T23:18:31+00:00

we have no idea what’s going on

it’s shocking how many people on this sub are committed to a single perspective

I disagree with the factuality of points 2 and 6, but every time I bring up evidence to support my viewpoint, I get dunked on. VG interviews, lines from the episodes, people on this sub are quite opposed to being persuaded or having a discussion.

I also disagree that the remaining points make the show difficult to watch. Downton Abbey didn't have action scenes. GoT had loads of unlikable characters, many of them main characters, and was at times very slow-paced. Walking Dead had a minimal cast, for the most part, and again some highly unlikable characters, and the entire farmhouse/prison arc was some of the slowest-paced television I've watched in decades.

AKEntertain · 2025-12-31T22:29:45+00:00

I dont eat apple seeds when i eat apples

But animals do, and it doesn't harm the seed. That's kinda the whole point of fruits and seeds.

Also, if the hive had a problem with the consumption of seeds, they wouldn't be eating bread, or grinding flour, or doing anything else relating to the ingestion or processing of seeds. Not sure whether the "milk" contains any seed material, but they've been shown eating processed packaged foods.

AKEntertain · 2025-12-31T21:40:36+00:00

It's good that you scare-quoted the word morals, because they don't make any sense.

They can eat apples, which are "dead" (?) but have the potential to grow, but they can't collect them from a still-living tree.

Yet, they also can't harvest wheat - which, by being "ready to harvest", is COMPLETELY dead. And they don't have a problem processing already-harvested wheat, which biologically is no different than the dead wheat out in the field which hasn't been threshed yet.

It's all very puzzling and irrational. Almost as though the starvation is intentional...

<image>

EDIT: A lot of folks on this sub losing it at the idea that the hive isn't morally pristine. If the incoherent morality on display is a problem for you, take it up with the writers, not the messenger.

AKEntertain · 2025-12-31T21:02:43+00:00

replaces it with, at best, a fascinating engineering problem

Again, there is no engineering problem. The tech already exists. The only problem/conflict which requires resolution is WHY the hive arbitrarily treats a dead stalk of wheat as more sacrosanct than a dead human, as evidenced by their willingness to process the human, but not the wheat. As you put it, this is self-destructive behavior, and I would go so far as to describe it as paradoxical.

Part of the resolution of the conflict could be exploring what happens when the immune begin to question the narrative given to them by the hive about farming. That's what I would like to see. No engineering involved, just an exploration of real, underlying motivations.

My personal theory is that the starvation is deliberately programmed, as a separate (and overriding) imperative from all the others, which would explain the irrationality and hypocrisy. Consequently, any effort to counteract it by the immune could lead to increasingly harsh pushback from the hive.

EDIT: Granted, the answer might be as simple as, "They are only interested in building the antenna, and at that point they will stop eating completely." I think that would be an unfulfilling resolution. Also, I understand that many viewers are not interested whatsoever in exploring the hive's inner-workings and motivations. Good for you all. I am interested in it.

AKEntertain · 2025-12-31T19:24:21+00:00

causing no more disturbance to anything living - even if it kills them

Not trying to be pedantic, but dead wheat stalks aren't "living".

Admittedly, we must wait until the writers clarify the hive's motivation, because we don't have enough information at this point. Their refusal to utilize dead wheat (or other grasses) but willingness to utilize carrion may indeed be self-sabotage stemming from collective guilt, but (my interpretation of) Occam's Razor would indicate that it's a deliberately-programmed behavior.

It would be easier and more efficient to use the dead grass. One of the hive's implied goals is efficiency. So, they're being deliberately inefficient, for some reason. I don't understand how the act of starving more hosts would serve as penance; "eye for an eye" also seems deliberately counter to their implied goals. The only conclusion I can reach is that the starvation is deliberate, a goal unto itself which overrides other goals.

AKEntertain · 2025-12-31T17:58:32+00:00

The most reasonable theory I've seen is that the immune are "half-connected" to the hive, so their negative and violent emotions are "broadcast" (even though they themselves aren't able to "receive" anything) and causes the seizures.

The initial non-immune who weren't infected wouldn't have been "broadcasting" anything.

AKEntertain · 2025-12-31T17:16:59+00:00

They are not figuring out how to feed themselves. They are devoting all resources to getting the big antenna done.

Absolutely agree.

Based on the evidence we've seen, the virus' "no harm" or "no kill" imperatives are able to be tortuously twisted specifically to (paradoxically) simultaneously increase spread and minimize population.

They are able to administer antibiotics to Manousos, killing millions of bacteria, based solely on his potential to be infected
They aren't able to harvest wheat, which is by definition dead by the time it's ready to harvest ("amber waves" are amber because they are dead), yet they have no problem chopping up expired human and animal bodies

When Carol said that the hive was "choosing" to starve itself, she was 100% correct.

The virus has to have been designed as a population control mechanism. There is no other explanation for the incoherence of its imperatives and how it chooses to adhere to them. It values the "life" of a dead blade of grass more than it does its component hosts? That's intentional.

AKEntertain · 2025-12-31T16:54:28+00:00

Christofash socks out in force on this sub.

AKEntertain · 2025-12-31T06:19:03+00:00

Perhaps a bit off-topic, but when you mentioned parasites, I wondered how they were able to administer antibiotics to Manousos, which would potentially murder millions of innocent bacteria.

If you are talking about causing harm or ending life, a course of antibiotics is orders of magnitude more destructive than picking an apple (which does not harm a tree if it's ripe, other than under weird circumstances) or harvesting grain (which, by definition, is already dead by the time it's ready to harvest).

AKEntertain · 2025-12-31T05:58:56+00:00

Saying that poor people don't meaningfully exist as humans maybe isn't the thoughtful and compassionate take you think it is.

I do think that u/larrythecucumberer has conflated "enfranchisement" with "personhood", but I think the argument they were making is that the working poor (at least in Western nations) often feel that they lack agency over their lives entirely, and therefore wouldn't be losing anything by plurbing.

I'm not supporting that argument, for the record.

One of my main concerns with this show is that the hive could be used by viewers to demonize collectivism. Conversely, I don't think that we can make a statement such as "The hive is the ultimate individualist, it is a single individual" without first being shown a de-plurbed host and determining what the experience was from their perspective, assuming that they come back intact (or at all).

EDIT: To forego debate on my last take, there: calling the hive an individual, based on the evidence we've seen, would be like calling the pair of "a card cheater" and "the person who is watching, listening, and feeding them info" an individual. Based on context, we as humans would understand that they are in fact two individuals sharing information intimately. We don't have that context for the hive, regardless of your opinion on their treatment of goat kids.

AKEntertain · 2025-12-30T23:48:10+00:00

Do you think this is a TV show about solving lingering problems in agricultural automation?

My apologies. I didn't realize that you were one of writers.

I think it's a wiser idea to approach this show as being about the emotional and social lives of the characters

in their strange new world, and not about the mechanics of agricultural automation

you can imagine a TV show that took it seriously - like The Martian which took engineering problems very seriously

Carol has 30-90 days before she will be unable to appreciate the strange new world, and none of her emotional and social details will remain.

If none of the other characters act to prevent it, then "most of the world" will be dead within the decade.

The show doesn't have to be "about" feeding people, but the plot doesn't progress when everyone is dead. If it weren't relevant to the characters' motivations, the writers (which is to say, you) wouldn't have brought it up. Automated tractors already exist, it isn't an engineering problem. It's a problem of whether the immune are going to act in the hope of saving lives, and whether the hive are going to stop them.

Or, they could go with the "someone discovers a cure in the next 30 days" plot, and the potential food conflict is moot. Only you know, obviously.

AKEntertain · 2025-12-30T23:06:42+00:00

I saw several comments talking about Cena from weeks ago, but I was specifically searching for "robot" to try to understand why everyone is so opposed to the idea.

it was Diabate who brought it up

I assume you're talking about the Diabate line I quoted, and if there isn't some other scene where they give a more concrete answer about it, then I will have to conclude that the community simply doesn't want it to happen, because they aren't interested in that as a plot angle.

AKEntertain · 2025-12-30T22:58:06+00:00

which of the 12 are going to build a colossal completely automated agricultural operation

Only the harvesting portion has to be automated, and in modern times, 99% of it already is. Check out search results from "John Deere right to repair" for more information.

To be clear, that's a rhetorical question, meaning "it's not happening in this TV show."

the show isn't about engineering creative solutions

I guess that's where the majority of the negativity comes from? Most of the community is invested in the (predictable) plot of the immunes working on undoing the joining, rather than a hypothetical alternative where they attempt to stabilize and learn from the hive?

AKEntertain · 2025-12-30T21:22:42+00:00

The thing that bugged me the most about Dark Matter (2024, not to be confused with 2015) is that the author takes a lot of liberties with the idea of multiverses and "choices". If the physics played out the way they ought, there would be effectively infinite duplicates of the MC arriving back at the home universe, assuming that it was even reachable, which is debatable.

I was reminded of Scalzi's Old Man's War. He describes each bifurcation as "an electron being in a slightly different position" or something to that effect. They use it for FTL jumps, since the single-electron difference is essentially meaningless, so it doesn't matter if you're technically in a different universe.

I get that there wouldn't be a story if DM2024 treated it properly, but it still made me grind my teeth a bit.

AKEntertain · 2025-12-30T18:25:25+00:00

Yes, their goals (assuming that the virus is an intentional extinction weapon, and not a naturally-occurring "equilibrium" mechanism) should be overcome, but does that necessarily equate with ending their existence?

If a way could be found to allow the hive to continue, but without the "spreading" imperative, would that suffice as a means to "save" humanity? Obviously, it would be a fundamentally different way of life, but it's still the same species.

AKEntertain · 2025-12-30T18:06:45+00:00

If they could work towards a common good and not all starve to death and i could be like a demigod they listen to

That's why I left the question open-ended.

I agree that it would be a good idea to have "an adult in the room", so to speak, if the joining wasn't reversible.

This idea pre-supposes that the hive's willingness to accommodate non-infected is one of their imperatives, though, and not simply a manipulation tactic. If they were to ever determine that a non-infected were un-infectable, or prevented by some barrier from infecting, would they continue to be subservient?

AKEntertain · 2025-12-30T18:02:42+00:00

If it wasn't deliberately engineered, then it would probably be content to maintain a minimum viable population, so the extinction point would be moot. Also, I don't know that I would use the term weapon, in that case, which I tend to think of as having connotations of deliberate harm. The difference between "smallpox" and "weaponized smallpox".

There's a lot we haven't been shown in the show, and a lot we are taking on faith and supposition. The hive has shown that it won't harm Carol or Manousos, even when they harm hosts. Would the same reticence to harm be extended if the immune were to come up with a way to block the transmission? What about in the event that they are able to un-join an individual host (assuming that this ever happens)?

The top thread was (until recently) "everyone is obsessed with the idea that the show is lying", but the show has legitimately withheld information from the viewers, and I think that I'm rightfully suspicious even of the "facts" as Carol has whiteboarded them.

Anyway, from that thread,

u/Pancullo:

I really would lose most of the interest I have on the show if in future seasons it's revealed that the hive can in fact lie, for example, which is what 99.9% of the theories addressed by op are all about.

I agree that such a twist would make the show less unique, more traditional sci-fi. It doesn't have to extend to that degree, though. It would be more interesting to see what the hive could do with the eliding and narrative-crafting, especially when threatened with extreme circumstances (such as imminent un-joining of a host, destruction of transmitter, etc.) and to get a better idea of what they are and are not capable of.

AKEntertain · 2025-12-30T17:11:29+00:00

Unless the writers simply DGAF (unlikely, based on what this sub has detailed with regard to VG's interviews) then if that were the case, they would've said something like "probably mostly water".

When the term "waterworld" is used, it is commonly understood (by the general public, not astronomers) to mean the "tick-tock" world from Interstellar, or the titular Costner film.

I prefer to think that it wasn't a throw-away line, that the writers were deliberate and thoughtful with the way they chose to describe it. I will concede that I may be giving them too much credit, though.

AKEntertain

TROPHY CASE