A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

WENT TO MY DOCTOR YESTERDAY; HE SAID I SEEMED TO BE OKAY: Kim raised the excellent question yesterday, re Lost, of what effect salt water would have on a gunshot wound. I thought exactly the same thing. And then I thought: It's lucky I'm a medical expert! At least in things that have occurred on Grey's Anatomy. So I thought I'd compile a few of the medical questions that have come up in the last few weeks, crack open my DSM-IV, and dispense some irrefutable medical wisdom. Caveat: since my medical license is temporarily neverexistent, please consult a doctor before testing any of my hypotheses by sitting between giant electromagnetic donuts (or otherwise). Anyway, please peer into my waiting room (subscriptions: Guns and Emo; Elegant Cat; The Oakland Chronicle of Traffic Inconveniences and Garbage Strikes) to overhear the advice I've given to our favorite non-attritioned Oceanic passengers:

What would ocean water do to a gunshot wound? A 1% saline solution made from clean water is a good way to clean a wound. Ocean water, however, has a higher salt concentration and will sting like a scorpion. In addition, according to the authoritative medical text aloha.com:

In marine wounds, however, the risk of infection is high. Warm ocean water, and the mouths and skins of marine animals, host numerous bacteria including species of Staphylococcus (Staph) and Streptococcus (Strep). These wide-ranging bacteria, also common on land and human skin, are the leading cause of marine infections in Hawai`i. Some wounds are complicated by venoms, broken teeth, other animals parts, or by bacteria found only in water, for example, Mycobacterium marinum and Vibrio.

So on the one hand, Kate's wound would be excruciatingly painful. On the other hand, some people enjoy sepsis.

Could Widmore's electromagnetic donuts actually kill somebody? They certainly could, if the person were made out of iron. For those of us made out of carbon and water, there is a dispute about whether electromagnetic fields are hazardous. The dispute appears largely to be between scientists who say there is no evidence of danger and non-scientists who think that Jenny McCarthy cured autism. Let's say that I am in the class of people who place their faith in diner-counter science backed up by rigorous celebrity tweetsearch. In that case, since powerful magnetic fields allegedly cause cancer (everybody knows that weak magnetic fields cure minor maladies, duh -- why do you think I paid $24.95 for this magnetic bracelet?), extremely powerful magnetic fields must trigger spontaneous, instantaneous cancer, right?

What should a person worry about when exiting a flooding submarine? First, getting out. Because the submarine is still flooding, water is moving into the submarine. Getting out, I imagine, would be a little like trying to throw a whiffle ball into an open fire hydrant. I suppose one would have to wait until the water is in complete equilibrium (meaning the sub is completely flooded) before leaving. Once out of the submarine, you'd have to worry about getting caught in the wash. The friction of the large, heavy object sinking will drag nearby water (and whatever's in the nearby water) down with it -- I believe I read this with respect to the Titanic, anyway. And if our heroes escaped, they would still have to worry about ever making it to the surface. Submarines can surface very rapidly -- faster than a person can swim, by decompressing air into the buoyancy tanks. If the Dharma submarine were a minute and a half away from surfacing at the time of the explosion and then sank for another couple of minutes, it would be a long way to the top. Even assuming they could orient themselves correctly (and I have no reason to think they could, since the submarine appeared to be spinning), Hurley and Jack could not rely upon their natural buoyancy to take them to the surface, because the pressure at depth would compress the air in their lungs and frustrate buoyancy (I read this in the New Yorker article about free diving). Without those cool dolphin fins that free divers use, they probably wouldn't make it to the surface. Did I mention that they were each carrying someone? And once at the surface, wouldn't they have to be a long, long way from land, since they were so deep when the bomb went off? But I'm a fake doctor, not a fake physicist. What I do fake-know is that our submarine escapees would need to surface very slowly and take breaks to allow the nitrogen in their lungs to come out of solution slowly. Otherwise, the bends would kill them, or at least make them wish they were dead.

Can you just reach out and snap someone's neck by twisting it? Having little experience with this, I consulted my practice partner, Dr. Google. He talked at length, and everything he said fell into one of two categories: (a) why don't you try it and report back; and (b) I totally can -- I know three-point-five ways to do it, but I am trained in several obscure martial arts and also probably am fourteen years old and on a school district watch list. So I'm not crediting Dr. Google. All I know is that the way that Smokey did it -- reach out with both palms as if imitating an elderly relative kissing a grandniece, then give a hiccupy twist -- doesn't exactly seem textbook.