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Old 01-01-23, 05:50   #1
CSEverett
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Default Plausibility of Lara's injuries & effects (plausible)- doctor feedback appreciated

(If anybody here works in the medical/EMS field time to speak up and probably correct me, since I am very much NOT a doctor.)

Looking at Lara's injuries in Tomb Raider (2013), despite many claiming how unrealistic they are, there's a few points that IMHO make it considerably more plausible. With one exception for later.
Also - when Lara cauterizes her wound with an arrow, to me it looked more like she was doing it to a brand new, large-area wound on her thigh, (which I think I saw), not her abdominal one.

Most of her various falls and tumbles don't look like the sort of thing that always results in crippling/life threatening injury. (There's also a selection bias at work where those who have something similar happen and aren't heavily injured don't show up at the hospital and don't call 911.) Buuuut...
We're talking about by the end of the game a fair chunk of her body has severe deep-tissue bruises (which of course can't really be shown in a game), and probably has bruised half the bones in her body. Which doesn't actually stop you from using them, other than it hurting. She might well have bruised an internal organ or two, but again, it will heal on it's own. Also, for all we know she's broken a rib, possibly a couple times in different places. It wouldn't show on the outside, and doesn't physically stop somebody.

Of course, she's also probably in constant severe pain by the end of the game every times she moves, but that's something a sky-high pain threshold and extreme willpower can keep you going through, since everything still works properly.

The arrow to the arm is a flesh wound. A heavy flesh wound, but if it doesn't sever a nerve, sever a muscle or tendon or puncture a major blood vessel isn't a crippling or life-threatening one. (Although I suspect she might have had surgery back at home later to fix it properly considering how much is wide and deep it is.)

The bear trap is best explained by a bear trap winding up there likely being in very poor condition plus tough boots. Also there probably was severe bruising, not saying she was completely unhurt.

The burning off the ropes at the absolutely beginning of the game might well have only resulted in very minor burns. She was inverted, so the flame was going away from her face and toward her boots, and she was also cocooned in - something, and it's likely the ropes burned through before the something had burned away enough to stop protecting her. Otherwise of course there would be nasty burns if it weren't for that.

I wouldn't worry about needing a tetanus shot, since if you keep up to date on those like everybody in the general public should, there's nothing to worry about, and Lara being up to date can be taken for granted. Probably vaccinated for a lot of other other non-typical-in-the-US things both to get passports and as a matter of basic common sense.

About the 'being fine a few minutes later' thing, the night-day cycles shows the game lasts over around IIRC about 4 days, while obviously gameplay doesn't last that long. There's a lot of unstated time compression/boring stuff skipped over since it has to be. The 'few minutes' likely as not in most cases could be a few hours. Also regarding outfit damage she's probably patching it up at base camps.

And of course there's the rebar to the gut. I'm assuming it's left over from Japanese WWII concrete bunker construction, otherwise it would have no way of being there. The big question, of course, it where exactly it went internally. I see two possibility based on my totally incomplete layman's knowledge of medicine. This is where those who actually know better should speak up. Based on how far to the side it is, it might actually just barely have missed the abdominal cavity and only gone extremely deeply and badly though muscle and tissue. Since I don't actually know how far to the side it extends, anybody who knows better should correct me now.
The other possibility is that her abdominal cavity is filled up with brackish seawater. Punctures to organs there have been known to have (very rarely) been survived untreated, but with water filling up her interior there's no way.
Or does it not work like that? (Those with medical training please speak up again.)

An additional point from the beginning of Rise of the Tomb Raider is that not everybody who's unbuckled in a rollover accident gets ejected, (Lara's body being front/back probably prevented that), and people have been surviving rollover accidents since before seatbelts. Same point about busing and potential broken ribs applies.

The big thing that's ignored across the whole trilogy is infection. Nowhere in the 3 games does Lara seem to make any effort to keep her wounds clean, even when she's treating them and they're clearly not. The jaguar mauling to her back in Shadow doesn't seem to be shown on her character model to what I've seen, her shirt is completely undamaged, so we can only imagine it. And it's certainly a dirty wound. And in the first game, right after getting cut up everywhere from tree branches have having some sort of open wound (see "did her abdominal wound reopen or is that a leg wound" question at the start) she wades through raw sewage. I don't see any way Lara's not going to get massive infections and die of sepsis.
Thaaat being said, assuming she was on the merchant ship in the closing cinematic about 3 days later, it's certainly possible she got medevaced by the Japanese coast guard shortly afterward (the island is within helicopter distance of something after all) to be treated for a massive infection once it got severe enough Lara couldn't ignore it. That's about all I can come up with for that game. Otherwise it doesn't make any sense.

In the later two games, we don't know what she's got in her supply kit, and it's possible she did something that's really something you shouldn't do, but not because of it's effects on yourself - she might be taking antibiotics regularly and preventativly whether infected or not. It contributes greatly to antibiotic-resistant bacteria and a practice of that on the part of some is part of how we wound up with them in the first. Kind of selfish from a medical standpoint, but considering her constant injuries and the threat Trinity poses, perhaps justified. That, and preventative antibiotic treatment for one wound wouldn't end before the next treatment from the next wound would start, and probably the one after that.

With the rebar impalement, people who actually know what's inside the body there please speak up, since I'm probably in need of correcting by those who know better.

Last edited by CSEverett; 01-01-23 at 23:39.
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Old 04-01-23, 20:04   #2
jeffrey van oort
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The plausibility is 100%. It is factual fiction made into a playable adventure as a videogame.

Don't compare fiction with reality. The effort is too great.
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