Cool Guides

Since everyone's having fun dunking on these, I might as well have a go and potentially look like a fool in the process. Note, I will be commenting on the accuracy of the chart and assessing whether the chart is correct, not the myth.

1. Partially-correct. As someone else said, it's very unlikely for you to restart a heart with a defib; they're meant to stabilize a fibrillating heart (when the heart is beating irregularly and too quickly, like a heart attack). However, if you can get a person's heart to start fibrillating by some other method, like CPR, then it can help stabilize them.

2. Correct. It does indeed take longer than a couple seconds to knock someone out with chloroform. That said, supposedly plenty of other medical anesthetics that supposedly can put you out really fast.

3. Misleading. Tracing calls is extremely fast, it's getting the proper authorization that takes time.

4. Iirc this is technically correct; forensic investigation doesn't actually tell you anything about what happened, only what is present now. The explanation is what you get from the evidence. Seems a bit like saying, "guns don't kill, it's the massive trauma resulting from your body trying to stop a tiny lump of lead that's flying at over 1k meters-per-second that kills you" but okay.

5. Technically correct, but wrong in practice. This is such a widespread myth that cops will sometimes repeat it. Additionally, the time period can be anywhere between 24~72hrs, depending on the person responding. So if someone tells you to fuck off and wait, call and try again.

6. Correct. >95% of the time the victim is too busy trying not to drown in order to yell or scream. You need air to scream, and if you're struggling to get air, then screaming isn't something you're doing.

7. Partially-correct. Aiming with two guns is possible, but significantly harder than shooting one. People try to do something hard like splitting their attention to aim at two targets, and then when they can't do it, they assume that it's impossible. No bitch, that's like an archer giving up because they didn't hit the target the first time. Don't let your dreams be memes, gitgud.

8. Partially-correct. There are some extremely quiet guns out there, and subsonic ammo helps quiet the gun further (bullets aren't breaking the sound barrier, also lower powder load = smaller explosion). However, it's unlikely you'll get a gun down to a "pew pew pew" like in the spy movies.

9. Almost completely wrong. Firstly, aim at center mass. Yes, it's thicker, but there's also a lot of air in there and the individual pieces of metal are probably thinner. It'll be easier to hit and less likely for the lock to deflect the bullet (hitting a flat-ish surface vs curved one). Secondly, use something other than a .22 pistol.

10. Mostly correct. If you have headsets then you probably could, especially if they cover your mouth, but otherwise basically correct.

11. You see that little lever? You're supposed to hold that down before you pull the pin. Dumbass.

12. Eh, kinda. Depends on the asteroid belt. Planetary belt? They can absolutely be that dense (though they're unlikely to be all that big). Stellar belt? Probably not, or at least ours isn't that dense. That said, it's a big universe out there and we haven't even come close to visiting our neighboring stellar system, so who knows.

Tbh, some of these myths are so widespread and have such a high risk of causing injury from ignorance (like 5 and 6) that it should be illegal to repeat them in a way that portrays them as factually correct in media. However, based on my current knowledge, that's my rundown on the trues/falses.