Warning: The following story will contain SPOILERS for an event late in this week’s episode of “Lost.” If you haven’t seen it yet and don’t want to know, please turn back now….
As the story of the side flashes on “Lost” continues to heat up, one major moment this week featured the Desmond from that universe running over the Locke from that universe. The shot showed Locke and his wheelchair flying up in the air and over the car driven by Desmond.
But is the hit and run by Desmond scientifically accurate?
Popular Mechanics breaks down the event.
Locke takes the hit from the side, rolling up onto the hood and smashing his head into the windshield hard enough to crack the glass. He goes up and over the car, lands on his side on the pavement and skids a few feet on his side as Desmond speeds away. On the ground, Locke is shaking, and his eyes are open; he’s looking around. But how close is this scenario to the real aftermath of getting hit by a car?
If this happened in real life, Locke definitely could have survived—but it’s not likely that he would have been conscious immediately afterward. “He’d probably be knocked unconscious if he hit his head hard enough to crack the windshield,” says Dr. Justin Sattin, an Assistant Professor of Neurology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. “You probably wouldn’t have your eyes open and be looking around after an insult that severe. I mean, you never say never, but it’s surprising.”
Locke’s slight shaking is a little odd, too. Though seizures can occur after a traumatic brain injury, this doesn’t have any of the characteristics of seizures. “A true seizure is usually a bit more prolonged than that and more violent shaking and rhythmic,” Sattin says. “The limbs kind of convulsing, not shaking your hands up and down in the air sort of thing. And usually a true seizure is not seconds after injury, it is usually a little later. Though I guess you can get some non-specific shakiness after a while after any injury.”
Getting hit by a car, and knocking your head hard enough to crack a windshield, could cause any number of injuries. Sattin says neurologists would have to look for brain herniation, or swelling of the brain, as well as bleeding in different parts of the brain. In this case, it wasn’t just Locke’s head that got hit; he flew up over the car and landed on the blacktop, which Sattin says could lead to fractured ribs, broken arms and legs, internal bleeding or perforated viscera (abdominal organs).
The other thing to be worried about with this kind of injury, Sattin says, is the spine. In a hit like this, “you could easily fracture your cervical spine,” seven vertebra that begin at the base of the skull. “That’s a very dangerous condition,” Sattin says. “If you fracture the spine, the fragments can basically cut into the spinal cord, which can make people paralyzed.” Locke is already paralyzed from the waist down, but Sattin says if the fracture is complicated by an injury to the actual spinal cord, he could lose the function of his arms as well.
The man survived a fall from 8 stories… on his back… this is LOST… it kind of supercedes naturally occurring events. So… I care little about how it would REALLY happen, just how it affects the story.
I didn’t attribute the shaking to seizures, but rather to “Oh my gods it hurts!”-type shock.