As we've previously explained , Hollywood has some weird ideas about how easy it is to survive falls from great heights and, say, explosions that occur 10 feet away from the hero. But it's almost stranger the way movies and TV exaggerate the dangers of other things. For some reason, it's not a big deal to jump away from an erupting fireball, but we're supposed to believe that encounters with the following are certain death.

5 Scorpions

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According to Hollywood:

Scorpions are deadly creatures that can incapacitate a man in seconds. Which is to say, a villain once tried to use one to kill James Bond in Diamonds Are Forever. They're an instrument of torture for pirates, and should basically be approached with the same caution that one would use with a schizophrenic serial killer with radioactive lightsabers growing out of his body.

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What short of a man in gloves, could best this mighty beast?

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In Reality:

There are around over a thousand species of scorpions, of which 25 to 50 have venom that is dangerous to humans. OK, fine, but Bond assassins probably use one of the dangerous ones. Even then, the adult mortality rate for a sting is around one percent. So you'd really need a whole suitcase full of scorpions and for Bond to lay still for you for a bit while they get 100 stings in. And if he's being that cooperative, you could honestly just kill him with the suitcase.



How were we to know a movie in which James Bond hijacks a moon rover

is an unreliable source on entomology?

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Unless you're a child (for whom the nasty ones cause death in about 10 percent of cases), a scorpion sting is painful and might be incapacitating in a bad case, but it's not going to kill you.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but a scorpion's natural behavior when confronted with something bigger than itself is to hide and try to escape. So the chances of being attacked by one are laughably small. In fact, the odds of dying from a scorpion sting are one in 300 million. To put this in perspective: Your odds of dying by simply falling over in the shower are one in 65,000. In other words, if you find a scorpion in your shower tomorrow morning, the shower stall itself may still be the greater danger.