THE MOVIE:

The Amazing Colossal Man

An Army man exposed to nuclear radiation grows extra big -- and quick!

What are the pros and cons of being "embiggened"?
 

Heart trouble and insanity aside, I can see several advantages to being embiggened.  First, (and because I have to work this into a conversation on a daily basis) and I cannot stress this enough, is that women dig tall guys.  Now, I can't suggest that any short guys reading this jump in the path of an oncoming stock footage nuclear missile, but still, the truth remains, they prefer 'em big.  In this case, history even gives many examples of tall guys who manage to score legions of women despite baldness such as Michael Jordan and Mister Clean.  Second, you can always be the hit of any Christmas party as you put the star at the top of the tree.  Hey, I can rip off "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and you can too!  Third, your height isn't the only thing which grows, if you know what I mean.  I think I'll let Alan elaborate on this topic as I'm sure he's chomping at the bit to do.

Alan: Actually, I was going to avoid that entirely, since all consequences resulting it from it would obviously be negative.  Sure, having a water-tower sized winkie dinkie doo might sound like a slutty woman's dream, but I think you've forgotten your Swift.  No, I'm not talking about eating babies to solve our monetary problems (what a very sound plan to enact -- we should do that right now! I mean -- what?  It was satire? I simply had no idea!).  I'm talking about Gulliver's unfortunate experience with being perched, umm, you know, on a gigantic woman's, umm... well, her nipple, okay?   It was her nipple.  And he didn't like it.  It was too damn big, senor, like a scaly finger print magnified to 10x.  So if you've got some notion of all the virgin maidens coming to worship Mr. Bilbo like some Easter Island idol, you'd better put that right out of your head right now.  Furthermore, I wish to avoid related and unpalatable subjects such as how a giant would find the correct sports cup size.

Now, party tricks aside (and I'm pretty sure all the party-goers are going to get turned off as soon as our giant sneezes), there seems to be little practical value to being embiggened. Your increased size and muscle mass lends itself only to two things -- manual labor and world's strongest man competitions.  Okay -- so even Magnus ver Magnusson can't beat you, but it only happens once a year and the thrill of victory is going to wear thin when you're bigger than the airplane you're pulling.  Manual labor becomes your only career choice.  Everyday, you move offshore oil platforms, set leaning towers straight, etc.  And the commute!  There's no transportation system big enough for you, so you'd have to walk everywhere!  Not to mention that you can't ever live in any civilized area that has sewage laws, if you get my ken, and I'm sure you do, since I'm sure "nature calling" is foremost in many peoples minds.
 
Does this sound like any kind of life to lead?

Rob:  No, Alan, it doesn't sound like such a great life.  I mean, the guy's public life sucks.  Everyone just wants to make him do menial work because he's huge, and his private life can't be any better, he can't even have one!  Where the hell is he suppossed to live?  It's not like the Incredible Shrinking Man where he could just shack up in some Malibu Stacy Dream House.  He's huge!  Where's he going to live?  The Astrodome?  Sooner or later, he's going to outgrow that, too.  Then what?  In the movie, he would've just kept growing forever if it hadn't been for that pesky heart condition which made him crazy and ended up with some Army guys shooting until he fell down the Hoover Dam and died (and yes, I'm aware of the sequel War of the Colossal Beast, I'm just ignoring it, thank you).  Once again ignoring the heart problem, the guy would've just kept sprouting until no Army-made diaper could hold him and whole cities could be stepped on faster than you could say "viva gorditas".  Then there's the whole "lack of atmosphere" think once he gets too big.  Sure, he could try lying down across a continent or something, but that's really just running away from the problem, don't you think.  Nope, being an Amazing Colossal Man would really suck.  I just can't see the upside.  Alan, perhaps you can find the silver lining in this dark cloud?

Alan: I'd love to help, but the prospects look dim.  Your observation concerning the lack of oxygen is right on the money -- but even if he did lie down, eventually he's going to grow so big that his head and feet are poking out the side of the atmosphere.  Even if we could rig some sort of artificial injection system through his Australia-sized heel, he'd still be subject to the ravages of interplanetary vacuum.  Lack of food.  Lack of air.  Lack of SPF-3 Billion to protect against direct sunlight. And don't get me started on the tides!  Our giant's feet are rotating at the same rate as the Earth.  His head has to spin many times faster to keep up.  He's not only dizzy, he's likely to be sheared in half.

Simple postulate he automatically stops growing when he gets 50 times normal size or we've got precious little to talk about.  At least in this case, our giant can survive, if not be happy.  Or can he?

Stay with me as I get to the heart of the matter (and my thoughts seem to scatter, but I think it's about -- forgiveness)  while breaking several laws of physics, chemistry and biology.  Although the exact method of the embiggening process is nebulous, we must assume that all parts of the body grow exact relative amounts (except the heart, which, as all scienticians know, is a single cell).  This occurs as the cells rapidly divide and multiply, not simply by expanding to many times their normal size (which results in slight technical problems like electrical impulses not making the long jump from synapse to synapse -- me lose brain? uh-oh!)  But the multiplying solution sounds okay, right?
 
Realize that in either solution, the distance between his brain and extremities has increased 10-50 times.  Nerve impulses take 10-50 times longer to reach the brain.  Twice that for the two-way trip.  A simple reflex action now takes 20-100 times longer to happen!  His powerful limbs would be reacting to inputs long after they occurred -- the best spin is he won't win any Nintendo tournaments.  Personally, I'd be more worried about his reaction time when I'm right now where his foot wanted to go 15 seconds ago.

So he might lumber. I definitely wouldn't party with him. But!  I think I've finally come to the first genuine pro in the whole deal. Unlike the debilitating brain condition caused by the "scaling" method, the "divide and multiply" method would result in normal brain cells being produced in abundance (one must assume this process works even on cells that do not usually divide -- except, of course, the single-celled heart)  Our Collosal Man now has the most densely packed collection of neuron material this side of Talos IV.   Barring any complications from "real science" which might say, "what? the brain doesn't work that way, that's stupid!", our giant's increased mental capacity just might allow him to find a way out of this predicament that we mere short men can't begin to fathom.
 
Rob:  Alan, you bring up some excellent points I woudn't of thought of.  Still, however, it's not much of a pro.  Sure, he might be a really smart giant freak with slow reactions, but he's still going to have the same problems he did before.  If anything, he'll just be more aware of how crappy his life is.  It's not like his name's Will Hunting and he can learn to love and be normal just by not being such a jerk anymore and getting intimate (in a non-sexual way, I think) with the guy from Flubber.  No, he's huge, smart, and still can't get it on.  If he grows to 50 times his size (assuming he's six foot) he'll end up 300 feet tall!  It's not like his ability to do math is going to make going to the bathroom easier.  Hell, because of the whole slowness of brain impulses thing, no matter how smart he is, at that size there'll always be someone who might not be smarter but can figure stuff out and act on it a lot quicker.  Besides, where's the chalkboard big enough for this guy? All right, so let's assume his cranial enlargement was accompanied by some kind of telepathic powers, giving him the ability to do things far beyond human ken.  Even then, what can he do?  He can't make women grow to his height with the power.  He can't make a pizza the size of Wyoming with his brain.  Sure, he can give himself the illusion that he's on a date with the 50-foot woman, but he'll know it's just that, and he'll never really be able to fool himself.  I mean, yeah, it would be a lot of fun mentally controlling the tiny humans to do stuff for you like build a giant toilet and fill that crater in Arizona with Miller Lite, but after a while, it's going to get old.  Now, this is still a lot better than just being big without mental powers because otherwise there's just a bunch of pesky little people around shooting at you, trying to inject you with giant hypodermic needles, getting stepped on, etc., but it's not exactly the high life.  I have to think sooner or later you're just going to end up taking off to the Andes to live in solitude among the Yeti or whatever giant manimal they've got living up there.  It would be a sad, lonely life.  Man, now I'm all depressed.  Alan, why don't you wrap this one up so I can get on with my life?

Alan: There, there, my Lilliputian friend.  Let's not be so desperate to help our huge brethren that we have to cry ourselves to sleep.   Mental powers to do parlor tricks? (and this time, only to amuse himself, not buxom women at a Hollywood wrap party) -- come on, we're just grasping at straws for the big guy.  At this size, there's just no hope.  He's going to be lonely (and dead).  There's only one chance.

Debiggening.

We SMALL-minded humans (oh, so delicious!) don't have the technology to do this.  Why, the original embiggening process was a fluke, a never to be repeated accident (oh, sequels... whatever).  The only way to reverse the process is to create an atomic IMPLOSION of equal magnitude.  Now, I don't pretend to know how this is possible.  But if our Collosal Man wants to live to do it one more time, he's going to have to think it up himself.  If he can survive a similar reverse explosion, say from one of the implosion stages of a star going supernova, perhaps he can once again shrink to normal size and be happy amongst us short people with no reasons to live once again!  We can have a big "Welcome, back Gigantus!" parade and our giant will carry on with a fairly normal life. Huzzah!

Unless he keeps shrinking forever.

Oh ... fuck.