Ladder

References

• Urban Exploration
• Rat King
• It
• Almost Plausible: Black Cat
• Almost Plausible: Zipper
• Transporting water to the tops of trees
• Gaslight
• Dexter
• Event Horizon
• Snakes and Ladders
• Arachnophobia
• Lake Placid
• Snakes on a Plane
• Open Water
• Fall
• My Dinner with Andre
• Star Wars
• 28 Days Later
• 28 Weeks Later
• 28 Years Later
• Deus ex Machina
• Hellraiser: Bloodline
• Jason X
• Adam Scott

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Shep]
But at night, because they’re this far down, they can see there are lights.

[Thomas]
Mm.

[Emily]
Mm. I thought you were gonna say “At night, the space spiders come.” They’re like, “Fuck this shit.”

[Shep]
Well, it really takes a turn.

[Intro music]

[Thomas]
Hey there, story fans. Welcome to Almost Plausible, the podcast where we take ordinary objects and turn them into movies. I’m Thomas J. Brown, and with me, as always, are Emily-

[Emily]
Hey guys!

[Thomas]
And F. Paul Shepard.

[Shep]
Happy to be here.

[Thomas]
On this episode, we’re going to create a movie plot where a Ladder plays a crucial role. We’ve each brought some story ideas, and we’ll start out by pitching those ideas to each other. We’ll take the one we like the most and work together to develop it into a full movie plot. I’ll get us started with my pitches: Three teens/young adults are doing some urban exploration in storm drains. On their way back out, the rusty old ladder they used to climb down breaks, grievously injuring one of them and stranding the group. They do their best not to panic while they try to find another way out, but it starts raining and now there’s a trickle of water at their feet that’s slowly getting deeper.

[Shep]
Head downstream, head towards civilization.

[Emily]
Yeah, but you do run into the potential of it being barred up.

[Thomas]
Right, or the tunnel getting smaller, or a Rat King guarding the way through, whatever it is, yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah. And then there’s the clown with the balloon.

[Thomas]
Right, right, right. It’s territorial, so- I have another pitch here: Two neighbors in the same apartment building both sneak up to the roof when they think no one else is around. She goes up late at night to stargaze and unwind. He goes up early in the mornings to drink coffee, watch the sunrise, and escape his noisy roommate. Neither one knows about the other until the day their routines collide. As he’s climbing up with his coffee mug, she’s climbing down in a skirt. They meet in the middle, kicking off this rom-com.

[Emily]
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Why she only got a skirt? She’s got more to her life and personality than a skirt.

[Thomas]
I just like the idea of him not realizing and suddenly his head is-

[Emily]
Enveloped with fabric.

[Thomas]
Is like between her legs and he’s looking up like “What?” And he’s like, “Whoa!”

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
And she’s like, “Oh, you’re trying to look up my skirt?” And he’s like, “No!” So he gets in trouble on accident.

[Emily]
Okay, that’s good justification. I approve.

[Shep]
How would you not realize someone else is climbing on the ladder?

[Emily]
He’s on his phone holding a mug.

[Thomas]
Right. He’s listening to podcasts.

[Shep]
He’s climbing the ladder with a mug in one hand and his phone in the other. This really paints a picture.

[Thomas]
This feels like the kind of movie AI could make. It just ignores physics.

[Shep]
I mean, you would feel the vibrations in the ladder.

[Emily]
Whoa, okay, he’s almost up to the top. Like, he’s like two or three rungs up from the top, and she’s just coming over the edge, so it’s like-

[Shep]
Okay, now that works because he’s almost at the top and she doesn’t realize anyone’s coming up, so she climbs over and he feels the vibration. So he looks up and he’s right there.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Right. Yeah.

[Shep]
Why she wore a skirt to the roof? I don’t know.

[Emily]
She had a hard night and a bad day.

[Thomas]
Right, and then she fell asleep on the roof, stargazing. All right, those are my pitches. Emily, what do you have for us?

[Emily]
All right; I’ve got a woman comes home from work one night to find the ladder to her attic is down.

[Shep]
Oh, geez.

[Emily]
She knows for a fact she has not been in the attic, like ever since buying the home. The only person she’s even aware has been in it was the electrician that did some rewiring before she moved in. She enlists the help of her boyfriend to investigate the situation, but when he disappears later that night, she is left all alone with whoever or whatever is using the attic ladder.

[Shep]
Now the boyfriend goes home, or he just disappears from the house. Like a black cat that visited you on Halloween.

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah, he just disappears from the house.

[Thomas]
The attic swallowed him. Emily, I don’t like this pitch. It’s too scary.

[Emily]
Oh, too scary? I mean.

[Thomas]
It’s creeping me the hell out and we haven’t even talked about it, so…

[Emily]
You know, I’m good at those.

[Thomas]
You are.

[Emily]
Remember the good part of Zipper?

[Thomas]
Yes, unfortunately.

[Emily]
Too often, late at night while I’m sleeping alone. Yes. All right, Shep, what do you have for us?

[Shep]
Okay. Stranded in a dying city at the top of humanity’s greatest achievement, which is a space elevator, a group of survivors, most of whom have never set foot on Earth, must abandon their home and undertake a vertico inducing- vertico? Vertico??

[Thomas]
That’s the name of the company that owns the space elevator.

[Shep]
That’s great. Must abandon their home and undertake a vertigo inducing months long climb down a sheer maintenance ladder to an earth that has gone mysteriously silent.

[Thomas]
I want them to put a fireman’s pole down the middle of the thing.

[Shep]
Ha ha ha.

[Thomas]
They’re just like for like a whole day, they’re just like going down the pole, like (bored noises)-

[Shep]
The friction starts a fire.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Yeah, it seems like you would want like a fireman’s pole that goes down like several floors and then stops, and then you go around to the other side and go down several floors and, you know.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Make it a lot faster than having to walk down a- or climb down a ladder for months.

[Shep]
What is the capillary limit? It’s 100 meters or something?

[Thomas]
Oh, I don’t, I forget.

[Shep]
I mean, there’s a reason trees can’t grow any taller than that, and that’s the limit that capillary action can pull water up.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So I imagine there’s like tubes transferring water and they have stations every 100 meters or something. So that’s how long the fireman’s poles are.

[Thomas]
There you go.

[Shep]
That would be a trip. Imagine a 100-meter fireman’s pole.

[Thomas]
That’s wild.

[Shep]
You couldn’t get insurance for that ride, but it would be bananas.

[Thomas]
That’s why it’s an emergency thing.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
It’s like, look, everything else has gone completely wrong.

[Shep]
But if you need to make a fast exit from the building.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So that’s it for me.

[Thomas]
I like that one a lot. It’s very interesting.

[Emily]
It is interesting and also frightening to me because the vertigo at the heights is… I don’t like that. I don’t like watching movies where things are high.

[Shep]
I imagine there are sections where they’re having to climb down the ladder on the outside of the-

[Emily]
Well, that was going to be my next question: Is this maintenance ladder inside or outside of the elevator shaft? But having one on each side and having to, because there’s damage on the one inside and having to climb outside.

[Shep]
Yes, yes.

[Thomas]
Oh right. Which of these pitches is calling to us?

[Emily]
Obviously the one with the ghost in the attic.

[Shep]
I am terrified by that one.

[Emily]
We could make it less terrifying, and he could be gaslighting her and then gonna murder her. Is that less terrifying or more terrifying?

[Thomas]
That’s a very good callback to the film Gaslight, since like a whole bunch of it takes place in the attic.

[Shep]
Of course, we all know that’s not a real movie.

[Emily]
Yeah. No, it never happened.

[Thomas]
Right, yeah.

[Shep]
And you imagined it.

[Thomas]
Emily, what do you imagine is in the attic?

[Emily]
So literally, I couldn’t decide between there being some sort of evil entity. It’s either gonna be full-on evil supernatural entity or the boyfriend is fucking with the girlfriend and he’s gonna murder her ’cause he’s crazy.

[Thomas]
She’s dating a serial killer, and-

[Emily]
Yeah, something like that.

[Thomas]
It’s slowly revealed that she’s kind of starting to figure it out, and so he’s got to do away with her.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Oh, he’s murdering other people.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
Okay, okay.

[Thomas]
He’s trying to also have like a normal life.

[Emily]
You know, season what, two or three of Dexter?

[Shep]
The first four seasons when he was married.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Spoilers for anyone who hasn’t watched Dexter.

[Thomas]
We could combine both of your pitches and instead of climbing down from the space station, they’re climbing up to the… That’s not a space station, whatever it is, but it’s haunted. And so they’ve got to climb up to the haunted space station.

[Emily]
Ooh, make an Event Horizon-type thing?

[Shep]
Oh, geez.

[Emily]
That movie is scary.

[Shep]
So are any of these non-horror movies? I guess, the rom-com.

[Emily]
There’s the rom-com.

[Thomas]
There’s yeah, the rom-com. Yours isn’t necessarily a horror movie, Shep.

[Emily]
Yeah, yours is an action adventure.

[Shep]
It has suspense. I mean, it’s literally suspended.

[Thomas]
Well.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I feel like the tone of my Urban Exploration one and Shep’s one are similar.

[Emily]
Yeah, it’s the panic situation of: there’s clearly an imminent threat of danger.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
I am actually fine with any of them, so I am no help.

[Thomas]
Well, I would say let’s get rid of my Storm Drain one. That one is the one I find the least interesting of the four.

[Emily]
Okay, that is the more, that’s… We’re just gonna go to It. It’s just gonna end up being It. So- Good call. Okay, so now we’re down to three.

[Thomas]
So it’s rom-com, horror, or like-

[Emily]
Suspense.

[Thomas]
Action, thriller, suspense, yeah. Mmm.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So the problem I have with the attic ladder one is the ladder is only important for like the inciting incident.

[Emily]
Yeah, good point.

[Shep]
So, and it’s the, our episode is Ladders.

[Thomas]
Well, and I guess that’s true of the rom-com as well. I mean, I suppose in both of those cases, it’s like we wouldn’t be exploring this except for the fact that the ladder was involved at some point.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Ah, okay, hold on. For the horror story, maybe there’s some sort of other thing, and then the person in the attic is using another ladder. There’s a second ladder that we don’t know about.

[Emily]
There could be ladders upon ladders upon ladders.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Maybe one of the walls is a lot thicker, like a person can go down in there, and so they climb down another interior ladder.

[Emily]
But there’ll be a chute or two, as well.

[Thomas]
And snakes for some reason?

[Emily]
Yeah, right.

[Shep]
Yes, snakes in the walls. It could have been a giant snake; it was an anaconda.

[Thomas]
There we go.

[Emily]
He’s living in the walls.

[Shep]
That knocked that ladder down the first time.

[Thomas]
Yep.

[Emily]
Ate the boyfriend.

[Shep]
Ate the boyfriend. Oh, wow.

[Thomas]
I’m coming around on this now. Now that I know it’s a giant anaconda, this is basically like a modern version of Arachnophobia.

[Emily]
Yeah, but with an anaconda.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
It’s Lake Placid or Arachnophobia.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
But, like, you expect to see an anaconda in the jungle.

[Thomas]
Exactly, yeah.

[Shep]
That’s a rational fear, but not inside your house.

[Emily]
Right. In Nebraska or Ohio or Oklahoma.

[Shep]
Yep. I do want to do a snake episode based on the pitch session from this.

[Emily]
Okay, we’ll save it. Bonus episode.

[Shep]
Let’s just do a straight horror episode based on snakes. Not on a plane. That’s it. That’s the only rule.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah, that’s the only rule.

[Thomas]
No, it is Snakes on a Plane, but it’s P-L-A-I-N, because this takes place in Nebraska.

[Shep]
Ha ha ha ha ha.

[Thomas]
That’s this movie, Emily. It’s a house in Nebraska, and it’s “Snakes on a Plain”.

[Emily]
Yep. Yep. I’m sold.

[Thomas]
How can we make this into a horror comedy?

[Emily]
Easily. All right, so I think we’re eliminating mine because we’re gonna save that for another time.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Emily]
That leaves rom-com-

[Shep]
Or-

[Thomas]
Or space elevator.

[Shep]
Space elevator. I’m okay with either of these.

[Thomas]
Yeah, me too.

[Emily]
Okay, so here’s the thing about space elevator. How much story are we going to be able to get out of this? Because I have not seen any of the movies that are like Open Water, where there’s literally nothing else but the premise, or the one where they’re stuck on the radio tower or-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
See, all of those, I think, have the same problem, which is: there’s nothing else there. It might as well be My Dinner with Andre.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Where they’re just talking in a restaurant. My idea for this one is at first they don’t even realize there’s a problem. Ships stop coming, they lose contact with Earth, and then like the water stops flowing. I was like, “Oh, if we stay here, we’ll all die.” So reluctantly they’re having to climb down. But… So, at the top at the space elevator, there’s a big platform and that’s where this town has built up. But in the elevator itself, there’s not really anything except for every hundred meters, there’s a little area for like the water transfer to switch between things.

[Thomas]
Right, like the mechanical room.

[Emily]
Yeah, okay.

[Shep]
Yeah. So they have to go down and they can’t all go in one. I don’t know how many people this is, how many people left in this tiny village at the top of the space elevator.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
But, so like they’re staggering it out and how do they keep in contact with each other? And then they get to one where like something has hit the side of the space elevator. So it’s damaged. So it’s just more things that they’re running into as they’re traveling down. It’s a long, long way down.

[Emily]
There’s got to be like a weird hermit or something in there too, right?

[Shep]
What is he living off of?

[Emily]
I don’t know.

[Shep]
So he could harvest the water. So if he had like a little hydroponic station partway up.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Oh, so he came up from Earth. He was making the journey up.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So like Earth is falling apart.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah, he’s-

[Shep]
Maybe there’s a pandemic or there was an asteroid or something. Nuclear war. And he’s, he’s making his way up because he’s like, “Oh, there’s a city at the top of the space elevator. If I can get to there, I can live.”

[Thomas]
But after like a solid week of climbing, he was like, “You, know what? This sucks.”

[Emily]
Could you imagine climbing up the whole time? It’s so much worse.

[Shep]
Climbing down is also hard.

[Emily]
Yeah, but at least you could, in theory, do the whole fireman slide on the side of the ladder.

[Thomas]
Oh, that would- you could probably start that way. If you had like a spacesuit thing.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
You could start on the outside and hold on to something and drop down.

[Emily]
Just kind of (shooooo).

[Thomas]
Because it’d be low, no/low gravity? I don’t know how would it work on the platform at that height. I have no idea what the science is like.

[Shep]
I imagine low or no gravity.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
It’s also going around the earth.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So it’s like freefall.

[Thomas]
Right. But it wouldn’t be like a full-on like skydiving type freefall. Not, it wouldn’t be at full speed, would it? Not at first.

[Emily]
In my brain, I, understand the actual structure of the elevator, but I’m just gonna ask this question anyway: Is the elevator fixed to a spot on Earth, or is it like stopped at a certain point within the atmosphere where it then has another platform where people would come and go? Like it has, people have to fly up to put things in the elevator to go up, or is it like in Dubai there’s an elevator and you push the button?

[Shep]
I don’t know.

[Emily]
So that while it’s rotating, is it a fixed rotation or is it like a satellite rotation?

[Shep]
I imagine it’s a fixed rotation.

[Emily]
Okay, so it’s fixed into the Earth somewhere.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I mean, that’s kind of like the goal usually with the space elevator is that you don’t have to send anything up. You know, you just put it on the elevator and push go and it goes.

[Emily]
Now that this is on my brain, like how- It’s bigger than an average elevator, right?

[Thomas]
Oh yeah, for sure.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
I mean, it’s a movie, so we can make it as big as we want.

[Emily]
Well, but I’m like, in my brain, I’m thinking, are these space elevators, like, you know, the ones in office buildings? Are they just these tall, skinny tubes that would just really collapse at any moment in wind or something? Or are they like these really honking structures?

[Shep]
I don’t want to point out that everything is listening to us all the time, but I opened up Google and I typed in, “Would there be gravity” and it auto-completed “at the top of a space elevator”. Yes, there is gravity at the top of a space elevator. It’s much weaker than on the surface.

[Thomas]
Okay. So that’s kind of what I was thinking is like, they can maybe start by doing like a slide down.

[Emily]
Yeah, ’cause it wouldn’t be an insane velocity.

[Thomas]
Right, but once that like the gravity starts picking up to a certain point, like maybe they know, because it would be marked on the interior or something like that. Like, oh, this is how many feet above, probably actually be meters, however many meters above the earth you are. And so somebody knows like, “Oh, once we get to this amount, we can’t keep sliding. Like, it’ll be too dangerous. We’ll be fighting gravity or whatever.” So they could get past a big section of it initially that way.

[Shep]
What are the characters like? How old are they? How physically fit are they?

[Emily]
Okay, so I was just thinking about at least one of the characters would be like late 30s, early 40s fireman build type guy. You know, he’s like one of the main construction-esque workers on the platform.

[Thomas]
Right, like a worker type role.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Hmm.

[Emily]
So he’s got like that blue collar strength, you know, reasonably strong without being like, body builder.

[Shep]
There’s a problem.

[Emily]
This movie exists.

[Shep]
No, no. Where is the platform? Is that at the very end of the space elevator? Because apparently at the end, the counterweight area, it is one G of effective gravity going out.

[Thomas]
The other way.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Oh.

[Shep]
So they would have to climb up, up the ladder towards Earth.

[Thomas]
Well, I mean, they could talk about that too. They could say, “Look, we’ve got to climb up the ladder toward earth, but at some point we’ll become basically weightless, and then we can carefully start going down the other side. Like, it’ll get easier as we go to a point.”

[Emily]
So yeah, they’ll be climbing up and then all of a sudden the blood will be rushing to their head.

[Thomas]
And actually, that would be a really nice moment of light-heartedness and levity in the film when like, “Oh, they’ve been facing some difficulty because they’ve been climbing this ladder for a week,” or I don’t know, however long it would be. And then they get to that point and it’s like, “Oh yeah, we can kind of goof off a little bit” and have this fun moment.

[Emily]
How long would it take to go up or down a space elevator shaft? Like how many meters are we talking?

[Thomas]
That would be good to figure out.

[Emily]
I don’t have a concept of distance. I’m not, I wish I was joking, but you can tell me that it’s been three miles and it’s only been one mile and I’ll be like, “Yeah, sure it was three miles. It was hard.” Or vice versa.

[Shep]
I really should have done research before I brought this pitch.

[Thomas]
Does this one require too much homework?

[Emily]
This is Hollywood. Research is dumb. We can just do what we want. If we just say that’s the way it is, then that’s the way it is.

[Shep]
Okay, so a geostationary orbit is about 36,000 kilometers up.

[Thomas]
Oh, my god. That’s so far.

[Shep]
So, the counterweight would be 100,000 kilometers. So that’s not where the platform is. The platform’s at the geostationary spot.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
I assume. So, if a bullet train were flying up the space elevator at 300 kilometers per hour, it would take five or six days.

[Thomas]
My god.

[Shep]
So that’s why I said months in the pitch. Months and months of climbing.

[Emily]
That makes sense.

[Shep]
And that could be an issue that they have to face, which is: they can only carry so much food. So at some point they have to stop and like harvest the water and grow food for the next leg of the journey. Or we could just, you know, hand wave it. So they bring up water in the capillary tubes and then there’s like a food paste tube. So they’re just harvesting the food paste as they go down. Then you don’t got to worry about what are they eating. You really got to think about where are they pooping? There aren’t toilets in the in the engineering sections.

[Emily]
Well, sometimes you just go where you gotta go. Like how many other people are gonna be coming through there? Could they wait to poop at every maintenance door or collect it and carry it?

[Shep]
I mean, I would just poop in the maintenance areas.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
What do you wipe with? It gets grosser the more I think about it.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
See, this is why these things don’t come up in movies. I’m just saying.

[Shep]
That’s why you never see a bathroom in Star Wars.

[Thomas]
So I asked ChatGPT about how long it would take to climb down this ladder. And it’s saying anywhere from seven to twelve years.

[Shep]
Oh, geez, it’s a whole different group of people when they get to the bottom.

[Emily]
Not if you start with an 18-year-old.

[Thomas]
There’d be 25 at least.

[Emily]
That’s not a whole different group of people.

[Shep]
Well, like the old people died off, and then, you know, a couple of them fell in love and had, so he was climbing up and she was climbing down. They fell in love. And then, you know, she’s pregnant. So how do you climb down? You know, she’s got all this extra stress on her. And then they get to the very bottom right after she gives birth, you know, a couple days earlier. And it’s just the two of them on a green earth and no humans are left. And it’s Adam and Eve.

[Thomas]
I have a proposal to help with this preposterous timeline, which is there’s a basically an escape hatch built-in that will return you to Earth. It’s some sort of a descender, and it’s not a comfortable ride. It’s not necessarily a fast ride, but it’ll get you down there. And so they can ride the descender a long way, but then they get to, you know, there was an asteroid impact or something.

[Emily]
Oh, then they get to where the damage is and they have to start climbing on the outside.

[Thomas]
Right. And so, right. And so they can’t use the descender anymore. And then, yeah, they have to get outside for a section of it, a big section of it, which is crazy dangerous. And then they come back inside and now they have to climb down manually. But they’ve already gone half or two thirds of the way or something like that. That makes it a…..

[Shep]
They’re 90% of the way.

[Thomas]
Right, it’s like a much shorter distance left. So it’s not years, it truly is like a month’s worth of climbing at the most.

[Shep]
Okay. That fixes pretty much everything.

[Emily]
So the descender should have been like week, week and a half travel down because you said it might be slower.

[Thomas]
Maybe not even that long. Maybe it is quick. I don’t know, but-

[Emily]
Couple days?

[Thomas]
Maybe it’s not inside the shaft either. Maybe the descender is, because it’s an emergency thing, there’s- It’s an exterior track that it’s on-

[Emily]
I can see that.

[Thomas]
Because it’s designed to be an “in case of emergency” thing.

[Shep]
Right. There are four of them.

[Thomas]
Ah, yeah.

[Shep]
One in each corner. So it’s four little groups, and they all go down, and one of them gets stuck way earlier. It’s like, “Well, what can we do? There’s nothing we can do. We’re not climbing back up.”

[Thomas]
“This is where we live now.”

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Does one of them go flying off the…

[Shep]
Oh, yes, yeah, yeah.

[Emily]
100%.

[Shep]
Where the damage is.

[Thomas]
Yep.

[Shep]
One of them goes flying off.

[Thomas]
Because the asteroid didn’t strike right in the center, it like nicked the edge. And that’s where the… It was like right through that track. So that goes flying off of its track and just crashes to the Earth below, killing those people. And that’s why the space elevator cannot go up. It hasn’t completely destroyed the structural integrity of the tube, but-

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
The space elevator cannot run as a result of that. And maybe it cut off some of the water, food, whatever.

[Emily]
Oh, so they think once they discover that they’ve discovered, “Oh, that’s the problem. We’ll get down there. They’ll have a solution. They’re probably working on it and we’ll just wait it out and return home. Because it can’t be that long.”

[Thomas]
Right. And maybe they even get to that point and they’re like, “It’s so weird that no one’s here working on this. It has to have been like this for a month” or something like that. Like surely by now they would have started fixing it.

[Shep]
Right, I imagine that it had been a period of time, like they wouldn’t immediately get in the descenders and go down.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Just because nobody is coming up the elevator. You know, up that high, they have solar panels, they have their own electricity, they’re recycling their water.

[Emily]
And they have seeds and stuff, so they have some food.

[Shep]
No, no, they grow their own food up there.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Hmm.

[Shep]
They live there, they live there. And so there’s a bunch of them that don’t wanna leave. Like, “Why would we leave? We live up here.” But it’s like, “This is not maintainable forever. We’re not getting any more resources from Earth anymore. Something has gone wrong. We cannot contact anyone on the ground. So-“

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
That’s when some of them are like, “We have to,” you know.

[Thomas]
Well, you would have scientists, presumably, astronauts, whatever, living on that platform who’s like, “Hey, my rotation should have ended three months ago.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
“I would like to go home now, please.”

[Thomas]
“Yeah, I want to see my family.”

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
“I want to pet my cat.”

[Shep]
You don’t take your cat up to the base elevator station?

[Thomas]
It’s gotta stay in quarantine for so long, it’s not worth it.

[Emily]
Have you met cats?

[Shep]
They would love it. They would love the low gravity.

[Emily]
Yeah, they would love it.

[Shep]
They could jump so far.

[Thomas]
That’s fur in everything.

[Shep]
Yep. Oh, man. All the air recyclers are just clogged. So a bunch of people deciding to leave is actually good for the people that remain-

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
Because they’re not using up all the resources.

[Thomas]
So we have four descenders. How many people do we want to have survive? Because I imagine three of those four, at least two of the four are dying.

[Emily]
Why?

[Shep]
Two of the four descenders.

[Thomas]
Yeah, of the descenders, yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Because one of them gets stuck and the other one goes flying off the, literally goes off the rails.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
One of them makes it to Earth at least, but does the other one also?

[Emily]
My vote is for yes, they both make it. Just because they don’t want to have, I mean it’s our movie so it wouldn’t necessarily have to have it, but that very dramatic self-sacrificing, “You go, you can-“, you know, scene.

[Shep]
No, I hate those.

[Thomas]
Well, we could split them up and bring them back together later for dramatic effect if we wanted to as well.

[Shep]
There are four descenders. One of them stops partway and we don’t find out what happens to them and we don’t know what caused them to stop. Something went wrong with the track or something. And then one of them flies off the rails, one of them continues on, and one of them stops, and that’s the group that we’re following.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
They have to climb down the ladder, and when they get to the bottom, they’re reunited with the people in the other descender. And that’s where your ending is. Just having them show up at the end signifies it’s safe down here. We didn’t all die to mad cannibals right away.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
But statement of new problem/set up for sequel?

[Emily]
No.

[Shep]
Back to the top. That’s the sequel. It’s climbing back up.

[Thomas]
So how many people fit in each descender? How big do we want our group that we’re following to be?

[Shep]
Five.

[Thomas]
Okay?

[Shep]
Or three. An odd number.

[Thomas]
Do all of the people in our group survive?

[Shep]
No! No.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
It wouldn’t be suspenseful.

[Thomas]
Then we should probably start with five.

[Shep]
You start with five so you can have two at the end.

[Emily]
Why do you have to-?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
What?

[Emily]
That just seems like a lot to kill the majority of the people. I think one or two deaths is fine. And you know, I’m very pro killing people. So-

[Shep]
Well, one of them’s got to fall from the ladder.

[Emily]
Okay, if you can give me two other cool deaths to sell me on it.

[Shep]
One can kill another directly, and then it’s not-

[Thomas]
Space madness!

[Shep]
Space madness or starvation. They brought enough food and water for the trip in the descender, which was already going to be several days.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And they are STARVING. I don’t know why I said it like that. I also haven’t eaten today, so-

[Thomas]
So you are STARVING.

[Shep]
I am. It’s the reason that we’re recording it in different places.

[Thomas]
So you don’t eat us.

[Shep]
So you’re safe from me, for now.

[Thomas]
For now. You know where we live.

[Shep]
I do, I do.

[Emily]
Sadly. Oh, no. Now I have to- Do I have to worry about my attic stairs?

[Thomas]
Yeah. Alright, well let’s take a break here and when we come back, we’ll find out what happens with our descending heroes in our episode about a Ladder.

[Break]

[Thomas]
We are back from our break. When we left off, we had five people in an emergency descent pod headed down to Earth, which eventually stops short and our characters have to get out and climb the rest of the way down. Now, we did talk about how getting enough food and water is challenging, but not impossible.

[Shep]
Right. They can tap into the fancy electrocapillary tubes and tap into that water. It’s only a little bit of water each area.

[Thomas]
Mm. Yeah. Oh, and it’s got to be the kind of thing where, like, it’s not like they have a spigot. Like, they can cut into it, and then that whole pipe drains.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
And so, like, you better be ready. “Are we ready to catch it? Everyone’s got your helmet or whatever that you’re gonna,” you know.

[Emily]
“What are you holding your water in?”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Get out of your spacesuit and you hold the spacesuit up and it fills up a spacesuit’s worth of water.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Then you got to drink it all and then turn it inside out till it dries.

[Thomas]
“Oh, it tastes like Jeff.” That would be awful. All right, so how are they eating? What are they eating?

[Shep]
Now, you can live without eating anything for weeks and weeks.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So I am imagining that they aren’t eating. There’s oxygen in the inside and there’s water in the electrocapillary tubes.

[Emily]
Okay, you can survive without eating, but you’re getting less and less capable of things as your brain is starved of-

[Thomas]
Oh, is that why one of them falls off the ladder?

[Emily]
That could be.

[Thomas]
He’s too weak and passes out or something?

[Emily]
Yeah. And every body is going to react to that, get to that point at a different juncture in the journey.

[Shep]
Oh, so the one that’s starving and like, “I can’t go on, like, just leave me, I won’t make it.” And they’re like, “You can’t stay here. We have to stay as a group and you can make it. You can make it. It’s only 100 meters. 100 meters and then we’ll rest. 100 meters, then we’ll rest.” They talk him into it, and then he loses his grip and falls.

[Thomas]
Wow. That’s a major downer. Not just because, “Oh man, our compatriot died,” but it’s like, “Oh, we told him to do that.”

[Emily]
“We totally made him do that.”

[Thomas]
“That’s kind of on us.” So, yeah. Do they maybe, like, they get to one of the maintenance things and there’s a box of Twinkies or that kind of thing and a note, and it says, “Oh, hey Mitch, paying you back for last time” or whatever, just something like one maintenance guy has left a treat for the other maintenance guy who hasn’t come yet (and never will because there’s some problem with Earth).

[Shep]
So how often are people going to these maintenance areas? Infrequently, I imagine.

[Emily]
Well, I would think a piece of machinery like that is going to have to actually have regular maintenance, you know, with oiling, painting, checks.

[Thomas]
Sure, if there are pumps or something like that for the water, they’re gonna need some kind of maintenance on a regular basis.

[Emily]
It might be like once a month, or once every couple weeks, but it’s going to be a regular schedule.

[Thomas]
I imagine the ones closer to Earth need more maintenance because the gravity creates extra wear. The weight of the water is heavier to push up the tube lower down or, I don’t know.

[Shep]
I don’t know. So not a box of Twinkies. And in fact, maybe not, like, what could you have that would be a scarce resource that would cause conflict in our remaining four people? Like, it’s one protein bar. So it’s not like someone left it for Mitch.

[Thomas]
It’s that Mitch dropped it last time he was there and didn’t realize.

[Shep]
Well, it’s like maybe the person that maintains this section left it for themselves.

[Thomas]
Mm-mm-mm. Ah, so it’s a box of protein bars that he’s left because he grabs one every time he’s there. And there’s just one protein bar left in the box.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
So first they’re like, “Oh, boy! Oh, no.” I like the hermit idea. That guy is probably growing some kind of food.

[Emily]
Yeah. I feel like as humanity, there’s at least one person taking advantage of this mostly empty space to live outside of society.

[Shep]
Right. It’s free real estate.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Like your attic.

[Emily]
Yeah, exactly.

[Shep]
How far up is that? Is he the last thing that we encounter? Is that the last obstacle?

[Thomas]
I feel like it must be, right?

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah, that might make sense.

[Thomas]
Because there’s no way he’s also still getting water.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
So he has to have some method of collecting it.

[Emily]
If he’s closer to Earth, wouldn’t he have more access to condensation?

[Shep]
Ooh, good, good.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Outside that hatch, there’s like, he’s got, he’s put poles with something hanging on them or something, and they collect moisture and then he rings them out.

[Thomas]
Mmm, yeah.

[Shep]
So before they get there in the, like the previous couple of places, there’s no water. There’s no water in the tube. It’s already drained out.

[Emily]
Mm.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Because he drained it. And that could also cause issues for them because it’s like, is there not going to be any more water for the rest of the climb?

[Emily]
Yeah, and then they have to count their resources.

[Thomas]
So you need oxygen below, or excuse me, above 8000 meters. That’s like the death zone. And then below that 2500 to 3500 meters is where you start like needing to have oxygen. So our hermit needs to be living below that point.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
So it’s like they are getting quite close.

[Shep]
How many people are alive when they get to the Hermit?

[Thomas]
We started with five?

[Shep]
We started with five.

[Emily]
We lost the one guy.

[Shep]
Right. Does one of them go crazy and kill another because of lack of resources?

[Emily]
Well, I was hoping the hermit would kill one.

[Shep]
Well, the hermit could be a danger to them.

[Emily]
But they killed the hermit first.

[Shep]
Or they escape.

[Emily]
So you’re saying the hermit is not involved with death in any manner?

[Shep]
The hermit could try to kill them. For the meat.

[Emily]
Mm.

[Thomas]
Is he a false ally? He acts kind at first.

[Shep]
I mean, that would be what you would expect. How do you respond if you’ve been climbing down for weeks or however long it’s been and you run into a person, your first thought is got to be, “Oh, they must have resources. They’re living up here.”

[Thomas]
Mm.

[Emily]
Mm. Right, right.

[Shep]
Like, “We’ve, we’ve reached civilization.”

[Emily]
Ooh. Okay. So if he does the false ally thing, is he like feeding them lies about, “Oh yeah, everything on Earth is,” you know, swaying it one-way or another, how he thinks it would best manipulate them, whether or not he’s like, “Oh yeah, Earth’s fine. There’s plenty down there. I just live up here because of tax reasons.”

[Thomas]
Tax reason.

[Shep]
Would you tell them that? What do you want them to do? Keep going?

[Emily]
Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.

[Shep]
Or do you want them to stop here?

[Emily]
That’s what- Yeah. So he can eat them.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
So he’s got to tell a terrible tale of what’s going on on Earth.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
“It’s a wasteland down there.”

[Thomas]
It’s an irradiated wasteland or a toxic wasteland.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
It’s not even worth going all the way down.

[Shep]
Right. You can’t go all the way down. It’s a death zone.

[Thomas]
The interesting thing is once they get past him, they don’t know that that’s untrue.

[Shep]
Right. They don’t know that’s untrue until they get down and meet the people that were in the other descender.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
So does the other descender, I’m going to skip ahead a little bit here.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Emily]
Do they assume that they’ve died? Since the descender didn’t make it and they have no communication with them?

[Thomas]
Right, as far as they know, one of the descenders stopped mysteriously already. And they know this one stopped mysteriously to them. Just as we, the audience, never find out what happened to that first descender, they just assume the same thing has happened to our people’s descender.

[Emily]
Our people. Okay.

[Thomas]
They know one of them went flying off and two of them stopped, and I guess we’re the only ones who made it. But then our crew comes down the ladder.

[Emily]
The two.

[Thomas]
Right, the remaining crew.

[Emily]
And they’re asking them all kinds of questions about the other ones because, you know, the one who fell off is some guy’s brother.

[Thomas]
Oh, of course, right.

[Shep]
Why wouldn’t they be in a descender together?

[Emily]
They wouldn’t be.

[Thomas]
There wasn’t room for whatever reason. “It’s fine. We’ll all meet it down at the bottom.”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
No one anticipated trouble.

[Shep]
Or they did anticipate trouble.

[Emily]
So they split.

[Thomas]
Mmm.

[Shep]
“If we split up, then at least one of us will probably survive.”

[Thomas]
Yeah, “One of us can tell mom what happened.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
“But mom always said we should all die at once, so I don’t know.”

[Shep]
“Yeah, but mom was crazy that way.”

[Thomas]
“Mom had space madness, so-” We should probably work out these deaths. We know the hermit wants to kill them for meat. Are there four of them at this point? Here’s an interesting thought: So the first death in our five person group is the person that falls.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So perhaps our murderer person, while they’re sleeping, kills one of the other people. And maybe the murderer is like, “Well, I know this is a shitty thing, but like, we don’t have food and there’s meat here.” And everyone’s like, “Oh, god, we can’t believe we have to do this, but like, we’re fucking starving.” So they decide to eat the guy. And so then when they get to the hermit, our murderer is like, “Great, I don’t have to kill one of my compatriots. I’ll kill this guy.” Because the other thing I’m wondering is, what is the hermit’s plan? You’d have to kill them all at once. Like, you can’t just kill one person.

[Shep]
You poison their cocoa… Okay, these maintenance areas are small.

[Thomas]
Mm. Yes.

[Shep]
So they’re resting in them, but it becomes clear that they can only stay in them a short time before they run out of oxygen and have to move to the next one.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
So when there’s four, they can stay a little bit longer. So the murderer smothers one in their sleep, not just for meat, if we do that route.

[Thomas]
Uh-huh.

[Shep]
But also so they can rest longer, recover their strength longer, and have a greater chance of making it to the next. Because the climb is getting harder as they’re going down and gravity is getting stronger.

[Thomas]
Sure, yeah.

[Shep]
But once they reach the hermit, the oxygen is no longer an issue.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Because they’re far enough that there’s enough atmosphere outside they can get that.

[Thomas]
Yeah. They’re like snacking on Jeff Jerkey on the way down.

[Shep]
How do they prepare the meat?

[Emily]
They planned ahead!

[Shep]
How do they cook it? They carried salt all this way?

[Emily]
Yep.

[Shep]
How do you butcher? Are they carrying knives?

[Thomas]
They probably have some sort of like universal tool. Every spacesuit has one.

[Shep]
Right, they have a Swiss Army knife.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So the knife is one inch long, and that’s what they’re using to-

[Emily]
So- But I think Shep’s idea of having them just wanting to rest longer or have a few more resources, and so he kills. He’s clearly starting with the space madness and paranoia, so he kills the one he thinks wants to kill him or that he has some imagined beef with and it’s not that they’re gonna eat him and they don’t eat him.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Emily]
They just kick his body over and he falls down the shaft.

[Thomas]
Or you can just leave him in the maintenance area.

[Emily]
Yeah, but if they make it to the bottom they can bury him.

[Shep]
I mean, he’s in the biggest mausoleum.

[Emily]
Okay. So, but the hermit is crazy. He was crazy before anyway, like he doesn’t have space madness. He’s just been crazy this whole time.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
And he wants to eat them because he hasn’t had meat in a while.

[Shep]
Oh, what happened on Earth? We didn’t really explain what really happened.

[Emily]
We haven’t gotten there yet.

[Shep]
So whatever it is, the hermit had to live through it, and maybe that has made him more crazy, more wary of others.

[Thomas]
I know we had talked about a cataclysmic asteroid strike or a nuclear war, but I feel like those are things that our people on the platform would have been aware of.

[Emily]
Yeah, they would have noticed that.

[Thomas]
Whereas if it was just like a pandemic, you can’t see a pandemic from space, so-

[Shep]
A pandemic that turned everyone into zombies.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
So it was 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later, 28 Years Later, “28,000 Kilometers Later”. That’s this one.

[Emily]
Yep.

[Thomas]
There we go. I see.

[Shep]
So whatever it was on Earth has, like, finished.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
But, like, society is ruined.

[Thomas]
Yeah. So it’s like pre-industrial or like early, definitely not space age anymore.

[Shep]
I mean, it hasn’t been a thousand years.

[Emily]
Yeah, I was like, why wouldn’t it only have been not even a whole generation? It would have been like, what, a couple months before they noticed?

[Shep]
Right. So you couldn’t do like a virus because that would have, someone would have infected everyone up there.

[Thomas]
Mm.

[Shep]
Unless it was a pandemic. And they’re like, “Okay, we’re, we’re obviously not going to send people up to this platform.”

[Thomas]
Yeah. I mean, that makes sense. I could see temporarily not sending people up.

[Shep]
Right. So they don’t get infected just in case.

[Thomas]
Right. And then it just keeps getting worse.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
90% of the Earth’s population is dead.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Society has functionally collapsed.

[Shep]
Most of the survivors that were immune to the virus starved because they lived in cities.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Right, the whole infrastructure for everything collapsed.

[Shep]
This one got real depressing. All right, you talked me out of it. How does the rom-com go?

[Emily]
So they get there. They kill the hermit, right?

[Shep]
Or the hermit tries to kill them.

[Emily]
Do they just leave him in there to terrorize?

[Thomas]
Uh, do they push him off of his own platform? Because he’s built into the outside a bit, so maybe he has like a little outdoor…

[Emily]
He’s got a little balcony.

[Thomas]
Right, he’s got a little cantilevered platform thing that he’s built, and it has a hut on it.

[Shep]
Oh, the descender, whatever caused it to stop, releases and it just shoots down and-

[Thomas]
So deus ex machina.

[Shep]
Scrapes the side. Yeah. There would have to be a way to like release it or something that they could trigger from this point, send a signal up.

[Emily]
So why did it stop? Wait, I forget.

[Thomas]
They stopped theirs, right?

[Shep]
Did they stop theirs intentionally? Because that’s a long climb to do with no resources.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Oh, they do stop it intentionally because the track is damaged.

[Emily]
Oh, that’s right.

[Shep]
The track is damaged and it starts to wobble and one of them pulls the emergency stop and they stop.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And then the other one of the other ones keeps going and shoots off, off the rails.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So they could have restarted it at any time, but it wouldn’t have helped because it was probably going to just fall off the rails.

[Emily]
Do what the other one did. Yeah.

[Shep]
Right. So they could trigger that and it falls. Now it’s no longer attached to the elevator, but just falls straight down. And hits the hermit’s hut. Then it’s not deus ex machina, it’s they intentionally did it.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Yeah.

[Emily]
So there’s three still?

[Shep]
Is there three or is the murderer fighting the hermit in his hut when they trigger it and it takes them both out?

[Emily]
That was my question. Have we killed the third person yet?

[Shep]
Oh no. I was like, “Oh, he’s the one that triggers it.” And I was like, oh no, that’s the self-sacrifice thing that we don’t want to do, because it’s so cliche. Although he could do it just to spite the hermit, like he’s going to lose the physical battle. The hermit turns out to be completely jacked under his scraps of cloth.

[Thomas]
Right, he’s constantly climbing ladders.

[Shep]
Yeah, he was climbing up. He was doing it the hard way. So yeah, he’s all muscles.

[Thomas]
He goes down and gets supplies and brings them back up. Like, this guy, yeah, he’s ripped.

[Shep]
Does he go down and get supplies and bring him back up?

[Thomas]
He’s got to build the platform somehow.

[Shep]
Oh, yes. That’s a very good point.

[Emily]
He had at one point gone down and got supplies until the shit hit the fan.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
And then he was like, “I think I’m good.”

[Thomas]
I think it’s after the shit hits the fan that he-

[Emily]
Oh, goes into the-

[Thomas]
Has been doing it, because otherwise he wouldn’t be able to build on the space elevator. Because people would come up, security would be like, “Um, no! You don’t live here, actually.”

[Emily]
True.

[Thomas]
But now that society’s collapsed, he can do whatever he wants. So yeah, I like that, a one-day climb, roughly.

[Shep]
Yeah. So he does something to the others. They’re inside the maintenance area. Maybe he has stabbed one and the other is trying to stop the bleeding.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
And he’s fighting the third one in the hut when the descender comes down and takes them out.

[Thomas]
Yeah. I wonder how long the descender would have been falling. Like, how far up did they stop? Like, from the time that you push the release button.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Is it a five-minute wait? Is it an hour-long wait? Like, you know, what is it? And then the descender comes out of nowhere and crashes into the platform. I mean, it’s a movie, so we can do whatever we want.

[Shep]
I mean, someone will have to do the math at some point.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So that our space elevator movie is not implausible.

[Thomas]
So they’re pretty wounded. Are they probably not able to climb on their own? Do they have to?

[Shep]
So they can’t climb currently.

[Thomas]
Ah, but luckily the hermit has built a supply harness for climbing the ladder with supplies.

[Shep]
Well, this is the area where he has his supplies. His food is stored here.

[Thomas]
Ah, yeah.

[Shep]
So they can stay here for a while, while that person is healing.

[Thomas]
He may even have built like a winch system inside the tube.

[Shep]
Inside the tube?

[Thomas]
Because like, why would you do a day-long climb carrying steel girders?

[Shep]
To build your core!

[Emily]
Yeah, to get ripped.

[Shep]
Yeah. For the challenge.

[Thomas]
Nothing else to do.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
So do they wait for the person to heal enough? Or does the injured person stay there and the other person goes down by themself?

[Shep]
They also have to discuss whether to keep going because they’ve just heard this horror story about what is going on, on earth.

[Emily]
Mmm.

[Thomas]
Yeah. True.

[Shep]
Whatever it is, which I guess we didn’t, what did we-?

[Thomas]
Who knows what, though? I mean, the hermit’s lying to them about whatever it was.

[Shep]
Right, but whatever it was, the other people in the other descender are down there and they’re fine at the end.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So whatever it was didn’t kill everyone. Or it killed everyone, but now it’s fine. So-

[Thomas]
Right. Virus can’t spread if there’s no one left to spread between.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
If the hermit has told them it’s toxic, it’s irradiated, it’s whatever, why would they bother to keep going?

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
That’s the debate they have. One is like, “Let’s just stay here. We have supplies, we have a system, we can figure it out for a while. We have time now.” And the other one’s like, “He was full of shit. He wanted to eat us. The man was clearly insane. That can’t be what happened.”

[Thomas]
Right, “We’re gonna take his word for it?”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Oh, maybe they decide to stay. Like, “Let’s just chill here for a bit.” But at night, because they’re this far down, they can see there are lights.

[Thomas]
Mm.

[Emily]
Mm. I thought you were gonna say “At night, the space spiders come.” They’re like, “Fuck this shit.”

[Shep]
Well, it really takes a turn at the end.

[Thomas]
This is where the big snakes show up.

[Shep]
That’s why it’s a tube.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
It’s so the one snake can go. And it’s a space anaconda.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah, so much bigger.

[Shep]
It fills the whole elevator shaft.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
So when they get down to the bottom, it’s all the eggshells.

[Thomas]
Right, they’re literally walking on eggshells when they get to the bottom. It’s all crunching underfoot, like, “Uh-oh.”

[Emily]
Just to be pedantic here though, snake eggs are actually more like leather.

[Thomas]
That’s true. It’s a good point. I like that idea of lights at night.

[Emily]
The lights at night makes sense.

[Thomas]
And actually, if the descender has just crashed down, the other team that made it all the way down would potentially go to inspect.

[Shep]
That was my thought before was that that was why they’re there at the bottom of the shaft when these people get down there, because it’s only, it’s within a day’s climb. But then I was like, well, if they’re injured, that’s why they’re not fighting the hermit. But then they have to recover and then it won’t be the same day. So it’s like, what do you do?

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
If they’re injured, you can’t have that. But if they’re not injured, why aren’t they fighting the hermit?

[Emily]
I think I got confused on your logic. Who’s injured?

[Shep]
What I’m saying is they can’t be injured because they want to just continue down.

[Emily]
Okay, so one of them can’t be injured.

[Shep]
Right. So they’re there recently after the descender came down and crashed. That’s why the other group is there inspecting the wreckage.

[Emily]
Well, if one of them is not injured, why would they want to stop?

[Shep]
Because they heard the story from the hermit. Maybe that’s the reason that they even considered it.

[Thomas]
Sure?

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
But it’s that night that they see that the lights are there. And so they climb down the next day.

[Emily]
That works for me.

[Thomas]
And the original crew has probably moved away from the space elevator. And then they saw that happen. So maybe they come back.

[Shep]
Right. They came back to inspect when there was a big crash.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Like, “Let’s go see if anyone survived or if there’s usable equipment.” Maybe there’s a settlement nearby because earlier I was like, well, they have their own electricity because the space elevator is in space. They have their own solar panels. And so maybe the elevator itself still has electricity in it. And so there is a settlement nearby that’s harvesting that electricity to rebuild civilization. All right. Is there anything we’re missing?

[Thomas]
When they get reunited, is there anything that we… I guess what’s the denouement? So they reunite with the crew that made it all the way down, and then it’s, okay, this is our new reality living in this post-apocalyptic world?

[Shep]
I mean, where is the hope?

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Where is the hope?

[Thomas]
Because don’t forget we left people up on the platform.

[Shep]
Yes. Now they can last a lot longer because there are fewer people up there, but there are people up there.

[Thomas]
And so the question is, is there a plan to reopen communications? Maybe-

[Emily]
Well, yeah, because there’re friends and family that are still up there. This is a small select group.

[Thomas]
Maybe they had some plan in place of like, “Oh, we’re gonna get down there. we’re gonna aim a radio dish up there and tune it to this frequency” and, whatever, there’s some way that they’re going to reestablish that communication.

[Shep]
Right, the communication line doesn’t work.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
But they have technology up there and electricity.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So they can rig a radio receiver, which is not hard.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah. And then we can imply somehow they fix the elevator.

[Thomas]
Right. We don’t need to see it. We just need to know there’s a plan to do it.

[Emily]
There’s a plan to fix the elevator.

[Thomas]
We don’t need to know whether or not it works.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
And rebuild civilization.

[Emily]
And rebuild civilization, which-

[Thomas]
Exactly.

[Shep]
From whatever the catastrophe was.

[Emily]
Right, right.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah. I think that works as an ending. Are we happy with that?

[Emily]
I’m satisfied.

[Shep]
Oh, there was someone- So I mentioned the last two people is a couple. It’s a man and a woman.

[Emily]
She’s pregnant and has a baby.

[Shep]
No, but like she has a relative, maybe her grandma is up on the station or her mom or someone that didn’t want to make the trip. But at the end they have already established radio communication and so she can talk to her mom again. And that’s your happy ending.

[Emily]
Hmm. There you go.

[Thomas]
That’s good, yeah. Well, we’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s episode about a Ladder. Did we rise above or are we still on the lowest rung? Let us know by leaving a comment on our website, reaching out on social media, or sending us an email. Links to all of those can be found at AlmostPlausible.com. You know, when I compare the number of downloads for each episode to the number of ratings our show has, it’s clear that most of you haven’t rated the show yet. You don’t even have to write a review. Giving us a rating, hopefully a five-star one, takes just a few seconds and helps us out a lot. You can leave that rating on whichever podcatcher you use, but if you leave a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and include a written review, we’ll read it on a future episode. Join Emily, Shep, and I as we reach for new heights on the next episode of Almost Plausible.

[Outro music]

[Thomas]
I love the inevitable space entry into the 28 Days Later franchise. Everyone’s like, “Now what do we do?”

[Emily]
“Put it in space.”

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
Looking at you, Hellraiser.

[Shep]
Oh, oh.

[Emily]
Jason.

[Shep]
Jason.

[Thomas]
Yeah, Jason, that’s a good point. At least the Hellraiser one had Adam Scott, so-

[Shep]
Did it?

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
What?

[Outro music]