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by ghaff 3450 days ago
That's one of the aspects of Westworld that I think you have to just more or less accept and move on. The nightly reset is implausible at all sorts of levels: economically, scale and effort (even to buildings burning down), and just logistically (does the park just shut down for a few hours every night). And we're shown that, as you say, this all seems to be a very manual process for the most part.

Something else you pretty much just have to accept is that through all sorts of mayhem, the humans stay safe (well, until the end at least). There's some rather inconsistent hand waves around guns and bullets but one has to believe there are still ample opportunities for serious injury in some of the scenes we see.

4 comments

> the humans stay safe

[SPOILERS]Dolores kills a human outright by aiming at their head mid-season. Then it isn't mentioned again.[/SPOILERS]

I always assumed something in the suit lining made the guns faux-fire, and the suit responded by exploding a pocket of air or something. But then you can see The Guy In The Black Suit (I've forgotten his name) load his revolver by manually inserting bullets, so I have no idea how that'd work. It's probably one of the only things that bothered me about the series.

It's not a human, it's a host that Dolores kills. The significance is that she doesn't have "weapon rights," and so is programmed to be unable to shoot a gun.
According to Jonathan Nolan it's the bullets: https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/11-rules-of-wes...
Which is a reasonable handwave until you start asking about the physical damage that the bullets do to [EDIT] hosts and ignore the mayhem involving explosives, fires, etc.

It doesn't especially bother me though. We know that TV and movies generally have a convention that trauma that would put someone in the ICU in the real world is brushed off as a flesh wound. And I'll accept technobabble about the bullets. I'm also happy to accept that maybe Westworld takes place in a culture where theme park risks on par with base jumping are considered fine and proper.

In the movie, and I'd assume it's sourced from the book, the guns have temperature sensors and won't shoot at something that is warm blooded. But... that probably doesn't hold up with the "they're basically humans" anatomy of the hosts.
Actually, the economics of Westworld aren't quite as implausible as they might sound:

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/27/what-it-would-actually-cost-t...

It's fun to think about how it is possible :)

Edit: popular holiday destinations like Mexico are reasonably dangerous, maybe Westworld is on the other side of the border ;)

The supplementary materials released on-line include, AFAIR, Westworld's Terms of Service - which do touch on possibility of injuries and death during the visit in the park.
"The nightly reset is implausible at all sorts of levels"

Especially since a lot of hosts "work" at night. :)

Yep and they're presumably with guests. And it's not like all the guests head off to the Westworld Hilton after dinner every evening so that the park can do its daily cleanup.
I think it's more likely that they would cycle them out over time to reset.

Yes, the hosts are busy, but it's definitely possible they could be recalled to a location for pickup (or whatever) when they're free.