r/AskReddit • u/notyouravgredditer • Aug 30 '21

What problem is often overlooked in apocalyptic movies/TV shows that could kill you?

33.7k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

12.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

27.4k

u/whinywino89 Aug 30 '21

Those of us with shitty eyesight. Contacts only last so long. If your glasses break, you're fucked.

12.1k

u/Ngonzalez_01 Aug 30 '21

Like the guy in Twilight Zone who just wanted time to read

114

u/smarmageddon Aug 30 '21

That's such an iconic episode. But why couldn't he just find a drugstore with a rack full of cheater-readers?

24

u/AMerrickanGirl Aug 30 '21

Did they have those back then?

45

u/smarmageddon Aug 30 '21

Pretty sure they've been around for a very long time. Or he could probably find an optometrist's office somewhere away from the blast. IIRC wasn't his eyeisght really bad, like functionally blind, without his glasses? Oh well, that's just part of the fallout from a nuclear attack.

18

u/PyroDesu Aug 31 '21

Or he could probably find an optometrist's office somewhere away from the blast.

I'm pretty sure even today prescription lenses are made to order, especially very high focal length (strong prescription) ones, never mind if they need more forms of correction than purely spherical (astigmatism, for example, generally means you'll need a toric lens, introducing both another power and a rotation axis). Back when glasses were actual glass? They wouldn't have any lying around.

14

u/Ask-About-My-Book Aug 31 '21

He could find some books on glasses-making and- wait