CandyBMM

*This post contains spoilers for the end of the Iron Lung movie, as well as frank discussion of severe injury + death, medical terms, and illustrations of broken bones*

As promised, here is the infodump about how I think Simon's arm loss went and how it was possible :3 The first half of this is anatomy basics and then I get into more Simon-specific examples

First tho, my credentials for doing something really involved like this: I have a degree in scientific and medical illustration and I've studied human anatomy, injuries, biology and physiology extensively. Also I'm autistic and this is my main special interest XD

Now to start: Here is our Simon for these visuals. Say hi to him, he doesn't know what's in store for him yet (I'm sorry he doesn't have a face, human faces are my weak point hhdbcj)

Simon in the movie loses his left arm above the elbow during the climactic fight with the Blood Eel/the ocean itself. It becomes stuck to the surface of a pipe by what I am referring to as bloodvines - these are an aspect of the ocean/the blood eel, and they encase Simon's left hand and attach it to the pipe to try and trap him. In complete desperation to get free, he braces himself with his feet and, in a visually stunning display, pulls his own arm off.

As a baseline we're working under the assumption that this is absolutely mentally possible for Simon to accomplish. Where it might not be possible for someone weaker, Simon is shown to be incredibly strong both physically and in willpower. He wants to live; he'll do whatever it takes. It it also, as we see, possible physically. He's able to get his arm off and get free.

This raises a few questions though. Take a look at some basic anatomy of the upper left arm on our Simon:

Muscle-wise, the shoulder and upper arm are pretty complex structures. A lot of connections and attachment points are involved in making the 360 degree motion we humans have in our shoulders possible, however luckily for Simon, most of those complex and tiny muscles are stored in the back. The three main muscles his limb loss would affect directly are the deltoid, biceps, and triceps (biceps and triceps count as one muscle each they just both have a few attachment points).

Bone-wise, this injury is technically simple. It's going to affect the humerus, the only bone of the upper arm between the elbow and the shoulder - in fact, it's part of forming both of those joints.

Knowing all this anatomy that forms the part of the body where Simon's injury happens, here are our reference photos:

These are stills from this moment in the movie. However, they're not great quality, so I also found this video posted to TikTok from the account of an SFX artist (ATXFX) who was part of the team that created this effect (video link: https://www.tiktok.com/@atxfx113/video/7629184974377323790?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc )

Makeup and SFX for Iron Lung were designed and carried out by Anna Fugate-Downs ^^

THESE ARE FAKE ARMS.

Here, we can see where each fake arm was cut in order to create the ripping effect later achieved. This is our trauma site. With this trauma site decided, we can make a few inferences about what was affected and what problems this brings up and would cause.

Now to address the problems this raises. First off: the humerus.

The humerus is a long bone, one of the strongest in the human body - it is comparable to the femur, which is the longest and strongest bone and makes up the upper part of our leg. The humerus has a LOT of muscle attachment points as well as being part of two different joints, as stated earlier, and here is the very crucial thing about severe limb injuries and loss; these traumas almost *always* happen at the joint. The meeting point between two bones is the weakest part, and usually if an arm is going to be ripped off it's going to be at the elbow, or at the shoulder if things have gone *really* wrong.

However as is clear from the reference photos, Simon's arm is ripped off about a third of the way up the humerus. Right on the main shaft. Where it is almost at its strongest.

Damn you Markiplier for making my job harder (/j), alright, here are my theories for how this happened:

One method for explaining this, and something that is definitely an option in fanfiction, is that there is a moment we as viewers miss in the movie where Simon's arm is hit with something hard enough to break it along that specific point on the bone. Personally, I intend on using this interpretation in a fanfic, mostly because I want him to be holding the piece of Ellie's tooth that he breaks off for... reasons. However, my other idea for a blunt object that could do this would be the fire extinguisher. This injury in the moment could be self-inflicted or accidental as a product of the ship being thrown around.

Another method: It was the bloodvines. These vines are shown to be extremely damaging - Simon's hand starts to mutate and deform almost as soon as the vines encase it and start to spread, and wherever they touch Simon's skin is left horribly marked and damaged. They're clearly hurting him with every second they touch him, and I believe that it would be possible that if he had begun to rip himself free and they were able to grasp his bone in their effort to contain him, the force of being gripped combined with the damaging, almost necrotizing nature of the vines would have snapped the humerus at that point and freed him.

A third method that seems slightly less feasible, but possible: Simon had a somewhat-recent bone break at that specific point on his arm. It would've likely had to have been a complete break, something that went all the way through the bone, and it's not hard to believe that it wouldn't have healed correctly given his residence in prison probably receiving less-than-ideal nutrition. A strong enough force or pressure would've snapped the bone along a pre-existing fault line a LOT easier than it would a healthy, whole bone

So, these are the main three theories I came up with on my own, but it still seemed like a long shot. So I consulted Reddit. And lo and behold, the wonderful Iron Lung fandom had already come up with the final piece of the puzzle.

Radiation damage.

Sustained radiation damage, alongside causing a huge amount of damage to the soft tissue cells in the human body, also mutates, weakens, and breaks down bone cells. I haven't yet done an Iron Lung watchthrough where I count how many times he uses the camera (last time I was busy counting concussion opportunities) but it's safe to say that Simon is exposed to a LOT of radiation over a fairly short period of time. Yes it's muted somewhat by the hull of the Iron Lung but like. We see him puking up and coughing blood, that's not normal. His mutations at the very end also speak to this problem, which may also be being accelerated by the bloodvines. If the spot on his humerus where his arm broke off happened to be at the right stage of radiation damage, it would make perfect sense why any of the above factors would've snapped it. It might've even been possible for the bone to snap on its own, without any outside force (pulling wouldn't do it though - Simon would have to jerk his arm to the side to get.the necessary force).

I have included a diagram of all the kinds of bone breaks Simon may have sustained along his humerus during this process, partially for visual clarity and partially so that my fellow writers and artists can feel confident in their descriptions :3 I encourage everyone to look into these specific kinds of breaks to best describe what actions cause them!

Alright, we're almost done. Final things I want to address is if you intend to have Simon survive at the end of his ordeal in the Iron Lung, in one way or another, and he has already lost the arm, there are a few things to keep in mind. One of those is the brachial artery.

This is a major artery that runs through the armpit and down the back of the arm. It supplies blood to the whole of the arm, and while it doesn't bleed *quite* as fast as other branches of arteries it will still cause severe blood loss in a matter of minutes. Solution! Tourniquet that man at once. The sooner he gets a tourniquet applied to what's left of his arm (placed high as close to the armpit as possible), the better off he'll be

There is also the risk of shock, which is compounded by blood loss and just total system overwhelm from pain and bodily harm. Shock can definitely be lethal and often is, and at the end of the movie Simon's lack of immediate pain response to having his arm ripped off could be seen as an early sign. If you want him to live, fixing that blood loss first is a necessity, then getting him to a place where he can be stable and hopefully pull through. He's a fairly strong person so his likelihood of dying of shock isn't as high as it could be, but the risk is never zero.

I did want to mention that it's always a good idea to read accounts from people who have lost limbs in the same place/same way as Simon has in order to represent the experience of living without a limb more accurately. Reddit's r/amputee is honestly probably a good place to start, and you can find an endless amount of accounts from real people living with this disability.

Rocky and Grace

link to the podcast, this section below is from timestamp 24.35

“andy weir provided a packet to the creature shop that was like a packet of eridian biology and stuff but there wasn’t much about eridian culture or eridian sociology and i made a bunch of choices going in because i just needed to have like a ‘who am i?’ right? 

[…] and i made a decision that rocky’s species, that eridians are really social animals that in fact are like a beehive or a pod of dolphins - it’s a unique and really integrated ecosystem of everybody doing their [specific] part. and the fact that rocky had to fly that ship for about 45 years - longer than grace has been alive, i wanna point that out - he’s been alone on that ship, having to run that by himself and- ryan and i would talk about that, one day we sat down and he was like “so what’s the movie from rocky’s perspective?” and i was like “oh it’s like ‘alien’, […] like he’s in a ‘contagion’ movie by himself and he has no idea what’s going on.”

he’s basically in castaway by himself which of course ryan is too but like, one reason why we never cut to the past of rocky is like, i think it was really horrifying! i don’t think rocky has slept in however many years and so a thing i was really struggling with is this idea of like “rocky must watch sleep” because how do you make that a need as opposed to like, a cute idea? and i just had to make the decision that […] he has a lot of unprocessed trauma around the things that he doesn’t understand and how much he is blaming himself because he’s the guy who fixes, he’s the guy who fixes and there was something really freeing about deciding that rocky was a deeply emotional, deeply anxious, deeply horrified person - being - that is trying to move through that in some way and how that affects the early scenes with him until there’s a point in the story where you can see we’ve physically softened rocky’s behaviour, because he’s finally feeling more safe and ok but all of that lore, all of that information [was essential].

When You Look at Dr. Grace

When You Look at Dr. Grace

“A coalition of organizations that work with marginalized communities in Lebanon such as migrant workers are raising funds to provide support and assistance (food, medical supplies, pads, diapers) to the various communities. Please share and donate.”

March 2026 update:

Campaign Story: Starting at 42,000 USD (raised in the last war), Voices of the Unseen begins again.... Following the devastating events of 1 March, 2026, and the subsequent heavy bombardment of Beirut’s southern suburbs and South Lebanon in the early hours of 2 March, we are witnessing a terrifyingly familiar cycle of violence. At least 31 people have been martyred and 149 wounded in just the last few hours. Thousands more fleeing their homes under new evacuation orders. The recent escalation has pushed Lebanon back to the brink of a full scale war.

In 2024, we saw firsthand the systemic failure of the state. As bombs fell, the state offered no safety net for those most vulnerable:

Migrant Workers: Still trapped under the Kafala system a form of modern day slavery, many are being abandoned by employers fleeing the violence, left without papers or safe passage.

Syrian Refugees: Already displaced by over a decade of war, we are once again facing the trauma of being uprooted with nowhere left to run.

Palestinians: Facing an ongoing struggle for survival as the violence in Lebanon mirrors the aggression they have endured for 78 years.

Marginalised Lebanese: Families in the South, Bekaa, and Beirut are losing their livelihoods and homes, watching their society be torn apart once more.

I did not like the end result but whatever

A local paper had some great photographs, all taken by Nicole Hester:

The day before, Rep. Justin Pearson tries to attend a Senate Committee meeting and is barred access by the Sergeant at Arms.

Lawmakers and protesters link arms as the descend the capitol steps.

Once inside the chamber, Democratic representatives continued to stand together with arms linked.

They continued standing together with arms linked as votes were cast.

Democratic representatives take a group photo protesting the redistricting.

Rep. Justin Jones burns a photo of the Confederate flag with the words, We will not go back.

And stomps the ashes.

KeShaun Pearson being escorted from the building by the Staties.

KeShaun Pearson (left) being taken into custody. Rep. Justin Pearson (right) showing his support of his brother.

Additional information: State lawmakers have been gunning for Pearson and Jones nearly their entire terms. Most notably, in 2023, the House expelled them for participating in a protest at the Capitol. Their districts had to have special elections to have them reinstated.

Pearson is one of the plaintiffs of a lawsuit seeking an injunction against the redistricting.

- The raccoon’s name is Annabelle! So we should start saying Happy Birthday Annabelle (or Racoon Annabelle, or Annabelle the Raccoon, something to honor her name)

- She hasn’t been alone! The video has multiple singing to her so the recording birthday party was a good one :D

It’s not “the most unhinged pitch possible” if you remember that transmasc sex workers exist.

Transmasc sex workers exist.

Trans men exist. Trans men. The men who are trans. The men who can and do get pregnant. Transgender. Transgender men. Not to mention intersex men, but I doubt that’s ever crossed these people’s minds even once.

(Parker also has two other books, Transactional Intercourse which is an anthology of trans & intersex sex work experiences, and Hooker Mentality which looks at "what hookers' experiences reveal about capitalism and gender and policing," both available as paperbacks and PDFs)