I came across this today and unfortunately, it’s not at all uncommon for amateur writers, especially young, immature amateur writers, but I thought it would make a good cautionary tale that people can learn from.

There was someone who popped up on Reddit with a rather silly idea for a major mechanic in a book and even when everyone pointed out just how unrealistic, unworkable and downright ridiculous it was, he kept demanding that he wanted to do it, no matter how badly it would all turn out.

These people need to grow up.

This is where I think people need to stop just asking dumb questions at random on Reddit and do some actual research. People are lazy and lazy people don’t tend to get anywhere.

So this guy shows up and says that he wants to create a tank in a relatively modern setting that, instead of carrying ordnance, he wanted it to scoop up dirt, compact it into bullets and that would mean it would never run out of ammunition.

On the surface, to someone without a clue, that might seem like a fine idea but he wasn’t really looking to have anyone shoot it down, he was just looking for validation. Validation-seeking is not a good characteristic for an author.

So I, and others, pointed out why this was absurdly unrealistic. First off, what happens when the tank is on rock? Or sand? Or any other substance that the compactors just don’t work with? What then? And the reality is, dirt isn’t compatible into something that hard. It will just split apart when fired and you’ll be pelting the enemy with a fine powder. I suggested that the only reasonably modern-day solution would be a fast-setting epoxy to bond everything together and that introduces some other problems.

Where does all of this happen? This is going to take space and space in a tank is at a premium. The size of the scooping, processing, compacting, gluing and holding facilities until these dirt bullets are ready to go, that’s going to be far larger than just storing ammo onboard already. It’s lots of moving parts that can fail at a moment’s notice. Failure in the middle of combat is a death sentence. So why do it?

Of course, here’s where it becomes obvious that this guy is a complete idiot with zero comprehension of the real world. He started arguing that they can compress “dirt into diamonds”, something that is laughably untrue. Yes, we can make diamonds but it requires specific starting components, huge machines and a lot of time. It’s not scooping up dirt and producing bullets in seconds. The second I pointed that out, he started flinging insults because he wasn’t being validated and all he wanted to do was use his “cool” idea that would just make your average reader roll their eyes.

I also pointed out that the enemy could just put something down over the dirt and that would stop the tanks cold. Creating thick plastic sheets that you put down across the battlefield wouldn’t be hard to do. Then he yanked an ad hoc rationalization out of his butt and claimed their enemies “just couldn’t do that”. Why? Who the hell knows because it’s all just being made up on the fly.

That’s all these people ever do. It’s why nobody helps these idiots because this is the level of comprehension that they have. It’s like talking to a 6-year old and that’s probably not that far off. Maybe the problem here isn’t the people explaining reality, maybe it’s the kid with a dream who can’t stop playing make believe. After all, he came here and asked what everyone thought and then when everyone thought it was an unworkable idea, he flipped out.

Sorry, your ideas, no matter how “cool” they might sound in your head, they have to be realistic within the context of your story. Just because you like it, if it breaks immersion, readers are never going to accept it. I’ve read my fair share of books where my only response was “what the hell are you smoking?” It’s why you need sane people to rein you in and far too many of these crackpots simply don’t have that. It’s why you need to talk to experts, or at the very least, people who know more than you, before you just jump in with both feet and make a fool of yourself. I just finished reading Andy Weir’s “Project Hail Mary” and in the end, he thanked a whole slew of people for vetting the scientific ideas that he wrote about. He didn’t just make it up and demand that everyone had to accept it. It was actual, relatively realistic science.

But who cares about that, right? Certainly not this doofus. That’s pretty pathetic.