Question: Suppose we were to remove G1 Shockwave's ability to fly from the equation for a minute. Shockwave is teetering on the edge of a cliff or hole and, ta daa, is about to fall in. Hanging within reach is only one thing... a pull cord, that will switch off all of Cybertron, including himself, if he hangs by it. If he switches off, naturally, he will fall to his death anyway. He knows this. Does he panic, and grab the cord? Or does logic overcome his Decepticon selfishness? Discuss.
Good! He could do that, if he can turn around and grab it in time. But he won't know that until the pullcord is out of reach.
He knows he can either fall and die or grab a cord he knows will kill him, but he doesn't know he can turn around and grab something else? That's not very logical.
sorry, i misunderstood. He won't know if he can reach the lip of the cliff until the cord is out of reach. Not that he can reach it, if. he knows it's an option.
His "logic" is usually flawed, hence him overevaluating his value to the decepticon cause, and thinking it natural he should be its leader. It is in turn logical to assume that this ego would assert itself in this completely hypothetical situation, and he would pull the cord. This, of course, assumes that he is excercising deductive reasoning during the fall, and not working from base reflexive programming.
He would conclude it was illogical to have a giant shut down cord hanging over a hole, and grab it knowing it would not shut him down.
The logical response is not to grab the cord and fall into the hole. Given how easy it is to repair a Cybertronian from virtually any injury, as long as there are other Transformers still alive on Cybertron, there's a chance that someone will wander by and repair Shockwave eventually. Given his ranking within the Decepticon hierarchy, it's likely someone would notice Shockwave's absence fairly quickly and go looking for him, thus increasing his chances of being rapidly repaired. If he grabs the cord, he shuts himself down and also shuts down anyone who might have a chance of finding and repairing him.
For the sake of arguement, I'm assuming that he also doesn't have his jet boots/thrusters in addition to not having the generic decepticon flight ability. Why wouldn't he just transform, point the barrel down and fire? Newtons third law of motion would save him. Even doing nothing and just falling, he's almost assured a chance to survive, after all, he survived a fall from space to impact on Earth, among other brutal beatings and survived fully functional.
This is the conclusion I came to also, but I also like the option of grabbing the edge of the cliff with one hand, and pulling himself up, if possible.
Logically Shockwave would have deduced the slight possibility of being dangled over a cliff/hole with a death-or-death pull cord being the only thing that could save him and, millenia in advance, placed large trampolines at the bottom of every cliff/hole in the universe.
Neither. He has realized that good will always triumph over evil, and that all of his attempts at conquest and power have been in vain. Nothing will ever fill the gaping black hole in his processor. It is after all the reason he is a Decepticon in the first place. So he lets go and falls silently....quietly..... into the abyss....into the darkness. Peace at last.
Good point. He emits gamma rays, x-rays, light, infrared rays, and radio waves. Maybe we need a scientist for this one. Can a burst of any of these cause recoil. I guess he could fly on the flow of soundwaves alone if they were concentrated enough. There you have it.
