Scorpion - Alternate Solutions

CBS's Scorpion is an adventure / drama about a team of genius misfits that save the world (or at least the day) in each week's episode by using their super genius powers to MacGyver their way out of various pickles.

Supposedly, the main character is based on a real person, "Walter O'Brien" who reportedly tested to an I.Q. of 197. Since it is TV, his character is played by Elyes Gabel (hey, he was in "Interstellar"),


which is a good choice because I don't think alot of people would tune in each week to watch the real guy:



In any case, the stories usually go this way:

1) Big Problem ("BP") is set up.
2) Team devises a plan to solve BP.
3) Team attempts to execute the BP plan.
4) Sub-problems ("SP") arise during the execution of the BP plan.
5) SP's are solved.
6) BP is solved with very little time to spare.

Some character interaction is sprinkled through each episode, mostly at the beginning and end of each episode in an attempt to humanize the characters, and keep the interest of those who might care about their emotional development.

Now, to the point. I will post BP's from some of the episodes I have watched, and leave it to you to come up with solutions. Can you do better than "Team Scorpion"?

Scorpion BP #1:

A young girl in a Los Angeles hospital needs a heart transplant, and now has four hours to live. Unfortunately, due to some malicious computer tampering, the barcodes on the entire blood supply in Los Angeles have been scrambled, mixing bags of blood supposedly headed for a research lab into the regular supply. How do you save her?

Quote: Ayecarumba

Scorpion BP #1:

A young girl in a Los Angeles hospital needs a heart transplant, and now has four hours to live. Unfortunately, due to some malicious computer tampering, the barcodes on the entire blood supply in Los Angeles have been scrambled, mixing bags of blood supposedly headed for a research lab into the regular supply. How do you save her?

Well, a diagnosis giving exactly four hours is remarkable. I don't know this for a fact, but I suspect a heart transplant takes about as long, if not longer. It's very delicate surgery. And this is one procedure where speed is important, as the less time the patient spends hooked up to a heart-lung machine, or under induced hypothermia (if they do that), the better.(*)

I suppose in the show they wheeled the patient to the OR with minutes in the 4 hours to spare. Good thing time stretches in TV, eh? ;)

Anyway, does a heart transplant require a blood transfusion? Not every surgical procedure does. But even if it does, does it require very specific typing, or would any generic typing do? If the latter, then find volunteers with O- blood (you have four whole hours and a hospital full of people). Or try one of the experimental blood transfusion substitutes (one of them is bright white in color, ironically enough). Or take advantage of the heart-lung machine and perfuse the patient's blood running through it with additional oxygen. Or collect spilled blood during surgery, filter it and transfuse it back to the patient (they were testing that in the late 90s, I think).

In the meantime have lab techs test all the blood and re-label it correctly, while the police or whoever hunts down the miscreant.

I'm willing to bet I'm not even close.


(*) According to the Mayo clinic's website, a heart transplant takes about 4 hours! Longer if the patient has had previous heart surgery (like valve replacements or coronary bypass).

So unless they get her in the OR right now at the start of the episode, the patient is done for.

I saw the one where they went to Las Vegas. It packed every gambling and blackjack cliche into an hour. I don't recall the exact details, but at the end they needed a few hours to turn $100 into $100,000, or something like that. So they immediately figure out how to do so at various different casino games. I will never watch the show again.

Quote: Ayecarumba

Scorpion BP #1:

A young girl in a Los Angeles hospital needs a heart transplant, and now has four hours to live. Unfortunately, due to some malicious computer tampering, the barcodes on the entire blood supply in Los Angeles have been scrambled, mixing bags of blood supposedly headed for a research lab into the regular supply. How do you save her?

Helicopter her to nearby Orange County
or jet her to nearby Vegas
Or transport blood from either location to hospital

Create a blood bank at the hospital

get a geek to fix the computer problem

Quote: terapined

Helicopter her to nearby Orange County
or jet her to nearby Vegas
Or transport blood from either location to hospital

Good one.

Quote: Nareed

Well, a diagnosis giving exactly four hours is remarkable. I don't know this for a fact, but I suspect a heart transplant takes about as long, if not longer. It's very delicate surgery. And this is one procedure where speed is important, as the less time the patient spends hooked up to a heart-lung machine, or under induced hypothermia (if they do that), the better.(*)

I suppose in the show they wheeled the patient to the OR with minutes in the 4 hours to spare. Good thing time stretches in TV, eh? ;)

Anyway, does a heart transplant require a blood transfusion? Not every surgical procedure does. But even if it does, does it require very specific typing, or would any generic typing do? If the latter, then find volunteers with O- blood (you have four whole hours and a hospital full of people). Or try one of the experimental blood transfusion substitutes (one of them is bright white in color, ironically enough). Or take advantage of the heart-lung machine and perfuse the patient's blood running through it with additional oxygen. Or collect spilled blood during surgery, filter it and transfuse it back to the patient (they were testing that in the late 90s, I think).

In the meantime have lab techs test all the blood and re-label it correctly, while the police or whoever hunts down the miscreant.

I'm willing to bet I'm not even close.


(*) According to the Mayo clinic's website, a heart transplant takes about 4 hours! Longer if the patient has had previous heart surgery (like valve replacements or coronary bypass).

So unless they get her in the OR right now at the start of the episode, the patient is done for.

Good ideas, and actually pretty close to Team Scorpion's... but there's a

Quote: terapined

Helicopter her to nearby Orange County
or jet her to nearby Vegas
Or transport blood from either location to hospital

Create a blood bank at the hospital

get a geek to fix the computer problem

This was my initial solution too. If you can't bring the blood to the patient, take the patient to the blood.

However there was a

Quote: Nareed

Sub-Solution!

No problem. Hearts are viable for transplant for only a few hours. Blood remains viable longer. Get blood from the body of the deceased donor. If the donor wasn't the same super-rare blood type as the patient, chances are the transplant would have resulted in an agonizing death anyway.

A good suggestion but there's a