Fridge / Dr. STONE

Fridge Brilliance

• Most of the people in the new world have an amazing physique and are at the peak of their physical condition. A few thousand years of cleaner, non-polluted air might mean that everyone's metabolism is through the roof. It would also explain the crazy level of stamina Taijuu and the rest of the unpetrified people have - their metabolism is having a boost.
  • With the petrification’s effect of healing all the injuries of the petrified being when depetrified, it could possibly also fix any harmful effects on the body that were caused by life in the modern world, such as pollution or chemicals in foods and such.
  • The revival of Tsukasa's sister Mirai, who was clinically brain dead, proved that the revival formula could even fix mental issues, despite the petrified individuals not losing conscious thought immediately—or at all, in some cases. This likely explains why Taiju and Senku are still sane after living over 3500 years in an And I Must Scream situation—their revivals would have reset their minds back to proper working condition.
  • Not only that... But they have discovered that the petrifcation/depetrification is a way to reach immortality, being confirmed by both Senku and Tsukasa after their "deaths" in the attack against Xeno
• The chapter in which "Dr. Pepper" gifts Gen a bottle of cola got published on Christmas week, resulting in a subtle reference to Coca-Cola's Christmas marketing campaigns.
• When Ishigami Village is first introduced, one might notice that almost all of the villagers look somewhat similar. This is actually a justified case of there being Only Six Faces, as they're all descended from the same six people.
  • Which would actually be impossible, since 3 of each sex is not enough diversity to build a population. Assuming all possible mating pairs in a generation happen (producing 1 boy and 1 girl each, since extra siblings from the same pairing are irrelevant to genetic combinatorics), then the first generation could produce 9 such pairs, the females of which have 4 potential partners each, eliminating the other 5 males, as they have a common grandparent, making them first cousins. This produces 36 possible offspring (of each gender), but none of the females of this second generation would have any potential partners that weren’t a second cousin. Being further apart than fourth cousin is generally accepted to be “safe” (as in, roughly as related as to any other random person in the same general group).
    • Inbreeding only causes a real problem within 3 or 4 generations, after that, the gene pool is distilled enough to not get the problems that go with incest. Assuming they all had at least 4 children, it's possible to get up to 4 generations with no inbreeding.
    • That “distillation”, by the way, would come at the price of a truly horrific child mortality rate. This is actually how low-genetic-diversity strains of mice for lab work were created. The mice were inbred, the defectives died, and the survivors had any dangerous genes selected out, so it isn’t as dangerous.
    • This might be another bit of fridge brilliance, as it might also explain why the tribes populations are so low. There were a few generations where inbreeding caused genetic defects that were detrimental to survival and therefore there were a few generations where a significant number of the population couldn't survive the harsh conditions of the stone age world. Thus the gene pool would eventually diversify again over time due to natural selection but at the cost of a much smaller population.
    • Also keep in mind that five of the original six are career astronauts, which means they are healthier than the average population. The initial diversity also helps as we have three Slavs, one German, one Yamato Japanese and one Han Chinese.
  • It was 3700 years from the six people landed on the Earth again. Assuming those people have their firstborn at around the age of 20 to 25, it would be more than 150 generations from the original six to Suika. This is enough generations for natural selection to kick in and the genetic pool start to diversify again. That tribe may face a selection pressure 5 generations from the original six, but since they made it for all those years, the gene pool problem has long been resolved.
  • Actually since we don’t know how big of a group left Treasure Island and founded Ishigami village we may have a more recent justification for the Only Six Faces situation.
• Senku's situation in Ishigami Village makes a hilarious contrast with his devotion to science. Think about it; he is a stranger that steps out of the forest. He has a strange appearance (gravity defying green-tipped hair) and "sorcerous power". Shortly after his arrival, he uses heavenly tasting food to enlist the villagers' assistance in work that is beyond their understanding. Then he banishes the darkness with an invisible energy (electricity) that creates non-fire light which leads them into the world he came from; a world where the night doesn't exist and wonders beyond their imagination are everywhere. What does this sound like? Senku is a classic Fair Folk using Food Chains to bring mere mortals to the Land of Faerie.
• Kohaku’s decision to rebel against learning the Hundred Tales from Ruri (when she was still expected to die soon) might well have saved her life, considering that Ruri was sick with pneumonia. The time Kohaku would have needed to spend in close proximity to Ruri in order to memorize all the Hundred Tales could have very well resulted in Ruri’s disease winding up being passed on as well.
• The people of Ishigami village nearly all follow Rock Theme Naming, with two specific exceptions. Soyuz is justified as he's not actually from Ishigami village, which leaves Suika, whose name means watermelon, as the Odd Name Out. Or it does, until you realize there is a mineral Suika's name can correspond to: Watermelon Tourmaline.
• Why is Senku so positive all the time, even in the face of the worst adversary? Well, in the Stone Wars, he quotes Shawn Achor, saying that "20 seconds of confusion" are all you have when facing down an enemy. What else is Shawn Achor known for? For one thing, the power of positive psychology. It seems Senku really, really believes what Achor is preaching.
• Why did the "Why man" responded in English morse code when they started to broadcast more powerful signals? The first radio signals that were powerful enough to be beamed through space were Morse code signals!

Fridge Horror

• Despite Senku’s professed desire to revive everyone from petrification, it’s clear that, from the disaster’s beginning, a large number of people did not survive in one piece. In the very first chapter, we are treated to images of airlines crashing out of the sky, car crashes in cities, and other catastrophes that have resulted in countless statues being shattered beyond repair, all in the first few seconds since humanity was petrified. Later on, Senku and the others realize that Mt. Fuji has erupted at least three or more times since everyone was petrified, which has drastically reshaped the landscape of Japan. Combine that with the countless other natural disasters and catastrophes that probably occurred in the past 3700 years, and it’s likely that thousands, if not millions, of statues, have been smashed beyond repair, leaving no chance for those people to be revived.
  • Anyone who was on a boat, submarine, or platform out at sea when they were petrified would inevitably sink as the structures they were on degraded, meaning there are thousands of petrified people at the bottom of the ocean, who may never be found. And imagine if some of them stayed conscious for all of that.
  • This gets somewhat metaphysical, but: it's established later on that, given enough time, focus and precision, petrified people whose bodies have been shattered could be pieced back together and ultimately restored to life. If that's the case, then are the shattered people truly 'dead'? Or is their consciousness - which in some schools of thought is equated to one's soul - still in a state of limbo, even if their bodies have been reduced to so many chunks? Does that mean that, though they are unaware of where they are (which in many cases could be buried halfway into a cliff, at the bottom of the ocean, or even under layers of dirt and soil that have formed over the millennia), they are trapped and unable to 'pass on'? And if they did 'pass on', does that mean that if their body is restored, their soul is forcefully pulled from the other side - just to return to a world they would no longer recognize and may not survive in? If given the choice, would people who have found paradise beyond even want to come back to life now?
  • That's not even mentioning the number of pets, infants, and elderly folk who need care to stay alive suddenly not having anyone to care for them, or, in the infants and seniors cases, any way to be cared for after being turned to stone. In the first few seconds of the mass-petrification, we see a woman frozen solid while her dog is barking at her, still attached to its leash, undoubtedly dead after thousands of years after starving to death. How many babies and elderly folk were petrified while bed ridden, or in their cribs, with their families aware but unable to help them?
• There’s also a potentially severe ecological toll from the disaster. As a result of their staffs and crews suddenly being petrified, oil platforms, nuclear powerplants, and numerous other dangerous sites would suddenly be left completely unmanned, with no one to shut them down or maintain them. Oil platforms, in particular, would be in danger of breaking down from erosion or catastrophic failure from a lack of monitoring. Imagine the BP Oil Spill several-hundred times over.
  • Nuclear power stations would be fairly safe in the absence of maintenance and operator inputs; they are among the most failsafe and redundant systems that humans have built. Within a few days, they'll self SCRAM and drop to 3% of normal heat output. Within a couple of weeks, not even the coolant systems are necessary, as the passive heat distribution of the containment chamber will be sufficient to prevent a meltdown. All that said, this only applies to more modern nuclear reactors. Older ones, Gen 1 and Gen 2 reactors, would most likely meltdown in the event of sustained human absence.
  • And then there's the fact, that with humanity gone, there is no space program to prevent a life-destroying meteor strike.
    • The Dr. STONE reboot: Byakuya series shows two meteors, one crashing in Europe and causing a Class 4 to the continent, the other large enough to cause a Class 5 to the entire planet that was prevented by the efforts of the robot Rei.
• Senku and Taiju are attacked by a pride of lions, which had apparently escaped from the zoo after the petrification wave, with Senku speculating that the zookeepers must have been petrified before they could close and lock the doors to the enclosure. However, that brings to mind the question of what happened to the other animals. How many zoo animals died a slow, painful death from starvation, without anyone to care for them? How many pets died in their homes without their owners to provide them with food and water, or stuck after their owners were petrified while holding their leashes?
• With the entire planet reclaimed by nature, all that remains of human history, knowledge and culture is whatever the residents of the Stone World remember.
• What if there were undiscovered enclaves of people? Maybe another expedition from Treasure Island? If waking from petrification happened spontaneously twice (aka staying conscious until nitric acid hits you or even ending up in a cave with fermenting fruit and nitric acid - fruit bats could make accidental nitol), it could happen again. So when, triggered by the Science Kingdom, a second petrification wave envelops the Stone World, and Ishigami Village and Treasure Island were shown to be prepared for it. But unknown human enclaves could get shattered, wake up one at a time then starve, or stay petrified so long their food, tools, and shelter rot away.
• The petrified come back to life after being unpetrified, even if they were dead before. How are they going to hide that fact when they inevitably revive humanity and it turns out some of the revived were recently deceased before being petrified and their loved ones clearly remember them dying?
• The Stone World is incredibly lucky that the first known spontaneous revival was Senku, who is absolutely devoted to the idea of reviving all of humanity indiscriminately. Tsukasa's motivation may be kind of silly, but he is a perfect reminder of the fact that humans are naturally factional: a lot of people in Senku's position absolutely would be all for "selectively" reviving humanity. Imagine if the equivalent of Senku was a fanatical religious zealot who saw themselves as divinely chosen by God, with a holy mandate to eradicate all of the vulnerable nonbelievers so their followers can inherit the earth? Or a race supremacist who realized that this would be the ideal opportunity to literally purge every "undesirable" from Earth by hunting down and destroying all the petrified humans who don't visibly match their chosen ethnicity?
• Senku's goal of creating a time machine to change the past so that either the petrification never happens, or Earth's people are prepared for it, would by its very nature NOT WORK. While he could theoretically avoid a paradox by including instructions to create the time machine and send the information back in time, perpetuating the time loop, there is no way to prevent the Petrification while also ensuring that all of the descendants of the ISS astronauts COME INTO BEING. Even if the same couples formed among the ISS crew, their descendants would not be the same because they would have a much more diverse pool of potential spouses—one that doesn't involve inbreeding. This means that either the time loop's generating factor never existed (as Senku never had those adventures that led to allying with Whyman), or the timeline is instead split and the Senku who originally invented the time machine can never know if it works or not.
  • Then you start getting into multiversal time theory and whatnot. I could definitely see Senku as the type to believe that all the people who died/are still petrified deserve a chance to live somewhere (even in another universe), even if he personally gains nothing from it. Theoretically, since causes have to be preserved for effects to happen, this would create a single, easily followable line to an outside observer: Stone World happens. Senku forms Kingdom of Science with ultimate goal of preventing Stone World. Time Machine is created. Stone World is prevented. But because Stone World was the direct cause of Stone World being prevented, it continues to exist parallel to the world in which Stone World didn’t happen, but at least some people know it existed (by getting that information from Senku “objectively-previously” in the chain of events). Senku wouldn’t know if it worked or not, unless the Awake World humanity that stayed awake for 3,000 years gains the ability to jump universes and comes to say thanks. This isn’t too impossible, given the existence of beings like Whyman and that Awake World humanity would have 3,000 years to have negotiated with them and whatever else might be out there.