10 Horror Movies That Forced You To Answer Impossible Questions
4. Could You Kill 30 Co-Workers To Save 30 Co-Workers? - The Belko Experiment
The grim conceit at the heart of the James Gunn-penned thriller The Belko Experiment involves 80 employees arriving at work and being told that they must kill 30 of their number within the next two hours, or 60 employees will die at random by way of exploding tracking devices implanted in their heads.
This is good old fashioned utilitarianism at work - committing an act, no matter how heinous, that provides the greatest outcome for the largest number of people. Either people successfully participate and 30 of them die, or they refuse and 60 die.
From that perspective it's basic maths, but the actuality of taking a life is far more complex, and so each person has to consider whether they have what it takes to kill another in order to ultimately save 60 lives.
Or, as a final act of protest, would you refuse to take part, fend off the inevitable attackers, and resign yourself to your fate? There's no easy answer, beyond hoping that others will simply do the dirty work for you while you hide somewhere.
The entire hypothetical is an ethical nightmare with no satisfactory answer, because who should decide who lives and dies?
Are you prepared to take the matter into your own hands or instead refuse to take part in an "experiment" that, even in survival, would leave your soul irreparably tarnished?