SCIENCE: Can Hulk haz strongest bones there is?

A little while ago Agent M teamed up with Greg Pak to answer the question everyone is dying to know. The post is reprinted below:

Anonymous asked: okay. let’s say the hulk underwent the adamantium bonding process. If he survived, would Banner have adamantium bones as well?

This is such a crazy question! And to answer it, I tapped one of the nicest dudes in comics and an expert on all things Hulk, writer Greg Pak.

“Excellent question…

You might think that if adamantium has bonded with the Hulk’s skeleton, then it would kill Banner when the Hulk reverts back, since a Hulk-sized adamantium endoskeleton would just rip through Banner’s body. But the Hulk wouldn’t let himself die that way, so presumably he’d never revert back to Banner.

But it’s possible that things could actually work differently. The idea would be that the Hulk’s system would only allow itself to bond with adamantium in a way that would allow Banner to live — part of the Hulk’s biologically driven survival instinct. Under this theory, the Hulk’s bones would only allow the adamantium to bond in a kind of net or mesh form, so when the Hulk shrinks down to Banner-size, the adamantium can fold in on itself and shrink down in size, too. So you end up with Banner with an adamantium laced skeleton!”

So there ya go! Neato! Make sure to give @gregpak a follow on the Twitters—he’s a quality dude

I felt that both those answers were a bit too concise. I wanted more! So I thought and thought. It’s harder than it sounds, but it’s what science-types do. And I return with… thoughts!

I’m gonna breakdown the above questions into the simpler questions I used to think through the problem. Hopefully that’ll keep things a bit more organized.

1)    Can you bond adamantium to the Hulk?

Experts (me and Ron) agree that the adamantium bonding process is a surgical one. You get sedated, put into a bacta tank, and there’s an automated surgical process that gets the adamantium onto your bones.

This brings me immediately to another question,
1a) Can you sedate the Hulk?
My thinking is the Hulk only exists in a heightened emotional state, so sedation is impossible. It’d be like giving tranquilizers to a guy high on PCP. If you successfully sedated him, he’d become Banner and not survive the bonding process. The solution is Hulk would have to submit to the procedure willingly. The scenario I imagine is Wolverine makes some snide remark about how he is strongest there is ‘cause he has the strongest bones. Hulk then proceeds to one-up him, unaware of the all the consequences I am now forced to sit here and think through.
Back to the question at hand, we have a willing Hulk in our tank, now what? Well a healing factor is required to survive the procedure. Hulk has a healing factor, but there are a lot of unknown variables. Does Hulk’s healing factor work at the same rate as Wolverine’s? I’ll assume not, and I’ll also assume that the Hulk heals faster the madder he gets, and we’re dealing with a Hulk at the minimum level of rage to prevent reversion to Banner, so likely a healing factor slower than Wolverine.
The other thing we don’t know is how different speeds of healing affect the adamantium bonding process. I’m going to assume that the bonding is unaffected and that the patient just needs the healing factor to simply survive the process. If you’re looking for more on the tricky nature of healing factors and medical procedures I encourage you to go check out Geoff John’s first arc of Teen Titans involving a gruesome knee-capping and painful looking surgery. Bet you didn’t remember that Bart had an artificial knee, did ya? But I digress.

1b) Can you penetrate the Hulk’s skin?

Bones are, to sound fancy, sub-dermal. And while the Hulk can heal like Wolverine, he also doesn’t get injured nearly as often. Bullets bounce right off him so designing special surgical equipment is a must. You’d probably have to have adamantium tipped needles to get the adamantium in. You can’t just go through the mouth or ears like they do in the comics because that’s not where bones are. Duh.

Ok, so I’m reasonably satisfied that it’s at least theoretically possible to get yourself an adamantium enhanced Hulk, now onto the next phase.

2) What happens when Hulk goes back to puny Banner?

This is the crux of the question given to Agent M and I have a few ideas for how to tackle it. There is the most obvious solution that Hulk simply never becomes Banner again. That works, but isn’t as interesting.

Pak suggested that if the adamantium existed as a lattice or mesh on Hulks bones then it could shrink down to a more robust structure on Banner. I actually like this idea a lot. Having a mesh like coating wouldn’t make much difference since adamantium is essentially infinitely strong (I know that’s impossible but I’m going with it). And there’s a real life equivalent to all this! Doctors are now using foams containing titanium that creates a framework for new bone to grow on inside the human body! These fancy metals are nice because they’re generally not very reactive inside the human body, and strong enough to last. The problem with a lot of joint replacement surgery is the lifespan of the replacement. Most people getting joints replaced are elderly and less active than your average rampaging monster. My concern with the mesh idea is one of metal fatigue. Take a paperclip from your desk and bend it back and forth a buncha times. It breaks. Similar concern here, but at the end of the day it’s adamantium, which is the comic equivalent of mirthril so it’s probably fine. We know a regular human can handle adamantium in their system because Bullseye had some on his spine for awhile.

And of course since this is based on something from Agent M the post wouldn’t be complete without some cuteness. Here’s a video of some kitties with fainting goat syndrome (real thing) that has been edited to include lasers. The lasers are fake and the fainting doesn’t hurt the kitties, I promise.

  
Cats Getting Shot By Lasers – Watch more Funny Videos

Ryan Haupt pretends that writing articles and producing his podcast is the same thing as really getting work done. One day he’ll crash and burn, but until then, critique his poor reasoning in the comments.