What was the deal with the big, clean bone (femur?) found in the downed jet? If the AS had mutated into a form that crystalized plastic/rubber (which is what caused the crash when the pilot's mask disintegrated), wouldn't the remains of the pilot just be the standard BBAR (Burned Beyond All Recognition)?
shareIt was probably explained in a cut scene, but is included in the book. The dissolving rubber was very similar to skin. Hence the skin was eaten away, leaving only the bone.
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He who pays the Piper ... calls the tune!
Synthetic rubber is similar to live tissue? Man, that's a big suspension of disbelief. No wonder there was no explanation provided in the movie. Maybe if they'd just left the dissolving rubber completely out of it and had AS mutate into some sort of flesh-eating bacteria.
Better still, just leave the bone completely out of it. AS eating through all of the synthetic rubber on the airplane would be enough to bring it down. Hell, they could have had the pilot even bail out before his oxygen ran out and survive.
Why? In real life, synthetic skin can be made by using a plasto-elastic polymer (stretchy rubberized plastic), with lots of semiconductors imbedded inside, which serve as synthetic nerve endings (source: <http://www.technologyreview.com/news/533106/artificial-skin-that-senses-and-stretches-like-the-real-thing/>;). Possibly it could have given rise to a suspension of disbelief in 1971 (though maybe not, as plastic was already being used in increasingly more and more applications even back then), but it certainly doesn't require any suspension of disbelief now.
So maybe to a virus/bacterium, organic polymer seems similar enough to natural flesh to be worth eating (especially to a rapidly multiplying/growing sample that is really, REALLY hungry)?
In my copy of the film, they DID provide a sort-of explanation to the synthetic rubber/plastic thing. The green goo is contained within a plastic-like black material within the space probe. This apparently serves as a food supply for the goo.
And the AS that contaminates the Phantom recon jet cockpit also feeds on rubberized plastic, as well as on the pilot's flesh.
Eh, I'm not buying it. When AS shows up in Piedmont, it simply coagulates blood. Then, it later mutates into eating synthetic, skin-like rubber. Even if that means it also eats organic, living tissue, what about the rest of the pilot's viscera? It's now eating not only skin-like rubber, as well as real, organic skin, but internal organs, tissue, and everything else, too, but not bone?
Even if this is the case, the AS at Wildfire mutates in the exact same manner as the AS remaining at Piedmont, i.e., eats through the rubber gaskets at Wildfire, yet the poor bastard scientist in the lab survives because AS just 'happens' to mutate 'right then' to a non-skin eating form? The fact that AS started out as maintaining the same characteristics for a while, then suddenly begins mutating instantly all over the place just isn't consistent.
Like I said, it would have been okay if they'd have just left the damn bone completely out of it and simply had some single line indicating that the pilot's remains ended up as they normally would have in such a crash with the only strange thing about the crash was that there was none of the polymer-rubber material found, anywhere.
The movie states that there is no actual rubber used on the plane, it's all "polychron," a synthetic material with properties similar to Human skin.
Later we are told that all the gaskets in Wildfire are also made of "polychron" which is why they start degenerating and dissolving leading to the rush to deactivate the nuclear device.