Tails might fall off? Reminds me of an old Jimmy Stewart movie in which an eccentric metallurgist (Stewart) is mocked when his predictions of catastrophic failures of airplane tails fails to materialize - until it does (fortunately, while the plane is still on the ground) and he is vindicated.
The Jimmy Stewart movie was No Highway in the Sky. Very good movie.
I saw that movie. Good one. The geek wins and gets the girl too.