In a zombie apocalpyse

[noparlpf]

I figure the right answer to people poking holes into hypothetical scenarios is not to add detail but to substract it.

As in, "Imagine there's a situation where, if a person does nothing, five people will die, and if he flips a switch, one person will die. He can't do anything else. Which would be the moral thing to do?"

Then, answer every complaint about the scenario with "Magic."

I wave my hands in the air and jump up and down. I didn't do nothing and I didn't flip the switch. Really, what's stopping me from doing that?

This isn't responsibility. There is no responsibility in the choice.

The responsibility is with the person who arranged this twisted choice to begin with.

I pick the 5 because, on such an abstract level, the only question I am answering is "would you prefer more people died or less?" The easy answer to this trivial question is "less".

But such a question and answer has basically nothing to do with the real world or solving actual moral questions.

Exactly. It's the ass who tied the people to the train tracks who's responsible.
Oh yeah and what happened to the train's emergency brakes? I wouldn't build something that big without at least one redundancy in the emergency brakes, and I know that real trains do have normal brakes as well as the emergency brakes.
And sure, most people would say that without further information, choosing to let the lone person die is the right thing to do.
I say, give me a real-world situation where that's really the only choice.