5 Things That Aren't Nearly As Dangerous As Hollywood Thinks
As we've previously explained, Hollywood has some weird ideas about how easy it is to survive falls from great heights and, say, explosions that occur 10 feet away from the hero. But it's almost stranger the way movies and TV exaggerate the dangers of other things. For some reason, it's not a big deal to jump away from an erupting fireball, but we're supposed to believe that encounters with the following are certain death.
#5.
Scorpions
According to Hollywood:
Scorpions are deadly creatures that can incapacitate a man in seconds. Which is to say, a villain once tried to use one to kill James Bond in Diamonds Are Forever. They're an instrument of torture for pirates, and should basically be approached with the same caution that one would use with a schizophrenic serial killer with radioactive lightsabers growing out of his body.
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What short of a man in gloves, could best this mighty beast?
In Reality:
There are around over a thousand species of scorpions, of which 25 to 50 have venom that is dangerous to humans. OK, fine, but Bond assassins probably use one of the dangerous ones. Even then, the adult mortality rate for a sting is around one percent. So you'd really need a whole suitcase full of scorpions and for Bond to lay still for you for a bit while they get 100 stings in. And if he's being that cooperative, you could honestly just kill him with the suitcase.
How were we to know a movie in which James Bond hijacks a moon rover
is an unreliable source on entomology?
Unless you're a child (for whom the nasty ones cause death in about 10 percent of cases), a scorpion sting is painful and might be incapacitating in a bad case, but it's not going to kill you.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but a scorpion's natural behavior when confronted with something bigger than itself is to hide and try to escape. So the chances of being attacked by one are laughably small. In fact, the odds of dying from a scorpion sting are one in 300 million. To put this in perspective: Your odds of dying by simply falling over in the shower are one in 65,000. In other words, if you find a scorpion in your shower tomorrow morning, the shower stall itself may still be the greater danger.
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"Would you mind using the 'No Tears' stuff?"
#4.
Running Out of Fuel in an Airplane
According to Hollywood:
In a panic, the pilot looks out of the window and sees that the propellers have stopped spinning -- or his instruments show that the fuel gauge is on empty and his engines have ground to a halt. Cue the Kamikaze dive-bomber sound effects as the plane plummets toward a deadly crash.
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They say small planes are the deadliest, but seasoned travelers know that the most
dangerous plane is whichever one you are on right now.
The heroes have a matter of seconds to find parachutes on board -- or if they have the skill, to bail out at the last moment, perhaps in a life raft, as in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Anything is better than staying in this plummeting deathtrap!
"This was the most logical action to take!"
In Reality:
Remember a few years ago when a jet flying out of LaGuardia lost both engines after a bird strike? The plane was at a mere 3,200 feet and still managed to stay in the air for four minutes and fly the length of Manhattan before ditching safely in the Hudson River.
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We hope they'd had their shots.
The reason is that even if you lose power, you're flying a plane, not a jetpack -- the same principle of aviation that lets planes fly also means they can glide. Granted, jets make pretty bad gliders, but even they have glide ratios of between 10 and 20 to one -- meaning you can fly 10,000 feet horizontally for every 1,000 feet you drop. Get a jet up to a cruising altitude of 30 to 40,000 feet and you can travel over 100 miles before metal is going to meet dirt.
Your average private plane is surprisingly not as glide-worthy since it's got less mass and can't coast on inertia for quite as long. However, it makes up for distance with survivability. A typical prop-driven four-seater plane will keep gliding until it slows to about 40 to 50 mph, which means you don't need a hell of a lot of space to land and stop short of kissing a tree. Jets need to be traveling at least 140 mph to remain airborne, which means that you'd better find something long and paved (or long and wet) to land on.
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Perfect.
Let's look back at that scene from Temple of Doom. As you might recall, the pilots had parachuted out of the plane, leaving it running on fumes, and both engines quickly failed. As the plane began to plummet toward the mountains ahead, Jones and his two companions (Floozy Girl and Annoying Boy) jump out on an inflated life raft, eventually hitting a snow-covered slope and going over a waterfall.
In reality, if a life raft could have made it to that slope, the plane certainly could have glided to the river they end up floating down. You can argue that Jones didn't know how to fly a plane, but even a ham-handed attempt to turn it around and ditch in the river probably offers better odds than jumping out of a plane in a life raft. Something to do with a large metal hull offering better protection than a flimsy piece of inflated rubber. But we're no scientists.
#3.
Getting Shot with an Arrow or Crossbow
According to Hollywood:
These pointy projectiles are death with feathers. Get hit with one (especially if you're a bad guy or an expendable cowboy) and you pitch over and die. Legolas seemed to perfectly average one dead orc per fired arrow in Lord of the Rings. Before that -- for almost a century's worth of movies -- if a cowboy got tagged with one, he'd be on his way to the pearly gates.
There is no functional difference between that bow and an Uzi.
In Reality:
If you've got a strong stomach, take a look at the picture on this page. Yes, that's a guy with a crossbow bolt sticking out of his chest. Not only did he survive the initial wound, but he survived a seven-hour plane ride to the hospital (it was in Australia, and he was shot in a remote location, presumably by a giant bow and arrow wielding spider we've yet to read about) before the sucker was removed.
Via How could he do this and survive, you ask? Basically, arrows and other type of longish projectiles tend to stay in the wound, providing a nice plug to hold in the blood and keep things intact. By comparison, getting shot -- something that Hollywood heroes survive in every other scene -- is more dangerous by magnitudes. When a bullet strikes a body, it starts chewing up everything inside, bouncing off bones, tearing major blood vessels open -- just generally doing all it can to kill you.
Ask any hunter who uses a bow, and they'll tell you that it's not uncommon to have to trail an animal for hours after it gets hit by an arrow.
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Exploding arrows are harder to come by than you'd think.
all this arrow talk and not one to the knee joke, yet??
Replyyes but movies don't have time for the good guys to take the necessary multiple shots to incapictate the bad guy... I was actually watching Deliverance.. you know the camping trip with Burt Reynolds and Jon Voight being stalked by crazed hillbillies... and it was hilarious how one arrow shot would drop them stone cold dead...
ReplyTo be fair, Legolas has every excuse to be able to get a 1:1 ratio with his bow, because Tolkien elves are freaking badass.
Reply"it was in Australia, and he was shot in a remote location, presumably by a giant bow and arrow wielding spider we've yet to read about"
ReplyThe whole article was good, but this made me snort water. Never change, Australia.
In defense of #5: Most people would probably die of fear if not the scorpion venom.
ReplyI believe the "bow and arrow wielding spider" you mention in #3 is known as a "spider jockey", and in fact they occur in all biomes, albeit rarely.
ReplyWow, that may be the first Minecraft reference I've seen on the site. Bravo, sir
#1 reminds me of that idiotic part of the (otherwise well-done) Battlefield 3 campaign where you blow up a tank in a gas station simply by shooting a pump. So many things wrong.
ReplyWho cares, the explosion was totally worth it :)
One time I shot an adventurer in the knee with an arrow. He's not dead, but he's not an adventurer anymore.
ReplyIt depends on the type of arrow. Some tips are made to shred the inside pretty badly, especially if the arrow gets jostled or is attempted to be removed. And you would have to think that the people using the arrow knows what they're doing and is aiming to the correct parts of the body. I imagine that a cowboy from the era the films were set in getting shot with an arrow, if it's a good one, would die. Generally speaking, their medical personal are hardly comparable to the medical personal who attended to the man you used as an example.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesPlus, Daryl Dixon. Nuff Said.
Generally good points, but the fact is that arrows would not be a good choice in large, fast-paced fights or battles (e.g. in LOTR): even if guns or canons are unavailable, swords would do more damage to the body than an arrow as they would be pulled out of the body leaving a hole behind and not staying there to staunch any of the bleeding, plus the gaping wound would become easily infected.
Also, *personnel.
Arrows are used because of their other advantages -- by which I mean, ability to be used long-range -- rather than because of their sheer 1-on-1 deadliness if compared with swords.
It also depends on what kind of bow and arrow. If a longbow arrow hits you, you're probably going to be left with a pretty lethal hole. But longbow arrows are also almost impossible to aim. Remember that the next step up after the development of the longbow was the development of the ballista, e.g., a bow the size of a building firing a bolt the size of a man. Yeah, that's gonna be pretty fatal if it hits you.
But a shortbow? Yeah, you'd have to get lucky to hit a fatal spot.
What about the Mongolian short bow? Pretty sure Genghis Khan wouldn't have taken over half the world with s****y bows, seeing as they were also his strongest point.
I would argue against the bow thing.. the English long bow revolutionized war back when they were invented because they were strong enough to pierce through heavy armor and kill the knight within. They were also quickly reloaded (unlike crossbows) and if someone got a large enough force you could rain constant death upon the enemy. Other foot solders and knights couldn't inflict the same injuries because despite the common thought that swords can cut through armor they were actually pretty useless against well-forged steel. morning stars and other heavy weapons were more effective but still less efficient and effective than the bow. that was obviously a long time ago but I wouldn't say that something that killed so many people back then isn't deadly... -_-
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesGetting hit with AN arrow isn't particularly life-threatening unless it hits something REALLY important; the linked medical article notes that "Thoracic great vessels are injured in about 4% of penetrating chest trauma cases."
Would a regiment of longbowmen letting loose at you be killer? Yeah. ONE guy with ONE arrow? In all honesty, probably not. Of course, this is just talking about your "basic" mass-produced wooden arrow. Modern arrows have all sorts of designs to do all sorts of gnarly stuff to your insides similar to a tumbling bullet.
Yeah, medieval archers also made a habit of dipping their arrows (and swords, come to think of it) in the latrines so that people who weren't killed developed nasty infections. Archers were certainly deadly in the Middle Ages but it wasn't because arrows are a great substitute for a bullet.
Sure, they revolutionized war because they were comparatively more deadly than being hit with blunt objects, which most swords effectively were when confronted with armor.
"So those horny electrons are going to make a beeline for the ground, and totally ignore anything that doesn't get them there as quickly as they can." - Martin Bear
ReplyThat's not... QUITE true. The flow of current along a path is basically proportional to the voltage difference across the path divided by the electrical resistance along the path. (Ohm's Law.)
And so, given the same voltage differences, more electricity will tend to flow through lower-resistance paths, but there will still be some electricity flowing through higher-resistance paths; just not quite as much.
Is that true? Toaster in the bathtub won't kill you? Oh dammit. Guess I'll have to settle for the good old fashioned way
ReplyI tried that bathtub thing and now I'm dead. You'll be hearing from my lawyers!
ReplyWait, if your dead and posting this....Zombie!!!!
(finishes reading your post) ....with LAWYERS!!!!
#2. The photo of the radio is of a tiny $10 radio that comes with a lanyard to hang it around your neck and is powered by one or two AAA batteries. No speaker, just an earphone. Pretty safe for the tub.
ReplyThey test #2 in Mythbusters and they have shown that it could totally kill you.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesYeah, it seems the author forgot that in this circuit, you become a parallel branch, and one of the laws (Kurchoff's or ohms, dont really know) say that the current your body will carry is proportional to the resistance of the branch, and you only need about 300uA to stop a heart.
Are you certain? Because I'm sort of banking on that if I ever need to go all black widow
It COULD kill you, but they got barely enough electricity across the heart to be dangerous. It would depend on the person's skin, body fat, and heart, as well as the appliance and wiring, plus the conductivity of the tub. Lots of people survive electrocution, some don't.
Didnt they have to add a bunch of impurities to the water t make it conductive enough to zap the heart? AND disable the circuit breaker, AND disable Ground Fault Interrupt?
MY theory is that Australia is Minecraft, and a spider jockey got him.
Replylol
Actually, the buttons on bathroom outlets are yellow (test) and red (reset).
ReplyMine are white and red. It's not standard.
Vlad: You're a huge jack ass..I've seen your other comments on Cracked, & I really, really dislike you..
Well it can be argued that since Legolas is an Elf, he's just really bitchin' with that bow. It's fantasy.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesI'LL thay!
Also, have you seen some of the broad head arrows on the market today? They are certainly able to murder up a deer pretty quick. But you know, deers are kinda easy to kill. Like when you hit them with a car, they usually die pretty quick, most of the time, anyway.
So we should be killing orcs with cars, got it. Where's Mater?
Cracked once again makes a *slips on shades* crack *removes* about the mortal peril of living in Australia. Awesome.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesAnd New Zealand?
No, we've really only got 2 deadly spiders in NZ (three if you count the ones hitching over from Aus). The native ones are so rare that if you get bitten by them, you deserve it because you actually went out looking for one.
It's the dinosaurs you've really got to watch out for.
Amemait you make me laugh
Hollywood doesn't exaggerate the dangers of gasoline. Movie explosions are practically harmless; "stay away from the fiery bit and you'll be fine". Thus, it balances out.
Reply Hide All See All 3 Repliesactually, you wouldn't be-the fiery bit is what would burn you-bad yes, but unlikely to kill you. What you should be worrying about is all the debris it sent flying outwards-shrapnel-which, after being launched by a goddamn explosion, will be flying pretty damn fast (though not as fast as a bullet in most cases, because guns focus the explosion to push in one direction, whereas your average explosion will just send s**t flying everywhere.). Now, thanks to sir Isaac Newton, that means, that that bit of rock half the size of your fist, is perfectly capable of penetrating say your skull, or snapping your spine clean in two, and royally f**k up your day. The good news is that if the explosion is powerful enough, the shock wave it sends through the air will knock you clean off your feet, usually to the ground, meaning that you'll have less target area to be hit by the shrapnel. But no matter what happens the sound will probably rupture your eardrums and send the red stuff leaking out of your ears.
And if the explosion's shockwave is _really_ intense, it can fuck up your internal organs all by itself.
you missed the point that a gasoline explosion in movie conditions won't kill you. Gasoline tends to deflagrate, rather than detonate, unless properly vaporized, oxidized, and contained at pressure. So there would be no shockwave. There would be no shrapnel. There is hot, burning gas attempting to rise. You can actually stand 10 feet from the outside of the radius of a gasoline (explosion) and be completely unharmed.