Gotta love the movies where someone is falling only to be caught by a superhero who has accelerated to ludicrous speeds to catch the fallen and intercepts their trajectory at 90° just before hitting the ground. So the victims goes from 150mph down to some crazy speed at a 90° vector to their original path after being slammed into by superhero.
They’re so dead.
But the superhero Suspension of Disbelief Field extends to secondary characters in the story.
You're not wrong but there is one thing: hitting the ground is an instantaneous impact with a hard surface. Being swooped in some direction is a relatively slower process - the swooper is softer than concrete, and the change in velocity is spread over a longer period of time (even if it's still "instantaneous" to the casual observer, it can be an "instant" 100 times longer than ground impact).
It's like landing on a mattress vs a hard floor - from a high enough height both are deadly, but I'd still pick the mattress.
I also assumed the swooper still decelerates you a little even if not by much. If you're falling at 50m/s as you are trying to slow your fall by taking a skydiver pose, and a superhero caches you midair, you could decelerate over half a second and stop moving within 12 meters while still only experiencing 10g.
12m is pretty tall but not insane in a superhero style piece of fiction where people may be dropped out the sky or from tall buildings. If you want to increase that g-force to the maximum survivable limit of near 100g (in theory), you'd only need to go from terminal velocity to 0m/s in 1.5 meters. Being reasonable, being caught 5 meters above the ground would be enough for most people to survive without major reprocussions, and is always better than hitting the ground.
Transformer movies were awful with this. Human falling hundreds of feet to the pavement. But wait! They'll hit a giant steel hand instead! Much better. Soft.
I guess technically this could work if the robot lowers the hand at the same speed they were falling and then decelerates gently, but I bet that's not what happens in these movies.
Isn't this the story of the original Gwen Stacy? Spiderman tries to save her, but does exactly this and the force on her body kills her anyway.
It's been a long, long time since I have read the comics but iirc, it was a defining point in the spiderman canon.
That's exactly what I thought when I was watching that scene with that superfast dude in X Men where he saves a bunch of people by carrying them away from an explosion. They must accelerate from 1 to 1000 km/h in a mere second.
The scene is still awesome, but I don't think anyone would be alive after that.
He would have created his own explosions just getting there either from the friction of moving all that air out of his way so he didn't collide with the atoms, or from the nuclear forces involved in colliding his atoms with the air's (and still creating a lot of friction in the process).
It would be like that light speed baseball pitch question and answer that ends up killing everyone in the stadium with a nuclear blast.
And Xavier would have done one of those himself in X2 when he freezes time at the mall... Maybe, actually I'm not clear if his ability is a time stop or if he did a mind control on everyone and made them stand still. There's another one like that in Logan, though Logan is able to fight through it, which kinda makes it even less clear exactly what he's doing. Powers!
It's like one of the opening scenes from The Boys.
splat
Sorry Lois Lane, superman just made you into a bony pink mist.
Was thinking of the Airplane Rescue, as Homelander breaks down why everyone's fucked no matter what they do.
Isn't it well known that if you're near Superman you"get" some of his powers. So him coming in to save you like this would be ok because you'd have some of his invincibility.
The cleanest explanation was that he's Superman because his powers give a psychokinetic field around his body that can absorb kinetic and other energy. It's what makes him invulnerable except for kryptonite that can just bypass and negate that field. It can also extend over other people so they can lift along and it can absorb the energy from the fall.
Alright, that's enough nerding out.
I believe there is the unified theory of Superman's powers where he actually has the ability to manipulate molecular structure of the object he touches.
He is shown picking up cruise ships and the ship doesn't split in two, that's because he's strengthening the structure and making it lighter as he lifts it.
He causes the air around him to thicken and squeeze him through the sky.
He causes the air touching his eye balls to turn into hot laser beams.
So when Supes catches a falling human, he instantly makes them invulnerable to the sudden stop
All this is done unconsciously on his part.
It is like the trope of the explosion behind the hero.
I mean if you catch the person like you catch an american football ball, it should greatly reduce the effect of the impact.
Moments before
What's the name of this comic and/or the artist. I recognize it from the fortune teller "I see you alone in an apartment with a lot of X... Jesus that's a lot of X" meme.
Largely true, but it's crazy what the difference of just a few feet of slowing down does (rather than zero feet of abrupt stopping) to acceleration forces. The crumple zone on a car only has to be 3 feet long to turn a 60mph crash from a fatality to a horrific injury.
Crumple Zone is the superhero we really need here. With thick arms and soft bones he can rush to the scene and turn sudden death into mere horrific imjuries.
Check out the absorption barriers on the edges of racetracks. They’re remarkably small for cars that could be hitting them at 100+ mph.
Of course, the cars themselves are also designed to save the driver but it’s the same concept.
Totally. Every next safety measure from airbags to seatbelts are about adding extra inches, rarely even full feet, and they are shockingly effective.
What's the old saying? It's not the fall that kills you, but the abrupt stop?
I disagree, the difference in deceleration from hitting concrete vs being caught could make a difference.
If Superman (or whoever) uses the remaining distance between you and the ground to reduce the impulse on your body. But they also have to be careful about their speed coming in to grab you, because they could easily substitute your impact with the ground for an impact with them.
See, that's how you know people here have never touched grass. Otherwise they'd know how big of a difference it makes to fall on grass vs concrete. All over a few mm of yield.
Also anecdotally I've seen videos of people catching falling children (back in the day in/r/DadReflexes). It works, empirically.
Penny: Yes, I know men can't fly.
Sheldon: No, no let's assume that they can. Lois Lane is falling, accelerating at an initial rate of 32ft per second, per second. Superman swoops down to save her by reaching out two arms of steel. Ms. Lane, who is now traveling at approximately 120 miles per hour, hits them, and is immediately sliced into three equal pieces.
Leonard: Unless Superman matches her speed and decelerates.
Sheldon: In what space, sir, in what space? She's two feet above the ground. Frankly, if he really loved her, he'd let her hit the pavement. It would be a more merciful death.
Superman should just fly completely under Lois, grab her and instantly match her speed, and crash through the concrete and the layers below (protecting her with his Super Bod), decelerating slowly enough that Lois is saved without harm.
Your forgetting about his Tactile Telekinesis.
My favorite thing like this, even though I love the movie, is The Iron Giant. His hand is fucking metal and he caught them like 6 ft before they hit the ground anyways.
The sheer amount of cardio in panel 2
This is why Gwen Stacy's death was so confusing to some people
Well in Spiderman's case Gwen would've survived if she was caught before. Spidey's web is stretchable so it would have decelerated her fall. It even stretched on catching her but she was too close to the floor and hit her head.
Is that in the movie? This is the image I have in my mind but I forgot that she hit her head. I think that's not the case in the comics IIRC. Instead it's unclear whether her neck was already snapped before she fell, or the late web catch caused the snap.
I read a fan theory somewhere that Superman's actual powers are matter manipulation, able to change things like densities, speed, and energy with just a touch. It was interesting to think about.
How does the light from a different star give him all those powers? The original story is that the gamma rays from our star feed his cells, giving him super strength and speed. His power creep over the decades has truly become ridiculous.
At one point, he had a power where he could create a mini version of himself from the palm of his hand. He had so many ridiculous powers, even the comic writers themselves went "hold on, we gotta get this shit under control."
What if he redirects the momentum by doing a cool flip
He needs to roll him. Redirect that energy by 90°
Spiderman knows this all to well
This is why all super heroes have inertial dampeners.
Incorrect. There are additional lateral acceleration forces due to SuperDude flying at the speed of sound to catch him. At least the sidewalk doesn’t need to be cleaned.
And so does the guy catching him
Also Billy now have two arms less than before.
The same forces but concentrated onto our heroes arms. Very efficient way to slice
The slicing forces would actually be helpful, because the resistance of the arms would spread the impulse out over a longer time period. So maybe you get decapitated, but your head doesn’t just instantly splat. So you get… a few seconds? more of life.
our hero's* arms
This begs the question for me - at terminal falling speed, what's the fastest you can decelerate to 0 and not sustain injury? And given that, how much more distance would you need to move?
Maybe a superhero can catch you, decelerate you to 0 over 3 inches and that's good enough?
Human terminal velocity is roughly 56 m/s. Let's say our superhero wants to decelerate the person at 10G, which should be survivable for a short period. That would be 0.6 seconds of deceleration over 48 m. That's a short time but quite a long distance, let's slow down faster:
20G -> 0.28 seconds, 24 m.
30G -> 0.19 seconds, 16 m.
50G -> 0.11 seconds, 9.6 m.
100G -> 0.057 seconds, 4.79 m.
200G -> 0.029 seconds, 2.45 m.
5000G -> 0.0011 seconds, 3.6 inches.
A 40 mph car crash in a modern car into a solid wall gives around 15G.
F1 driver David Purley survived a 180G crash in 1977.
In short, I don't recommend catching someone with 3 inches to spare.
Something is wrong with your distance formula by a factor of 4 (you should have D=1/2 * V_0^2 / a) . Not that it changes anything in your conclusions.
Wow. Good math. Thanks!
I came here looking for a The Boys comment about the plane, but noone talked about it 😓
