hello
i'm tyler this is the imaginary axis and
guys
i get it we're all tired of seeing
spider-man's origin story
i mean how many times does uncle ben
have to die
kid visits a science exhibit gets bitten
by a radioactive spider becomes a
superhero we've heard it all before
but did you know there was more to that
story that simply getting
bitten by an unlucky spider isn't enough
to make you go from this
to this certain variations have
suggested that since the spider was
crawling around in a science exhibit
it was part of a study itself a
genetically engineered super spider that
carried a powerful retrovirus capable of
spreading from cell to cell in peter's
body
and eventually becoming ingrained in his
dna
other stories have suggested that peter
actually had a rare dormant gene caused
by celestial experiments on early
mankind
when he was bitten by this fighter
something about that radioactive venom
activated those genes and turned him
into spider-man
still other stories suggest that the
spider bite was magical and peter was
actually chosen to become spider-man by
an extra dimensional spider deity but no
matter which version of this story you
buy into they're all trying to fix
the same basic problem spider-man
is too strong according to the
old-fashioned
unexpanded unedited conventional origin
story when peter was bitten by that
spider he gained spider-like senses
speed and strength while an ordinary
human might be able to lift four times
their weight
if they're really really good some
spiders can lift up to
50 times their weight meaning if a
teenager of peter's size had the
proportional strength of a spider
he'd be capable of lifting up to 8 350
pounds or about the weight of two cars
stacked on top of each other
that's some impressive work but it
really doesn't make a lot of sense
because of something called the square
cube law
take a look at spider-man's arm here we
all know that as someone gets stronger
their muscles increase in height and
width
but not length that would be weird in
other words their strength increases by
a square
a buffer spider-man wouldn't necessarily
be taller
he would just have more surface area but
if we wanted spider-man to grow in
general his volume would increase by
height width and length like cube
as an organism grows it gets bigger
faster than it gets stronger
meaning spiders don't lift up to 50
times their weight because their muscles
are better than ours
they lift up to 50 times their weight
because they're tiny
if they were scaled up to peter parker's
size they'd just be about as strong as
an average human
scale them up even further and they'd
eventually collapse under their own
weight
but spider-man stands in blatant
defiance of that rule
he lifts things up to 50 times his size
as though he were an inch tall
or smaller i mentioned earlier that
eight thousand pounds was impressive
and it is eight times the world record
but spidey can do
way better than that here he is lifting
a massive chunk of cement blown straight
from the side of a building
and here he is just lifting a building
or supporting one section of it anyway
it was a big building
here spider-man lifts a train car while
enraged
the average train car weighs about 20
tons or 40 000 pounds so that's
240 times his weight at this point we're
getting
way stronger than a spider should be one
time he
literally knocked scorpion's jaw off
with a single punch
and in another story this private jet
was falling out of the sky
so spider-man just goes outside forces
the landing gear down and supports the
weight of the entire plane
on his back being a nerd like me he even
calculates the struggle in his head
landing weight over 75 000 pounds
full-on fuel
add another 30 to 40 000. combined with
thrust and
spider-man is supporting over 115
000 pounds in this panel
that's and a half tons
at this point not only is spider-man
holding up nearly 689 times his weight
but it's the equivalent of supporting
eight african elephants at once
the largest land animal on earth or six
t-rex
whichever you prefer spider-man spot
dinosaurs before
but interestingly enough despite his
amazing strength
one of the most iconic spider-man
moments of all time
was about him struggling to lift
something
if this be my destiny is a classic story
arc written by stan lee and illustrated
by steve ditko
it acted as one of the earliest powerful
dramas in comic book history
when peter parker's adoptive mother aunt
may suffered a mysterious illness
apparently caused by an earlier blood
transfusion between her and peter
and sadly the doctors tell him she
probably won't make it
peter does everything he can of course
contacting some experts and even
managing to raise money for a possible
cure but a necessary ingredient gets
stolen by a super villain
while on route to delivery this makes
him
furious spider-man isn't going to have
this aunt may's blood will not be on his
hands
so he tracks down the super villain
responsible in
an underwater base because why not
and the two face off in a battle so
intense that they actually collapse the
support beam
for the base's iron interior oops
you see you can't have a base under
water without making it out of something
that can
withstand the pressure underwater
nearly the entire upper section
collapses on spider-man
the villain runs for his life and the
penultimate issue of this story
ends with spider-man trapped beneath an
unmovable iron surface
as water slowly starts to fill in from
above
this is the cover for that story's
conclusion beaten
weak his aunt's life hanging by a thread
his own life measured in minutes as the
ceiling begins to break
spider-man can't even budge the heavy
debris he's trapped under
and the one thing that can save his only
family is
just out of his reach because he
couldn't control his temper
because he made the ceiling collapse
aunt may is sick because of his
radioactive blood
and as peter laments his tragedy he can
almost see
his aunt and uncle beside him it always
came back to him
he was the one who let uncle ben's
killer get away and he was
not going to be responsible for another
death
so with every muscle in his body
spider-man
starts to stand up and it should be too
much for him
it might be too much for him his head is
pounding
his eyes are blacking out that stuff was
keeping the ocean out
but anyone can win when the odds are
easy
it's when the going gets tough when
there seems to be no chance
that's when it counts limits are a
liability
i have two different proposals for what
happened in this scene
proposal one by comparing the iron layer
to spider-man's size we can determine
that there are about 37 peter's worth of
iron visible in this panel
assuming the metal's width is roughly
equal to peter's height and there's not
much extra iron off panel
this would put the iron's weight at a
rough 24 tons
sure he's done more impressive things
since but maybe he's been working out
and proposal 2 while the hunk of iron is
falling on spider-man he estimates
that it must weigh more than a
locomotive hyperbole
probably but he is a super genius he's
made rough estimates of heavy things
while lifting them since and we never
see the full extent of the metal he's
trapped under
so giving him the benefit of the doubt
the most common locomotive in north
america in 1965 was the
emd gp9 locomotive
weighing in at 129.8
tons far more weight than anything else
we've described today
but again he was really pushing his
limits when he lifted this thing
now i know some of you are probably
thinking tyler come on spider-man can't
lift 130 tons
you just told us that less than half of
that was like lifting eight african
elephants
i mean why even bring it up for
comparison
because i just wanted to point out that
in spider-man homecoming
peter parker actually manages to hold
this entire ferry together
for at least a few seconds we can see in
this scene that the vessel's name is
spirit of america
and that's a real fairy that you can
actually ride between staten island and
manhattan
according to george g sharp incorporated
the company that designed the ferry
it weighs 3 200 tons so in this scene
spider-man is holding together 1 600
tons of metal
with each hand that's over 45
390 times his body weight or
over 21 blue whales the largest animal
to ever exist
this peter parker would be the strongest
thing
on our planet so the next time somebody
tells you that spider-man can
do whatever a spider can tell them to
give him a little more credit
he's nothing short of amazing
so thank you for watching this video you
know i think we might need to give
spider-man an award for being like
the first superhero ever who's stronger
in the movie than he is in the comic
i'm not forgetting anyone am i if i am
let me know in the comment section
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momentarily and again
special thanks for waiting it out to the
end
but just because you can beat him up
doesn't give you the right to
remember with great power comes great
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