this is episode 123 of The Twilight Zone
nightmare at 20,000 feet arguably one of
the most iconic episodes of the show
ever made it stars William Shatner as a
portrait of a frightened man mr. Robert
Wilson Bob sees a gremlin on the wing of
the plane and decides the only possible
solution to the problem is to steal the
air marshals gun open the emergency exit
and shoot the thing clearly this scene
is complete fantasy and I'm not talking
about the gremlin there are a couple of
reasons why you can't open an airplane
door mid-flight
the first being it's locked but there's
another big factor that the twilight
zone seems to ignore and that's physics
let's consult our first completely
reliable source the episodes IMDB goofs
page it says the plane Shatner's flying
in is either a twin-engined convair or a
four-engine douglas dc-6 or dc-7
all of which would have been pressurized
the higher a plane flies the lower the
air pressure outside and the lower the
air pressure the harder it is to breathe
that's because the air is thinner the
higher you go the molecules are
literally farther apart so there are
fewer oxygen molecules in every breath
you breathe and less pressure defusing
that oxygen into your bloodstream
over 18,000 feet above sea level and our
bodies just aren't able to absorb enough
to keep us functioning
that's why planes are pressurized to
mimic conditions about 8,000 feet above
sea level it's a nice middle ground that
lowers the oxygen in our blood by only
about 4 percent which is not enough to
really affect how we function modern
airlines fly at about 36,000 feet above
sea level if they weren't pressurized it
would cause delirium in seconds and
knock you out in under a minute and the
difference between the inside of the
plane and the outside can be huge which
is exactly where the doors come in
inside the cabin eight pounds of
pressure push against every square inch
of surface area the typical passenger
door is about six feet tall by three and
a half feet wide so
looking at more than 24,000 pounds of
pressure bearing down on that exit the
strongest man alive can deadlift only
1102 pounds but wait you scream at your
computer screen this nightmare was at
20,000 feet not 36,000 the pressure
would be lower you're right but there's
no need to yell the pressure would be
lower but still too much for a person to
overcome even William Shatner and the
door flying out into the inky black
practically impossible on a modern plan
most passenger doors are tapered the
inner edge being wider than the outer
it's called a plug door and it basically
acts like a bathtub drain stopper
working the hole without falling through
but what if someone on your plane had
Shatner's superhuman strength it could
cause something called explosive
decompression and it's the one thing the
twilight zone got mostly right during an
Aloha Airlines flight in 1988 a piece of
the fuselage tore loose at 24,000 feet
leaving blue sky where the first-class
ceiling had been according to the
captain the chief flight attendant was
instantly sucked out of the plane
through that gaping hole explosive
decompression happens infrequently but
it does happen a rip in the plane wall
of window cracks it doesn't matter the
cause the huge pressure difference
creates a vacuum capable of shooting
anything up to a thousand pounds out
into the sky and that vacuum effect
would last until the pressure inside the
cabin matched the pressure outside so
Shatner made a good call buckling
himself in before opening that emergency
exit
if you don't live in the twilight zone
your chances of pulling open an airplane
door mid-flight are just as good as
seeing a gremlin on the way so the next
time you start getting nervous about it
just remind yourself I'm gonna be all
right