Hey Vsauce, I'm Jake and we know that Pokemon are deadly.
Some are 1.7 times hotter than the surface of the sun, others could blow a hole through
you with water jets, but thankfully there is one Pokemon who is completely useless and
could never possibly kill you...Pokemon #129
Magikarp.
Magikarp has the ability to leap a mountain.
And fish jumping out of the water isn't that uncommon.
The Silver Carp, also known as the flying carp can leap 10 to 15ft...and is actually
pretty dangerous.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, reported injuries from Silver Carp
range from black eyes to broken jaws, noses, ribs and even getting knocked completely unconscious.
Unfortunately for you, our fish isn't just able to leap 15ft, no it is able to clear
a mountain and since there is no universally accepted definition for the height of a mountain
we'll go with one of the UN's requirements that it have an elevation of at least 8,200ft.
So now we have Magikarp, a 22lb fish falling from a height of 8,200ft and right below it
is your head.
Because of air resistance Magikarp's terminal velocity, the speed at which the air pushing
and gravity pulling reach an equilibrium, would be around 131.2ft/s...about the speed
of a fastball...a 22lb fastball.
When Magikarp hits you, it's doing so with enough pressure to crack concrete.
So your jaw, nose, your face would break in multiple places and your skull would probably
fracture which is not good.
But that might not kill you, what would kill you is how fast your head would accelerate
immediately after impact, the g-force.
Col. John Stapp, dubbed "the fastest man on Earth", set out to find the amount of g-force
a human body could take and the effects.
Stapp and his team built a rocket sled capable of withstanding 100gs and, on the very first
test, sent a dummy at a speed of 150mph then hit the brakes.
The dummy was subjected to 30g's, snapping the seatbelt and flying through a wooden screen
finally slamming into the ground 710ft away.
Stapp then tested the sled out himself on numerous occasions.
He cracked his ribs, broke his wrists, went unconscious a few times and even lost a few
fillings in this teeth.
On his final attempt, his sled was stopped in 1.4 seconds, subjecting him to 46.2g's,
making his body weigh almost 4 tons.
He was barely conscious and the capillaries in his eyes exploded causing a redout.
Luckily his eye balls weren't ejected from his head and a few hours later he regained
his sight...but here's the thing, 1g is you just standing on the planet, existing.
3.5g-6.3g is a drop on a roller coaster, 9-12g's is your typical fighter jet, 50-75g's is serious
injury or death, then we get to 214g's and race car driver Kenny Bräck which is the
most g-force anyone has ever survived.
And now we go to around 400g's which is how many your head would be experiencing.
When Magikarp hits your face, that 22lb fish is now more like 881lbs, and it goes from
131ft/s to roughly 0 in an incredibly short amount of time, so that impulse, that change
in momentum transfers into you.
Your neck would snap back and, most likely, snap.
Your brain would probably slam so hard against the inside of your skull that it would turn
to mush, all resulting in your fishy death.
But lets get a little extreme.
Lets say there is no air resistance to slow Magikarp down.
Now Magikarp would be hurdling towards you at 726ft/s.
5.5 times faster than before with the potential energy equal to 408 9mm bullets.
It takes about 224lbs of force to tear human muscle, even less to tear flesh, and the fish
that's about to hit your face now weighs about 2.4 tons.
To help visualize here is a clip from Mythbusters where they sent a steel girder travelling
65mph into a human sized dummy...
Obviously the girder weighs a bit more than a fish, but it helps paint the picture.
Upon impact to your head, well, your head would likely be knocked off your body, maybe
a few bits of muscle would be keeping it literally hanging on, and your eyes and brain would
come out of whatever orifices were open.
It...would be messy.
If Magikarp were to hit your chest at that speed instead of your head it would likely
be similar to Blowing from a Gun.
It was an execution technique used from the 16th to 20th century where the accused would
be strapped to a cannon with their back against the muzzle.
The cannon would then be fired and there body would be ripped apart, limbs flying in every
direction.
Either way that Magikarp hits you, be it at 131ft per second or 726 your chances of survival
are pretty low because, as it turns out, leaping over a mountain...it's super effective.
But take solace in knowing that for magikarp, it would be a kamikaze mission because his
body would turn into chum...which would look similar to your face...and, as always, thanks
for watching.