(Christmas music)
♪ Santa won't you hurry ♪
♪ Down the chimney tonight ♪
(gunshots, police radio chatter)
(music continues)
(policeman):
(gunshots)
(Jake): He got away!
Start a YouTube channel, talk about science. What could go wrong!
You know, I came here for a VSauce Christmas party,
before robbers held everyone up and ruined it.
Anyway, I was able to make off with this walkie-talkie.
So I can communicate with a police officer outside.
(policeman):
Uh, it's Ian, from SMOSH.
(Jake):
(chuckling) - It's my second job. Yeah...
AdSense isn't doing too great.
Got kicked out of Google Preferred.
- Still looking for a way out of here.
- Do you need me to shoot somebody?
(man):
If I don't get the codes I'm looking for,
it's not gonna be a Merry Christmas for you or the hostages.
(suspenseful music)
- Yeah, uh...
The bad guys are on the same frequency as myself and the police officer.
This dude is trying to mess up everyone's holiday, all for some codes.
- The codes, Jake. Tic-toc.
- Anyway, I'm Jake, and before I was crawling through an air vent,
I had two loves in my life: science and movies.
So, I decided to put myself in one of my favorite films, Die Hard,
to find out if you could survive it.
(explosion)
Could you survive a massive C4 detonation?
Dangling from a skyscraper?
Or plummeting ten meters ties to a fire hose?
Could you survive Die Hard?
(police radio chatter, sirens)
(Jake): Alright, we need to get out of this air vent,
so just a little bit more ways to go, I think.
(vent rumbling, debris falling) Ah, what's happening!
Oh boy!
(Jake groaning)
- Who are you? - (stuttering) I'm... a hostage.
You're one of them. You're a bad guy.
- Oh, no, no. I'm not the bad guy,
I'm here to help you. I'll put this away, I'm sorry about that. Don't worry.
- That was a really hard fall. Are you okay?
I mean, what made you think you could climb through an air vent?
- Oh, I didn't think I actually could, I was...
What makes you think that I can't? Just out of my own curiosity.
- Well, there are a few issues with using air ducts or ventilation shafts
to sneak around.
I mean one is that they are incredibly loud.
You'd have to move extremely carefully and slowly not to make any noise.
Second, they're not built to support the weight of a human.
They're built to support the weight of fans and air.
So the air duct would most likely bulge wherever you are,
making it easy to spot you. And then of course,
you've got the issue of it breaking, collapsing and you falling out,
just like what happened.
(Jake): Those are fair points, also they're generally small and too narrow
for a person to fit through, since their purpose is to push air, not people.
You know, I find your insight and knowledge of ventilation shafts to be incredibly...
trustworthy.
Why don't you take this gun and then follow me. I think I got a way out of here.
- He's on the 30th floor.
I'm gonna need those codes, Jake.
(suspenseful music) I'm gonna count to three.
One... Two...
Three.
(gun clicking)
- Ah... Derek. Did you really think I didn't know who you were?
I mean, I can't avoid your Shade Ball video on YouTube.
And also, why would I give you a loaded gun? One, that's very unsafe,
and two, to fire a gun on set requires a lot of safety measures and precautions--
- Well, that's just fine, because my men are on their way right now.
- Good point.
Ah!
Ha! Took your bag of C4, you jerk!
- You're running out of places to hide, Jakey boy!
(police sirens)
(Derek):
or I dispose of each and every hostage.
(scoffs) - You want the C4 and detonators?
- You got it, pal. -Jake! Don't give him the explosives!
We can negotiate!
God, I love Twinkies! (Jake):
Are you eating right now?
- Yeah. Just having a Twinkie. - Did you know an ingredient in Twinkies is cellulose gum,
which is also used to make rocket fuel?
- And, they take about 45 seconds to explode in the microwave.
- Are we doing Twinkie facts now?
- And in 1995, scientists at Rice University conducted a multitude of experiments
to determine the physical properties of Twinkies.
- Very true, Derek, and that project was called
Tests with Inorganic Noxious Kakes in Extreme Situations, or Twinkies for short.
- And they found that Twinkies expand to twice their size when in water.
- And, when they're pureed, they're pretty much just turned into air.
- Or that they could be dropped six stories without sustaining much damage at all.
- Twinkies are great.
- Surprisingly, this section of the episode is not sponsored by Twinkies,
it is just a callback to the Twinkie conversation from Die Hard.
Okay, back to what I was doing.
-
- You want 'em? You got 'em.
Welcome to the party, pal!
(explosion)
Oh, sh--
- Hey, buddy, that was a pretty big explosion.
Kill some people?
Bad guys, good guys? Are you dead?
- This is the kind of explosion that we see in the movie, but here's the thing...
C4 exploding does not create a giant fireball in real life.
Rather, it results in a large concussive blast
that causes damage through the pressure wave it generates.
We actually showed what that kind of pressure wave looks like
in our Mad Max episode.
(explosion)
So, if it was just a brick of C4,
it wouldn't have blown up an entire floor of a building in a fiery blast,
nor sent a fireball up an elevator shaft.
But C4 might not be the only explosive in play here.
In Die Hard, when the chair, CRT monitor, C4, and detonator contraption
hits its intended target, that concussive blast
might've detonated the cache of stinger missiles
that are right outside the elevator door.
In other words, a sympathetic detonation. Here, let me show you what I mean.
To examine a sympathetic detonation, we're dropping a chair,
laden with explosive detonators,
tied to a CRT monitor,
ten meters into a tub of propane gas.
Chosen because it is denser than air, and will sit at the bottom of that pool.
Toss it!
(man): Three, two, one,,,
(explosion)
(Jake): A sympathetic detonation is when the force of an initial explosion
triggers a secondary fuel source, creating a cascading explosive event.
The explosive detonators act as the initial explosion,
while the propane provides the secondary fuel source,
since it's illegal to purchase stinger missiles. Trust me, I tried.
When our Die Hard explosive rig slams into the ground,
the internal eruptions in our detonators ignite the pool of gas.
This is the same principle behind how a gun fires a bullet.
The firing pin strikes the primer,
which produces a small explosion,
igniting the primary fuel source: gun powder.
The force of that explosion propels the bullet out of the gun.
There's just one small problem.
The rockets, the missiles that are on the other side of that elevator
would not blow up because military grade rockets
are not really susceptible to concussive blasts.
But instead, fire and heat, that is what detonates it,
which we wouldn't have, because again, it's C4.
So the building would pretty much be okay.
But that didn't stop us from blowing up a scale model of Nakatomi Tower
for your enjoyment.
Because obviously, we couldn't detonate explosives in an actual skyscraper.
Also, we're not filming in a skyscraper.
Just like a good portion of Die Hard,
we're filming on a soundstage with a translight behind us.
Now, a translight is basically a giant photo with layers of opacity,
and a light passing through.
This, coupled with forced perspective and depth of field,
gives the illusion that we really are on the 42nd floor of a building.
Let's close this...
But still, we have to worry about Derek.
-
If you don't find him, we blow the top floors.
- Okay, that's not good, because that doesn't give me enough time
to run down the stairs to safety.
So, the only choice really...
...is to get onto the roof, wrap a hose around my waist, and jump off
like John McClane does.
But... is it the right choice?
To find out, we're gonna fall ten meters down,
which is the same distance John McClane did in the movie.
But instead of me doing it with a fire hose wrapped around my waist,
we're gonna be using our good old friend the ballistics dummy.
Good luck, my angel. (kisses)
The effects of jumping 10m with a fire hose tied around your waist
are rather...
... devastating.
The ballistics dummy absorbs all of the kinetic energy generated during its fall,
in that split second it hits the full extension of the rope.
And it's a lot of energy. About 78.4 kilo Newtons.
Six and a half times more than the maximum impact force a human body can withstand.
It's transmitted to the spine and the neck.
The spinal column is snapped, which allows the hose to tear through the body.
And then your neck snaps back with such a severe case of whiplash
that your head would rip off.
This could've been avoided if John McClane had jumped with a bungee cord,
because it would've absorbed and dissipated the impact force up the length.
That's why it stretches, similar to the ropes of a wrestling ring.
They are dynamic cords, with give and elasticity,
allowing for the transfer of the impact force.
Whereas a static cord like a fire hose...
... does not.
(wind blowing, sirens)
Whooo... Slow and steady.
Yippee ki-- - Hey!
Where did you come from?
- I obviously just came from my science lab.
- Science lab? Is that what you're calling those scissor lifts
and that empty soundstage?
You know, when I was doing my PhD-- - Derek.
Why you doing this?
- I'm just questioning your use of the term "science lab."
- No, why are you doing this, Derek, the whole explosion and hostage thing?
- Oh. That. Well, you know, the YouTube algorithm is stored right over here.
- Wait, so you're doing this all for the YouTube algorithm?
All the explosions, the hostage Christmas people thing?
- Yeah, pretty much.
- Why didn't you just talk to me?
- What, you can help? You mean, I don't have to break into this safe?
- Yeah, dude, you don't have to do that. We can game YouTube together.
Think about it, think about all the views we can get
in an effort to stave off our inevitable fade into obscurity.
- Oh, I should definitely be a part of that.
- It does sound pretty good. Alright. Let 'em all go!
We got what we came for.
- Buddy, we're gonna have a long, lustrous life ahead of us, full of success,
watch out for the window, there's no glass there.
- Whoa! - Very excited. Oh no, Derek!
- I got you, buddy! - Lift me up!
- Interestingly, in Die Hard, Holly McClane isn't trying to lift Hans,
but this moment does remind me of when John McClane lifts himself up
- in the ventilation shaft. - Whoa!
- That could never really happen because even if John was quick enough to catch himself,
stopping that much mass that quickly would've instantly broken his fingers,
and sent him plummeting to his death.
Isn't that interesting, Derek? Der... Oh no.
- Ahhh!
- Why you falling so slowly?
Okay, bud, I'm gonna...
I'm gonna go.
(Derek): Ahh!
(police radio chatter)
- Jake, my man. You did it. - We did it, buddy.
Also, has Derek come down yet?
- Oh no, I haven't seen him around. I wonder where-- (thudding)
Bet he wishes he was a Twinkie. (laughing)
- Oh, Ian. And as always. Thanks for watching!
(laughing)
- Murder. - Yeah, that's a dead guy.
- Yeah, he's murdered. - Hella dead.
On the next episode of Could You Survive The Movies?
Ah! Oh, what is that?
(thud) Oh!
- So you will die from suffocation before
anything else bad will happen to you.
- Just a warning, this footage is kind of gross.
Flamethrowers! Let's light this up!
- What the--
- Die! - No!