Are movie survival situations realistic?

Movies love to exaggerate things to make them more interesting or exciting, and although it can make the movie better they don’t always give out the best advice. If you copied what people do in the movies during a real survival situation you’d probably die most of the time, so are movie survival situations realistic?

Here are a few of the most commonly seen survival situations in movies and whether they are possible or not.

1) Getting sucked under quicksand

When the unsuspecting character steps onto a patch of quicksand they slowly sink until getting completely covered, only to sometimes be pulled out at the last moment by the hero who grips them single-handedly and with one mighty tug pulls them right out.

This myth couldn’t be more wrong for two reasons. First of all the human body is less dense than quicksand is so it wouldn’t be possible to become completely submerged, with the lowest point you could sink to being halfway up your chest.

The next reason is that the amount of force needed to simply pull someone out would be much more than any human could provide, and if someone was up to their chest and had a rope around their hand attached to a truck, it would most likely just rip a limb off instead of gently sliding them out. If you’re ever going to be in an area that is likely to have this natural danger, then you should learn how to escape from quicksand.

2) Jumping off a huge cliff into a river

There have been many characters that evade capture by running through the trees and coming across a cliff with water at the bottom, only to jump at the last second and survive the fall. After gently washing up a short distance downriver they get out and walk away like nothing happened.

This one is actually possible but highly dangerous and would more often than not lead to death. Jumping from anything higher than 30 feet starts to get dangerous, and jumping from anything above 50 feet can be fatal. The World High Diving Federation recommends no one should dive from more than 20 meters (65.5 feet) or above unless professional rescue divers are in the water below. Most movies that feature a huge cliff jump normally have something well above 100 feet to make it look extra dangerous, but anything of this height would only be possible for the most highly experienced professional divers and even then could result in death.

The problem is that when you’re traveling through the air so fast the water becomes harder to break through with an object that has a large surface area, and as speed increases so does the impact force. If you dive from too high with so much as a finger sticking out too far, the water could bend it right back and easily break it. Most people who don’t land perfectly normally get knocked out and drown, and that’s if they are lucky enough to be diving into water deep enough in the first place.

3) Getting washed over a waterfall

For some reason, people in movies don’t seem to notice millions of gallons of water washing over a huge cliff with an intense roaring noise you can hear from more than a mile away until it’s within spitting distance. They of course get washed over and after a quick rinse end up on the banks 20 feet from the bottom.

Waterfalls are one of the places that it’s recommended people never dive in. The constant water falling on the same spot would seem like it should carve out a deep pool someone could dive in, but in reality, waterfalls are constantly eroding and moving slowly back, washing rocks and breaking off large chunks as they go, all falling into the pool.

Normally on the bigger waterfalls, there are small stones and pieces of wood constantly washing around in the fall pool, and even if you did survive the fall the chances of getting cut up are quite high. The other problem would be the extra depth you would gain from the water pushing you down, which could lead to you breaking your legs on the bottom. There is the possibility of surviving a trip over a waterfall, but it would be purely down to luck if you did it without getting hurt.

4) Jumping into the sea from a cliff

Used in movies in the same way as jumping into a river, but surely the sea would be much deeper and safer. It is indeed deeper, but not right at the point where the cliff touches the water. Cliffs are not formed by running vertically into the sea, immediately giving a good distance under the water until the sea bed starts, but rather by sloping out as soon as they touch the water.

If you jumped off a cliff you’d just end up getting wet before crushing your legs on a load of sharp rocks a few feet under the surface. There is the chance that there wouldn’t be rocks, such as on cliffs made of limestone or ones that meet the end of a channel in the sea, but most of the time you’ll end up with a slope.

Even if you did make the fall uninjured you’re now floating at the bottom of a cliff with no way of getting out the water while being bashed against the jagged rocks by the waves. If you managed to not get knocked out/ cut to pieces/ pulled under and drowned/ sucked out to sea with the tide and also happened to be an Olympic class swimmer then you might just have a chance of surviving.

5) You can survive a central Antarctica-class blizzard in a hoody

Too many movies show people wandering out into a storm to look for something or to investigate a noise, and most of the time they do this wearing basic clothing. The movies always try and make the blizzard look as bad as possible and bring in giant fans to blow fake snow around, but the levels they try and create in the films wouldn’t allow the characters to act like they do if it was a real blizzard.

In a blizzard of -50°C with 50mph winds, you would experience flash freezing, which is basically instant frostbite. Regular clothing like jeans, hooded tops, and standard jackets would protect you about as much as rubbing your hands together, with someone lasting no more than a few minutes until they passed out and froze.

Here are some bonus tips for surviving a movie:

• If you hear a noise coming from your basement after the power has gone out and people have disappeared, get the hell out of there immediately via the nearest exit.

• If a load of your friends have been killed by a monster and you hear a noise coming from a nearby bush, don’t stand there and look at it curiously, but instead run like a gazelle.

• When you aren’t sure where the monster is and you hear something literally right behind your head, don’t turn around very slowly and scream. Just whip your head back as fast as you can and hope you break its nose before again, running like a gazelle. (not recommended on monsters with horns or big teeth)

• For god’s sake remember to charge your phone, and a spare battery wouldn’t hurt.

• Try to befriend someone who looks tastier than you, another tactic is to befriend the most overweight person you can find, as there’s a very high chance they won’t be able to run faster than you.

• If you see a creepy dark entrance with strange noises coming out of it and a bloody drag mark leading into it, there’s a good chance that going inside is not going to end well.

• Pick up a damn weapon and hold onto it, and not something stupid like a pair of scissors or the smallest knife you can find. Ripping off a table leg to use as a baseball bat or grabbing the meat cleaver out of the kitchen draw will serve you better than running through rooms of your house aimlessly.

• If you have to run out of the house wearing nothing but a bath towel before running through dark woodland, know that you will definitely fall over an obviously placed log, causing your towel to slip slightly and giving the monster a chance to catch up.

Hopefully, these tips will help you the next time you are magically teleported into the middle of a movie scenario, which is a growing issue these days. Just think run like a gazelle and fight like a crazy Viking, and you should be fine. Oh, and charge your phone.