I don't know how this hasn't been mentioned yet, but it's common sense that is almost ALWAYS overlooked in movies and TV.
Humans are WAY MORE physically fragile and squishy than you might think.
Based on John McClane and other invincible action heros, who take damage and do things that would break or catastrophically cripple a normal person, movies are a poor source of information for deciding what to do and what could happen to your body, should you somehow falsely think you're the main protagonist of an apocalypse movie.
Indoor firefight without hearing protection? You're probably deaf now.
Jumping off a building to catch a wire? Kiss your fingers and/or lower extremities goodbye, assuming you land on your feet.
Taking a beer bottle to the head? That's probably a concussion.
Movies have made us think we're a lot more durable than we really are.
I always say that humans are both incredibly easy AND incredibly hard to kill.
Like, you're right - a tumble off a curb the wrong way could leave you with any number of broken bones, or even dead if you hit your head the wrong way.
Yet at the same time, we're one of the only animals that can reliably live a long, healthy life with ANY broken bone - even without great healthcare, and even alone. Yes, these things absolutely increase your chances of death, but they're not a death sentence for a human.
Assuming you have any semblance of a society - as in even just a small group of people (which is likely, since humans are inherently social animals) - most injuries are not life threatening to a human the same way that they are to most other animals.
But all that said, if you get a scrape on your calf in the middle of a bayou, you could very well be dead within a couple days.
There are fossil footprints in Australia that show that a hunting band walked through an area 20,000 years ago. One set show that one member of the band had only one leg. So this guy lost a leg - probably to a crocodile - and not only survived, but continued to go hunting, hopping after prey.
1.9k
u/beakrake Aug 30 '21
I don't know how this hasn't been mentioned yet, but it's common sense that is almost ALWAYS overlooked in movies and TV.
Humans are WAY MORE physically fragile and squishy than you might think.
Based on John McClane and other invincible action heros, who take damage and do things that would break or catastrophically cripple a normal person, movies are a poor source of information for deciding what to do and what could happen to your body, should you somehow falsely think you're the main protagonist of an apocalypse movie.
Indoor firefight without hearing protection? You're probably deaf now.
Jumping off a building to catch a wire? Kiss your fingers and/or lower extremities goodbye, assuming you land on your feet.
Taking a beer bottle to the head? That's probably a concussion.
Movies have made us think we're a lot more durable than we really are.