Savior [Light Roast]

Gotta love the movies where someone is falling only to be caught by a superhero who has accelerated to ludicrous speeds to catch the fallen and intercepts their trajectory at 90° just before hitting the ground. So the victims goes from 150mph down to some crazy speed at a 90° vector to their original path after being slammed into by superhero.

They’re so dead.

But the superhero Suspension of Disbelief Field extends to secondary characters in the story.

Moments before

Largely true, but it's crazy what the difference of just a few feet of slowing down does (rather than zero feet of abrupt stopping) to acceleration forces. The crumple zone on a car only has to be 3 feet long to turn a 60mph crash from a fatality to a horrific injury.

I disagree, the difference in deceleration from hitting concrete vs being caught could make a difference.

Penny: Yes, I know men can't fly.

Sheldon: No, no let's assume that they can. Lois Lane is falling, accelerating at an initial rate of 32ft per second, per second. Superman swoops down to save her by reaching out two arms of steel. Ms. Lane, who is now traveling at approximately 120 miles per hour, hits them, and is immediately sliced into three equal pieces.

Leonard: Unless Superman matches her speed and decelerates.

Sheldon: In what space, sir, in what space? She's two feet above the ground. Frankly, if he really loved her, he'd let her hit the pavement. It would be a more merciful death.

My favorite thing like this, even though I love the movie, is The Iron Giant. His hand is fucking metal and he caught them like 6 ft before they hit the ground anyways.

The sheer amount of cardio in panel 2

This is why Gwen Stacy's death was so confusing to some people

I read a fan theory somewhere that Superman's actual powers are matter manipulation, able to change things like densities, speed, and energy with just a touch. It was interesting to think about.

Spiderman knows this all to well

What if he redirects the momentum by doing a cool flip

This is why all super heroes have inertial dampeners.

And so does the guy catching him

Incorrect. There are additional lateral acceleration forces due to SuperDude flying at the speed of sound to catch him. At least the sidewalk doesn’t need to be cleaned.

Also Billy now have two arms less than before.

The same forces but concentrated onto our heroes arms. Very efficient way to slice

This begs the question for me - at terminal falling speed, what's the fastest you can decelerate to 0 and not sustain injury? And given that, how much more distance would you need to move?

Maybe a superhero can catch you, decelerate you to 0 over 3 inches and that's good enough?

I came here looking for a The Boys comment about the plane, but noone talked about it 😓