We've all seen movie characters escape from a lot of stuff: some of it almost believable, some of it downright silly. Other times, we see
characters unable to run away from things like the walking dead or a giant snake. Hollywood used to be a little better about realism because there
were real people who were running away from real dangers - like the good old days where they used real bullets and arrows during filming. The
frightened look on James Cagney's face as he's plastered against a wall in one of his gangster movies was not simply born of great acting but was the
result of a healthy dose of fear. Now, thanks to cheap computer graphics and better special effects, you no longer have to risk actors or their
loyal stunt doubles in situations with real pyrotechnics. Instead, you can show your actors scurrying for their lives as a looming
fiery/watery/muddy/temporal wave of death threatens to envelop them. Unfortunately, many recent directors have been greatly abusing these
techniques to introduce suspense and excitement to supplement the lack of story or substance in their movies. For example, the recent movie,
The
Time Machine, showed our heroes free-climbing up a 100 foot cliff and then racing to safety up a mountain to escape a large explosion. In
The Mummy Returns, a hero actually outruns the sunlight streaming over the horizon (really just outrunning the rotation of the earth). Just how unbelievable
are these feats of speed?
Here's a chart showing maximum speeds for some of the more common Hollywood hazards measured against the fastest speeds that an Olympic
level human can deliver (all in meters/second).
|
Killer Snail |
0.01 m/s |
|
Walking Dead |
0.8 m/s |
|
|
|
|
* Fastest Swimming Human |
2.3 m/s (Olympic record) |
|
Giant Snake (Black Mamba) |
3.0 m/s |
|
Swarm of Angry Killer Bees |
3.6 m/s |
|
Australian Freshwater Crocodile |
4.7 m/s |
| * Experienced Parachuting Human4 | 7.6 m/s |
|
Roadrunner |
6.7 m/s |
| Kangaroo1 | 6.9 m/s (loping) |
|
Lava Flow in Steep Channel |
9.1 m/s |
|
Rottweiler |
10.0 m/s |
|
|
|
|
* Fastest Human Running Speed |
10.2 m/s (Olympic record - 100 m dash) |
|
|
|
|
Tyranosaurus Rex |
11.1 m/s (likely best speed) |
|
African Bull Elephant |
11.2 m/s |
|
Great White Shark |
11.2 m/s (swimming) |
|
Killer Whale |
13.4 m/s (swimming) |
|
German Shepherd |
14.2 m/s |
|
Lion/Tiger/Bear |
15-17 m/s |
| Thrown Knife (top speed)5 | 15.7 m/s |
|
Tornado |
15-26 m/s |
|
Rabbit |
16.0 m/s (non-vorpal) |
|
Landslide/Mudslide |
16.0 m/s (max) |
|
Velociraptor |
16.7 m/s (15 second burst) |
|
Coyote |
17.9 m/s (short distances) |
|
A Duck |
17.9 m/s (flying) |
|
Ostrich |
19.4 m/s (not-flying) |
| Kangaroo1 | 19.4 m/s (frantic and panicking) |
|
Car going 45 mph |
20.0 m/s |
|
* Human on Skis downhill |
30-40 m/s |
| Cheetah3 | 32 m/s |
|
90 mph baseball pitch |
40.0 m/s |
|
Stone from Commercial Slingshot |
42.5 m/s |
|
Crossbow Bolt |
45.7 m/s |
|
An Avalanche of Snow |
48.0 m/s (near base) |
|
Peregrine Falcon2 |
51.1 m/s (diving) |
| * Human Falling at Terminal Velocity4 | 60 m/s |
|
Arrow from 84 lb Compound bow |
84.3 m/s |
|
Boeing 747-400 Take-Off speed |
92.6 m/s |
|
Small Meteorite |
138 m/s |
|
Wall of Rushing Water |
139 m/s |
| * Human Free-Falling Record4 | 142 m/s |
|
1929 Biplane |
147 m/s |
|
Bullet(.45 Auto 230 Grain FMJ) |
246 m/s |
|
Speed of Sound |
340 m/s |
|
Bullet(.357 Mag 158 Grain Led) |
381 m/s |
|
12 gauge shotgun pellets |
411 m/s |
|
Rotation of Earth |
482 m/s |
|
F-15 |
715 m/s (max velocity) |
|
|
|
|
Surface-to-Air Missile (Russian SA-2) |
1180 m/s |
|
Shockwave of an Explosion Underwater |
1020 m/s |
|
Shockwave of an Explosion in Air |
2380 m/s |
|
250,000 ton Arizona Crater meteorite |
16000 m/s |
|
|
|
|
Speed of Light |
300,000,000 m/s |
Awarded the Illuminated Site of the Week on June 27, 2004
Credits for contributions and suggestions:
1 Jason Sinclair - For the
"I-can-do-this-for-hours" and
"oh-crap-something-wants-to-eat-me" kangaroos (6/30/04)
2 Breton Veach - Corrected the
stoop speed of a peregrine falcon (originally listed on this page as 89.4 m/s)
by citing a 1998 article from a Swiss scientist - Dr.
Matthias Kestenholz - (6/17/04)
3 Greg Collver - Asked that the
cheetah be added to the page. (6/21/04)
4 Richard
Jones - I found this link through Jason Sinclair's email. Richard seemed a
bit grumpy on his blog that I didn't account for falling humans so I added
numbers for falling humans. (6/30/04)
5 The Rev. Dr. David R. Adamovich, aka The
Great Throwdini told me the following: "A knife thrown by either the handle or blade will tumble through the air as does a pin-wheel
between 30 and 35 mph. 35 mph has been clocked by a top ranked competitive thrower who, in his
younger days claims to have thrown a baseball at 90 mph. For that experiment he was
instructed to throw the knife with "all he had" and only to stick it without reference to hitting a bulls eye.
Normal competitive throwing is between 28 and 32 mph. Clearly the physics of each projectile
differs significantly. The treatise is referenced within my site, http://www.knifethrower.com.
For the record, I am a professional knife thrower, a world champion and the world's fastest knife
thrower (as it relates to frequency, not speed. I have been recorded throwing a hand full of
knives at 2/second, i.e. 0.5 seconds/knife). The Wheel of Death, for example, is usually performed
by professional throwers at about 0.65 seconds/knife." (12/27/04)
