Holy shit, its real. This just seemed to dumb to be true.
Wait, your link says it’s not real. I mean, the challenge is real but 4 people haven’t died. They mention two deaths in Alabama that occurred before the challenge was a thing.
https://www.wvtm13.com/article/alabama-boat-jumping-tiktok/44494914
I was surprised how low the number was when assuming it was fake with the instantly snapped necks phrasing.
People really have no idea how dangerous fast moving vehicles can be.
Random internet search says it takes 1000-1250 foot pounds of torque to break a neck.
A 200 pound person only has to fall 5 feet to make that happen. When you factor in the additional speed, the less controlled angles, and probably drinking, it’s shocking the number of deaths isn’t higher.
I’m not sure how you arrived at this conclusion but the math is wrong. Did you just multiply 200 pounds by 5 feet and arrived at 1000 footpound? Your units don’t work at all. A weight under a certain acceleration falling for a specific distance has a certain amount of kinetic energy (E=mgh). Energy =/= Torque.
I was a bit surprised to hear “victims broke their necks instantly,” so I was hoping for someone else to do some math to back it up. Sigh…
Assuming ≈1000 ft/lbs to break a neck, and a 220 lb 6’10" person (so we can exclude the head to get ≈ 200 lb 6’), if it were possible for them to keep their body completely rigid, simply laying them horizontal, only supported by their head in a fixed orientation, would produce ≈ 600 ft/lbs (CoM 3’ from the moment) on the neck. Which is actually a surprising testament to the strength of the human neck.
The actual math for determining the torque on the neck from a worst-case scenario of a person jumping off a moving boat and hitting the water head-first with a stiff vertical posture is a bit above my pay grade. You’d have to calculate the resistance of the water over time as the head makes contact and starts deflecting, vs how much of that force gets transferred to the body and starts to rotate it towards the water.
But just conceptually, doesn’t make a ton of sense to me, as someone with a fair amount of experience with hitting the water at high speed; I used to barefoot water ski. Sucks hitting the water that fast, but the worst injury I’ve sustained is a ruptured ear drum.
The article did warn you it was Alabama. It could have been Arkansas, except they sold their boats for meth.
“Inertia is a property of matter”
Did none of these people watch Bill Nye??
Even if they did, most people don’t really grok what that means. Most people’s mental models for reference frames are intertial and without transition, so the idea that they’re still travelling at the speed of the boat, say, when they hit the water, and not the speed of the water, doesn’t make intuitive sense to them.
They left the boat. To them, that means they’re no longer moving with the boat.
I’m not so sure about this. If we apply the same logic to cars, it’s immediately obvious that almost everyone understands this concept quite well – jumping out of a moving car is dangerous, precisely because you’ll be moving when you hit the ground.
I think they’re underestimating how quickly the boat is moving, and how quickly you’ll slow down when you hit the water.
People understand you’d get hurt jumping out of a moving car (even still, people sometimes try it) but often underestimate the amount of force a vehicle moving at various speeds can apply. Huge difference between 30 mph and 60 mph.
Won’t jump out of a car at 50 miles an hour will jump from a speed boat doing 50 because water is wet and you will fall through it and be safe
If there’s anything I’ve learnt from video games, then it’s that water is always safe, no matter how much speed you fall with.
If there’s anything I’ve learnt from slamming my own waterski’s snout into the back of my head and being sown at hospital with 11 stings, then it’s that water is very much not soft at high speeds and water resistance is a bitch.
Maybe I’m entering the cranky old women yelling at kids to get off her lawn phase of my life-- but why are all the TikTok challenges always something ridiculously dangerous? (Emphasis on “ridiculous”)
China wants Americans to die in the most absurd ways possible. /s
I wouldnt be suprised if the algorithm pushed it a lil bit more. China has there own for a reason.
This is known informally as “thinning the herd”.
Im not a fan of the whole Darwin Award thing, but these people would have died in some dumb way like this either way. Just a matter of time.
absolutely crazy people don’t think things like this through.
This is worthy of Darwin awards
Just let natural selection run it’s course ffs
