Could You Survive Just Cause 4's Grappling Hook? 

Thanks for watching! This one was a lot of fun. Get your nerdiest comments in, in time for the next Footnotes. It's been a hell of a year so far, and I'm working on something right now that should blow your mind early next year. Stay tuned! -- kH

Challenge accepted! Just kidding. Though I am aiming for 2.5-3m/s, so twice as fast as the Atlas!

Kyle: "Could you survive Just Cause 4's grappling hook?" Me, a big fan of Just Cause: "Hell no."

I’d love to see kyles take on the Titanfall 2 grappling hook ability! That one, while still unrealistic, seems much more grounded in physics and it even takes into account gravity. Also since you’re in a suit it does seem at least slightly practical.

video idea: how fast must santa claus travel to deliver all presents to all kids on earth?

I think my favorite thing about the Just Cause grappling hook is the impossible physics in doing a freefall from a jet, no parachute, then grappling the ground and pulling yourself down even faster to land safely, only because grappling hook.

What about an exoskeleton style rig from your "grappling arm" going across the rest of your body. So the force would be more distributed rather than just ripping your tendies out...

Suggestion for a video: Is it possible to redirect an arrow/bolt back at a shooter using a sword like Geralt in the Witcher games?

In theory? No, mythbusters did the bullet fired-bullet dropped, and got the timing perfect and in reality a bullet fired does hit the ground at the same time as a bullet dropped.

So basically the Adam West version grappling up a buidling would be the most practical out of all incarnations of Batman

Kyle should do a video about what would happen if you're heart grew three sizes like in the Grinch for Christmas

The first time you dropped the marker, assuming it stopped moving when you started going down to pick it up and assuming it didn't make a sound cause it fell on something soft, it fell for 110 frames or 4.583 seconds. If we use the equation for freefall we get 105.035 meters of distance. When you started going down to pick it up you went the same distance in 20 frames or 0.83 seconds if we assume you weren't moving in the cut. Going 105 meters in 0.83 seconds you need an average speed of 126 m/s which you seem to acquire in 8 frames or 0.3 seconds putting a G-force of 42gs on your body. The answer to everything truly is 42 :D also, you should be dead from that much gs ;)

Well, time to mess with the human genome to make us durable enough to be Rico or Batman....

There are like 40 different things you could make a Because Science video about in Just Cause, and we go for the grappling hook. Not even how the wires are capable of pulling things together all by themselves. I am only complaining because I want MORE Just Cause Because Science episodes XD

“Because Duh, and also Science” 😂

6:15 Would have been funnier if when you dropped the marker it would come back from above, Because Void.

Why can you survive the grappling hook in Just Cause 4, you ask? Easy,... ...just cause.

*pulls out DnD 5th edition rulebook to look up grappling rules*

Just a small correction. When calculating the acceleration that Rico experiences, you use his average velocity as his max velocity, but that is only the case when he doesn't accelerate to get to his average velocity. If you assume he starts at ~0 m/s and accelerates for ~0.88 s (based on your calculation), his max velocity is ~53 m/s and he experiences close to 5,000 N of force, which is significantly larger. Thanks for getting my brain thinking early in the day.

Kyle, would the wing-suit have any effect on the amount of force experienced? I don't know if I am looking at the wrong kind of real world example with this but I thought that it would be similar to an airplane or glider where pulling forces cause lift due to the wing's designs. Maybe the lift generated by those could even make someone basically a human kite due to how the force would be distributed against the human body and wings. I am highly curious, since he has the wing-suit under his arms the entire time even when not fully opened, and I thought it may even cause the opposite problem of too much lift that takes them farther away from their intended target location. Maybe lift forces would be something worth mentioning in footnotes?

Question, would wearing a gliding suit help with the problem of gravity using air resistance ?

Since you're covering the Just Cause grappling hook physics, I'd love to see you cover the magnetic grappling device as shown in PlayStation game Wild 9.

The best part about being in an high school AP Physics class right now is that I can perfectly understand all of the concepts that Kyle is using in this video, and I could actually recreate all of this math myself if I wanted to (but who actually likes doing math that much)

Loved that in The Void joke with the pen drop

Saw the title and it immediately reminded me of game theory's take on the subject featuring link's grapple hook.

Anybody rememeber the attack on titan episode? Yeah exactly

If no one else has, I would like to mention the fantastic Mythbusters episode, 'Bullet Fired VS. Bullet Dropped'. I only mention this because you mentioned it yourself, Kyle, and Adam and Jamie proved that the bullets do in fact hit the ground at the same time, given the right circumstances. Aside from that, great episode Kyle, and love your vids, very educational, you are one of the best science communicators; up there with the Mythbusters themselves.

Dude, that entrance. Was so good. Your videos are hilarious.

Falling at terminal velocity? Just grapple the ground!

I have a solution that could make fictional grappling hooks a reality, exoskeletons. An artificial exoskeleton would make these fictional grappling hooks a lot safer. So there's your solution. Great video, keep up the good work. Have a nice day/night.

Hey Kyle, Love the show and LOVE this franchise. I followed along with your math to see what the recoil of the arm-mounted grappling hook would be. Using the same clip where Rico travels 122m, it looks like the grappling hook reaches the car in about 1s, meaning it would need to be going 3x Rico's speed, ~135m/s. Most grappling hooks I was able to find on Amazon look to be about 2.65 Lbs or 1.2 Kgs. Using the same equation you used, we'd be getting about 186 newtons of force or 40.9 pounds of force. Not enough to break your arm, but definitely enough to knock you off your feet if you weren't ready for it. Probably wouldn't be a great game mechanic to keep having to pick Rico up every time he fires the grapple.

OFF TOPIC: I recently watched Total Recall (2012), and I was wondering if a person would be able to survive ‘The Fall’ considering it travels through the center of the Earth, which is about 7,926 Miles in diameter, in about 10-20 minutes. When the guy plants the bomb at the start of the trip, he sets the timer for 15 minutes. And after the trip is over, the timer still has around 4-5 minutes left. That would mean they would have to be traveling about 31,704mph. And factoring the remaining time on the bomb, it would be more around 47,556mph. Which is nearly double the Escape Velocity of Earth. I know this has nothing to do with grappling hooks, but I would really appreciate it if this were discussed in a future video. Thanks for all the work you guys do!

Kyle! Great vid as always. But I'm curious if Rico's world has different gravitational constraints. Everything in the world seems lighter, judging by the rag-doll physics. Almost in a perpetual state of free fall after they have been hit, exploded, shot, whatever antics in which Rico partakes. I wonder if there's a way to figure that ratio compared to our own world.

If you were in a free fall, you would not be feeling any acceleration. Well, except maybe the drag of Jupiter's dense atmosphere may counter the free fall enough for you to feel a fraction of it's gravity. But then again, the turbulence and strong winds may accelerate you in all sorts of ways. Does anyone got the numbers?

Thank you for making this video. I recently played through Just Cause 2 & 3 in their entirety and I’ve been wondering exactly this. What would the effect of the Just Cause grappling hook be in real life.

Its like Yahtzee said once, (Paraphrased) “ whats the best way to survive a fall at terminal velocity? Fire a grappling hook at the ground and smack into the ground slightly faster”

Why does the marker fall? you are in a void and you demonstrated there is nothing under you whan you let the marker fall. I wonder, if there is nothing under you, why wouldn´t the marker go towards your center of mass? Furthermore, it seems like the marke falls "downwards" with the same acceleration it would have on earth. Why is that? What is going on? Also, if the marker could somehow fall down due to the fact tthat there is something very massive very far away, why aren´t you "falling"? In that case the marker woudn´t fall, but float, so again, What is happening? Are you ignoring this in order to make a joke? Or is the void so uncomprehensible that fisics as we know it doesn´t matter?

maybe he uses the same ''juice'' as used by the crew of the Rocinante in, The Expanse. #Kyleontheexpanse

Just by covering the Just Cause games you’re pretty much my favorite youtuber, though you know that Rico can take a train impact, a grenade to the face, over 10 bullets, a missile, a flak bolt and more, right?

In a science fiction game I ran, I had such grapplers. To use them, you needed a "force distribution screen" to not rip your arm off. That screen was common, it is why the game tended to use a borderline HP system for injury rather than location hits. If you don't have it, combat kills you quickly. If you have it, you will probably survive being near most portable weapon explosions or multiple weapon hits. Such grapplers in my game also worked with portable jump items to counter gravity. Most were jetboots, some were kinetic inductors (ungodly expensive).

This is assuming that the components of the grappling hook could withstand these forces, specifically the cable. Let's be super generous and give Rico's grappling hook the tensile strength of steel cable; 14,400lbs, which would take about 64054.391 Newtons to break. So the cable would rip apart before your arm. Because Science. P.S. Kyle you are a beautiful boy.

Rico can do it just cause 😉

Love your vids man keep it up

"Ow, my tendies" is my new favorite phrase! Lol! Oh, Kyle, you silly big Ole girl, you!

3:25 "

6:38 No "theory" about it Kyle. Mythbusters did that, it worked.

Hahaha I say my Tendies too, say it every time I get hurt. I thought I was the only one. I love this show even more now. Thanks Kyle!

That's why video game worlds are great, creators can make their character survive(or die) to whatever they want. You can have charaters that can take a hundred bullet shots and still won't die, or a charater that dies by a single touch of a turtle.

Darn… my prep notes for things he might miss or not discuss… he hit them all. A full body harness hidden under their clothes to evenly distribute the force, and connected along the arm instead of chest would at least prevent you from dislocating your shoulder/ripping off your arm when using an arm mounted grapple hook. And still look heroically dynamic. G-Forces would still be a problem. Unless you have access to Iron Man’s magic tech that let’s him suddenly stop when evading jet fighters. (See previous episode of Because Science)

My tendies

Hey Kyle, love the videos!!! One question though. How come you only talked about the taking off part of the grappling hook. Wouldn’t it be just as big of an issue if not a bigger issue to stop. Just a thought, keep up all the great videos!!!

I like how 2 of things in this episode were covered by Mythbusters: Bullet dropped vs bullet shot and grappling hooks. Jamie's arm-mounted grappler worked quite well if I remember correctly.

attack on titans gear is more realistic and safer ?

I'm watching this while playing Just Cause 4 😆

I love how Kyle keeps everything interesting even with sponsoring around

I was waiting for this since just cause 2.. awesome

Who else actually started using argan oil because of his recommendation?

Breath of the wild link doesn’t even have a grappling hook kyle 😂

In Just Cause 3, Dimah actually says when she gives you the new grappling hook: Less chance of violent limb detachment.

You don’t mention the fact that the force required to even fire the grappling hook would send his arm flailing off his body in the opposite direction. Man, science is awesome! Keep up the good work!

He kyle how does dragon ball's fusion work

Thats why attack on titan's grappling hooks are the best

Question: which would fail first? The joint that is a shoulder or the joint that is an elbow? I ask because I 1) haven't played the game and 2) you illustrated the device ending below the elbow. Love the videos! Keep up the amazing stuff you do both in and out of the void!

The bullet experiment you were talking about, dropping and firing a bullet at the same time, was done by the Mythbusters. They found that the bullets were just about milliseconds apart from reaching the ground at the same time. So yeah, gravity's acceleration does play a part.

Kyle Mattpat already did this. And no no one can survive a grappling hook. And Kyle please explain Gundam's Beam Weapons.

Come on, man. You're better than this, stealing a Game Theory episode? tisk tisk.

New idea- Could you survive the Dovahkiin’s shout power in Elder Scrolls v: Skyrim

Having wrote this and re-listened to the video I realized you said "in theory" but a tidbit of information. In extreme long distance shooting, you have to calculate for the curvature of the Earth, meaning, that unless you are on a perfectly flat plain and depending on the elevation from which you dropped/shot the bullet, and the caliber, etc etc. the dropped bullet may hit the ground first.

OMG... first Mortal Engines and now Just Cause?? This has become an advertisement channel. Same thing that happened to Minute Physics.

this was a grat ep, was laughing most of the ay through. Nice work.

I'm so glad this was an as on a video I watched, now I've found such a great channel!!

Hey Kyle, love the channel. A couple of points/questions: Attaching the cable to your center of mass does make the most sense, but wouldn't it still cause some trama to the lumbar region of the spine and hips? What would be the velocity tolerance for that? Now I'm just seeing someone pelvic thrusting into oblivion... Wouldn't the slowing down also pose a massive problem like in your superhero landing video? I know thats why we use dynamic rope in top roping, but we're still not landing right on our feet. What if they used a dynamic cable instead of a rigid/static one? Hope to hear from you, thanks!!

There goes that beat again 🔥 *starts Milly Rocking*

If you ever watch a video of a pilot training inside a centrifuge (there's several on RU-vid, but the specific one I'm thinking of is a very pretty female officer training to be a F-18 pilot), you can see the methods used to endure 3+ G's: pressurized suits, a core-clenching and grunting/quick breathing technique to keep from blacking, or "greying", out, and the way in which they introduce and acclimate trainees to high G forces. In the F-18 trainee video, the trainee is in a mock cockpit on the centrifuge, which includes basic controls and joystick/yoke, as well as various devices to measure the effects on the body; green lights extending to the edges of the field of vision (so the pilot can report loss of consciousness, tunnel vision, etc, by relaying the extent of light they can see while under strain), biometrics (fitbit-like data; heart rate, blood pressure, breathing pattern, oxygen levels, and the like), etc.

You are so fun! I'm so happy when I see this show

The drop/fired bullet experiment was done (and confirmed) on an old episode of Mythbusters.

Kyle, you compute the effects of accelerating, but you don't worry about the deceleration at the other end. Since the wire can not slow you down, you are impacting the destination at your max volocity (assuming horizontal movement). This could have several failure modes depending on what is there. These include failing to stop and going splat against a wall. I am sure there are many other ways to fail as well.

These last two sponsored videos have been great. It's nice to see the channel get recognition like this

Your videos are so good, I can't believe you have only 727 subscribers.

So, I watched the Game Knights episode that you were in and it got my brain cranking for some reason. So I've been thinking about how energy works on Kaladesh and how much energy the Izzet guild produces. Yes, I know it's technically magic. Yet, lets not forget Kaladesh and the Izzet Guild are composed technically of scientists. Now lets focus on Kaladesh. I was wondering if you remove aether from the components of their Vehicles, Thopters, and other Artifacts/Artifact Creatures. How much energy would be needed to mimic these Artifacts?

To add further hurt to injury consider him stopping at the end. It seems he doesn't decelerate before landing but slams to what ever he grappled to. Since he is traveling at 45 m/s the impact equals (according to my math) jumping from a little over 100 meters tall structure. It would also severely damage the cars structure but that would be least of his problems at that point.

Free falling on Jupiter is a sick band name. Thanks Kyle.

The #1 thing i think that wasnt discussed is the sudden stop at the end. The free fall doesnt usually kill you, its the sudden stop. So if you were going even 40mph on this hook, when you caught the side of the building it would be like being hit by a train at 40mph. So in the end you used some special tech to protect your body as described below but you still ended up being a bug on a windscreen. Your arm could withstand a lot more if you wore some sort of dampening harness. Obviously not to the video game extent but to a much greater extent. You would mount the grapple arm on a hydraulic damper the length of your forearm so that it takes up a chunk of the initial shock. That is then attached to a strong but stretchable harness that goes up your arm to your core. at full extent it is the same length as your arm so that it cant be dislocated. Then the whiplash factor comes into play. The harness would have to go up your neck with some sort of mechanism so that when the harness is pulled tight on your arm it pulls plates together behind your head and neck to basically lock it in the upright position but only if the hook is deployed so that your neck doesnt lock on punches or climbs. You would likely want the same kind of functionality behind your legs so that they dont just flail around behind you.

This made me think of Widowmaker’s grappling hook in Overwatch, which led to thinking about how “sciencey” other abilities are. For instance, how loud would Lucio’s sound wave have to be to bop someone off the edge?

07:52 it genuinely made me laugh, how exited kyle is about 700...thaaaaaousand

Of course Rico can survive it. Have u seen his insane healing factor

Kyle, love the show. I’ve been curious about what would actually happen to a person’s arm under strain like that. You mention it ripping off and that seems like one possibility, but I wonder about the details of that and the alternatives. I believe his grapple is connected with straps around his forearm and wrist in Just Cause 3. Assuming the grapple doesn’t just get disconnected from his arm (the straps breaking or something), what would actually happen? Would it rip his arm off at that forearm strap or would the path of least resistance be a joint (like his elbow)? Or would it simply rip off his entire arm (separating at the shoulder) because…I don’t know? Or would it break all of the bones in his arm and hands until it could just slip off his arm? I’m assuming that if the grapple was trying to slip off his arm, it wouldn’t pull evenly since the grapple is on the top of his forearm. I would think that there would be more tension on the top of his forearm than on the bottom, so if it’s trying to slip off would it simply strip off layers of skin and muscle on the top of his forearm and hand instead of ripping some portion of his arm off? What would actually be the most likely consequence?

"Gravity applies to you here on earth..." "Here" on Earth, Kyle? I didn't know the void was located on Earth.

Just gotta love how in free fall with Rico, you can dive toward the ground as fast as possible ......then use grapple on the ground when its in range, thus accelerating you even more toward the Earth......and then land with no injury what so ever.

Hi Kyle please create a video "Why you dont wa t to have the power to stop time" I always learned and love your videos :)

One thing I really didn't see mention in this video is the deceleration forces since in most pop culture uses of grappling hooks that come to mind has them pretty much "landing" at full speed. So one would need some sort of heavily engineered protection or reusable airbags to cushion landings to keep them from having dust for bones.

You know, there are pros and cons for the realistic grappling hook in a video game as well! You wouldn't have the same fine control, but you could dual wield pistols as the acceleration wouldn't make aiming too difficult once you got used to it. That in addition to the fact you'd be difficult to hit, but would probably need rollerblades so you don't get your feet caught in any potholes and get them ripped off or your ankles dislocated. Yeah, it could make a cool video game concept

"I like my tendies" brilliant

An idea just struck: what if you attached the grapple gun to a harness that tethers from your hand to your chest? That way you can still have that heroic pose but instead of all the force going through your arm ripping your squishy limb off it would transfer all that force directly to your torso.

I've always wanted media makers that use Grapnels and the like to include harnesses and exoskeletal frames: or super-strength/durability. especially with the "super robot arm" trope, where an arm that strong would rip your own body in half: unless it transferred it's forces through an exoskeletal frame and to the ground, or diffusing the forces evenly throughout the body with a harness for negative forces.

So like you said at the end of the video about a system that would be cradling your body Attack on Titan got it right then, right? To that extent if one were to use the Attack on Titan setup, you could use the hans system which stands for head and neck system that NASCAR driver use to prevent whiplash from both accelerating and deceleration. It’s been said that if Dale Earnhardt would have been wearing the Hans he would have survived the crash that took his life. The crash had enough force to give him a internal decapitation. Anyway thanks for all the great content, keep up the great work and keep it coming!

Hey Kyle! Great video! How would Rico survive firing his grappling hook in the first place? A launcher that forceful propelling a projectile and line that heavy should send him (or his arm) flying in the opposite direction at a fatally high velocity. Disregarding that, the retracting of the cable would be forceful enough to tear apart whatever was grappled onto. Rico’s arm and a chunk of concrete would collide at high velocity somewhere in between Rico’s starting point and his destination.

I'm just surprised that the enemy is just stunned momentarily from the grappling hook shot right on his chest and not straight up incapacitated or dead given that grappling hook can punch through tank armor an hook on to it

I do like that the game very much acknowledges that it's not very realistic, but still does crazy things because they're fun. After all, you can't have a parachute that you can activate, and then deactivate into a wingsuit before activating the parachute again. You also can't use a parachute to gain altitude, or as a travel ability to travel impossible distances, but you do anyway. Think about the strain that launching and deactivating a parachute would have on Rico. You even point out in the episode that putting on a parachute at terminal velocity (something that Rico does all the time) would have a force of approximately 4-5000 N. Rico is able to go from free-fall to parachute, to wingsuit, to grappling straight to the ground, and take no damage. Think about the problems of grappling into the ground. You have the force of the grappling hook, and the force of gravity all causing large forces to Rico when he stops on the ground.

That makes the Attack on Titan 3DMGs a bit more feasible since it's attached via harnesses. That design also leaves both your arms free so you can use them for other functions, like wield weapons. Though I'd maintain that it still isn't safe with the speeds they are moving (because of all the other problems described).