The SCIENCE! Behind Power Armor in Fallout 4 

Not taking falling damage? That sounds like something a synth would do...

Just wait until he discovers the metal leg armor that negates fall damage

Still wondering why can you get poisoned by something like radscorpion, while wearing Power Armor :/

Brotherhood of Steel incident report AD-851: Another initiate has jumped from the prydwen in a t45 power armor unit, initiate did not survive the impact, the only thing salvageable is the helmet and it is also the only thing we have to bury.

Gravity pisses me off. It's always holding me down.

"I come to your games to get away from the reality!" *immediately puts reality into every single video he does* Oh.....

"most developers have fall damage in their games" Borderlands: Hold my physics.

What if your fusion core runs out while ur falling

so I have a question! who the fuck boarded up almost all the houses in the commonwealth.

you made me understand physics better than my teacher ...

You know what's more dangerous than falling inside a Power Armor at gravity force? Falling inside a Power Armor at "Austin's Talking Speed". The PA would scatter to fucking pieces :,)

Dear Austin. I have a question for you. Not that you’ll likely see this since this video is nearly 4 years old and you have better thing to do anyway, but after reading like ten comments I decided nobody important has brought it up. First let me qualify my question with an observation I had while upgrading my power armor. When looking through the leg upgrades I noticed one was to add explosive vents to the legs, it increases damage to nearby enemies when falling from great heights and adds an explosion effect when you land. Now I’m no expert on explosions or collisions but when cars hit something at high speeds there doesn’t seem to be a super impactful shockwave that spreads from the impact in a radius. So this got me thinking that the energy from landing isn’t getting absorbed by the armor but dispersed by some magic device in the legs of the armor that takes all that kinetic energy and pushes it out in a explosion thus sparing the poor squishy innards of the individual within the suit and not sparing anybody unfortunate enough to be standing within some radius of said falling individual. Anyway my question is: Is this actually possible. And if so just how much damage should this blast actually be doing to the surrounding areas. It seems like it would be more than the game shows but I’m not informed enough to figured it out myself so if by some miracle of fate you see this, maybe you can. -Sincerely Jarod

6 frames = 1/10th of a second? So... console players fall slower?

Does anyone remember proctor Ingram and how she lost her legs? It has to do with her testing power armor but was attacked by super mutants. The area she worked was high up and was hit by something and she was tossed off the area and and surived the fall but lost her legs and the power armor she hand on was destroyed from the impact. I just don't want to dig in the comments to find any hint of it.

This should be titled "The SCIENCE! Behind falling in Power Armor." I was expecting an analysis of how the PA operates. Like how the pistons help give you more strength, etc.

So will my PC survive a massive fall because it has a G-force graphics card? Yes! 1-0 NVidia AMD!

Are you MXR's immersion scientist?

Stunt pilots can get even up to 15 Gs for a short extended time. And the guy in the airforce who endured 43 Gs did so *backwards* which actually makes a humongous difference, which is what he was testing.

Sooooo, we can finally train like Vegeta??

For a more realistic experience... Use a jetpack on the PA. :P Short hopping the jetpack before landing should reduce the impact and Gs enough so that the PA's leg hydraulics don't instantly give way and hopefully the reduced G force won't turn you into tomato salsa.

"245 miles per f*cking hour" 😂

What's wrong with them is they run on NUCLEAR batteries that last for ~25 minutes.

Dear shoddy, what about the freefall leggings? Those make even less sense than power armor!

SUPERHERO LANDING!

Lmao I love this guy. Bethesda probably hates him lmao

dear shoddy cast: plz use metric mesurements. thank you.

I always figured that being futuristic tech, they found a way to put some type of inertia damper into the power armor to negate the g-force on the armor and wearer. That's pretty much the only explanation I can think of.

I hate fall damage in Witcher 3. Super human mutant dies from a 10 ft fall.

Pneumatic shock absorption. That's the key, as its mention in one of the leg mods. It uses the compression of air at the moment of impact to decelerate your body and suit during the fall. WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY.

That guy who built that rocket train thing..... the blood vessels in his eyes busted but they healed in a few days

So... how bad would the damage actually be with the Freefall legs? I'm guessing your body would be reduced to fine pâté...

Power Armor is not new and improved. The fusion cores only last 5 to 10 minutes. That's the opposite of improved.

Ah see, now we know where all that energy from the fusion cores actually goes: It isn't to power the armor, no sir, it is to counter all that kinetic energy caused from impacts/deceleration. How? No clue, but that is certainly where all that energy is going because it certainly is not all getting used to move around. Oh wait! Idea: the suit actually creates some sort of suspension field that actually maintains your internal organs suspension in your cavities by stimulating the fluids and structures in the body that keep your organs where they are supposed to be. Sort of like how you can run an EM field over magnetic objects to make them move (obviously over-simplifying but you get the point). If their scientists could figure out how to make compact FUSION happen and mass-produce said units I am sure they could come up with a way to generate a field that counters the negative effects of deceleration on organic entities with fluid cavities that contain delicate organs. Such a continuous field would of-course require a huge amount of power to maintain thus the reason for a power source capable of powering large building being deleted in mere hours if not minutes of continuous use. Ta-da! Fixed.

No one's afraid of heights but everyone's afraid of falling from heights

Just use your jet pack on the way down to decelerate. That way you can stay immersive :P

I never realized video games needed to be uber realistic.

I let my friend play fallout 4 for the first time. Walks into boston common "Oh look! Stuff! I BET I CAN FIND SOME MONEY MONEY!" "Bro,you should check VATS first" "Nah,I GOT DIS!" "HO MY GHAD A SWAANN!!"

Love the fact that I️ actually learned about this kinda stuff in ap physics. Brings back some good feels.

The power armor in the thumbnail is the T-49: Power armor of the storyteller

*cough* kinetic repulsors *cough*

Let's not forget that Proctor Ingram (The character) lost her legs due to a fall in Power Armor. Yet we the player, as stated in the video, take no fall damage when wearing power armor. Think about it.

Here's another problem with power armor: "Power cores power a building for years!" and yet...you run out of juice in a few hours.

Actually, the player character is about 6 feet tall without power armour. The power armour adds a foot of height, so the power armour is 7 feet.

When you put weights can you PLEASE include kilograms? I'm from Italy and I have no idea how many kg a pound (?) is.

Speaking of deadly heights you can locate the Freefall Legs (which prevent falling damage without need of power armor) in the Mass Fusion building. There is also a journal by the inventor who mentions that Power Armor have hydraulic shock absorption integrated into them.

I did the research, And I have determined that the lightest commercially available slug for a 308 winchester (presumably the .308 round used in the Fallout franchise) that I could find reliable data for is 110 grains. That bullet, fired from a 24 inch barrel would generate exactly 3,316.34 Joules of energy at 100 yards. The most common bullet weight for .308 winchester 150 grains, which generates a force of 3,600 Joules. The most that T-51 power Armor can sustain is 2500 Joules, meaning that any one with a decent .308 hunting rifle and some ammunition could easily kill a soldier in power armor in ONE shot to the chest. Eat that, Bethesda! Kind of a fatal flaw, considering that the most common round for sniper rifles and medium machine guns to be chambered is 7.62x51mm NATO, which is the military variant of .308 and those would probably be the best weapons to use against power armour.

Or you could say, put a tomato in a jar, drop the jar into water from, like, 10 metres? and your tomato has now been brutally mangled.

"It's not the sudden stop that kills you, It's the sudden deceleration" ....That's...that's what a stop is....

The sad thing is what he explained took a WEEK for my science teacher to explain. (but she is still great)

The armor has bubble wrap on the inside to protect you from falling damage.

Never heard about digitally controlled valving for hydraulic cylinders.... I believe used for some Carrier Aircraft Landing Gear.

I like the old shoddycast with the lore videos that were more than 6 minutes long that were also just narrated, no actors

What if you tried to theorize how the power armor would mitigate falling damage? Like now you know what the forces are... Now what would be necessary to ignore them?

"I'm scared of falling and dying." Jumps off from extremely high places.....

I am currently a sophmore in highschool and i have learned more about physics from watching your videos than my whole school career

I learned about the Stanford Prison Experiment in my psychology class.

those suits where made to withstand direct hits with artillery shells so i doubt they would crumple. in addition, they made armor for your legs that can keep you from dying even without power armor so we can assume that they have found out a way to minimize damage. how that works, however, they never explain.

On the Prydwen, Ingram said she crushed her legs falling from a tall height in her power armor, which is why she's always wearing it now. So I guess the fact that the player doesn't take fall damage must be a mishap? Either that or Ingram is a real butterfingers.

Since you mentioned him: most people do _not_ know that Philip Zimbardo seriously pushed his test subjects in the Stanford experiment to achieve the results he was expecting, making the entire study much more about *obedience* than inherent *cruelty* in humans. For more on that, I recommend the *Milgram* experiment, which tested exactly that - namely unquestioned obedience towards perceived authorities - and was much less presumptuous about it.

WHERE ARE THE MEASURMENTS IN KILOGRAMS

Power armor uses, or so I'd imagine, a specialized system that compresses the foot as it strikes the ground, in such a way that the forces are spread in a circle around the armor instead of through it. Couple that with the human inside being suspended in a skeletal frame that isn't actually flush with the armor, instead having pneumatic sensors and an impact-absorbing gel (which actually exists in early forms today) that takes blows and redirects them around the suit, thus allowing minimal force effects to be experienced inside the suit.

What if they have discovered inertial dampening both for the pilot and the armour? I have no idea how that would work, but it would be cool! I mean if they can contain all the power of a nuclear reactor inside a reactor core that's the size of my fist, I am more than sure inertial dampening wouldn't be too much of a stretch.

In the beginning "I play your games to escape reality!" 30 secs later "Your power armor makes no God damn sense!"

It is a game where stimpacks heal bullet wounds nearly instantly as well as crippled limps, head wounds etc and the small nuclear reactors in Cars blow up when shot (rather than melt down) It is totally possible that Power Armor has some extra mechanics that will prevent the damage.

I think this explanation ignores the possibility of there being a shock absorption system that produces a difference in the deceleration of the suit and the endoskeleton in which the operator resides. It's a stretch but it's something. There are also what looks to be done kind of jet or rocket nozzles on some suits, like the T45, just under the chestplate. Maybe that also contributes. Or maybe it's just a video game, thus rendering this entire comment and video pointless.

Two things... first, while in game you're not required to wear it, there is a special jumpsuit every Power Armor unit has to wear while in Power Armor. That suit Danse is wearing? That's it. The same suit the guy in the intro video is wearing. Second, the frame. Exploding vents was the biggest hint for me to understand it. The VENTS in conjunction with the hydraulic system of THE FRAME, expel the excessive fore on landing and evenly distribute the rest. That pose your character assumes when falling? Soldiers are trained to fall from heights and land without damaging their legs and feet and the secret is in the way you land. That's also why Power Armor suits don't have... shoes, for lack of a better word. Imagine a cloud of steam coming out of the joints and feet of the frame when it lands, then replace it with G Force. That's why the pieces that form the armor don't crack either. The frame handles pressure and weight distribution and the jumpsuit you should be wearing makes sure you're not going to have a heart attack when you land. Can we build something that advanced in our world? No. At least not yet.

yeah! I'm really starting to love the series.

you can also jump in to water from any height, power armor or not, that's not realistic either

does anyone notice the STORYTELLER'S FO4 POWER ARMOR IN THE THUMBNAIL

We seem to forget that we're basically falling constantly and it's the ground under our feet that prevents us from moving downward. The fact that the apparent motion stops doesn't mean that we've stopped falling: if the counter weren't there, the apparent motion would just resume.

shoddy's key board I customized to have keys to instantly spell "No-god-damn-sense"

I have my own theory about this. you said at the beginning of the video that when a car hits a wall, the wall doesn't move very much which transfers all of the energy back to the car. What if in this case the power armor is the wall and the ground is the car? power armor is clearly harder than dirt, and that would explain the damage dealing, ground shaking, shockwave that the suit sends out. that would also explain why humans in power armor are able to survive any fall.

You've taught me more than the common core has lol

Austin, could you do another The Science video on power armor?! For example how much energy would you need to power a suit of power armor for a day or maybe a series of videos on how would an actual suit of power armor work and or be made of.

They borrowed technology from Aperture Science

Jump off a building in power armor, land... and have someone open the soup tin that is left over. The armor... don't even think the armor would survive the impact with all the non solid parts.. since they can explode off you from gunfire. Human soup...

Answer without watching the video: You would be crushed both by your own weight and the heavy power armor. Hope I am right.

I think its being said many times in the game that power amor has a hydrolics shock absorption system , if it is not said many times ( can't remember ) It is surely in the terminal in the little room at the Mass fusion building . You know , the room from wich you get the freefall leggings , wich also feature a hydrolic shock absorption system btw

I am not afraid of heights, I'm afraid of falling from any hight!

Pilots' suits help them survive higher g forces, the same can and should be assumed with power armor. As you can see when you are landing, he doesn't land like a brick but rather the suit buckles over a bit before you stand up again. You should honestly consider this when you are timing, because while the suit itself would probably experience that many g's, the person inside more than likely would experience g's that are survivable

The most curious thing is that fall damage negation is only part of the game, but canonically, power armor doesn't protect you. Graham lost his legs due to a bad fall, and according to the Prydwen terminal, an initiate tried jumping from the Mass Fusion rooftop, resulting in damaged power armor and a meat smoothie. In fact, when you arrive at the Prydwen, a scribe is fixing a power armor leg, apparently damaged because the knight decided to kick a Mirelurk xD.

Does the armor have certain shock absorbers? Like those you have in your car? Where it compresses the shock caused by the drop? You know ,sorta like a very extreme version of air jordans?

the one thing that power armor cant stop is fall damage from landing on water, i died from that in X-01 power armor because i decided to test out what would happen and it was death

I see a flaw in your math. You forgot the time it takes in in game seconds. So that would change your math completely and the player would be more likely to survive that amount of force. Sincerely, Ryan

Reminds me of the poor guy in the Expanse turning into paste in one episode.

Pounds! Miles! What the hell man, use scientific terms. You know, the measurements used by the rest of the planet.

Remember to roll

The way to counter this problem is either with deployable drag chutes to slow the fall or built in jump jets to provide lift as you fall to slow you down, not a jetpack, but enough to counter terminal velocity of the armor plus 200-300lbs of human

damn, where were these videos when I was taking AP Physics??

He forgot that time in this game is like 15 times faster than real time

And this is an armor Austin. You don't even saw the Freefall leg plates... 😅

6:19 Sounds like my kind of hood

Stanford Prison Experiment is considered to be botched last I checked. Subjects are supposed to go into the tests without any foreknowledge, but as memory serves he openly advertised asking for people who wanted to be prison guards and/or prisoners. He may have also encouraged some of the more disturbing behaviour, but I'm not sure about that one.

Damn it shoddy, 5:18 air doesn't push up. it just provides resistance.

the best teacher I've never had

How much G does Sonic the Hedgehog pull?

theoreticly its possible to fill the armor with water and surround the pilot with it. The water has the same falling velocity as a normal body, but the Pilot inside the water will not be effected directly by g-forces.

I used this to do my science homework

ShoddyCast: makes 10 minuted video on power armor and fall damage. Me: It's a video game.

Seeing as how a power armor suit is on average 2 feet taller than the people in them, and apparently the power armor suits cushioning pistons in the legs, I’m assuming that even though some of that height is taken up by armor and the feet, there’s still plenty of space to install shocks that will absorb the fall. The lore does state that they would airdrop in power armor, with or without a pilot inside them.