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  PENGUIN BOOKS

  AND THEN YOU’RE DEAD

  CODY CASSIDY has worked as the sports editor for Zimbio.com, a sports reporter for Stanford Athletics, and a writer for Coach magazine. He has no firsthand experience with any of the scenarios described in this book.

  PAUL DOHERTY is codirector and senior staff scientist at San Francisco’s famed Exploratorium Museum. He has cowritten numerous books, including The Exploratorium Science Snackbook, Explorabook, and the Klutz Book of Magnetic Magic. He received his PhD in solid state physics from MIT.

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  penguin.com

  Copyright © 2017 by Cody Cassidy and Paul Doherty

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Illustrations by Cody Cassidy

  Ebook ISBN 9781101991954

  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  Cover design: Will Staehle

  Cover illustrations: Cody Cassidy

  Version_1

  CODY:

  To Mom and Dad

  PAUL:

  To Professor Paul Tipler,

  who showed me how to inspire students

  to learn science by making it interesting,

  relevant, fun, and correct

  Contents

  About the Authors

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Introduction

  What Would Happen If . . .

  You Were in an Airplane and Your Window Popped Out?

  You Were Attacked by a Great White Shark?

  You Slipped on a Banana Peel?

  You Were Buried Alive?

  You Were Attacked by a Swarm of Bees?

  You Were Hit by a Meteorite?

  You Lost Your Head?

  You Put on the World’s Loudest Headphones?

  You Stowed Away on the Next Moon Mission?

  You Were Strapped into Dr. Frankenstein’s Machine?

  Your Elevator Cable Broke?

  You Barreled over Niagara Falls?

  You Couldn’t Fall Asleep?

  You Were Struck by Lightning?

  You Took a Bath in the World’s Coldest Tub?

  You Skydived from Outer Space?

  You Time Traveled?

  You Were Caught in a Human Stampede?

  You Jumped into a Black Hole?

  You Were on the Titanic and Didn’t Make It into a Lifeboat?

  You Were Killed by This Book?

  You Died from “Old Age”?

  You Were Stuck in . . . ?

  You Were Raised by Buzzards?

  You Were Sacrificed into a Volcano?

  You Just Stayed in Bed?

  You Dug a Hole to China and Jumped In?

  You Toured the Pringles Factory and Fell off the Catwalk?

  You Played Russian Roulette with a Really, Really Big Gun?

  You Traveled to Jupiter?

  You Ate the World’s Deadliest Substances?

  You Lived in a Nuclear Winter?

  You Vacationed on Venus?

  You Were Swarmed by Mosquitoes?

  You Became an Actual Human Cannonball?

  You Were Hit by a Penny Dropped from the Top of the Empire State Building?

  You Actually Shook Someone’s Hand?

  You Were the Ant Under the Magnifying Glass?

  You Stuck Your Hand in a Particle Accelerator?

  You Were Holding This Book and It Instantly Collapsed into a Black Hole?

  You Stuck a Really, Really Powerful Magnet to Your Forehead?

  You Were Swallowed by a Whale?

  You Took a Swim Outside a Deep-Sea Submarine?

  You Stood on the Surface of the Sun?

  You Ate as Many Cookies as Cookie Monster?

  References and Further Reading

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  BE HONEST. WHEN you are reading a random obituary do you sometimes find yourself skipping to the bottom, searching for the cause of death, only to be frustrated by the lack of an explanation or a maddeningly vague “death by fluke accident”? Did the poor sap freeze while ice swimming? Was he squished by an asteroid or was he swallowed by a whale? Sometimes they won’t even tell you!

  And when they do reveal a cause of death—say the obituary provides a tantalizing detail like “tragically killed by an oversize magnet”—the story quickly moves on to next of kin while you’re left wondering if magnetism even can be lethal. They are skipping the most interesting part!

  We understand your frustration, so we set out to resolve it. We pick up where even the most elucidating obituary leaves off.

  We tell you what really happens when you jump into space wearing only shorts and a T-shirt. We explain why Boeing doesn’t let you roll your window down on the 747, and we explore the problems with swimming in the deepest part of the ocean with as much science and gruesome detail as your stomach will allow.

  In other words: Stephen King meets Stephen Hawking.

  The upside in wading through all this gruesomeness is you may accidentally learn some science, a bit of medicine, and what to do if a shark begins circling you (encourage him to eat your entire leg—not just a chunk).

  How did we get our answers?

  When we could we used the experiences (or autopsies) of daredevils (or the unlucky) to figure out what actually happens when you go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, stick your hand in a particle accelerator, or get stung in the testicle.

  For some of the scenarios there weren’t firsthand accounts. So far nobody has actually jumped into a black hole, taken a bath in the world’s coldest tub, or dug a hole to China and leapt into it.

  To get answers to these questions we used military studies (thank you, 1950s-era U.S. Air Force, for subjecting real people to life-threatening experiments), medical journals, astrophysicists’ hypotheses, and the research of professors curious about the slipperiness of banana peels.

  Sometimes our answers took us to the edge of human knowledge. If this book were written just twenty years ago we would have sworn that, at least in this universe, you could not die from an oversize kitchen magnet. Fortunately, we didn’t write it back then because you absolutely can and it’s glorious.

  Because we were often reaching the frontiers of science in search of gruesome deaths, we also relied on speculation—the most science-based, as-accurate-as-we-think-anyone-could-get speculation. But it’s still speculation.

  Meaning if you try one of these scenarios, say, if you skydive from the space station, swan dive into a black hole, or leap into a volcano, and your experience does not mimic what we have described or, worst of all, you don’t even die, we sincerely apologize.

  Send us a note and we will
amend our second edition.

  What Would Happen If . . .

  You Were in an Airplane and Your Window Popped Out?

  LIKE MOST PEOPLE who have traveled in a modern airplane, you have probably spent a good bit of time staring out the window at the lovely clouds, sunsets, and beautiful views. And, like most people, you have probably wondered, what happens if this thing pops out?

  The answer depends on your altitude. If you were within the first few minutes of flight and still under 20,000 feet, you would probably be okay. You could still breathe for a half hour before you passed out at that altitude, and the pressure difference wouldn’t be great enough to suck you out. It would be a little chilly, but as long as you’re wearing a sweatshirt you should be fine.

  It would also be noisy. The wind blowing past your open window would turn the plane into the world’s largest flute, so getting the attention of a flight attendant would be a problem. All in all, though, not bad, and a lot better than if the window popped out at a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet.

  The air inside a plane’s cabin is pressurized to around 7,000 feet because of the whole breathing thing. If you’re at 35,000 feet and the window pops out, the plane rapidly depressurizes, and that leads to some issues.

  The first thing you would notice is all the air getting sucked out of every orifice in your body. And because it’s humid air, it would condense and come out as a fog. That would happen to everybody, so the entire plane would be a thick fog of everyone’s body air. Gross.

  Fortunately that would clear up in a few seconds, because the air in the plane is getting sucked out of the open window. Unfortunately, it’s not a neighbor’s window, it’s yours, and that makes a big difference.

  If you were sitting just two seats away from the missing window, the wind would be rushing out of the plane with hurricane speed, but that’s still slow enough that if you were wearing a seat belt you would be held fast. Unfortunately, you chose the window seat, where the air would rush out at 300 miles per hour—fast enough to pull you up and out of your seat even if you’re strapped in. (One of the less-mentioned cons of choosing the window over the aisle.)*

  Another reason your friend in the aisle seat would be saved is because airplane windows are smaller in diameter than your shoulders. According to research by Harvard University on the human body, the average American has 18-inch-wide shoulders, and the Boeing 747 aircraft’s windows are only 15.3 inches tall—so you would not be sucked all the way out of the plane, just partway.* That’s good for everyone in the plane. It would save you from a long fall, for one, and for everyone else your body would serve as a decent plug. It would slow down the air’s escape from the plane and give people more time to put on their oxygen masks.

  Your troubles, on the other hand, would only be beginning.

  The first thing you might notice about your new environment would be the wind. The 600-miles-per-hour gale blasting you in the face would push you against the aircraft, wrapping you in a J-shaped figure around the side of the plane.*

  The second thing you would notice would be the cold. The temperature at 35,000 feet is 65 degrees below zero. In that chill your nose would become frostbitten within a few seconds.

  The third issue is not something you would notice but is probably the most life-threatening. In addition to the abrupt drop in temperature, there would be a more serious change in air pressure. At 35,000 feet the air is so thin you wouldn’t get enough oxygen molecules per breath to survive, only you would not know you were suffocating. Your body cannot detect when there’s too little oxygen; the only thing that gives you that running-out-of-breath feeling is too much carbon dioxide in your blood. So you would keep breathing like everything was fine, but it wouldn’t be. You would have less than fifteen seconds of consciousness before you passed out—and four minutes before brain death.

  That goes for people inside the plane as well. As soon as your window popped out they would have fifteen seconds to put on their masks before they passed out—maybe a bit more if your upper body formed a good seal on the window—and really only eight seconds before their brains became so oxygen starved they would be too confused to put on their masks.*

  So to recap, you would be halfway out of the airplane, your face would be slamming against the side of the plane, you would have frostbite, and you would be on your way to unconsciousness. But you wouldn’t be dead yet and, surprisingly, if the pilot acted quickly and got down below 20,000 feet within four minutes, you might survive the experience. We know this because it’s happened.

  Captain Tim Lancaster was climbing past 20,000 feet in his British Airways flight in 1990 when the front windscreen popped off. He was immediately sucked out of his seat belt and out the window. Everything loose in the cockpit flew out and the flight door jammed into the controls, sending the plane into a steep dive. Nigel Ogden, a flight attendant who happened to be in the cockpit, managed to grab the pilot on his way out and reported the following to the Sydney Morning Herald:

  Everything was being sucked out of the aircraft: even an oxygen bottle that had been bolted down went flying and nearly knocked my head off. I was holding on for grim death but I could feel myself being sucked out, too. John rushed in behind me and saw me disappearing, so he grabbed my trouser belt to stop me slipping further, then wrapped the captain’s shoulder strap around me . . .

  I thought I was going to lose him, but he ended up bent in a U-shape around the windows. His face was banging against the window with blood coming out of his nose . . . and his arms were flailing.

  Eighteen minutes after losing the windscreen the copilot managed to land the aircraft, with his pilot staring at him from the other side of the window the entire time.

  Somehow, after firefighters managed to extract the pilot from his awkward position, he survived with only frostbite and a few broken ribs.

  Because of the smaller window, you may not need to rely on heroics from your fellow passengers—with just quick action from your pilot, you could enjoy an uncomfortable but scenic trip down.

  What Would Happen If . . .

  You Were Attacked by a Great White Shark?

  LIKE ALL PREDATORS, sharks are not interested in fair fights. Even for the winners, fair fights lead to injuries, and injuries mean a slow and hungry animal. So predators prefer devastating blowouts with as little risk as possible, which makes you the perfect opponent: You’re slow, weak, and completely oblivious in the water. Fortunately, you don’t taste very good. You’re the squirrel of the ocean, too much bone and not enough fat. Still, sharks are curious creatures and attacks happen—usually from the smaller species that aren’t as dangerous.

  But not always. Big sharks can attack. The great white can grow to twenty feet, and even its exploratory nibbles are devastating. Why might the shark go for a bite?

  It probably would not be for food. Researchers have stitched shark victims back together and discovered not a single morsel missing. When great white sharks bite a human, they are like children scrambling peas on their plate. Careful reconstruction reveals nary a pea eaten. We must taste so terrible to sharks that, frankly, we should be a little insulted.

  So if we taste so horrible, why bite us at all? One popular explanation is that it’s a case of mistaken identity. The theory goes that sharks mistake human swimmers for normal seal prey and take a bite, only then realizing their error and spitting the person out like a diner mistaking the salt for the sugar. It is plausible, but there is little science to back up this theory. There are visual similarities between a surfer and a seal from a shark’s point of view, but that does not explain important differences in the way a shark attacks a swimmer versus the way it strikes a seal.

  Researchers placed dummies in chummed water to observe the way sharks approached them. Unlike seal attacks, in which the shark comes from below and hits the animal with one devastating surprise attack, the sharks swam in circles around the dummies—chec
king them out with multiple passes before striking. The nature of the bite was also a more exploratory, open-bite slash as opposed to the full-gusto chomping bite a shark uses with a seal—like the difference in how you approach a carton of fresh milk as opposed to one close to its expiration date.

  So far the evidence suggests that it is not confusion at work when a great white shark attacks, but mere curiosity. Sharks can sense movement by detecting small changes in water pressure, and swimmers are moving, particularly if they have just spotted a fin. This motion can pique a great white’s interest, and sharks seem to operate under a “when in doubt, bite it” policy.*

  Incidentally, this is common behavior for many predators—if you have a cat you may have seen this explore-the-world-via-biting behavior. But exploratory biting by sharks significantly differs from your cat’s. There aren’t any reliable measurements of exactly how strong a great white’s bite is, but the few experiments that have been done all come to the same general conclusion: It’s strong enough. In at least one instance a great white bit a man in half as clean as any guillotine.

  So let’s say you’re splashing about in the waves and, unbeknownst to you, you attract the attention of a curious great white.

  First of all, you would have every right to be upset. Not because you could be slashed to death in a moment, but because the odds of this happening are infinitesimal. If you’re headed for a day at the beach, you’re ten times more likely to fall down your stairs and die on your way to your car. Once you get in your car you’re way more likely to die in an accident driving to the beach, and once you get to the beach you’re far more likely to die in a collapsing sand pit on your way to the water. And even if you avoid those sand pits and make it to the waves, you face the greatest threat of all: drowning. Once you hit the waves, you’re a hundred times more likely to drown than die from a shark attack.

  But let’s say you’re lucky and dodge all these bullets. And then you get really unlucky and a great white decides to go for a nibble.