I usually wouldn't cite Cracked as a source but I think they get the basics right, even if I disagree on some of the details, and they do cite more authoritative sources. I also think the broader point, that movies and media have distorted societies sense of reality in dangerous ways, is valid.

I doubt that most people are silly enough to voluntarily expose themselves to such threats, granted that it is hard, verging on impossible, to overestimate how stupid people can be, but I suspect the greatest danger is that people might take a hard knock or be around an explosion, and assume it is no big deal. Like in the movies.

http://www.cracked.com/article_18862_6-deadly-injuries-you-think-youd-survive-thanks-to-movies.html

Great article! I read if a few months ago (I'm a regular reader of Cracked, for whatever that says about me! ). [i][/i]

I thought they were basically correct. I developed a rule of thumb from my SAR experience that it took a fall of forty feet, rather than 30, to be fatal, but that is a minor quibble. Actually, what the victim lands on has a big impact as well.

They could do another article about how movies exaggerate the dangers posed by encounters with wild animals, which seem to happen with more frequency in flicks than in real life. I don't think I have ever seen a movie involving scuba diving where they didn't cue the shark - immediately

'Deadliest Warrior' shows the flip side of that. In the Celt vs Persian Immortal episode; the celt (admittably a big chap) hit a trauma torso with a short stick and removed his brain! The Jesse James pistol whip was also a deadly blow.
And just as you can beat the odds and survive what should be deadly impact, the reverse can happen. There's been cases where someone got punched in the face once and died of it. If it's enough to knock you down (which might be very little depending on thier balance) it's enough to make a head hit a pavement.
Any blow to the head is a very serious matter. Don't inflict it unless you are willing to go to prison.
qjs

I like movies, or more specifically good movies. What is a good/bad movie depends on individual taste and mood I guess. I find it interesting how most people, arguably almost all people, use movies and media to help define reality, norms and how things work.

Yes, there are the obvious discrepancies. The people who get a dozen or more hard hits in a fight and just 'shake it off' are not accurately depicting reality. There are really good reasons boxers wear gloves and even full-contact fighting limits the types of strikes that are legal. When they didn't there was a steady string of paralyzed people and corpses carried off. Even rules and gloves fail to contain the carnage completely. Picture Mohammad Ali in the 70s, and how he is now.

More than one military expert called John Wayne responsible for more kids dead than anyone else in America. I like John Wayne, his straight-talking persona was a true American icon. But his individual heroism on film is foolishness when used in real life. It isn't the fairy tales that get you hurt; it is when you try to apply fairy tale logic to the real world.

One I have personal experience with is the overall body aches from a car crash. Heroes in the movies drive head-on into trucks carrying bridge parts and off cliffs. Then they walk off and do something really heroic the next day. The day after my crash every muscle and joint ached. I could barely walk. Heroics were entirely out of the question. I was in slowly decreasing pain for a week.

Another personal experience was getting hit with a baseball bat. I wasn't unconscious, kind of wish I was. I was crumpled on the floor and quite incapable of moving. I could no more stand than I could jump to the moon. Took ten minutes for my body to start taking orders again. Twenty before I could walk straight. I had a headache for a couple days and twinges of pain for a week.