Cinema is the art of lying, they always try to make us believe implausible things on various subjects and we end up taking it for the truth since we don’t know anything about it. Today we decided to talk about a very cheerful subject: death, because the cinema tells a lot of bullshit on this subject and it is time to restore the truth.
1. A bullet in the arm or leg can very easily kill you.
Do you see that moment in the movies where a character takes a bullet in the limb and continues to shoot enemies or says to his companions “go on, I’ll catch you” and he gets away with it? In real life, a bullet in these places that do not seem “vital” can be quite fatal, because the victim can quickly bleed out and not get up.
2. Death by injection is not at all painless
In a lot of American films we are made to believe that an execution by injection is painless, otherwise it would make a bit of bad publicity for the death penalty, you tell me. The thing is, it’s actually not as quick and “quiet” as we’re shown to be, many death row inmates actually suffer in their final moments and some studies show that this type of execution is not is not at all less painful than others.
3. Strangling someone to death is really, really hard.
If in the movies we are often shown someone being strangled to death in a few seconds without it seeming to be a real problem for the killer, the reality is quite different. Obviously, it takes several minutes to kill someone in this way, to induce asphyxiation or a heart attack, and to do so, you have to have quite a colossal strength and enough energy to last that long.
4. A defibrillator cannot restart a heart
You have all already seen the famous scene of the electrocardiogram with a straight line which symbolizes a stopped heart and doctors succeed in restarting the heart thanks to a defibrillator. Except that in real life using a defibrillator on a stopped heart is not really useful, the electric shock is useful to “recalibrate” a heart that is not beating at the right rate, but not to make it beat again .
5. Nails and hair do not continue to grow after death
We are shown in a lot of films the stuff that happens in the body after death and very often it is big bullshit. The fact that nails and hair keep growing is actually fake, it’s just the skin drying out and shrinking which makes it look like they’re growing but they’re not. That said, it’s less filthy than saying “the skin dries out and shrinks”.
6. A dead man’s face changes very quickly.
When we see a dead man in the movies, we directly understand that the actor has simply been made up in white and that we have put a little charcoal on him to make dark circles, as if dying was tiring. In real life, the dead change their faces very quickly and it becomes almost difficult to recognize them: the musculature stiffens (rigor mortis), all the tension disappears, which causes all the muscles to relax and the skin to relax while changing. facial expression completely.
7. Making a fire in a cave can kill you
Ok, it doesn’t really seem to be a lie about death in the cinema and yet it is: in the films where we see a lost character who makes a fire in a cave to warm himself we are not shown not that he faces almost certain death. On the one hand if the place is not at all ventilated you could asphyxiate yourself but above all the heat could well heat the rock formation and make the stones move until causing a landslide.
8. The eyes of the dead don’t close completely
It’s far too rare for a dead person’s eyes to be completely closed, they usually stay ajar, which the movies don’t show since obviously everyone in Hollywood decides to close their eyes as if they were about to get a good night’s sleep.