Game Theory: Portal 2, Does Chell DIE?

here come the test results you are a horrible person that's what it says a horrible person we weren't even testing for them [Music] are you still there wish i could take it all back and not just because i'm stranded in space [Music] hello internet welcome to game theory just call us the absurd logic core to your youtube watch habits before we get any further spoiler warning we're going to be talking about the ending of portal 2. if that matters to you then why haven't you played the game in the last nine years i mean it's base price is 10 but more often than not it's even on a discount heck i've paid more than that for crappy indie horror games looking at you hello neighbor anyway if you care about portal 2 spoilers and somehow haven't already played it or heck if it's been a while since you last played it go spend the afternoon beating it then come back and watch this video alright everyone back cool as you all know since you all took my advice and just played through the game obviously portal 2 has you playing the role of test subject 1498 aka chell or shell i'm gonna call her chell there's an unused voice line of glados actually saying her name and that's the way she pronounces it as far as how you pronounce glados glados gladys apparently is a viable option it's at least in the wikipedia page these sorts of things make me so tired anyway you play as chel who wakes up in a stasis chamber in the aperture science research facility you then spend the rest of the game trying to escape with the help of your handy dandy portal gun this time there are various tweaks to the formula like the inclusion of gels that boost your speed or bounce you around but overall it's the same basic premise as the first game solve physics-based puzzles to escape but in order to make it back to the surface you first have to team up with your former nemesis glados to defeat the corrupted ai named wheatley now that alone would be cool enemies being forced to work together is always a solid plotline for a story but what's even more incredible is the way that you defeat wheatley in that final boss battle when everything seems lost chell looks up through a hole in the crumbling ceiling and out of desperation shoots a portal at the moon miraculously it works and i do mean miraculously considering the distance that the portal would have to travel just an inch or two off and you're missing that moon by miles anyway the shot lands a portal opens up on the moon exposing them all to the vacuum of space we're in space wheatley several ai cores and chell get sucked through the hole until glados reaches out and saves the day she begrudgingly delivers us to the surface and demands that we never return which i gotta admit is kind of a fair request considering we've now completely destroyed two of her testing facilities and of course there's a catchy song to round it all out now that moment where you look up into the sky and see the moon and realize that you can create a portal there is one of the coolest reveals in video game history no joke i remember that scene i was like wait you want me to shoot it on the moon and the game actually does an incredible job of setting this moment up earlier in the game we learned via various lore dumps that moon dust is the thing that allows walls to be portable in the first place no portable would mean that i could carry the walls portal-able portable sure we're just gonna go with that one the bean counters told me we literally could not afford to buy seven dollars worth of moon rocks much less 70 million bottom anyway ground them up mix them into a gel and guess what turns out they're a great portal conductor but that final scene does lead to some interesting questions from a science perspective which let's be honest is a valid perspective to take in a video game where all you do is physics puzzles in various scientific testing chambers for instance when you wheatley and the other ai cores are getting sucked into the vacuum of space should you really be able to hear their voices or anything for that matter mean you're in space and more importantly how did chell manage to survive her 28 second visit to the moon before glados rescued her shouldn't her lungs have collapsed in the vacuum of space or shouldn't they have like burst like a balloon i'm really not sure what should have happened in the scene and i'm really curious to find out i recognize that this feels like one of those moments where you're just supposed to suspend your disbelief and not think too hard about the science well a shot of that i say shut off your brains and stop worrying about the science if game theory as a show has a motto it's whatever the opposite of that is so uh turn your brain on and do worry about the science because when you actually look at what's going on in the scene well this iconic gaming moment actually holds up better than you would think with one big difference that completely changes the ending so today i'm going to show you the true ending of portal 2 and i guarantee it's not what you're thinking let's start by dispelling a common myth about what happens when you're exposed to the vacuum of space it's not a case of instant death experiments conducted on animals and humans no joke have shown that people can survive exposure to space's vacuum conditions what do you think it must have been like for the human test subjects involved in those experiments oh we're pretty sure you'll survive the vacuum of space but we just have to test it's the type of experiment that would make glados proud anyway not only can humans survive but we can survive for a few minutes former nasa astronaut jay bucky who now works as a professor at dartmouth medical school wrote about this subject in a book titled space physiology which has everything you need to know about surviving in space but we're too afraid to ask now surviving in vacuum conditions isn't going to be pleasant under low pressure conditions any air that's in your lungs will expand outward causing your lungs to inflate like balloons and i'm not talking about like fun birthday party balloons these balloons are gonna be causing you severe internal tissue damage so as counter-intuitive as this might seem if you're gonna spend a few seconds in the vacuum of space don't take a deep breath you want your lungs as empty as possible to prevent any gas expansion it's weird right it's actually the reverse of going underwater but that's not the only stress you're gonna be under as you may have heard the human body is around 60 water and that water content matters because when exposed to vacuum conditions lower pressure means lower boiling point you might remember from science class that the boiling point of water is 100 degrees celsius right well as air pressure goes down the temperature needed to boil water also goes down at an elevation of 8 000 feet or 2 400 meters roughly the size of a small to medium mountain the air pressure is low enough that water now boils at a temperature of 92 degrees celsius so eight degrees less than it is at sea level what happens in the vacuum of space where air pressure drops to zero well the boiling point of water drops so low that the liquids in your body can start to vaporize in your soft tissues this means bloating fortunately for at least the first few minutes your skin is strong enough to keep you from completely bursting apart but well let's just say when we're talking about how long you can last without bursting apart you can assume that it's not gonna be a comfortable couple of minutes by the way when people ask me why i never want to go into space this is the reason why space is like just terrifying as is and the methods of dying in space are just the worst your lungs are blowing up like balloons the water content in your body is making you swell to the point of bursting oh yeah and that boiling also applies to your blood bubbles forming inside your individual veins and arteries would block the flow of blood around your body effectively shutting off your circulation in one minute after that it takes about 15 seconds for the lack of blood flow to the brain to result in unconsciousness which at this point let's be honest is a mercy and while it would take several minutes after that for you to die well once you're unconscious you're basically at the mercy of whatever other person or ai might be able to rescue you thanks for that one glados now back to portal 2 we see that shell spends exactly 28 seconds in the vacuum of space honestly she's probably safe in one 1965 study dogs were exposed to near vacuum conditions for 90 seconds and survived after being returned to natural pressure conditions it only took about 10 to 15 minutes for the dogs to be steady enough on their feet to start walking around again chimpanzees can even do better studies conducted by nasa in 1965 and 1967 found that most chimpanzee test subjects could survive up to three and a half minutes in vacuum conditions follow-up tests conducted months later even showed that the chimps suffered zero lasting brain damage or loss of cognitive function all of this is to say that chell surviving for half a minute in the vacuum of space like we see at the end of portal 2 isn't just possible it's highly likely but wait this is game theory what have i ever concluded that a character could survive some horrific thing that happens to him in a video game feels feel kinda dirty and yet from a scientific perspective it's true the lack of air in space isn't the thing that's gonna kill her it's the air back on earth that's gonna do the job you see while shell's literally hanging out on the surface of the moon the portal is open and that means that everything in the aperture science testing chamber is getting blown out into space that includes wheatley the other ai cores various lab equipment as well as the air in the room itself watch the scene again in that 28 seconds she isn't just drifting calmly she is getting blown out by the constant rush of air that's coming from the portal watching the scene have you ever thought about that she's on the moon's surface shouldn't the gravity of the moon be pulling her down no and the air coming out of the portal on earth is why in space there's no air on earth there's lots of air and that creates a massive pressure difference and when there's a pressure difference nature rushes to balance it meaning that all the air on earth is flooding out into space now this is both good news and bad news for chell good news she can still breathe it means a lot of air is rushing past her face great it also means that yes she would be able to hear wheatley talking to her which i guess is either good news or bad news depending on how much you wish this guy would shut up by this point let go i'm still connecting but the really bad news is well high-speed winds can be hazardous to humans even more hazardous than the vacuum of space in 1946 naca no that's not a typo back in 1946 more than a decade before the first satellite was ever launched into orbit the pre-space precursor to nasa was naka the national advisory committee for aeronautics anyway in 1946 naca conducted a test to see how high-speed winds would affect a human passenger producing this highly amusing video where we see what happens to a human face when exposed to wind speeds of 457 miles an hour or 209 meters per second it just ends with the end on screen what this is a scientific film it isn't like some cinematic masterpiece by the way if you're wondering they weren't torturing this poor guy for the heck of it fighter pilots need to be able to eject from their planes when traveling at high speeds and it's useful to know just how fast their plane can be moving while still allowing them to survive being ejected so how does that compare to the speed of the air flowing out of the portal in portal 2. luckily we have everything that we need to calculate it based on the pressure of earth's atmosphere and the pressure on the surface of the moon which is almost but not quite a perfect vacuum we can calculate that the air would be traveling at a speed of 407 meters per second 910 miles an hour that is literally double the 457 miles per hour winds that we saw in the naka video so could chels survive that a wind speed of 910 miles an hour is equal to mach 1.2 that is 1.2 times the speed of sound for reference modern fighter jets flat a max speed of around mach 2.8 and in the real world aircraft safety specifications state that pilots can safely eject at a rate of 870 miles per hour or 389 meters a second and while 910 miles per hour is a little bit above that officially approved safe zone there are a few cases of pilots ejecting at velocities higher than that and still surviving with the record being incredibly over mach 3. admittedly that was done using specialized protective gear being exposed to wind speeds of over mach 2.6 or 1980 miles an hour is when you have to start worrying about things like you know the wind being strong enough to actually tear the skin off your face but the long and short of it is that at the wind speed she's experiencing chell actually has a decent shot of staying fine well she does have to live out the rest of her life back on earth where things are actually kind of far from being fined these days but still she won't be dying out in space anytime soon which is honestly not too far different from what they depicted in the game go figure that a game all about solving science puzzles actually adheres to real world science in one of its most extreme and unbelievable cutscenes but hey that's just a theory a game theory thanks for watching you know what else chell doesn't have to worry about her earbuds being ripped out of her ears provided she's using our sponsor for today's episode raycon wireless earbuds you see raycon's everyday e25s are the shape that actually fit and stay in your ears that's like my number 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that you've now passed mach 1. best of all raycon headphones are a premium product at a not so premium price being a scientific test subject doesn't pay all that great but lucky for chell and for you the raycon everyday e25s are half the price of other premium wireless earbuds on the market all joking aside i love these things i use them all the time when i brace yourself work out yeah i know i'm ashamed to admit it too but those core and 20 pounds ain't gonna get rid of themselves so long story short if you're looking to treat yourself to some new premium wireless earbuds look no further than raycon go to buy raycon dot com slash matpat for 15 off your order link is wait for it down below in the top line of the description no big shock there and i'll see you all next week

Channel: The Game Theorists

Views: 1,784,175

Rating: 4.9323626 out of 5

Keywords: portal, portal 2, glados, chell, portal puzzle, portal 2 2020, portal song, portal 2 song, wheatley, portal space, portal 2 space, portal theroy, portal ending, portal 2 ending, portal 3, half life, half life alyx, game theorists, game theory, matpat, game theory portal, the science of portals

Id: 0Hwjmek0Uvw

Length: 14min 8sec (848 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 22 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Portalkern395]

( I dont THINK that really Matters but ) When Chell AND Wheatley get sucked out into space, Wheatley is right INFRONT of Chell. Isnt he a bit of a windshield then that protects her from the "wind" of the air ( not the entire 28 seconds, but for some time )

Also great video, i appreciate he makes some portal content.

[u/Polyfuckery]

I'm a little worried that MatPat doesn't seem to be aware that the majority of human aviation and pressure studies for the space program came from Hubertus Strughold the so called 'Father of Space Medicine' who got them from human experimentation at Dachau. It's a very fun video. I love portal but those weren't volunteers they were holocaust victims.

[u/Ein6tein]

What bugs me is the fact, that theory ignores one other thing in space, that could kill a person - solar radiation. Moon doesn't have an atmosphere nor does it have a magnetosphere. So, wouldn't radiation kill (or at least harm) Chell?