How Deadly are Cyberpunk 2077 Mantis Blades?

the year is 2077. science and technology have pushed the boundaries of society and what it means to be human neon reflects off a polished concrete carbon fiber lukewarm chafes flesh if you can afford it metal and molded plastic can weaponize and augment your biology but just how dangerous would bladed arms be it's time to jack in now entering the facility ever since reading william gibson's foundational neuromancer i've been obsessed with cyberpunk i love the aesthetic i love the transhumanism of it i love the techno-ethical challenges that come along with ideas of human augmentation so obviously i'm very excited to get my hands on cyberpunk 2077 after waiting 77 years to play it but that's okay because today we're actually gonna get our hands on it i've tasked my razor girl thea to build a pair of mantis blades from the game in a more or less screen accurate way and we're gonna use this to actually test its deadly form and function in half once yeah yeah she's great now building this from scratch is going to take thea a little while so let's get some cyber science in first cyberpunk's mantis blades are clearly modeled after something in nature and when humans look to nature for engineering and design solutions it's called biomimetics or biomimicry humans are very good at coming up with solutions to very complicated problems just think of how hard it would be to watch this video from scratch but it turns out evolution with its billions of years of natural trial and error routinely outclasses anything that humans can come up with case in point this is the eastgate building it's an office complex in harare zimbabwe now even in the sweltering midday african sun this office complex uses no air conditioning and it only uses 10 percent of the energy that other buildings of a similar size would use how is that possible well the architect mick pierce actually looked to termite mounds for his inspiration for the design of this building he was fascinated by how termite mounds could retain a basically stable temperature during huge temperature swings night and day in the desert he took three-dimensional scans of the termite mounds interiors and then he applied it to the interiors of his building and now it runs on completely natural ventilation amazing or as another example take the ubiquitous and staple of any cyberpunk outfit material velcro this was inspired by a plant the burr plant you know that thing that sticks to your hiking socks after you're done walking your dog now there are many many more biomimicry examples from antimicrobial surfaces that were inspired by shark skin to bullet trains shaped after bird beaks to my glorious mane modeled after 1 trillion sexy lions and it seems like the mantis blades fit right in here with this kind of design but which kind of mantis are we actually talking about look i know what you're probably thinking right now but kyra what do you mean witch mantis it's obviously the mantis that's the praying kind you know the praying mantis cow dang hey first of all guy with a voice that's what i thought at first too but then you look at how the blades in the game actually function there's a lot more slicing in piercing and this is just not what praying mantids use their little praying arms for they use them to grab and hold prey while they eat their face while they're still alive thankfully for cp 2077 canon though there is a mantis which fits the bill a lot better biomedically speaking the only insectoid that is arguably more badass than the praying mantis is the mantis shrimp a carnivorous marine crustacean since you're probably an animal nerd like me if you're watching this video you likely know that these little murder prawns are awesome they have the most complex vision in the animal kingdom and can punch with calcified claws accelerated at 10 000 g to crack crabs and aquarium glass and create cavitation bubbles that create their own heat and light and pressure and they're awesome these heavyweights aren't even a kilogram but did you know that there is another species of manta shrimp that evolved spears instead of clubs yeah watch this uh yeah to my possibly augmented eyes if the cyberpunk blades are to be biomimetic of anything they are meant to replicate the piercing and tearing power of the squilomantis mantis shrimp's blades the only manta shrimp that people usually eat anyway speaking of piercing power mantis blades aren't just about the blade construction at 75. fantastic order the ballistics joe the kind with the brains inside yes yes put the brains in it oh this is going to be gross and good good old natural muscle has gotten humans a long way who do you think built the pyramids some dumb aliens on a history channel show trying just to make a dollar with decreasing viewership in an age where most people are cutting their cable cords no good old acton myosin chains baby but if we were in a dystopia where most of the guys who needed a good stabby stabby were made of half metal we might need more piercing power than anything that a natural muscle fiber can provide enter the emerging technology then of artificial muscle artificial muscles are systems and materials that can act like natural muscle they can expand contract twist and handle repeated loading and unloading and they activate in response to say electricity or heat now as of the latest research in 2014 scientists have used carbon nanotube yarn to create muscles that can pull and push with a hundred times more force than anything you can find in your arms or legs but you don't need futuristic fibers to make artificial muscle you can actually make it at home follow me for a little demonstration instruction complete oh forget that it's time to slice and dice stuff i mean we'll get back to it maybe i don't care i can definitely cut that guy in half oh hey there kyle oh it looks like you get a present for me is it done oh can you just it just are you ready i'm ready let's do it for the big reveal yeah are you sure i just want to make sure you're prepared wow oh man this looks straight up deadly this is definitely deadly wow how would you make this so it was a very complicated process to make this because i wanted it to look amazing and function gotta cut some people in half you know what i'm saying they do it slides onto your arm like this sick and then have some straps that go to hold it in place some little detailing so it matches up of course with the game i love that but it needs to be light enough so i had to do most of the fabrication out of aluminum to make it lighter because aluminum is about half the weight of steel so everything from here down is aluminium and this blade is steel because i need it to be sharp sure so we can mess some things up for this to articulate forward and properly have some good stabbing action like in the game these two joints need to bend in relationship to each other so they needed a double linkage because with a single linkage everything was just bouncing all over the place so and speaking of slicing and stabby stabby i brought you something too oh yeah yeah ooh i'm excited oh my goodness so that's a full ballistics gel head with resin bones inside of it so this is to approximate the cut ability and stability of human flesh with ballistic gel and then the resin skull is going to simulate some of the properties of bone not all the properties of bone of course but it should give us a pretty good idea and there also might be stuff inside of the skull i'm not 100 certain because i haven't stabbed it yet this is what we're going to be using today to test the slicey stabbiness of our mantis blades which do have different and screen accurate blades that we can put onto this prop also because you know i hate fruit because in orange kill my parents we will also be slicing and stabbing some fruit today now i know we do not have 2077 fabrication and materials at our disposal but given how beautiful this is how actually sharp this blade is i'm not even going to touch it and our test materials i think this will give us a pretty good idea of what it can do so are you ready to test i'm ready let's do this let's suit up [Music] [Music] [Music] oh my god that was insane i honestly did not expect that at all that is a perfect and perfectly clean cut right down the center wow really amazing this mantis blade is performing i didn't expect to say this but almost exactly like you'd see it perform in the game however to really test a fully molded ballistics gel arm with resin bones to approximate everything we want stop laughing again if the blade can make it through the hard skin of a watermelon you can cut into this appreciably i think i think this this weapon is totally feasible but uh i would never test this on a human which is why the ballistics gel don't look at me like that three two one is everyone okay so easily cutting all the way through the flesh and if you look closely through the flesh it even cut a good portion into the bone so we're not making it through the bone but i do have one more implement left to slice him can i make it into some corpo's brain that makes sense if you play the game [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] that was pretty cool well thea like i said we don't have the cyberpunk 2077 all the materials and nano machines and keanu reeves being breathtaking but i think we can say from how easy it was to cut into flesh it didn't really make it through the bone very well it did a little bit in a piercing action but you might you might suspect that a cyberpunk style augmented person would have something like you know artificial muscles something like that so all in all i think we have to say that this is a plausible design it's it's it's not perfect in terms of like a sword swinging weapon but it looks cool it functions and this is this was designed to the exact dimensions and specifications that is in cyberpunk yeah so this is this is screen accurate and it does the slicing i think yeah i think we did it look if our foe was a watermelon no problem anything more than that i think you have to rely on some cyberpunk style augmentations but this as an overall design i think it totally works and it's totally awesome nailed it hey what look how look how much damage there was on that watermelon where did kyle go he left with the blade to make his cyberpunk play through more accurate what a dork until next time now exiting the facility thank you so much to the very nerdy staff at the facility for their direct and substantial support in the creation of this here video if you want to get on the staff and get episodes early if you want to give me episode suggestions if you want to join our commander league if you want to see behind the scenes stuff live streams with me and go to patreon.com kyle hill and get on the staff today and today especially i want to recognize research assistant daniel penagos and visiting scholar zack ship and if you support the facility just enough you get your name honorarily on aria each and every week and as you can see there's literally hundreds of you so i've i have no idea how to pass that you should go to thea's channel right now and check out the other half of the collaboration to see how she built the mantis blades from scratch and you can make artificial muscle fibers at home by coiling fishing line but i'm tired i had to stab ahead thanks for watching cyberpunk voice

Channel: Kyle Hill

Views: 393,936

Rating: 4.912734 out of 5

Keywords: because science, engineering, kyle hill, learning, math, physics, science, stem, the facility, cyberpunk 2077, cd projekt red, cyberpunk 2077 gameplay, mantis blades, cyberpunk 2077 trailer, mantis blade, cyberpunk trailer, cyberpunk 2077 weapons, test, experiment, video game, cyberpunk 2077 info, cyberpunk 2077 review, cyberpunk 2077 night city, cyberpunk 2077 mantis blades

Id: tB4DDM8VHVg

Length: 15min 7sec (907 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 10 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/aweybrother]

I was expecting more... I didn't think this video is that good...

[u/juggernautjefe81]

I want Thea to make me one. For scientific purposes of course...