You've been invited to play a game of
Would You Rather, that could solve all your problems. But every choice you make
is going to be awful. You'll have to beat, out-game, overthrow and down the other
players, if you want to win the ultimate prize. But do you have what it takes? When you're
trapped in a room with desperate people, willing to hurt you for cash, what do you do?
I'm going to break down the mistakes made, what you should do in how to beat
the death game in "Would You Rather". This one, Iris desperately needs money
for her brother's bone marrow transplant, and she'd do anything to make sure he gets it.
Her brother's doctor wants to help and introduces her to this wealthy philanthropist who offers to
cover her brother's bone marrow transplant, but there's one catch. She'll have to come and play
a game, and will only get the money if she wins. The doctor confirms this guy's legit as he was
a winner of the last game and got a lot of money out of it. It's extremely generous and she asks to
think it over. All right, there's already enough here to tell me this is a sketchy deal. If he
wanted to donate his wealth to people in need, making a private game out of it is completely
unnecessary. There must be an ulterior motive here. But this girl doesn't have a lot of options.
A bone marrow transplant can cost up to $675,000, which is insane. If she worked three jobs,
like the one she applies for at this restaurant and didn't spend a penny for eight years, she
still wouldn't have enough money to afford the procedure. If it's my brother, I'd still join
any game short of an undergrad rush roulette ring to make sure he could live, but not without
some basic questions answered first. If we're going to play a game, we need more information to
prepare, study it and devise a strategy to win. This girl didn't even asked what the
game was and that was her first mistake. The best source of information is the doctor
here because he was the winner of the last game. I wouldn't leave until he told me his advice and
strategies so I have a competitive advantage. After returning home, she finds that she's
been rejected from her recent job application and she realizes her brother will die a slow and
painful death unless she decides to join the game. The next evening, she heads over to the mansion
where the event is being held and meets seven other guests. It's a real mixed bag of people.
There's a woman in a wheelchair, a professional gambler from Vegas and even an Iraq war veteran.
All of them are here out of sheer desperation and looking for a chance to win big, but none of them
are prepared for the horrors they'll be facing tonight. Okay. They might all seem friendly right
now, but this is a room full of desperate people, which makes them dangerous and we should
expect they're all sizing up the competition, so we should too. We can actually tell a lot
about these people based on their positioning in the room, body language, and drink selection.
Every single one of them is drinking alcohol, except this guy who just has water. This seems
irrelevant, but it's incredibly important. If you're about to play a game, you want to
be sober. It tells me this guy's taking the competition more seriously than the others and
is already strategizing. If they offer me drinks, I am refusing. I can also tell that this girl and
this veteran have trust issues because they've distanced themselves from everyone else in the
room. They're not here to make friends. They're here to win. And I expect that neither of them
will easily cooperate with the group. The brother comes in and tells the guests to remove any of
their personal belongings before they enter the game as a way to make sure they don't cheat.
It makes them feel nervous, but with money on the line, everyone hands their phones and bags
over and makes their way to the dining room. Okay? We are playing a game and
phones might be an easy way to cheat. So handing them over is actually a reasonable
request, but this is exactly why I would do everything I could to take mine inside. If I'm
already desperate enough to be here in the first place, why would I suddenly want to play by the
rules? If my brother's life hangs in the balance, I need every advantage, fair or not, to gain the
upper hand. When they ask for my phone, I would tuck it inside my waistband behind my belt, and
simply say that I didn't bring it with me. There's no metal detection, no x-ray, not even a pat down.
This is a flaw that we can and should exploit. Dinner starts and they're served the main course
of steak and foie gras. But Iris here has some gripes. She's a strict vegetarian who swore to
never eat meat. And this is where the night starts to get interesting. The host offers her $10,000 to
give up her lifelong commitment and eat the steak. She refuses at first, but everyone has a price
as she takes that deal and swallows her pride. He then notices the old man here is drinking only
water and finds out he's a recovering alcoholic. Offering him $50,000, he ups the ante and
tells him to drink at entire scotch decanter. After a lot of hesitation, he finally
gives up 16 years of hard-fought sobriety. Okay. There's a pattern building here. The host
wants to make us do things that go against our principles and morals for cold, hard cash.
Fortunately, this can be easily manipulated because both of these challenges were based on
information that they volunteered. I would create a lie that would make him give me easy challenges
that I didn't morally object to, such as telling him I'm Jewish and only eat kosher. I might even
say I'm celibate just to see what happens. Now, this is probably going to escalate quickly.
And if we stay too long, he might be asking us to do things that are downright evil.
With a room of desperate people, only God knows what some of them might be capable
of, especially when things start getting competitive. We should be taking this opportunity
to grab as much cash as possible in these simple isolated challenges and leave before it gets out
of hand. The host then reveals the main event of the evening. They will all be playing a game of
Would You Rather with some important differences. In each round, every player be given two
unpleasant choices with only 15 seconds to choose. They're eliminated if they don't act in time,
and the last remaining player wins the game. Before they start, he offers them a chance
to leave. But no one gets up and the game begins. The host reveals that his butler
used to be an interrogator for MI5 as he brings out one of his old tools for torture, and
they'll be using it to electrocute their guests. The alcoholic wants no part of this and tries
to leave, but the butler makes it clear that's no longer an option by shooting him in the
head. If they want out alive, they need to win. All right, this is messed up. And not just
because they've skipped dessert. If it's me, I'm paying close attention to the Iraq war
veteran. He would have the best instincts in a life-threatening situation. And if he's not
moving into striking distance of the gunman, it's fair to say we don't have a good chance
to fight our way out of this. We need to play the game until we have a better opportunity to
escape and now it's all about making the best choices to keep everyone alive for as long as
possible. Now we have only 15 seconds to make difficult decisions, which gives us very little
time to explore the consequences of each choice. This thing's a torture device. So we'll
likely have to choose between two different forms of pain, which is scaring the
(beep) out of everyone at the table. In high pressure situations like this one, the
brain is influenced by fear, panic, and cognitive bias and we tend to compensate for these by
oversimplifying our options. But there's actually a way to bypass all of these mental blocks to
lie to make better and more rational decisions. Professional chess players use a decision making
tactic in their games that psychologists call combinatorial versus positional thinking where
a player makes a series of moves based on a very specific final outcome in mind, and it lets them
make strategic sacrifices to achieve their final goal. Now, most people in this situation would
have based their decisions on avoiding pain, but that's a mistake because it limits your
thinking and strategy to only a momentary goal. The final outcome here is not to suffer less
pain, it's to win and survive. This type of strategic thinking helps bypass intuitive
and emotional responses and make better decisions to gain the advantage. The butler puts
a headband on this guy and he's asked if he would rather electrocute himself or Amy here. The host
starts the clock. And just before time runs out, he decides to shock himself and they say chivalry
is dead, but he's voluntarily weakened himself without gaining anything in return. If it's me,
I'm choosing to shock someone else because it increases my chance of winning if others are too
injured to continue the game. He's actually given everyone an advantage because they now have more
information to work with. If we know what we're in for, we can plan for it better. This guy is still
conscious and doesn't have any burn marks, which means the electrical potential is too low to stop
your heart and you can survive a single shock. Now there are some things we can do to lessen the
pain here. Water is a conductor of electricity. So if I was next, I would dry any sweat from my
forehead because wet skin has 500 times less resistance to electricity and it will hurt
much more. We could also consider cheating. If you were brave enough and halfway decent at
slight of hand, you could try slipping a credit card between your skin and the electrodes because
plastic is an insulator and thin enough to hide. The next two players in line gets strapped
in, but Amy here wastes no time and instantly chucks the old woman like it's nothing. She's
cold blooded. The old woman is given the same choice and she chooses to shock the gambler.
They go around the table and finish the first round with Lucas and Iris here, the only
other players who decide the shock themselves. Okay, there are actually two ways to play this
as a team. And that was for everyone to either unanimously decide to shock themselves or to shock
others. Only these two options will have a fair outcome because everyone gets shocked only once,
but this strategy requires a hundred percent trust and no rogue decision-makers. And when
the challenges get more brutal, we won't be able to rely on others that think about the
group over themselves. And this tells me group decision-making would be a bad strategy. The staff
prepare for the second round. With their only chance, the group secretly discuss taking down
the guards, stealing their guns, and taking their keys to escape the house. Before they can come to
any agreement, the host's son, Julian, comes into taunt them. The veteran starts mouthing off and
the son makes it clear that he'll regret it later. All right, bad decisions are made and you let
emotions get the better of you. Now, studies show fear drives people to make pessimistic decisions
and angry people will make optimistic ones. Deciding to curse this guy out optimistically
assumes that there will be no consequences, and that's stupid. We already know that the host
will have us killed without blinking an eye. I'd want to stay quiet so I don't get any
special attention. Now it's cold-blooded, but I'd also encourage others to speak out and
get emotionally triggered. This situation is scary as hell, and I'd be pessimistic enough to
think there's no way out of this without winning. Meanwhile, Iris's doctor has snuck onto
the property. He won the last game, so he must know what's going on and it looks like
he's here to help them. But he can't take out all the guards by himself. So they'll have to survive
the next round until he can figure out what to do. Okay. There's no reason for this doctor to be
on the property. If he actually wanted to save lives and avoid suspicion from the host, he
should have stayed home and called the police or the fire department from a burner phone
to avoid any trace of the call back to him. If the authorities get involved, it gives
the guests an opportunity to escape. This guy doesn't consider any of this. And if he was my
doctor, I'd definitely seeking a second opinion. The next round has begun. And this time they
will have 30 seconds to make their decision, but the choices will be a lot more sadistic. The
first player to go is Iris. And she's asked if she would rather stab this guy's thigh with an ice
pick or whip the veteran with a staff three times. Okay. Things are getting really serious now.
We have to be a lot more careful with our decisions because not only could they kill
someone, but we should also be expecting retaliation if we make the wrong choice.
I'd be very tempted to beat someone as a lesser punishment. But in this case, choosing the
ice pick is actually the safer of the two options. This whipping step is called a Sjambok and it's
a (beep) nightmare. Often made from a hippo or rhino hide and used by cattle herders in South
African police during apartheid, this thing can cause enough damage to experience symptoms of
crushed syndrome, which leads to kidney failure and rhabdomyolysis, which kills muscle fibers and
releases it into the bloodstream. A shallow stab of the thigh, however, can be quickly treated,
but placement is absolutely fine. Stabbing someone on the outermost side of their leg avoids their
major arteries. And depending on someone's build, there can be a thicker layer of subcutaneous
fat on the thighs, which might decrease the chances of causing a life-threatening injury.
Iris decides to use the African whipping staff, but the bigger mistake here was letting him take
off his jacket because he's removing a layer of protection. She tries to take it easy on him, but
the host won't count them unless she uses bold force. Now, the back has a lot of weak points.
There are vital organs, nerves, and bones without a lot of muscle or fat to protect them, making
it much more dangerous. This guy didn't specify where to hit him. So if you had to use the staff,
then you should aim for the butt or thighs and the forearms. Dominatrices target these an impact
play because they have a higher pain threshold than the rest of the body. So getting a little
kinky might actually save your life. The next guy is given the same choice. He can either stab
the woman or whip the veteran three more times. He knows there's a major artery in the thigh
that could kill her, but isn't sure where it is. So he chooses to be the soldier again. This guy's
taking it like a champ. Luckily it's the veteran's turn next and he's given a choice to stab this
guy, or get whipped three times by the butler. Surprisingly, he chooses the whip. This guy begs
the veteran to stab him, but the host says he can't change his mind. Okay. He's clearly being
singled out because he stood up to the host's son and it's hard to watch, but it's also a direct
benefit to every other player in the game. The most practical decision here is to use this
as an opportunity to take out a competitor and improve your chances of winning. So when it's
our turn, we should make our decision based not on what keeps him in the game, but on the
most compassionate way to take him out of it. The best solution for a merciful exit
from the game that's offend the rules, is to stab someone in the femoral artery because
it's a major supplier of blood to the lower body. This artery is primarily centered around the
inner thigh, so aim for somewhere around here and they'll die in a matter of minutes if they don't
get help. It's cruel, but there are two ways out of here. You're either the winner or get sent
out in a body bag. It's the gamblers turn now, and he's given the choice of either whipping
the veteran who could die from his wounds or stabbed the paralyzed woman next to him. He
rationalizes that she won't feel the pain because she's paralyzed. And he stabs her in the
thigh, accidentally piercing an artery. He makes a tourniquet with his belt to stop the bleeding as
the woman decides if she wants to whip the soldier or stab Amy here. She gives her answer and
quickly stabs a goth girl with the ice pick, but wasn't expecting to get elbowed in the face.
The gambler made the right move here. The vet is on his way out and the old woman can't feel
her legs, so if he aims for the femoral artery, he could eliminate her painlessly. That's two for
the price of one. And it's a perfectly rational strategy to cut down the pool of competitors. His
reaction here is a great way to garner empathy because even though he stabs her, he also decides
to help her once he sees how severe her wound is. Acting morally conflicted makes him appear
less evil. And the other players might be less likely to target him as a result. On the
other hand, if you act cold and calculating, you make it easier for others to see you as
someone they should take out quickly. Emotions and instinct play a huge role in fast decision-making.
So if you dehumanize yourself and give them a justification to punish you, they'll have no
problems hurting or eliminating someone they think is a bad guy. Now it's this woman's turn, and the
host decides to make things more interesting. She can either whip the soldier or stab anyone she
chooses. She makes it clear to everyone that this is a competition where teamwork does not pay off
and she's dead set on winning this. She chooses Iris as her target and asks the host if she can
stab her anywhere. He tells her she can stab only below the shoulder and immediately the girl jams
the ice pick into her side. It didn't penetrate the lungs. So she's going to be okay, but as
she's recovering, the veteran collapses from his injuries and isn't getting up. Okay, they've
introduced a new choice into this game. And this is important to our strategy because we can now
selectively target who to injure. With one person eliminated and two on the way out, we should
consider who's most likely to survive the longest. Out of all of them, the old lady is the weakest
due to her age and fatal stab world. So I'd want to keep her around. These two guys are healthy
enough to take quite a beating, but they've also shown a willingness to sacrifice themselves for
the group. So they might be easier to manipulate and are therefore less threatening. Amy's
most likely going to stab others in the back, which makes her the first person you should take
out, as she's too dangerous to be left alive. Iris here is in this for her brother, so she'd
do anything to make sure he gets what he needs, making her just as dangerous. As for the gambler,
I expect he's better at calculating probabilities and risk assessment and will eliminate any other
competitors who get in his way. If they give us the freedom to choose, the top three people we
need to take out are Amy, Iris, and the gambler and winning the game depends on making sure your
last remaining competition is weaker than you. Downstairs in the basement, the doctor is breaking
in. And he's decided he has to do something about this to rescues his friend Iris before she dies
in the game. The butler determines the soldier's unconscious, but still able to play. But they
realize the old woman has quietly died from her wound and she gets eliminated. It's now this
guy's turn to choose and he decides to beat the veterans so hard that he can't continue, leaving
five people left to play. But before the weapons change hands, the players make signals to each
other and they wait until the host starts speaking with his butler to seize their opportunity. The
three men attack the guards. They're striking them as Iris here runs out of the room.
The host shoots one of the players dead and ushers the remaining guests to the table.
But when he realizes that someone is missing, he commands his butler to find the
woman and lets his son join the search. Okay. This was their best chance at escaping and
they took it. We have two weapons that we didn't have in the first round and they would have been
taken away once the next one starts. So it was a perfect time to strike and they nearly got away,
but they made a few mistakes here. The first was assuming the hosts don't carry guns. There's no
way I'm thinking they aren't armed for any number of unexpected outcomes, and if they've been doing
this for years, they would know better. This guy should have left as soon as he had the chance
instead of walking up to the host. Secondly, splitting up would divide the outnumbered guards,
giving someone the opportunity to look for confiscated cell phones, then call the police.
The windows aren't barred, so I would look for a room on the first floor with a window and lock
myself in. Meanwhile, you should grab a knife in case you need to force open any locked doors in
the escape. This is actually not that hard to do. As long as the slanted part of the latch bolt
is facing you, the knife can slip into the small crack of the wall to force it open and you can
run away. Iris here tries to break out through the basement window with the host soon finds her
and tries to take advantage. She fights back and stabs him in the leg. Her doctor suddenly shows
up and tries to rescue her, but seconds later, he gets shot by the butler who takes Iris and back to
the game. Okay? This encounter here has made a lot of noise. And when you're running from the guards,
you have to expect they'll be drawn to the sound. The doctor should've considered hiding the dark
and wait for a guard to show up so he could easily ambush him and save Iris. Even still,
wandering into the house got him killed. And all he had to do was make an anonymous phone call
to the police and mention gunshots. As for Iris, this is a difficult situation. She stabbed this
guy in the leg. We saw how vengeful he was to the soldier. If we get caught and dragged back to the
game, we'll die for sure. So with this in mind, I'm deciding to stab in the neck for the kill
and run out of the hallway so I'm not caught standing over the body. Returning to the game, the
guards bring out a barrel of water. In this round, each player will be given a sealed envelope. And
inside is a card with a punishment written on it. They have 30 seconds to choose between
being held down under water for two minutes or take their chances with the envelope.
Okay? As soon as I see the tub full of water, I know where this is going. So before even being
presented a choice, I'm going to start breathing exercises to prepare in advance. Also, opening
the envelope takes away your ability to make an informed choice. Now, with that said, two minutes
held underwater is totally possible to survive. The magician, David Blaine, once held his breath
for 17 minutes using a technique that pro divers use known as oxygen assisted static apnea. David
Blaine's method is to take a minute to breathe in and out deeply. Then purge your body from excess
carbon dioxide by inhaling quickly and excelling strongly. If you do this, a normal person with
no prior experience can hold their breath twice as long as they would normally. The trick here
is to keep as still as possible in the water, slowing down your heart rate and not get panicked
and thrash because the body will send oxygen to the muscles, creating more carbon dioxide buildup
and making it much harder to hold your breath. Thankfully, we as humans have the mammalian
dive reflex, which naturally once our faces are submerged. This will cause your heart rate
to decrease narrowing the blood vessels to ensure that organs like the brain and the heart
have a continued supply of oxygen. The gambler goes first and decides to take a gamble on the
envelope. Finding out he must light a firecracker in his hand. It seems like he got lucky, but
instead he's handed something much bigger. The host assures that if it's a dud, he'll get a
free pass, but to make sure he doesn't drop it, they tape it to his hand and force him to light
the fuse at gunpoint. The explosion turns his hand into bloody chunks. He dies from a heart
attack, leaving three players left to play. Okay, this guy mentions it's a quarter stick, but
based on its size and the description provided by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, it
looks more like an M80, because an actual M1000 quarter stick is six inches long.
That ain't no six inches, trust me. These explosives are illegal to own
without a license because they're so dangerous. There's no way out of this situation other than
to cheat. He had more than 30 seconds before the explosive went off. So I would have tried using
my fingers to slowly pull the wick out of the explosive container and rip it out of the socket
it's glued into. This might convince them it's a dud and I'll get to keep both my hands. Lucas
here decides he'll open up the envelope. And he discovers his punishment is to slit his eye open,
is given a razor blade and 30 seconds to do it, but he doesn't think he can. It's too scary.
Still, he holds the blade to his eye and when there's only three seconds left, he slices it
open. All right, this is where you'd lose me. I can't even watch people put their contacts in.
So slitting my own eye is just too damn hard. But there might be a way to do this properly without
losing your sight. The eye is one of the fastest healing parts of the body. So you should look
away to avoid the pupil and slice the whites of your eye only. In order to avoid further damage,
you should keep your eyes closed. If you look around with one eye, the other eye follows because
they're paired together. I won't be able to see, but I probably won't need to in order to win and
able to protect my eye from further damage. The next player, Iris, bravely decides to take the
water barrel instead. And it's not easy, but she manages to last the whole two minutes, much
to the host's surprise. It's a good thing too, because if she had chosen the envelope,
all her teeth would have been extracted. This leaves Amy, here to go next and she chooses
the envelope rather than the water barrel. But as she discovers, her punishment is being
held under water for four minutes instead of two. And unlike Iris, she does not make it. This leaves
only two players left. And the host reveals for this final round things will be very different.
The butler flips a coin and Iris gets to go first. Her choice is simple, would she rather end this
game now with both players leaving empty handed, or would she rather kill Lucas here with this
pistol. Okay. She's been handed the keys to freedom, but there's more actual decision-making
here than meets the eye. If she walks away, they both live, there's no reward, and her
brother inevitably dies. If she shoots him, this man dies, but her brother lives. So
ultimately this decision is actually between the life of this man or the life of her brother.
If we were thinking about the greater good, we would take into consideration how many people
this man cares for and how many people his death negatively effects. It has a ripple effect
to everyone in his life he's responsible for. So if we were being altruistic, this will be the
right course of action. But at the same time, how could I tell my brother I chose a stranger's
life over his. With my brother's life on the line and only 30 seconds to decide, I'd
be heavily influenced by emotional and instinctive decision-making and probably would
shoot him in the end. He begs her to choose the first option and tries to convince her to walk
away, but she shoots him and everyone applauds. As the sole winner of the game, she's given her
prize. A bag full of money, a bone marrow donor for a brother, and a chance to finally go home.
She gets back to tell her brother the good news but tragically finds out he's killed himself.
All that torment was for nothing. After such an awful night, I'd take that money and
use it to get some much needed therapy. But what do you think? How would you be at Would
You Rather, and what would you rather do? Let me know with a comment down below. Thank you so
much for watching. Leave a like and subscribe and check out the How To Be playlist for more videos
like this. Until next time, have a damn good day.
