Lifting Cars off Kids et al.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/060120.html

I have to admit, I’m getting tired of Straight Dopes that aren’t - this one’s a perfect example, and we’re getting plenty of this kind these days.

Can a mom lift a car? Could be, or could be urban legend.

Is Geronimo’s skull in the possession of the Skull & Bones society? Probably not, but maybe.

Do women who live together get their menstrual cycles aligned? Probably not, but maybe.

Take a stand, sir. Where’s the uber-confident, snarky, funny, smartest-guy-in-the-world we used to know? Take Little Ed out to the woodshed and teach him who’s boss.

It was missing one key part – how much force is actually required to do these feats? Lifting a car over your head is one thing. Lifting two wheels off the ground is another. Lifting one corner a few inches is yet another. Likewise, benchpressing a 500 pound rock is quite difficult, but applying a force to roll it off yourself – hard, but not terribly impressive.

Bring in the physics…

The writer of the article might wish to contact the Montel Williams show. There was a recent show (within the last 12 months) on this kind of display. On that show two boys lifted a van or SUV off their father under similar circumstances as that mentioned in the article. It seemed to pretty well documented, but it being a talk show, make of it what you will.

I hate to offer something so vague but the history channel had a guy on who had lifted a helicopter or part of a helicopter to save someone. It wasn’t that long ago. It was played up that this was “physically impossible”.

Cecil is aware of this incident and is investigating; it is one of the “I’ve got a line on a couple similar tales but no details yet,” incidents of which he speaks. When the SDSAB was queried for leads about people exercising “superhuman” strength, I relayed the story to him. I’d seen that video clip a few years ago same as you.

For whatever it’s worth, in 1989, when I was a Freshman in college at Baylor University in Texas, the girl I was dating at the time and I were driving one evening to meet friends for dinner. We exited off the highway, came over the hill and noticed a car that was on it’s last flip of several flips in a ditch on the side of the road. I quickly pulled over, ran to the car. The driver jumped out screaming and acting totally distraught. I quickly realized that his buddy who was in the passenger seat was no longer there because he was thrown from the car. By this time, another car stopped to see if all was ok. The other person from the other car noticed a body pinned under the front bumper area in the ditch. We knew he would not survive the weight of the entire car if something wasn’t done immediately. I grabbed the drivers side of the car and lifted it up four-or-so feet, long enough to realize the guy was unfortunately dead. Tons of other cars started stopping. Someone notified the parametics. A couple days later in the paper, I read that the passenger had died in a drinking and driving accident b/c the driver was apparently too drunk to stay on the road.

It was rather crazy and totally suprised me that I was able to lift the car. I definately believe it was due to the extreme measures.

I’ll note that the urban legend predates the 1982 event (as the Kirby anecdote, among others, documents).

Thanks, but I’d prefer that Cecil not take a stand when the empirical evidence is mixed.

Fighting ignorance involves demarking what is known but also what is unknown. It is best to characterize uncertainty rather than cover it up.

Actually though, things seem pretty clear in this case. The UL is old. Independently, there are documented reports (AP Wire, interview by Cecil) of adrenaline-enhanced feats, backed up with physiological scholarship.

Kudos to the master.

Here are some more vague details. The scene was some type of construction site involving the helicopter lifting and moving equipment/supplies, and was being videotaped for insurance reasons, if I remember correctly. Only the pilot was in the helicopter, and there were 2 men on the ground (not including the video camera operator). The helicopter’s controls went haywire and the chopper crashed into a ditch. One of the men, nicknamed “Tiny”, who was by no means tiny, grunted and “lifted” the helicopter off of the pilot while the other man dragged the pilot out from under it. The pilot was unconscious and had one arm severed nearly completely off (skin was about the only thing left attaching the arm to his body).

Did “Tiny” lift the helicopter? Not entirely. But it seemed pretty super-human to me, and it was videotaped.

Indeed – raising one end of a large object would involve the application of leverage, and require much less force than the equivalent deadlift. That’s why we use levers! I suppose we could pretty much agree that it’s physically impossible for a human to deadlift 1.5 tons (at the surface of Earth), adrenaline or no adrenaline (bones, muscles, tendons and ligaments can take only so much before they tear or break) but that it’s plausible that given the right circumstances one could move a 1.5-ton object beyond what you would normally expect. The trick is in documenting the “right circumstances.”

About 15 years ago, I had a friend named Jerry who was about 6’6" tall, and one of the strongest people I ever knew. He picked up cars regularly. I don’t mean completely off the ground, but I do mean two wheels off the ground.

It’s one of the most impressive things you can see someone do, just walk up and get two wheels like 10" off the ground. (Keep in mind that you can lift a car several inches before the wheels start to come off the ground, depending on the suspension…)

He lifted the right half of my 1988 Toyota Corolla GT-S about 12" off the ground.
He lifted the rear-end of a friend’s car to keep her from driving out of a parking lot. (Her windows were up, she couldn’t hear us trying to get her attention - with her rear wheels of her rear-wheel drive car off the ground, pressing the accelerator kept her from leaving…)

He lifted the right half of his car off the ground, and that was some 1982 luxury car that was 18 feet long, can’t remember the make at the moment.

I saw him lift a ton of other cars like that to impress people in the few years I knew him.
OK, so that’s incredible feats from one person, who was very strong. Also, he knew how to use the leverage of the car - he wasn’t so much lifting as he was pushing, when he lifted them from the left or right side of the vehicle. When he lifted from the back, he was lifting the non-engine side, so the lighter side of the car. And if he is lifting a small car (MR2, Porsche, etc.) he could get the wheels wayyyyy off the ground.

Also, this is something he had practiced, lots. He dead-lifted heavy weights at the gym, and before I’d met him, had just spent lots of time trying different angles and lifting techniques to get the whole “impressive car lifting” gimmick down pat. I’d also like to point out that this guy had major back troubles before I’d met him, and spent time in the hospital because of it. That didn’t deter him from continuing to lift cars and stuff.

Hrm, didn’t someone in the 80s stop a van from rolling unattended down a hill onto his son by putting his shoulder to it and pushing against it until someone could open the door and pull the emergency brake? (I’m hazy on the details, but something along those lines…)
As has been stated above, this is very different from lifting a 1.5 ton (or 2 ton, in the case of my friend’s gigantic car) weight directly off the ground. I could easily lift a car several inches (but not get the tires off the ground) and even hold it there for some time. If you’ve played any sports that use your legs a lot (especially skating sports like hockey) or spent time at the gym working those legs, they are an incredibly powerful lifting tool. If all you needed to do was get a car 4" up to allow someone’s chest to expand to take air, I’ll believe it could be done.

Like watching bloopers on TV (confession) I am often puzzled by the role of the spectator. WHY is the woman lifting the car alone (for minutes) when there are others (neighbors) around moving jacks etc…??? In the next vignette it states, “Beverly watched as Eberle lifted the rock off…” HEY Bev, stop taking notes (or filming) and chip in!!

One quick comment, I doubt very much anybody really knows how much the rock weighs.

Ok, one more comment…it was interesting that Cecil mentioned the Incredible Hulk connection at the end of the column. I seem to recall in the tv series, probably in the pilot episode, our hero David Banner, while interviewing people who had exhibited feats of superhuman strength, talking to a woman who was able to lift a car off of someone (her son?) following an accident. Many years ago though, so my memory might be faulty.

This isn’t all that hard to believe if you do a bit of research. Humans normally use from 6% to 8% of the fibers in any given muscle at one time. The rest are recovering, clearing out waste products, repairing damage, etc.

It IS possible to use all or nearly all of the fibers in the muscle at once, effectively increasing the power by a factor of 15 to 20 times. While it can be done, and will occasionally happen spontaneously under stress, such as seeing your child in great & immediate danger, it has several caveats that are critical to understand.

The first and foremost is that it Hurts! This is Not the way muscles are designed to work and your body has a Strong interest in objecting, primarily because you can do yourself Severe damage. This is the same great strength enabled by PCP where 90 pound teenage girls hurl ten-plus large burly cops across rooms. It can rip the muscles from your bones or break those bones. PCP is a Very potent pain reliever and allows the user to ignore the pain that would otherwise keep them from doing such things. It also toasts their judgement so they are Likely to try it.

The next limitation is that muscles do not have a direct mechanism keeping them from working themselves to Death or destruction. Your nervous system provides that function by backing off the signal to the muscles after a few seconds and increasing the sensation of pain as you damage them and tear the fibers apart.
The ~burn~ felt when over-exerting yourself is the Nerve fatigue, not actual muscle response. Therefore, you can kill off or destroy substantial parts of your musculature by abusing it this way if you are not Very careful.

Keeping the use to well under ten seconds, and less than one if at all possible, is a good start. If you expect to use this in your life, get Training! Karate is probably the best as it and similar forms use the arms in ways that will allow you to learn it safely when taught by a particularly good sensei. Tai Kwon Do is not a good way to go as it emphasises leg work for unhorsing opponents; not too useful in this day and age and totally unsuited to learning careful use of power.

On the other hand, if applied Carefully, in a specific, brief and practiced way, you can produce results that Seem superhuman. This is one of the major ways that higher level martial artists can do many of the special techniques. They use the Full power of a particular muscle or set of them for a fraction of a second to add power to a move. Done by a trained practitioner, they will only feel a relatively small amount of pain. Toughening exercises are performed for this very reason; to get used to the pain involved. The ‘Ki-ai’ sound often heard is another method to mitigate the pain, and allow the user to focus on a result. Bruce Lee’s book on his methods may be of some help as well.

As an amateur in the martial arts, I have used this technique mostly in fixing cars, of all odd things. On several occasions, a stuck bolt or part was in my way. In one case, I sheared off a three-quarter inch hardened steel bolt because the alternatives were much worse. And I did it with a ten-inch wrench and no handle extensions because I was in a hurry and had nothing else available. This shocked the person working with me because he quite reasonably thought that wasn’t possible. And it wasn’t, within the limits we Normally work under. I set my arms and the wrench in position with the full normal strength of my body, then pulsed the muscles of my arms, shoulders and torso to 100% for a fraction of a second and the bolt sheared. And yes, it hurt, as it should. If it hadn’t I would have been seriously concerned for my health.

Contributions to the fight against ignorance are never wasted, albeit the struggle is eternal,
---- garnet_gargler

When I was 4 (1987), my father was out in the parking lot of our apartment complex replacing the universal bolt on the chassis of his Delorean. He had also removed one or more of the wheels for other maintenance, and had the car on a jack. A big truck rumbled by and the car fell from the Jack on him, piercing his lung with said bolt, breaking several ribs and stabbing him in the shoulder with some other protruding bolt or edge of some sort. However, his arms were positioned in such a way that his forearms held the car up by letting it rest on his bones as though he were bench pressing it, but his elbows were pinned to the ground. The oil pan was pressed against his face, which was turned to the side.

Anyway, he remained conscious and managed to call for help loudly enough that my mother and I could hear him between breaks in songs on the radio. My mom, who was about 6 months pregnant, ran out and screamed for help, but the apartment complex was nearly abandoned as it was undergoing renovations. The other people there were my father (the chief of security there) and about 4 or 5 workers (floorers, roofers, electricians, something like that). Three lifted the car and one or two grabbed his legs and pulled him out.

His entire back was black from the bruises and he spent nearly a week in the hospital but came out fine. Later that day or maybe the next, the workers tried again to lift the car, but could not. Clearly they were enabled by the circumstances.

It’s no 90 pound mother, but still, it shows what emergencies can motivate people to do.

–Bobby

Oh and … when I was in high school, in 1986, some guys from the football team picked up my 1970 VW Bug and moved it over the posts that separated the parking area from the walking area. The posts were about waist high (like 2.5 feet tall) and they were, together, able to lift the vehicle entirely over the posts. Now, admittedly, there were probably 8 guys grabbing the thing at once, they were all on the football team and very in-shape, and it was just a VW bug, one of the lightest cars around.

But still, 2.5 feet off the ground, wheels and all!

This sounds suspiciously like that old “Humans only use 10% of their brain” saw.

That presupposes he had to answer the questions to which he didn’t have a good answer. If you don’t have a good answer, wait until you do.

The 500 pound rock story doesn’t impress me. Motorcycles can weigh as much as 750 pounds, and they fall on their sides and trap their owners all the time. This is common enough that bikers consider it a non-event in the grand scheme of things. Virtually every bike out there more than 5 years old has been dropped once, and in many cases the riders were on them at the time and their leg was trapped. People usually find their way out from under the bike themselves. If Reggie Retiree can get himself out from under a 750 pound Honda Gold Wing, what makes a 500 pound rock so special?

Granted, a bike might be more conducive to being pushed off you than a rock, but that would depend on the rock, wouldn’t it? Also, unless they actually weighed the rock, 500 pounds was just an estimate… which means it could have been 400 pounds. Or 300.

Maybe if I’d actually seen this rock incident myself I’d be impressed. But as described it sets off my BS meter.

I work in a psych ward, and have had the experience of seeing a woman at 160 cm and 42 kilos require eight people to take her down. I have also had the personal experience of hiking 15 miles with a 90-pound back without the benefit of prior physical training – I would never have considered it possible, but the fact that I had to finish the 15 miles to get to the destination kept me going.

The limitations that we place on our physical selves by both reflexive and (at least partially) conscious inhibition are far, far, far more restrictive than the limitations placed on us by the physical capacity of our bodies.

That said, in evaluating claims of this nature, it is important to address the specifics. As others have noted, picking up a car in toto is a different proposition from lifting two wheels an inch of the ground, which is a very different proposition from raising the car just enough to enable someone trapped under it to go on breathing. And all of these are very different for a Cooper Mini than for a '66 Buick Electra.

What hasn’t been addressed is that physical strength is only a small part of lifting any part of a car. Applying that strength in the correct manner (for example, using legs correctly to create leverage, lifting the highest part of the car if the car is not on level ground, ensuring that feet are properly placed, etc.) is perhaps more important. Proper application of strength magnifies its effectiveness; my guess is that the stories one occasionally hears of small housewives partially raising cars involve both adrenaline-induced power and lucky (or instinctive) effective use of strength.

I have no trouble believing a small woman could lift a small vehicle enough to save her child’s life. Does anyone remember Darryl Dawkins? He played center for the 76’ers and the Nets, IIRC. (He became modestly famous for breaking backboards.) He was reported to have lifted the back end of a caddy out of a ditch in a nonemergency. He knew he could do it because he had tried it out after hearing that the guy who played Hoss in Bonanza could do it.

It would seem a woman half, or a third, their size could lift part of a small car to save her child.