ok more geekery here now from me. If I get a chance I'll come back and check this with an actual calculator. I'm terrible for converting badly feet to mph and metres and so on-using mixed measurement systems (owing to my age!) so I might have made a mistake in there.

I've happened upon an interview which said that the distance fallen was actually around 70 feet, less than I thought, which would make the speed on impact closer to 40 mph-which I understand is probably dead but not so definately and that anything to cushion the impact might actually make a difference.

Ok here is the problem. I've just rewatched the video on youtube and it has him falling for 8 seconds. Which means, unless I've made a big mistake (we're out of coffee-never good!) he hits the ground at around 250 feet per second which is something like 180 miles an hour. I don't think pillows will help him survivie this.

The trouble I'm having -that I've always had - is that I know Barts and it is a really tall building. I mean every Londoner knows Barts, so its not rarified, specialist knowledge or anything. I honestly don't think the screenshots really capture this-yes its three or four stories high but they are high stories. But to be fair I'm looking at another photo now and there's a phone box in it and assuming that a phone box is about 10 ft high that makes the particular part of Barts he jumped from around 70 ft meaning that the impact speed was about 40 mph.

There is an issue with the pavement and the truck too. You don't really get a sense of this I think in the show but actually, its a really wide pavement and I'm not sure how Sherlock could have changed his trajectory midfall anyway. Unless he had a rocket booster or something ;-)

Oh dear. Before I drown in a swamp of geekery (physics and Londonalia!) I think I'd better go and do some work. And it does seem possible to me that when the writing team laid out their clues as to his survival they weren't expecting the audience to call on their gcse physics, awesome as that would be :-)

Last edited by beekeeper (March 27, 2013 10:07 am)

No I don' think there is a cut, there is just an angle change. We change from the fall to a vantage point with the truck taking up most of the right hand side of the frame. 

More than anything, that's what is throwing me. I don't think our eyes leave Sherlock, its just that the angle changes. There isn't really time for him to roll off and onto a truck, even if the truck was actually in his flight path,which it isn't.

Reading the theories I'd assumed there was a cut but I just went back and rewatched (though its a youtube clip, don't think it looks edited though) and there isn't one.

ETA Unless we are looking at some kind of Seussian crane contraption of course and that was no ordinary rubbish truck

Last edited by beekeeper (March 27, 2013 12:24 pm)

In my opinion the truck theory is the only logical explanation. We see that the person who jumps is Sherlock. Something must have happend when John couldn't see him (there was that building between the hospital and John). I think the truck would be a perfect solution because it can leave quickly.

beekeeper wrote:

No I don' think there is a cut, there is just an angle change. We change from the fall to a vantage point with the truck taking up most of the right hand side of the frame. 

More than anything, that's what is throwing me. I don't think our eyes leave Sherlock, its just that the angle changes. There isn't really time for him to roll off and onto a truck, even if the truck was actually in his flight path,which it isn't.

Reading the theories I'd assumed there was a cut but I just went back and rewatched (though its a youtube clip, don't think it looks edited though) and there isn't one.

ETA Unless we are looking at some kind of Seussian crane contraption of course and that was no ordinary rubbish truck

 
Of course there is a cut. If not we would see BC landing directly on that huge inflated bag on which the actor landed . There is definetely a cut (which allows us to view on that scene in another angle). A cut means: The fall was not filmed in one shot, there are at least two interuptions to be seen (= cuts).
We are supposed to believe that there is no time passing in between the two shots (like John has to believe, too). But strangewise Sherlock has changed his position in between (he is falling straight forward from the roof, but landing parallel to the building). This is the proof that something happened in between shot two and three (how fast ever, whoever did anything), it´s not only about changing the perspective.

Last edited by anjaH_alias (March 27, 2013 5:09 pm)

beekeeper wrote:

Well by "cut" I just meant time loss.Cut time. Sorry if that wasn't clear, I don't know all the jargon I'm afraid.

 

I thought so, but wanted to make it sure .
A cut could be just a change of perspective, but here it´s definitely not the only reason. Whatever he or they did in the passing time in between the two cuts - it changed his position and will explain how he survived. Somewhen ....

erunyauve wrote:

I saw a screen shot with John getting hit by a bicyclist in the foreground and something that looks like a blue sheet with the people around Sherlock.  It might just be the blur of the blue scrubs some of them are wearing, but I think the most likely solution is that the homeless network caught him with one of those nets the fire brigade uses for people jumping from a burning building, and then quickly rolled him off to the pavement.

The part where they catch him would be when the angle changes - we see him fall nearly to the ground and then we see him hit the ground.  The last part of the fall would be from the net to the ground.  They could have got rid of a net pretty quickly, much more easily than any mat thick enough to absorb the fall.
 

It makes more sense but I can't see that blue thing...

OK I posted this on the other thread but I have a new favourite theory now, and I want to hear whether you think it might fly. Haven't seen this anywhere else so...maybe its a bit far fetched. Ok

Here's it in a nutshell cos below I'm thinking out loud.

Its not the homeless network who saves him but the remaining assasins who are after the keycode. There are two left at this point and it could be either. He has not planned this in advance but is relying on it  in the way that he relies on one of them saving him after he throws himself in front of a truck. I don't know what exactly they do-maybe pushing a laundry cart in his way as this clever person suggests http://finalproblem.tumblr.com/post/16150992025/as-promised-heres-my-current-theory-on-how . Everything else is basically opportunistic-he chooses his place to fall because there is a laundry cart nearby and, logically, some wheeled means of getting the laundry there. As I've said above, his speed is slow enough that if his fall was broken he'd survive. Also, if he'd fallen from even a smallish height odds are that blood might be real. Head wounds bleed stupidly much, any parent knows this.

Still some flaws, not least that why did the doctors move him, especially the one young guy who is shaking his shoulder? You don't shake someone's shoulder when they've fallen 70 ft! The cyclist? I don't know.

Oh and just to ETA too...doesn't the female assain look remarkably like the woman playing who we think is Mary Morsten in the new series? Blond, scraped back hair, similar make up...just saying, yk?

___________________________________________________________________________________

leaving this in because its a pain when someone etas and deletes a thread in the process :-) 

I wonder if it might be not the homeless network but the assaisns. At the point Sherlock jumps, they don't know he no longer has the keycode. We've already seen that they will go to extreme lengths, even effectively suicide, to stop Sherlock from dying. He's up on the rooftop talking long enough that they could have put someone in place to stop him plunging to his death (what, I don't know. Laundry cart?)-Christ the length of that speech they could probably have gone to the sports shop and bought a landing mat ;-). 


Two big advantages of this. First, the only person who might know that he wasn't dead might be the assain, who would be quite unlikely to spread the word. Second, the assasins are kind of set up earlier in the story and its not that clear why they are there. And Sherlock does do something that might be out of character there-he turns and thanks the assasin for saving him(although to be fair he does the same in the Blind Banker witht eh German tourists which gives him the clue to the A-Z...) 

But also-Sherlock seems genuinely upset and actually afraid jumping off the roof. He seems to be saying goodbye to John. In contrast, he seems more pensive in the graveyard scene. Why? He's not a physically timid man and might well be fine if jumping off the roof if he knew he'd survive. Well if he's pinning his hopes on his calculations about the behaviour of people trying to extract the keycode from him then I can see how he might be a little worried that it might just not come off. I mean he's crying up there-John can't see that so it can't be for his benefit. He's really geniunely afraid he won't see his <insert whatever John is to him as you prefer> again.

The hole in this is how he'd know that the laundry cart would be there and so be able to prevent John from seeing that he didn't die. Maybe,maybe that's just him being lucky, Maybe he chose the exact spot to jump from with the expectation that the truck would stay there long enough. Maybe even the assasin travelled by laundry truck (oh that would be cool)-because another hole is that that laundry truck is weird-who pulls off after they've seen a guy fall 70 feet to land beside them?

ETA no actually he doesn't thank the tourists, he apologises. I am trying to work out if he really actually genuinely thanks anyone else anywhere else. I mean he says it as convention in conversation (he's British. That and "sorry" are what we do.) But genuine "thank you?". Not sure.  Throwing himself in front of a truck also not in character either...

Last edited by beekeeper (March 29, 2013 1:01 pm)

ok yes I take that back re thank you. What is out of character might be more throwing himself in front of a moving truck. 

Someone said that Sherlock was falling for about 8 seconds, I'm pretty sure that's just because BC wasn't actually falling at the speed that you would be falling in real life, and so the fall took longer. I actually came up with the-assassins-who tried-to-save-Sherlock's-life-somehow-saved-him-from-going-splat theory, but I couldn't figure out a way for them to accomplish that. And also, with the ball theory, you have to squeeze your arm in order to not feel your pulse, and Sherlock's arm looks pretty limp when John is checking his pulse. And also, Sherlock couldn't rely on John not being in a state to check his pulse, as (because we've all agreed that Sherlock jumped), there would be adrenaline running through him, and so it would be very easy to feel his pulse if he had one

Sherlock-I think the assasins operate the same as everyone is saying the homelessness network does, but with the big advantage that they will keep it quiet 

It was me with the 8 (well, 6) seconds thing. My hunch is that its drama, yes, but it might also be a clue. He's falling at something like a third the speed you'd expect from gravity, that's quite a lot slower.

OTOH I've posted already about this, but at least one of the fake doctors is actually wearing the same kind of ring as Mycroft and Anthea. Which suggests to me that they are his people.