Every Frozen Movie Hero Should Be Dead (Except Ripley)

Hypersleep. Now. Another day in the yard!!!! Movies have been putting people to sleep for decades. Captain America goes into the Arctic ice and sprints across Times Square seventy years later. Stallone is frozen solid for 36 years and wakes up ready to fight. Austin Powers gets 30 years in a freezer, Woody Allen gets 200 in foil, and Han Solo comes out of carbonite blind. So every movie sleeper goes through the same three inspections. The ice: does the method freeze you? The wake-up: can you actually get up? The cost: what did those years take from you? The real science is stranger than the movies. Wood frogs freeze solid for seven months and hop away in the spring. Arctic ground squirrels cool to minus 2.9 degrees without turning to ice. A Swedish doctor survived at 13.7 degrees, a man in Japan lay on a mountain for 24 days at 22 degrees, and surgeons in Baltimore now cool trauma patients to 10 degrees on purpose. Hibernating marmots barely age at all. Only one movie passes all three, and the scene that makes it pass was cut from the theatrical release. Verdict: AMANDA. CHAPTERS 0:00 The sleepers 1:31 Why sleep through space 2:27 The ice (and why frozen = dead) 5:11 Cold, not frozen: the real survivors 7:41 The wake-up 9:33 The cost 10:52 The scene they cut from Aliens 12:36 The verdict 13:21 What it doesn't fix 13:46 Another day in the yard Narrated by: Me :) SOURCES - Larson, D. J. et al. (2014). Wood frog adaptations to overwintering in Alaska. Journal of Experimental Biology 217, 2193 - Barnes, B. M. (1989). Freeze avoidance in a mammal: body temperatures below 0 °C in an Arctic hibernator. Science 244, 1593 - Han, Z. et al. (2023). Vitrification and nanowarming enable long-term organ cryopreservation and life-sustaining kidney transplantation in a rat model. Nature Communications 14, 3407 - Tøien, Ø. et al. (2011). Hibernation in black bears: independence of metabolic suppression from body temperature. Science 331, 906 - Pinho, G. M. et al. (2022). Hibernation slows epigenetic ageing in yellow-bellied marmots. Nature Ecology & Evolution 6, 418 - Daan, S., Barnes, B. M. & Strijkstra, A. M. (1991). Warming up for sleep? Ground squirrels sleep during arousals from hibernation. Neuroscience Letters 128, 265 - Takahashi, T. M. et al. (2020). A discrete neuronal circuit induces a hibernation-like state in rodents. Nature 583, 109 · Yang, Y. et al. (2023). Induction of a torpor-like hypothermic and hypometabolic state in rodents by ultrasound. Nature Metabolism 5, 789 - Emergency Preservation and Resuscitation (Samuel Tisherman, University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center); Anna Bågenholm (1999); Mitsutaka Uchikoshi (2006) - ESA hibernation study (crewed Mars mission, spacecraft mass); SpaceWorks / NASA NIAC torpor-inducing transfer habitat; NASA Human Research Program (muscle loss in spaceflight) - James Bedford (cryopreserved 12 January 1967, Alcor); Aliens Special Edition (1991 LaserDisc, ~17 minutes restored); Elizabeth Inglis (Sigourney Weaver's mother) FOOTAGE Film clips are used under fair use for commentary and criticism: Aliens (1986, Special Edition) and Alien (1979) (20th Century Studios); 2001: A Space Odyssey (MGM / Warner Bros.); Planet of the Apes (1968) (20th Century Studios); Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers and Captain America: The Winter Soldier (Marvel Studios); Demolition Man (Warner Bros.); Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (New Line); Sleeper (United Artists); The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi (Lucasfilm); Avatar (20th Century Studios); Passengers (Sony Pictures); Interstellar (Paramount / Warner Bros.). Clips and footage via: Action Movies Of 90s and 00s, BBC, BBC Earth, BBC Studios, BowhuntingRoad, BRIGHT SIDE, Cjl Titan08, Clash of News, CT-5 /501, Dasan Broadnax, discjunkietv, Dms Vung Vang, European Space Agency, ESA, francischeefilms, Global News, Gonzalo Mendoza, Ian Rosen, Jay M, JoBlo Movie Clips, Markus Joel, NASA Johnson, Nat Geo Animals, National Geographic, Nature on PBS, News Direct, NOW PLAYING, Richard Parker, Science X, Screen Themes, Serenity, ShortClips, Sonny Bryan, Soul of Cinema, The Nature of Things, The Wall Street Journal, The Wild Taiga, thisisnz, TomoNews US, TopMovieClips, UCLA Health, Warner Bros. Rewind, xxxsergeantxxx, スティーブ. Stills: Wikimedia Commons.