Quicksliver: Days of Futuer Past

Because I just can’t let a meme be a meme…let’s talk about the Quicksilver scene from X-Men: Days of Future Past.  You know exactly the one I’m talking about, and if you don’t, here’s a meme to jog your memory.

 

Got it?  Okay, because it started to come up in discussion about what exactly happened to the guard in the above picture.  At first I speculated that Quicksilver’s finger tap probably translated to getting hit with a baseball bat, but I tapped into my education in physics and forensics and now I’m going to change my answer.  Quicksilver’s finger probably translated onto the guard’s face like a bullet.  Let’s get our numbers straight:  From the time Charles shouts “No!” at the start of the sequence to the time normal speed returns, it’s about 1 minute 27 seconds, or a total of 87 seconds.  It takes Charles about 3 seconds to say “No!” so Quicksilver is moving about 29 x’s normal speed.  If you take into account the average human’s between 15-20 miles an hour.  Meaning Quicksilver is running at 435 to 580 miles an hour.  We can safely assume that since this is Quicksilver we’re talking about, we can keep our numbers to the upper end of this, so for calculations sake we’ll say 580mph.  As always I’ll spare you the math and we can safely say he’s traveling 850 feet per second (fps).  That speed, by the way, is the average speed for a bullet fired out of a revolver.  Most commercially available handguns fire rounds between 800 to 1000 fps, depending on the quality of the ammunition.

The obvious argument is that “there’s nothing saying Quicksilver’s finger was moving that fast…” but there is.  He was running when he tapped him.  In fact there’s argument to say that he was traveling even faster than our calculations because he himself was shown in slow motion.  The finger tap would have translated into force at a downward angle, like a bullet, that would have sent kinetic energy through the man’s jaw, probably shattering, and possibly connecting with him with enough force to break his neck.

Yes, Quicksilver may have actually killed that man, but not just that man.

Remember all those guys he reposition into funny poses?  Those guys were tensed up, preparing for a firefight with one of the most dangerous mutants on the planet.  Flex your arm really quick and try to force it to move with your other arm?  There’s quite a bit of resistance there.  Quicksilver basically would have shredded muscles and tendons forcing those guys to move like they did, not to mention applying “speed of bullet” force to them, like making one guy punch himself.  Or how about the guy he gave a wedgie to?  His pelvis is probably broken now, not to mention what it did to his more tender parts.

So yes, half of these guys are going to the hospital, with a few probably going to the morgue.

Maybe they should have let Magneto and Wolverine handle it?