Action films and cartoons share a common idea, well, many ideas, but I will call your attention to this familiar situation. Our hero be he Bugs Bunny evading Elmer Fudd or a warrior on the run encounters a river. To thwart pursuers, he plucks a reed from the surrounding vegetation and submerges himself with only the reed protruding above the surface. He remains stealthily submerged until the pursuers have passed. There are also more than a few accounts in legend of various feats of escape that utilized this same breathing-though-a-reed trick. Our surface interpretation of this feat is that it is plausible, after all, the reed is operating as a snorkel and snorkels do a fine job of allowing one to breath while submerged. But, let’s look at the bare-bones physics behind this. First -The deeper we submerge the pressure change prohibits us from being able to breathe non-pressurized air—scuba tanks contain pressurized air. When we use a reed, we are attempting to draw dir...
Examining & Resurrecting Indigenous Skills and Frontier Rough & Tumble Combat