Game Theory: Surviving the Assassin's Creed Leap of Faith

Demonstrates Ezio repeatedly jumping from buildings and landing safely in haystacks, setting up the central question of the episode.

This episode was requested by viewers following a previous Assassin's Creed episode about genetic memory transfer.

Can the Assassin's Creed clan actually survive their famous leaps of faith from extreme heights?

The answer is no, though the episode explores the physics behind why survival is virtually impossible.

Medical journals indicate that falls from heights greater than 100 feet (30.5 meters) are generally unsurvivable, but Assassin's Creed features jumps that triple this height.

• 44 people have survived falls from planes at altitudes of six miles (31,000 feet or 9,656 meters) since the 1940s • 31 were wreckage riders attached to plane debris • 13 were pure free fallers with no protection

After falling 1,500 feet (457 meters), gravity's acceleration is balanced by air drag, creating a maximum speed of around 120 miles per hour (54 m/s) that remains constant regardless of additional height.

Once terminal velocity is reached, falling an additional 10,000 feet provides no further acceleration, only extended fall time.

• Spread their bodies like skydivers in the air to increase drag and slow descent • Target cushioned landing surfaces like wooden carts filled with hay • Aim for surfaces with give and flex rather than rigid materials

Wooden carts with hay are far superior to earth, concrete, or water. Water's surface tension makes it as hard and inflexible as concrete upon impact.

The Assassins land flat on their backs, which was considered optimal in 1940s studies for spreading impact force. However, modern research shows that a skydiver's landing position with flexed legs and hips is actually superior.

Despite low survival odds, the Assassins employ most known techniques to maximize their chances of surviving falls.

• Tower is 84.7 meters (278 feet) tall, built around 1340 in Florence • Fall takes approximately 3.7 seconds to complete • Falls above the 100-foot unsurvivable threshold

Using the distance equation with measured fall time and tower height reveals that gravity in Assassin's Creed 2 is 12.4 m/s², which is over 125% of Earth's gravity—comparable to Jupiter's gravity.

A 200-pound person would weigh an extra 50 pounds in this gravity, experiencing the equivalent of weighing 250 pounds without any actual mass gain.

The first game's Umayyad Mosque minaret jump from 77 meters results in even higher gravity of nearly 20 m/s², or 2 Gs, meaning a 200-pound person would effectively weigh 400 pounds.

Under the game's skewed gravity, impact velocity reaches nearly 46 meters per second or 103 miles per hour—approaching terminal velocity despite falling from only a fraction of the required height.

The higher gravity in Damascus results in a 56 meter per second (125 mile per hour) impact—equivalent to terminal velocity achieved in only a fraction of the distance.

Under normal Earth gravity, the same Florence tower would result in impact velocity of only 36 m/s (80 mph), demonstrating how the game's elevated gravity drastically increases danger.

Air resistance would actually slow impacts further, but would also indicate even higher gravity values in the game world than calculated.

Buildings could not structurally stand in a double-gravity world as they would collapse under their own weight due to heightened pressure.

• Humans would survive but require significant adaptation over time • Bone mass increases as the skeleton adapts to support doubled weight • Everything becomes twice as heavy, including blood

The heart must work significantly harder to pump heavier blood upward to the brain, creating extreme difficulty with circulation.

Assassins climbing tall buildings at high altitudes would be especially prone to light-headedness as their hearts struggle to deliver blood to the brain, likely causing them to pass out before reaching any structure's top.

The Assassin's Creed games operate under impossible physics with gravity far exceeding Earth's normal levels.

Don't jump off buildings in the real world—you will die. The combination of extreme heights and unrealistic gravity makes survival virtually impossible.

Even if buildings could exist in such a high-gravity world, the Assassins would collapse from cardiovascular strain before reaching the top.

The leap of faith would realistically be a tumble of fatigue, ending in certain death rather than miraculous survival.