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Survive on a single food | CAN IT BE DONE?

In the 2015 sci-fi film The Martian, a marooned astronaut survives on the red planet eating nothing but potatoes. But since there are no real humans on Mars, could a person survive eating nothing but spuds on Earth? The short answer: Unless you’re stranded with nothing but taters, it’s not a good idea. Learn more:…

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In the 2015 sci-fi film The Martian, a marooned astronaut survives on the red planet eating nothing but potatoes. But since there are no real humans on Mars, could a person survive eating nothing but spuds on Earth?

The short answer: Unless you’re stranded with nothing but taters, it’s not a good idea.

Learn more:

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Producer/Video by: Jason Lederman

Narrator: Jess Boddy

Researcher: Ellen Airhart

Cameras:
Canon EOS C100 –
Canon EOS 5D Mark III –

Additional equipment:
Canon EF50mm Lens –
Canon Zoom Lens EF24-105mm –
Sachtler Ace XL Tripod System –
Sennheiser EW100ENG G3 Camera Wireless Mic Kit –
Litepanels Astra E 1×1 Daylight LED Panel –
Lowepro Magnum 650 AW Shoulder Bag –
The North Face Base Camp Duffel –

Music: APM Music

Media:
The Martian (20th Century Fox), Pond5, Prelinger Archives, Pixabay, Pexels

CC BY-SA 2.0:
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19 Comments

19 Comments

  1. Ant B

    September 12, 2019 at 10:37 am

    No; you will most likely get sick and die. You could try milk, despite the fact that it is does not have enough iron, but sucks to be you if you are Lactose intolerant, like about 65 % of the world’s population.

  2. Yogthulu The First

    September 12, 2019 at 11:12 am

    What’s taters precious?

  3. Raheim Allen

    September 12, 2019 at 12:18 pm

    In the book he had enough vitamins and mineral supplements for his whole crew left in the HAB.

    • pharynx007

      September 12, 2019 at 5:59 pm

      yeah, i don’t remember if they covered that in the movie, but i guess not since they didn’t talk about it in this video.

    • Raymond Ramírez

      September 12, 2019 at 10:03 pm

      I posted the same type of comment. Most of the “Martian” fans never read the book. You and I did!

  4. Brother Nobody

    September 12, 2019 at 1:06 pm

    Not to mention the psychological impact of the lack of variety which would also manifest physically as well. Ie: depression, anxiety, etc..

  5. RyoriNoTetsujinfan

    September 12, 2019 at 2:33 pm

    Yikes, I guess the lav mic failed :/ sorry

  6. Jim Loehr

    September 12, 2019 at 3:12 pm

    Potatoes only, no. Now if he had sour cream, butter and cheese…

    • Perry Champ

      September 12, 2019 at 9:13 pm

      and some ground beef, and ketchup, and pickles, and some hamburger buns, and some beer, and some ice cream with chocolate syrup.

    • Gordon Ridgeway

      September 13, 2019 at 2:19 am

      and bacon

    • Perry Champ

      September 13, 2019 at 9:37 am

      @Gordon Ridgeway How could I have forgotten bacon? Wow, I’m getting old.

  7. Paul Olson

    September 12, 2019 at 6:51 pm

    The Irish people lived mostly on spuds, and when faced with the potato failure were forced to move to USA ( the potato famine)

  8. Ira Rosenberg

    September 12, 2019 at 8:46 pm

    I still remember my 7th grade teacher’s answer when that question was posed by one of my classmates–peanuts!

  9. matthewweaverworks

    September 12, 2019 at 9:07 pm

    Eat diverse food. Moderate amounts

  10. Raymond Ramírez

    September 12, 2019 at 10:02 pm

    If you read the book, it tells that the astronauts had vitamin supplements in their food stocks so he could had taken the supplements of the entire crew for several months and reduce deficiencies until he was rescued. So in practice, he can survive with just potatoes and the supplements.

  11. FireFrei

    September 12, 2019 at 11:35 pm

    The person narrating this video ate a lot of potatoes.

  12. A3Kr0n

    September 13, 2019 at 4:14 am

    What about Pop Tarts?

  13. Beach&BoardFan

    September 21, 2019 at 7:00 pm

    Thought you could survive on beer for a year?

  14. Guy M

    September 22, 2019 at 11:58 pm

    No one loads their taters with healthy stuff. Its butter, grease and deep fried then mayo, bacon bits and sour creams. Aint no one puttin no salad on their potato!

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The Buried Treasure That Took Us To The Moon – They Never Told You

The Space Race, the Cold War, and the Moon Landing all have an origin story connected to a small, obscure silver iron mining operation in the mountains of Lower Saxony in Germany – and it’s such a complex, unbelievable tale that it exposes our most dangerous intersections of science and morality. 14 tons of buried…

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The Space Race, the Cold War, and the Moon Landing all have an origin story connected to a small, obscure silver iron mining operation in the mountains of Lower Saxony in Germany – and it’s such a complex, unbelievable tale that it exposes our most dangerous intersections of science and morality.

14 tons of buried paper determined the fate of the world and kicked off humanity’s exploration of space.

We already know the end of the story: we know about Sputnik and Apollo 11, we know about Werner von Braun, and we know about Operation Paperclip. But pulling the threads of NASA and the Soviet Union’s Vostok program unravels an unknown World War II race between trucks and time, a struggle of secrets and survival, and a twist-filled tale of man, mind, and morality.

What you need to know is that story’s beginning – and if you don’t know it already, that’s because they never told you.

#spacerace #coldwar #science #history

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If Earth is a labrador dog and Venus is a human child, then gas giants like Saturn and Jupiter must also match masses with their own animals… like an African forest elephant and a herd of 7 giraffes. You can understand the real scale of vast celestial bodies by comparing their relative sizes to animals…

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If Earth is a labrador dog and Venus is a human child, then gas giants like Saturn and Jupiter must also match masses with their own animals… like an African forest elephant and a herd of 7 giraffes.

You can understand the real scale of vast celestial bodies by comparing their relative sizes to animals on Earth that we’re familiar with — and then you can see them all in 360-degree 3D animation. We’ve paired the real scale of all the planets in our solar system to a range of small and large animals worldwide, like Pluto as a tiny black rat and Mercury as a kitten — and of course, the Sun, which by comparison to the planets has a scaled mass of 78 blue whales.

The cosmos is everywhere, all around us, all the time… it just depends on your perspective.

See you in the future!

#nasa #space #comparison #solarsystem

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Why Do We Put Holes In Our Head?

The $15,000 A.I. from 1983: Scraping, grinding, or drilling a hole through the thick, hard skull that evolution developed to protect our most sensitive contents might be one of humanity’s worst ideas — and also one of our best. We have no idea how it started, or why the first trepanner thought it would fix…

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The $15,000 A.I. from 1983:

Scraping, grinding, or drilling a hole through the thick, hard skull that evolution developed to protect our most sensitive contents might be one of humanity’s worst ideas — and also one of our best.

We have no idea how it started, or why the first trepanner thought it would fix anything. We just know that nearly every civilization worldwide has been drilling holes in heads for at least 7,000 years. Sometimes it actually worked. Sometimes it… didn’t.

Unraveling the impossibly-complex story of trepanning exposes a deep conceptual understanding of the relationship between the brain and behavior. It reveals our desire to take drastic measures to preserve the lives of people who are important to us, whether their value is practical or emotional. And the development of trepanning from Neolithic peoples to the Greeks and Incas and modern trauma surgeons takes a winding road through horrors and genius.

Trepanning evolved alongside our understanding of biology, physics, and even consciousness, with both its tools and practices reflecting our increasing knowledge and our changing attitudes toward health and human life.

Skull jewelry. Headache cures. Experimental psychosurgery. A few people who just wanted to chill. It’s all trepanning.

And the most remarkable thing about this seemingly-crude phenomenon is how it not only persists, but that it might actually be an important part of our plan for tomorrow.

So sharpen an old rock, measure your brainbloodvolume, and grab a watermelon to practice on.

We’ll see you in the future.

** SOURCES / FURTHER INVESTIGATION **

“Bore Hole” by Joe Mellen:

“A Hole in the Head: More Tales in the History of Neuroscience” by Charles Gross:

“Holes in the Head: The Art and Archaeology of Trepanation in Ancient Peru” by John Verano:

“Hippocrates, Vol. III” translated by Dr. E. T. Withington:

“The Popular Science Monthly,” September 1875:

“The Popular Science Monthly,” February 1893:

“A History of Medicine: Primitive and Ancient Medicine” by Plinio Prioreschi:

“A History of Human Responses to Death: Mythologies, Rituals, and Ethics” by Plinio Prioreschi:

The Wellcome Collection:

** SPECIAL THANKS **

Advisor, History of Medicine: Dr. John Dickey, UMass Chan Medical School

The Wellcome Collection, The British Museum, and others who generously license their material with Creative Commons

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