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According to the Film Theorist's video on Spider-Man Peter Parker would undergo extreme g-forces during his swinging around. This is not so much of a problem, as any g-force based loss of consciousness could be avoided with a g-suit.

This question is more specifically aimed to the landing and stopping aspects. How could someone best swing at approximately 3 g's of force, and then stop suddenly without causing any damage to himself? Preferably this should be a fairly light-weight low-volume method, should be easily portable and not something others would easily notice.

Edit: My question is not about how Peter Parker deals with the G forces, but rather how your average Joe could deal with them by technological means, like Iron Man. Sorry for any confusion.

Edit 2: @JBH summarizes my question well:

How can someone NOT SPIDER-MAN use existing technology to bring themselves to a sudden stop after 3G of acceleration and not rip their limbs off [or rupture internal organs]?

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  • $\begingroup$ Your main question asks "How could Peter Parker best swing at approximately 3 g's of force, and then stop suddenly without causing any damage to himself?" Your edit says "My question is not about how Peter Parker deals with the G forces, but rather how your average Joe could deal with them by technological means, like Iron Man." These are contradictory. Please edit your question to be clear what you're asking. $\endgroup$
    – abarnert
    Sep 11, 2018 at 3:24
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    $\begingroup$ So, what you're very specifically asking is, "how can someone NOT SPIDERMAN use existing technology to bring themselves to a sudden stop after 3G of acceleration and not rip their limbs off?" Keep in mind that if you're specifically asking questions from the perspective of existing comic book characters/worlds (e.g., how would Tony Stark do it?), then this question belongs on Science Fiction & Fantasy, not here. $\endgroup$
    – JBH
    Sep 11, 2018 at 3:29
  • $\begingroup$ This is still a silly question. You're asking how a suit that allows its wearer (who is an average Joe—a middle-aged man with a heart condition, in fact) to make u-turns at supersonic speeds, fly through thermonuclear explosions, etc. could possibly allow him to handle the force of web slinging? JARVIS would twiddle the same magic knobs to cancel inertia, add cushioning force fields, etc., but it wouldn't take nearly as much of his attention, or of the suit's power, to do it. $\endgroup$
    – abarnert
    Sep 11, 2018 at 3:37
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    $\begingroup$ Now we have a worldbuilding question. +1. $\endgroup$
    – JBH
    Sep 11, 2018 at 3:46
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    $\begingroup$ If you really want to go light weight you can just do a rollout when you land, as opposed to a full stop. A normal human could be capable of withstanding a multiple story drop with no injury if performing a proper rollout (though it will be a lot easier if you have forward momentum such as provided by a web swing). It requires perfect timing and is by no an easy feat, but a modest amount of adrenaline and enough practice could probably pull it off. (In a similar note, an egg was once dropped out of a plane at 30,000 feet and survived without breaking because it landed on a hillside.) $\endgroup$
    – Clay Deitas
    Sep 11, 2018 at 9:15

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Hmmm. Well 3G is a lot of force. That said we can call an instant of 14G completely safe and John Stapp would shortly chime in with a couple figures. 32G being safe, 40G being tested safe to the extent of no lasting damage, and 46G safe by extrapolation. With no known upper bound on survivability. That said 32G is probably enough for us. So if we're swinging for 3 seconds at 3G and make a stop in 1 second, we're experiencing 9G. Which simple math makes that 32G÷3G=10⅔

So you could swing for 10⅔ sec per swing any way you wanted and if you stopped in a second you'd be fine. No extra contraptions required for "health reasons".

But wait! G-forces change depending on direction of your swing! So a perfectly ground-parallel swing might experience the full Gs all-the-way-through but a regular swing would have some varying Gs. So you could potentially swing even longer than that! If the stop was at the base of the swing where there was peak force, then that means you could have up to double the swing time if you were stopping at the base! And as much as you wanted if you were stopping at the top!

Then again a "Spider-man-style" landing might have lower G tolerances than purely feet first given there is a forward component. So maybe a little bit less than 10⅔...

But maybe you're more curious not in the health implications but in actually achieving this stop in one second. This paired with this would seem to suggest a human with gecko grip could stop with just under 20Gs of force on a dime for some landings at least. Add in some G-force activated locking joints in an light-weight exoskeleton and you could pretty simply come to a screeching halt at 19G it would seem. Pushing the bar to 32G or higher would maybe require better tech than we have now to remain unnoticeable, or maybe the same concept but engineered better than a gecko could get us there. Granted 19G is still a minimum of 6 sec of swinging which is a lot longer than what you typically see Spider-man doing.

Ah, btw technique is pretty important. If you're stopping faster than 1 second because you've collided with the ground on the down-arc of your swing... well your stopping time is for sure less than 1 sec and your Gs are going to sky-rocket and turn into pressure and kill you. So a crash at 3G is equivalent after 1 sec to a 65mph crash. So you'd probably only be able to come out of a ground crash at 3G if it happened within a fraction of a second (spit-balled from some median death heights, etc. go look here if you want a good starting point). Since you're worried more about a collision in that case than G forces the question is different. But yeah, no downward arc stopping, especially if your arc looks like free-fall.

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    $\begingroup$ Alright I'm assuming my G math is correct. It's late and I'm tired. And I didn't write it out by hand to make sure XP. Can I get a verification from someone that 1G over 2 sec, stopping in 1 sec, results in 2G of force? :d $\endgroup$
    – Black
    Sep 11, 2018 at 5:48
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    $\begingroup$ Also assuming the math is correct stopping exactly like Parker might not be your goal. In which case certain landing positions/techniques could make this gear-less $\endgroup$
    – Black
    Sep 11, 2018 at 5:54
  • $\begingroup$ I didn't take physics so I don't know all the formulas to check your work, but it looks about right. I know that a human can take 100g of force distributed on their body and get up and walk away, or even 200. Makes sense that 10g or more could be stopped easily with just leg muscles. $\endgroup$
    – Clay Deitas
    Sep 11, 2018 at 8:56
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If you want to go the body-enhancement route, you could create an internal chassis for your organs.

Call it "Ribcage++". A chassis of titanium mesh, struts, and flexible bands that extends inwards from your ribcage to hold all your meat bags in place. Like a sports bra for your innards. Organs are wrapped in titanium mesh to prevent herniation or bursting, and supported by form-fitting titanium cages, which are secured to the larger structure. Arteries are secured to all this like vines to a garden trellis. Your intestines and stomach are wrapped in mesh and held by bands of titanium thin enough to be flexible so they can still mush about a little for digestion and bending your abdomen. Similar with your lungs and diaphragm.

Your brain could be secured by using a special neckband that puts just enough pressure on your jugular that blood-flow out of your brain is reduced just enough that your brain swells just enough to make a tight fit with the inside of your skull, so it doesn't slosh around. It sounds like something I just made up but in fact I went looking for solutions and found this because it's real and has been tested with good results!

So TLDR: Sports bra for your guts.

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  • $\begingroup$ Lol, that seems like a horrible idea, increasing blood pressure to the brain. $\endgroup$
    – tox123
    Sep 13, 2018 at 0:24
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This person could build one large tridimensional structure around himself, some sort of silk spherical web, which could absorb impact energy and reduce g forces on internal organs. Real world similitudes with this.

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    $\begingroup$ Sumo-suit Spiderman would be incredibly less sexy then. $\endgroup$
    – kikirex
    Sep 11, 2018 at 10:16
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    $\begingroup$ @kikirex idk, Sumo-suit Spider-man seems hot. $\endgroup$
    – tox123
    Sep 11, 2018 at 16:59

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