Amusingly, people are still asking James Cameron about Jack’s death in Titanic even though it has been more than 20 years since the movie came out. On the one hand, this shows the impact that the movie made on its viewers; on the other hand, one can’t help but suspect that this is the sort of thing that would strain someone’s patience because it is an issue that has been brought up before again and again. This time as in previous times, Cameron stated that he killed off Jack for artistic rather than scientific reasons, which makes a fair amount of sense considering the tragic tone of the movie as a whole. However, it seems probable that the issue will continue to be brought up in the future, which is a rather amusing downside to what has otherwise been an incredible success for Cameron.
Could Jack Have Survived?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, there have been a lot of people who have looked into the matter of whether Jack could have survived the scene in Titanic or not. For starters, the question of how long someone can survive in cold waters is a complicated topic because there is a wide range of factors that need to be considered, with examples ranging from a person’s clothing to a person’s level of body fat. However, when the water is 28°F, people can’t hope to survive for more than 45 minutes even if they cling onto something that floats because they will start becoming exhausted and losing their motor function, at which point, they will drown. As a result, Jack needed to be on the board to survive, though it should be mentioned that there are cases of people who defy these general expectations but should be discounted because they are outliers.
Physically, Jack and Rose should have been able to fit on the board with no problems whatsoever. However, as Cameron has pointed out in the past, the issue is whether their combined weight would have caused the board to sink instead of remaining afloat. At which, both of them would have died in the freezing waters. The Mythbusters looked into this issue in one of their episodes, which produced the answer that the combined weight of Jack and Rose would have indeed caused the board to sink.
However, they also revealed that if either one of them had somehow thought to tie Rose’s lifejacket to the bottom of the board in order to increase its buoyancy, that would have been enough to let both of them survive the experience. As a result, what was shown in Titanic was still rather realistic because that would have depended on them being able to come up with such a plan while a horrendous sea disaster was happening all around them. Never mind the process of actually tying the lifejacket to the bottom of the board, which would have required a rather remarkable feat to say the least.
Would Jack Have Survived?
Ultimately, the scientific examination of whether Jack’s death made sense or not is not particularly meaningful, though it can be rather interesting in its own right. After all, Cameron made an artistic decision to kill off the character, meaning that if it hadn’t been for the freezing water, it would have been one of the other causes that claimed so many lives that terrible day.
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