10 Giant Lies Told By Movies That Will Definitely Kill You

6. Chopping Your Arm Off Is Fine

The Main Offender: Star Wars

Hand to hand combat with pointy weapons can often lead to dismemberment, but that's no reason to be glum. As Luke Skywalker, Anakin Skywalker, and Hannibal Lecter have proven, a lopped off limb is pretty easy to overcome, even when there's a slight delay to you receiving full, professional medical care. And even if you lose multiple limbs (or in fact all of them like Robocop, or Monty Python's Black Knight) you could well be fine. Especially if someone grafts bits of a VCR and toaster to you, and turns you into a crime fighting machine.

The Reality Massive trauma like a removed limb will spell disaster, and quickly. Limbs include such important things as major blood vessels, and severing them is a pretty good way to lose an awful lot of blood, and in case you've never paid any attention to simple biology at all, blood is pretty important.

Without immediate response - like pressure, or even better a tourniquet on the wound - you'll lose consciousness very quickly (closer to seconds than minutes) and that's not going to lead to you waking up a little later, feeling a little groggy, no matter what the movies say.