The reality of BJ Blaskowitz’s injuries

Throughout the history of the Wolfenstein series, Captain Blaskowicz has received a simply colossal amount of damage, be it bullets, explosions or other paranormal obscenities. All this relates to gaming conventions and without this aspect the shooter gameplay would stop working. And our exhibit today is precisely one of the founders of first-person shooters. According to the traditions of the old school, the plot of the games in the series fit into the description on the box with the game, but all this was until 2014, when the company MachineGames, founded by people from Starbreeze Studios, which gave us such wonderful games as The Chronicles of Riddick and The Darkness, got down to work. Under the auspices of Bethesda, they began developing a new part of Wolfenstein with the subtitle The New Order. It was decided to move away from the concept of a protagonist with emotional development that had been established over the years, and the developers endowed the main character with a character, and also shoved him into a dramatic plot, which they thoroughly worked on in this part. And the injuries that B.J. received during the course of the plot can no longer be attributed to game conventions, so we will compare all the injuries inflicted on Blaskowitz in Wolfenstein: The New Order with incidents from real life and check whether he could remain combat-ready after them or not.

Since the blog deals with plot points, everything below is a spoiler.

Plane crash

The game begins with an attack on the fortress of General Skull, in which the US landing aircraft suffers a complete defeat, as a result of which the plane with the main characters falls, but they remain alive. World practice totals (according to Wikipedia) 77 cases where passengers survived a plane crash.

Let’s take the domestic case as an example. On August 24, 1981, Larisa Savitskaya was flying from Komsomolsk-on-Amur to Blagoveshchensk, but at an altitude of 5200 meters the plane collided with a TU-16 bomber, as a result of which it broke into several parts, and Larisa, huddled in her chair, fell for 8 minutes. As a result, the part of the plane in which she was landed in a birch grove and the girl waited for rescuers for two days, so we can assume that Blaskowitz could be quite combat-ready after such a fall, considering the fact that he himself was thrown into the water.

Rock falling on head

Moving further along the plot, we find https://eddyvegascasino.co.uk/login/ ourselves in a situation where the main characters jump over a rift. And it seems to be successful, but the floor collapses under them and they fall, and a huge piece of concrete falls on William’s head. There have been many similar situations in the world and most of them unfortunately led to death, but it happened when the victim turned out to be completely healthy after that. For example, the well-known political scientist in Yekaterinburg, Alexander Belousov, while walking in the Oleniy Ruchi park, became a victim of a similar incident. Fortunately, the wound turned out to be light and Alexander was able to get behind the wheel and get to the hospital. It is not known what size the stone was, because a piece of concrete that fell on BJ could simply crush his head, much like in this scene.

So let there be a 50/50 likelihood of such a case, but after that he would hardly be combat-ready

15 years in a coma

When trying to escape from the clutches of the Nazis, the heroes plug the gas taps and jump out the window, but during the explosion, a shrapnel hits B.J.’s head, and he falls into a coma for 15 years, or rather, it is not a coma, but “Apallic Syndrome”. Typically, the eyes of a person diagnosed with apallic syndrome are open. He rotates them easily, but his gaze does not fixate. There are no emotional reactions or speech. Contact with such a person is impossible, since verbal commands are not perceived by him. But a powerful impetus for getting out of this state was the execution by the Nazis of patients and employees of the psychiatric hospital, where he arrived as a patient. Blaskowitz comes to his senses and, as if nothing had happened, begins to chop up the Krauts. Most likely, after spending 15 years in this condition, his muscles would have atrophied and he would have difficulty standing, let alone fighting. But in itself, the case of emerging from a coma after 15 years is quite possible, albeit with the use of modern medicine. Scientists from the Institute of Cognitive Sciences in Lyon (France) were able to return a patient to a state of wakefulness using electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve. So the outcome described in the game is possible with a very small probability.

Don’t be afraid of the knife, be afraid of the fork

For the next situation, let’s take two fragments from the game. The first occurs when we go to prison in search of Seth Roth and, going down to the basement, we get rid of the local warden, a maniac, a sadist who abuses prisoners. Due to inattention, Blaskowicz falls into his clutches, after which he receives three stab and two cut wounds with a rather massive knife. Next, BJ, of course, gets out and gives the entire Third Reich a light.

The second one happens just before the finale and there, in addition to the knife, the main character is pierced with a hook, not to mention the massive dose of a neuroparalytic substance that was rolled into him before that.

There are plenty of cases of knife wounds in the real world, and thank God, quite a few people survived such incidents, but it also happened that the victims, despite the injuries, could fight back, just like the hero of the game. For example, like British Police Officer Wayne Marques, who during a regular patrol witnessed a fight, and upon intervening received three blows with a knife, to the head, leg and arm. But having experienced a rush of adrenaline and being blind in one eye, Wayne was able to fight off the attackers with a baton and survive.

You can, of course, object by saying that he did not receive blows to vital organs, while the main character of the game had a knife stuck mainly in the chest area. But we are not making a meticulous comparison and the events described fully confirm that BJ could have survived his wounds and could have easily resisted the Nazis.

Monkey with a grenade

Well, at the end there is a scene in which the main character almost died in the game itself, and the possibility of such a situation existing in reality is hardly possible. We are talking about the final scene in which we defeat the general skull, to which he, in turn, responds with a desperate step and explodes a grenade in his hands at the moment when Blaskowitz himself was next to him, literally point-blank. Nevertheless, with some grief, his comrades were able to save his life despite the catastrophic injuries he received.

A similar thing happened to Lieutenant Yakov Novichenko in 1946, but if Blaskowitz exploded due to the meanness of the enemy, then Yakov committed a heroic act on purpose. That year, the DPRK celebrated the anniversary of the movement against the repressive policies of the Japanese in the country, and our hero was in a platoon guarding the government. When Kim Il Sung stepped onto the podium, a grenade flew at him. Yakov, without thinking twice, grabbed this grenade and covered it with his body. As a result of the explosion, he lost an arm, suffered numerous injuries to his chest and other parts of his body, and also lost his left eye. The doctors fought for his life for a long time, but in the end they succeeded and after 2 months he got back on his feet.

Despite some conventions, taking into account the nature of the wounds received and the organs to which were damaged, William Joseph Blaskowitz could well have survived after receiving numerous wounds, and also continued to fight against the Nazis. Medicine is full of cases where people remain alive even after the most seemingly fatal wounds, survive through wounds to the head, partial damage to the mog and survive literally going through a crusher, but still the human body is capable of many things, including the main character of the game. So, with all the pros and cons, we give a plus to the realism of the events described.