- [dan] what you are about to see is not just unbelievable,
It's also dangerous.
Do not try this at home.
(upbeat music)
Imagine a suburban mom with super strength,
More formidable than the world's strongest man.
- She starts lifting the car.
(mom screaming)
- It's something you see in a comic book, it's superhuman.
- Or a man who is immune to lightning.
(lightning strikes)
- It burns through his shoe,
But twice is apparently not enough.
Roy struck again.
- How about a mere mortal who's faster
Than a speeding bullet?
- It's too small and too fast for the naked eye to see.
(gunshot)
(clang)
- These are the humans so surprising.
They are truly unbelievable.
(spooky music)
It's April, 1942 in shenandoah national park, virginia
And a violent thunderstorm has park ranger roy sullivan
Taking refuge in a fire tower when suddenly
The tower is struck by lightning.
(lightning and thunder crash)
- After eight lightning strikes on that tower,
It's now ablaze and roy has to escape.
Well, on his way down the tower he's struck.
It burns through his shoe, yanks off his toenail,
But he lives through it.
- When you are struck by lightning,
An extremely large amount of electrical current flows
Through your body to the ground.
This is potentially lethal, for most people.
- [dan] the odds of being struck by lightning
Are just one in 15,300, pretty low.
But ranger roy is about to defy those odds again.
- He is driving his pickup truck during an electrical storm
And a tree adjoining his truck is struck.
(lightning and thunder strike)
The lightning rebounds into the cab of his truck,
Setting his eyebrows and hair afire.
- But twice is apparently not enough for roy.
The third time lightning bounces off of a transformer
And strikes him, but this time it leaves its mark.
It's a lichtenberg figure, so called, across his back,
In the shape of a lightning bolt.
- [dan] roy is now tied with a man named walter summerford
As the only known people who have been struck
By lightning three times,
For at least two years that is until-
- Roy struck again.
Fourth time, this time it sets his hair on fire
And he's got to put that out.
He takes a wet cloth, pats it on his head,
Puts his hair out.
- So now roy, the most struck by lightning man on earth,
Travels everywhere with a can of water at the ready,
Just in case he's struck and set upon fire again.
- [dan] unfortunately, that can of water
Is going to come in handy.
- He's driving down a mountain road.
He sees evidence of a lightning storm on the horizon.
He flees in the other direction.
- He starts driving away as quickly as possible,
A can of water at the ready,
Appearing to be at a safe distance from the ominous cloud
That he feels is following.
He emerges from his pickup truck only to be struck again.
Hair on fire, eyebrows on fire, can of water over the head.
Roy was prepared this time.
- It's the same show all over and over again.
- [dan] incredibly, roy has struck two more times,
The last after he leaves what already was for him,
A dangerous job.
- When roy finally retires from the park service,
His seventh and final time happens while he is at leisure.
(lightning and thunder crash)
He gets struck while fishing.
- Roy, in short, is a miracle man.
The chance of being struck by lightning
Seven different times is one out of 10 to the 28th power.
The chances of being struck and surviving seven times
Put the odds even
Further off the margins
And it would be considered impossible,
But for the fact that it happens to roy sullivan.
- So of course people want to investigate.
They want to understand if there's something special
About roy's body or study the effects
Of all these lightning strikes.
But when a doctor goes to examine him,
Lightning strikes happen nearby
And the doctor is no longer interested.
- [dan] even his own wife isn't safe around him.
- It's no surprise that his wife would be dismayed
Because when she's hanging clothes one day
When he's a hundred some feet away,
(thunder rumbling)
She herself gets struck by lightning.
(thunder and lightning crash)
- [dan] surprisingly, she doesn't file for divorce.
- The way roy chooses to deal with this attraction
That he has for things that kill anybody else
Is he decides to own it.
He becomes the guinness world's record holder
For the number of lightning strikes
That someone can live through.
He gives lectures, he has the artifacts
From when he's been struck.
He essentially becomes the human lightning rod, for real.
- His superhuman ability is that he shows us
That the word impossible should be used
Very sparingly, if at all
- Maybe roy's most superhuman feat after all
Is that he was able to stay married.
Must be his electric personality.
But perhaps that phrase should belong
To a guy in india known as current mohan.
Kollam, india.
A 7-year-old boy named rajmohan niar
Is reeling from a terrible tragedy.
- His mother dies when he's a child
And he simply can't bear it.
So he attempts to kill himself.
He climbs a utility pole and grabs a transformer.
- [dan] but something surprising happens,
Or should I say doesn't happen.
- He's not electrocuted, he's not killed.
(pulsing synthesizer music)
- [dan] even more unbelievable,
Mohan's survival isn't just good luck.
He seems able to absorb any amount of electricity.
(electrical current pulsing)
- He can take electrical wire that's plugged into a wall,
Grab the open end of the wire
And he serves sort of as a
Conduit for the electricity
To run through his body and to power an appliance.
- Blenders, toasters, lighting light bulbs.
He runs all of those things by driving power
Through his body.
- Raj becomes a local celebrity
And he basically spends his life displaying
These electrical shocks and running appliances.
- [dan] but how is this possible?
- Some tests have been run on him, including hooking him up
To a multimeter,
Which is going to measure the amount
Of current going through him
And the amount of electricity
That he can handle is on average 10 times
What a normal human being could handle.
- Raj is sort of a mystery.
No one knows if his organs are wired differently.
If for some reason biologically he just is resistant
To electricity, we really cannot ever actually know.
- [dan] or can mohan's gift be traced back
To that fateful childhood day as just another
Superhero's origin story.
- In 2020, icelandic strongman,
Hafthor julius bjornsson sets the world record
For a deadlift when he hoists 1,105 pounds
Clear off the ground.
(scream of triumph)
Impressive, yes,
Until a suburban mom does something unbelievable.
April 11th, 1982 starts off like any other spring day
For angela cavallo inside her suburban georgia home.
- Angela is in her kitchen
Doing mom stuff
And her son, who's a teenager,
Is out in the garage working on his chevy impala,
And she hears a crash.
(heavy impact of metal)
- Angela rushes into the garage,
She sees the impala on top of her son.
He is lying there,
Pinned under the car, immobile.
Like any mother, she's terrified and she starts to scream
For help.
- [dan] that's when 11-year-old johnny edwards,
Shows up, not exactly the muscle she was looking for.
- Bless this kid's heart.
He recognizes he's probably not gonna be much help.
He starts running the neighborhood, knocking on doors,
Trying to get another adult or two to help,
And then she tries to move the car.
This is a 3000 pound vehicle.
This is not something you can easily lift up.
- [dan] is it possible that tiny angela,
Can really best a strong man
And lift a 3,300 pound car?
(car creaks)
- She starts lifting the car.
(angela screams)
(dramatic music builds)
- Angela is there alone holding up this car.
If she lets it go, her son could be killed.
- [dan] she holds on for an agonizing five minutes
And then-
- The kid shows back up with two adults.
Angela has been holding the car this whole time.
(suspenseful music)
They managed to get tony out from under the car.
He is taken to the hospital.
He's released a week later on easter Sunday.
- Powerlifters in gyms who train for competition,
Who put themselves through arduous routines
Are able to lift maybe a thousand pounds.
What allows a everyday woman to not only lift
But to hold a 3000 pound automobile for five minutes?
- [dan] angela has just experienced a phenomenon
Called hysterical strength.
Could this superhuman trait lie dormant within us all?
- Everybody has the experience
Of a trigger of adrenaline
And we know that it rushes
Oxygen and blood to the muscles
And it can improve physical performance.
But at moments of life-threatening crisis,
These biochemicals may actually give us
A spurt of superhuman strength.
- To lift up a vehicle is something way more superhuman
Than just your regular adrenaline dump.
That's motherly love mixed into that.
- Lifting a nearly two-ton car
And holding it for five minutes, incredible.
It's also a feat so far beyond the normal limits
Of human strength that a few doubt angela's story is true.
Luckily, this next strange event was captured on film.
- It is 1988 and the television show magnum, p.I.
Is immensely popular and one of the icons
Of magnum, p.I. Alongside magnum's ferrari
Is the mcdonnell douglas little ball helicopter.
- When the helicopter isn't featured on the show,
It is sometimes used for commercial tourist flights.
Other times it's used to help out the local utilities.
So on this day of Friday the 13th,
The helicopter is flying, hauling some equipment.
There is an electrical problem with the flight system
And the helicopter begins to lilt to one side
And the pilot immediately decides to land.
- [dan] but just before touching down disaster strikes.
(helicopter thrumming wildly)
(dark pulsing music)
- The pilot after the crash landing is trapped under
This 3000 plus pound copter,
- His leg is stuck, his leg is stuck.
Which is now taking on water from the drainage ditch
And is leaking highly flammable fuel.
- And as it slowly, slowly starts falling to its side,
The water starts rising.
It's getting pretty dire as the water fills the cabin.
- The situation might be fatal were it not
For the appearance on the scene
Of a local vietnam vet named warren amaral,
Or as he's better known
By his nickname, tiny.
The trapped pilot is a friend of tiny's,
A fellow vietnam veteran.
Tiny runs up to help.
He witnesses a scene that is out of a nightmare.
- Initially, tiny goes to pull the helicopter pilot
From underneath the wreckage and his leg is stuck.
- Get help. Get help.
- So, he decides to take another course of action,
Which is lift up this 3000 pound helicopter
And save the pilot, steve.
- Come on.
Come on, steve!
Come on, come on.
Help me get his leg out of underneath the chopper.
Okay, watch your hand.
Get his leg out.
Okay, two legs.
Okay
- They're both vietnam buddies.
They've both been to combat together.
They share a bond that your average
Civilian couldn't fathom.
- Alright, it's okay, my man.
Just relax, chill.
- But to be able to lift up that 3000 pound helicopter
To save steve, it's absolutely superhuman.
- [dan] while scientists understand the concept
Of hysterical strength, they still don't know exactly how
It's triggered.
- It would be very difficult
To recreate the situation in a lab
Or to find drugs that induce that situation
That don't have catastrophic side effects.
So far we haven't found a trigger
Other than life threatening crisis.
- Sounds like something out of incredible hulk,
Capable of lifting thousands of pounds.
It is something seriously straight out of a comic book.
- Tales of great warriors defeating countless enemies
With their razor-sharp swords are often thought
To be exactly that, just stories.
But what if there were a modern samurai so skilled
He'd give those legends a run for their money.
(sword rings and clinks)
- Machii is not only deadly with a sword,
But he demonstrates super human speed with a sword.
- [dan] among his most impressive feats,
Slicing a baseball flying towards him
At a hundred miles an hour with ease.
(sword slices)
- Now if you ask anybody
Who covers sports,
Hitting a baseball
Is the single most
Difficult thing to do in sports.
- Isao machii was able to hit it with a samurai sword,
Not a baseball bat with a big fat barrel,
A piece of steel that is millimeters thick.
- So how does machii become the ultimate
21st century samurai?
- Isao machii grows up in kawanishi,
A part of japan that has a long, rich history
Of swords fighting, dating back to the 10th century.
- The samurai tradition no longer continues in japan,
But there is a tradition called kendo,
(sounds of combat)
Which is basically the inheritor of the samurai tradition.
- [dan] kendo is the art of fighting
With bamboo swords developed as a non-lethal
Form of training.
- And this is the practice in which he trains
And excels starting at the age of six.
(sword slices)
- Then he gives the ancient practice of tsujigiri a whirl.
- So tsujigiri basically the idea is you take a tatami mat
And you place it vertically and you slice through it.
(quick slices wth sword)
And the reason you take the tatami mat
Is because it mimics the texture and the hardness
And the resistance of a human limb.
(quick slices wth sword)
- You can imagine these
Tatami mats rolled up
And as soon as you slice it,
You impart a force on it
That's going to destabilize the tatami mat
And make it fall over.
The quickness and the precision and the accuracy
Required to do that is mind blowing.
- So machii sets his first world record by slicing cleanly
Through the tatami mat seven times before a tips over.
- [dan] then in 2007, machii adds another record.
1000 mat cuts in just over 36 minutes,
Slicing a full hour off his previous record
Like a human cuisinart.
- Imagine this master swordsman makes 1000 cuts,
Effectively severing 1000 limbs in 36 minutes.
It's the stuff of legend and it's playing out
In the 21st century.
- [dan] over the next decade,
He goes on to break six more records,
But they're nothing compared to what he does in 2013.
- He's going to slice a pea-sized, a six millimeter
Size pellet in two.
He's going to stand 70 feet away from a bb gun
And slice this tiny little thing, not just hit it,
But slice completely through it
As it's coming at him at 200 miles per hour.
- [dan] at that speed, a normal human
Wouldn't even be able to see the pellet
Much less slice it in two.
(gunshot) (sword slices)
- I watched this about five times
'cause I could not believe it.
- It's too small and too fast for the naked eye to see,
(gunshot) (sword slices)
But when you slow down the footage you see that he does it.
- [dan] how is this possible?
Well, according to math and all logic, it's not.
- The normal human reaction time
Is around a quarter of a second,
Which means if you receive a visual stimuli,
It takes you about a quarter of a second
Before you're able to physically respond to it.
In less time than that, the pellet travels from the gun
To him and it's not just speed, it's also precision
- Crazier still, he closes his eyes at the moment,
He cuts the bb out of the air.
That man is not of this earth.
- In machii, we're seeing a being who surpasses
What we as human beings are understood to be capable of.
He possesses superpowers, in fact.
- [dan] isao machii might be faster than a speeding bullet,
But there's another superhuman whose superpowers
Might be even more impressive.
No wonder they call him the batman.
- Daniel kish may very well be one
Of the most remarkable human beings
I've ever come across in my life.
- Every superhero or every superhuman has an origin story.
At 13 months old, daniel is diagnosed with cancer
Of the retina in both eyes and daniel's eyes
Have to be removed.
- With blind infants, very often they will clap
Or stomp their feet or make a noise
And it will elicit a response from the world around them.
- Very quickly, daniel develops a very specific sound,
A click that you can make by pulling your tongue
Off the roof of your mouth.
(tongue clicking)
Just like that.
Thankfully his parents encourage him to keep doing this
Because they can see that he's using it as a tool.
- [dan] it's more than just a tool.
Daniel is cultivating what will become his superpower.
- Daniel developed, on his own, a technique
Known as echolocation, where you emit a sound
And the sound wave bounces off of all the objects
In the room and comes back to your ears.
And different objects in different rooms
Will have different sound characteristics
That you can learn.
- [dan] it's a technique not often seen in humans.
- So bats use echolocation.
They constantly emit sound waves
And allow those sound waves to bounce off of trees
And insects, and then they listen for those reflections
And they use that to navigate in the night.
Daniel is doing the exact same thing.
- [dan] but how exactly does a human develop this gift?
(daniel clicking with tongue)
- The visual cortex is a big part of our brains.
Without having visual input that cortex
Is looking for a job.
So in essence, that visual cortex
Is now gonna be rewired and his ears become his eyes.
- He is able to not only tell spatial distance,
He's able to tell what material something is made of.
If it's concrete, if it's wood.
He can tell if someone is clothed or not.
- [dan] the batman channels his gift
To accomplish something even more unbelievable.
- He takes his bike and goes against a brick wall
And first trains himself to ride in a straight line.
- And then he bikes to his friend's house
And then a little bit further.
And now he's able to confidently ride his bike
Through busy streets and unknown intersections.
- I have two working eyes and I don't want to ride
A bike around traffic.
He is the modern batman and he is amazing, inspirational,
And, without question, superhuman.
When people turn 30, they often take stock
And try to make significant life changes.
But how far do most of us actually go?
In the case of this next superhuman,
A lot further than you'd believe,
- Dean karnazes is out celebrating his
30th birthday with some friends.
Now he's a little bit bummed about turning 30,
So he gets out of the bar and he starts running.
I don't know about you, but when I've done
A ton of tequila shots, my first instinct
Isn't to start running, but 10 miles later
The tequila wears off and he's sober again.
Most of us would've stopped by now, but he keeps going.
- He ends up running over 30 miles in one night.
30 miles is longer than a full marathon.
- And the remarkable thing here is
That dean karnazes was not a trained marathon runner.
He was not a trained distance runner.
He had run in high school but hadn't run in 15 years.
- And he begins to wonder,
What do I have here
That I've been neglecting?
- [dan] then this real life energizer bunny
Takes an incredible leap of faith.
- He decides to quit his job in corporate marketing
And become a distance runner, to make this his life.
- [dan] within three years,
Dean isn't just running marathons,
He's running a hundred mile ultra marathons
And winning.
(crowd cheering)
- We can't overstate how difficult on the body
Ultra distance running is and the idea that he's able
To withstand these beatings only having been training
For a few years is really quite remarkable.
- [dan] in 2005, dean tests the limits of human stamina
And endurance, running distances that sound impossible.
- He runs 350 miles in 81 hours.
- 81 hours straight without sleep.
That's more than three days.
- The thing is he didn't stop running
Because he couldn't keep running physically.
He stopped running because he couldn't stay awake
For more than three days.
He got sleepy.
- [dan] and dean's record setting runs
Are just getting started.
- In 2006 dean runs
50 marathons
In 50 different states
In 50 days,
Culminating in
The new york city marathon.
- He ends up finishing in three and a half hours,
Which is about an hour faster than the average finish time.
- 50 marathons, 50 days, 50 states right here.
- Well, one, I wanted to see if it could be done.
Two. I wanted to see is this bad for the body,
Good for the body, neutral for the body.
- [dan] so how does dean keep on
Going and going and going?
- Lactic acid is a byproduct of our normal
Metabolic functions.
If you exert yourself too much,
The lactic acid can build up in your muscles
And this is what makes them feel sore
After a serious workout.
But dean doesn't feel sore.
- His ability to essentially metabolize
Lactic acid is better than most.
- Dean estimates that he's run more than 100,000 miles
Enough to circle the earth four times,
Almost enough to get him halfway to the moon.
But while he might be the ultra marathon man,
Even dean would probably admit that he's not quite as cool
As the iceman.
- Wim hof is a dutch madman.
He can hold himself submerged in an ice bath
For hours upon hours.
- Wim hof can hold his breath for 10 minutes.
For reference, the average navy seal
Can hold their breath for three minutes.
- He had the guinness worlds record
For swimming 188 feet under ice.
(onlookers cheer)
- [dan] he even holds the guinness world record
For running the fastest half marathon in ice or snow,
While barefoot.
His time, two hours and 16 minutes,
Fast enough to make dean karnazes jealous.
- Taking it to the other extreme,
He runs a marathon in namibia in the desert
Without drinking any water.
- [dan] so is the iceman truly superhuman?
- Wim hof credits all of this to trauma suffered at birth.
He was the second of identical twins
And after his sibling came out,
They found that he was still in there.
He almost suffocated to death.
By the time he was actually born, he was purple.
- [dan] his near death experience
Puts him on a strange path.
- Later on as a young man, he sees ice on the river
And he decides I should jump in
And instead of freezing to death
Or even feeling cold, what he claims is that he feels power.
- [dan] but how is wim tapping into this superpower
At will in ways that defy logic and science?
- Our brains like to keep us comfortable,
And so anytime we have exposure to an unpleasant
Or a very painful stimulus, our brain will release
Its own pleasure giving chemicals.
Some of these compounds are known as endocannabinoids,
Which basically make you feel high and euphoric.
- [dan] his incredible ability to unlock
These chemicals allows him to barely even feel the cold.
- Experts find that his extremities have more heat
Than they naturally should.
So is he willing his regulatory system to create heat
Where there isn't or is he just built differently?
We can't tell.
- The ultimate irony may be that wim hof
Actually doesn't enjoy what made him famous.
In a 2022 interview, he said quote,
"please don't tell anyone, but I hate the cold."
- If I asked you how many windows your house has,
Could you tell me?
Maybe.
How about the house across the street?
Probably not.
What about that office building on the way to work?
Not a chance, but what if I told you there's a man
Who can tell you every single intricate detail
Of a skyscraper he has seen only once?
They call him the living camera.
- One day artist steven wilshire boards a helicopter
And flies around the city of new york for about 20 minutes.
- After his 20 minute flyover,
He goes into a studio
In brooklyn for five days with nothing
But a pack of pencils, an 18-foot-long canvas,
And his memory of the vision of the city.
- [dan] when steven emerges,
He's achieved something that friends
And acquaintances just can't explain.
He's drawn an exact replica of the most complicated skyline
On the planet from memory.
- It's not like he draws just shapes.
It is exactly what he saw from the air
Down to the number of cables on the manhattan bridge.
- It is as if he has taken a photograph,
But it is all lodged in his memory.
- [dan] but how does he do it?
His story begins in london, in the late 1970s.
- Steven wiltshire was mute as a kid
And when he was three years old,
He was diagnosed with autism.
One of the first ways he was able
To express himself was through drawing.
- Steven's parents sent him to a special school
That is designed for the learning experience
Of children with autism.
- And this is a place where
His proclivity for drawing
Just flourishes.
- And more and more he's able to recreate things
That he's only seen once on a field trip
Or on tv or in a magazine.
He clearly has this incredible ability to recall things
That he's seen and put it on paper perfectly.
- So I've got lots of detail drawings
On the st. Paul's cathedral there.
- And that was all just from memory?
- Yeah.
- [dan] you've probably heard of photographic memory,
But what steven has is far more rare.
- One of the consequences of autism is that areas
Of the brain don't develop properly.
Yet these are very sophisticated
And computationally intense parts of the brain.
As a result, certain people with autism
Develop a type of neuroplasticity
Where these areas
Of the brain are used in other and more unique ways.
- And again, it presents us with the prospect
Of life's power of compensation.
Our neuro systems will compensate for a difficulty
Or a challenge in one area by creating exceptional
Ability and capacity in another.
- The new york taxis are from the memory
Just had in my head.
- On any given day, I can't find my keys
And steven is able to recreate an entire city.
- [dan] while steven was born with this gift
For 39-year-old derek amato,
All it took was a good whack to the head.
- It's a normal summer day.
Derek and some friends are playing football
Around the pool.
Derek dives for a pass.
He lands in the shallow end of the pool.
His head strikes the bottom.
He suffers a severe concussion.
(dramatic music builds)
- He's floating in and out of consciousness
For the next four days in a semi-coma.
When he comes out of it, he's lost a significant amount
Of his hair, a significant amount of his memories.
But while derek's recovering, he's at a friend's house
And he's suddenly, inexorably drawn to a piano.
(gentle piano music)
- Now derek has played a little guitar,
But he's never trained on the piano.
- And out of nowhere
He just starts playing
And it's not bad.
In fact, it's quite good.
- He describes actually seeing black and white bars
In his head, announcing to him the notes to play.
- [dan] soon derek surrenders
To this strange new gift.
- If he starts humming a tune,
Derek immediately sees the sheet music in his head,
Not just for the main instrument,
But for a whole orchestra, for percussion and horns
And everything else to fill out that melody
And overnight becomes a fully fledged composer.
- [dan] but what exactly happened
That fateful day to turn derek
Into an overnight beethoven?
(gentle piano music)
- So one of the hypotheses
Is where the head injury
Inhibits the left hand side of the brain,
Which is the logical side of the brain,
Thereby allowing the right hand side of the brain,
Which is the more creative side to take over
And to function without any limitations.
- There's another theory that says the injury
Can release new neurotransmitters
That create completely new pathways in the brain
That allow you to develop these new skills.
- It's also possible that he has an extremely rare condition
Called acquired savant syndrome.
There are no more than 30 cases reported in the world.
- In most instances, the new
Ability is something numeric.
Some people have a
Sudden ability to say
What day of the week it
Was on July 15th, 1972.
Other people become really, really good at math.
- [dan] whatever happened in that instant
One thing is certain derek's life changed forever.
- To this day, he is traveling the world performing music
For audiences on a global scale.
I don't know if there's a superhero called savant,
But if there was, it'd be this guy.
- It's the biggest mystery we could ever imagine.
I cannot wait to see what the science
On this learns in the coming 10, 20, 50 years.
I hope I am around when we figure the whole puzzle out.
Stral music) I hope I am around when we figure the whole puzzle out.
- We have seen humans with superior reflexes,
Extreme mental fortitude, unparalleled strength,
Incredible memory, and just plain, unbelievable talent.
What happens if you combine all these gifts into one person,
Meet the birdman.
(pulsing electronic music)
- Wingsuit flying is about mimicking flight,
But also pushing it to the edge.
- People call it wingsuit flying,
But let's just be honest.
It's a controlled drop, that's what it is.
- It's not like a thing where, like,
Oh, on the weekend I'm gonna go
Wingsuit flying or something like that.
It's like, no, you either do this
To absolute perfection
Or you die.
- [dan] in fact, roughly
One in 500 wingsuit jumps
Ends in death.
- Wingsuit flying is no joke.
It is a dangerous sport.
There's been some years where dozens of people have died.
- Jokke sommer, aka, the birdman is perhaps
The most talented wingsuit pilot alive
And the fact that he is still alive is superhuman in itself.
- Jokke is an adrenaline junkie from birth.
As a child, jokke loved snowboarding and launching off
Of big cliffs and jumps just to get that feeling of air
And that sensation.
- Snowboarding isn't enough for him.
So now he takes up motocross.
And he's taking off into the air.
Still not enough.
So now he graduates from motocross into skydiving.
He's an obsessed skydiver.
- Jokke does 250 skydives in his first two months.
Two months? It's crazy.
- [dan] but again, not enough.
Apparently jumping out of a plane is too tame.
- It is not long before he is attempting wingsuit flying
And a very specific genre of that which is proximity flying.
It's an incredibly dangerous activity
Where you're actually testing yourself,
How close can I get to these surfaces?
- Just jumping and jumping safely is kind
Of considered being a bit of a wussy.
You have to fly as close as you can to the rocks,
The cliffs and the trees of the terrain.
I like watching it from the safe distance of my couch.
- In 2010, he has his
Closest brush with death
When a wind gust sends him too close
To the surface he's flying near
And he just barely adjusts his trajectory
To escape crashing into these jagged rocks.
- [dan] at speeds of more than 120 miles an hour,
Jokke has just milliseconds to make
Life and death decisions.
- There is a high fatality rate in this sport.
Jokke has thousands and thousands of proximity flights
Without incident.
It's as if he's a bird. He is superhuman.
- [dan] and when we thought humans
Couldn't get any more daring, someone ups the birdman.
- Despite the fact that jokke sommer is our closest thing
To superman that we have, somebody is gunning
For his extreme sport throne.
And that guy is luke aikins.
- Luke aikins is nuts.
I mean, what he pulls off in 2016
Is the ultimate skydiving commitment.
- [dan] on July 30th, 2016,
Luke prepares to jump out
Of a plane flying 25,000 feet above simi valley, california
And land in a net, all without a parachute.
- My whole life's been dedicated to skydiving
And pushing the boundaries.
- It's a square net that stands 200 feet off the ground.
It's a hundred foot by a hundred feet.
- From five miles above the earth,
You can't see a 100-by-100 net.
So you literally are taking a leap of faith.
This is a one and done.
- [dan] at 5:45 pm luke jumps, beginning his descent
Towards superhuman glory or a tragic death.
- There is zero room for error in a stunt like this.
- By straightening his body or moving his arm slightly,
He can adjust his trajectory, but he is hurtling
Through space, which means that the smallest correction
Can send him miles off course.
- The two companions that are diving with him
Pull their rip cords, and now it's just him.
- [dan] as he nears his target at 120 miles an hour,
There's one final thing that he must pull off.
- Just before he hits the net he has to flip himself over
In order to land properly so that his back
Doesn't bend the wrong way.
- If he comes straight into it,
The impact will snap his spine in half.
- For me, it was terrifying and I still have trouble
Watching it.
(cheering and pulsing music)
That's the new bar. You can never go back.
- This is a superhuman achievement
Accomplished by a normal human being.
And yet you could almost tear this from a comic book.
It's that incredible.
- Some amongst us push the limits of what's possible,
Whether it's through strength, power of the mind,
Pure talent or unshakeable courage,
All of these super humans are truly unbelievable.