Film Theory: How to SURVIVE the Hunger Games pt. 1

OMG, pink dogs and Louis XV jackets are so trendy! This season in Panem revolves around archery, white roses, and killing children. Oh, and the blue hair, oh it's so cute. (ENTER SUBJECT MUSIC) Hello internet, welcome to

film

theory

. Where we salute the capital for enacting the law that, frankly, we all want Halloween to happen every day. Unfortunately, today we're not talking about the Capitol's hairstyle choice. Or even any of your super high-tech equipment, battle tactics, or political strategy. (Wow) There are many topics we could address here. No, today we talk about his most memorable slogan. The odds may always be in your favor.

The odds may always be in your favor. It's a throwaway line that every on-screen character in the Capitol throws out before choosing the tributes. During their press tour, even when they enter the

games

. Hunger Games fans use it at the movies, while reading the books, in line to buy the iPhone 6. It's everywhere. The characters of the capital use it as a way to give good luck to those honored. But in reality, odds have nothing to do with luck, they have to do with mathematics, and it turns out that the biggest secret of the Hunger Games is that this phrase doesn't tell you to break your leg, it tells you how to

survive

.

games

.

Believe it or not, you can control whether the odds are ever in your favor. You can make games anything but a matter of luck. Whether you're the only survivor or dead on the first day depends precisely on whether you've stacked the odds in your favor. And after today's episode you'll know how to win the Hunger Games, not by skill, strength, or... extremely advanced finger painting skills, but by the power of probability. Choose wisely and you will have the best possible chance of survival, it's like a money ball, except instead of money you are betting your life.

And the lives of 23 other innocent children. As you can see, this is going to be a really enjoyable episode. Well. So let's say you want to

survive

the Hunger Games, the first step that guarantees you'll live one hundred percent of the time. Katniss: "I volunteer as a tribute." Do not volunteer when your name does not appear in the drawing. Most likely you will always survive. But hey, let's say you want to be a hero and you just showed up as a tribute. Stupid decision, but since you're here you should act fast. When you start the games there are 24 tributes in total, two from each district.

As such, the initial odds of winning the Hunger Games are one in 24. Which won't get you very far. And I can already see you jumping into the comments and protesting because it's definitely arguable that even from the beginning not all tributes are created equally. Rue doesn't have the same odds of winning as, say, Katniss, or a race, or Foxface. To that I say... bad. In articles already published about the Hunger Games it has been statistically proven that the chances of winning are truly equal regardless of race, age, sex or district. Based on the information available on previous winners, it turns out that those factors don't actually affect their chance of survival.

Winners come from both sexes, race and color certainly don't seem to be a major factor in Panem, and the age ranges of the winning tributes are definitely variable. Make your starting characteristics in the Hunger Games a statistical wash. Say what you want about fascism and playful child-killing. The

hunger

games are not prejudices. Even in racing, those kids train from an early age to be sociopathic killers for the express purpose of surviving the games, who you'd think would have a higher chance of winning... ...actually not. Mathematics doesn't lie. Hey, it's good news for you if you come from the poorer districts, and if you have a career, well, I'm sorry I wasted your life.

Very well, knowing that, you have arrived in the capital fresh off the train as a new tribute. What are you going to do? Cry and contemplate the sweet release of death? Ha, hell no! The number one mistake tributes make is wasting this precious time. If you want to stack the odds in your favor, do so before you get locked in the tube and the game countdown begins. This isn't the time to make out with Peeta or write cheesy letters home. You have a week, seven days in the capital to prepare before the game and before the game.

No! Not that kind of foreplay! The games leading up to the Hunger Games involve two things; train and eat. To have the best statistical advantage when entering the arena, start by carb loading. No, it really sounds stupid, but this is not the time to work on your thigh gap to get some capital-approved yoga leggings. This is the time to put on the old pounds. Think of it like Thanksgiving, except: I'll thank myself next week when all my friends are dead. But think about it seriously. You don't know what kind of arena you're entering, but one thing you do know from previous games is that there may not be food for weeks.

And you, as an active teenager fighting for your life, will burn between 2,000 and 2,400 calories per day, depending on your gender. Under the stress of fighting Jabber-Jays and bad CGI dogs, we can assume you're going to burn a lot more than that. Which means you want to have some body mass to spare, so you significantly increase your chances of survival by gaining five pounds of fat before the games. This gives you an extra 17,500 calories to survive eight and a half days before your body begins to shut down from starvation. Which, honestly, may be enough to get you there.

The Hunger Games don't always have the same length, but we know that the 74th game of the movie lasted 18 days. Which means you could technically survive almost half that time on practically nothing. In those same Hunger Games 11 of the 24 tributes died while trying to seize supplies and food. So from a probability standpoint, being able to survive independently significantly increases your chances in the long run. It's great that you're celebrating, our next step is to make sure you're using your training time well. You've got three days here at the gym and let's face it, you're not going to develop new weapon skills from scratch, so don't bother trying to become a nunchucker master in less than a week.

Instead, develop the skills that result in the highest survival rates. Based on the 27 known winners from movies and books, 11 of them won primarily for their passive survival skills. Most of them, again, by not dying of

hunger

. This makes your first stop on the circuit edible plants and insects, in addition to lighting a fire. Really sexy skills, I know. Well, we'll see who has the last laugh when you don't die from the poisonous berries. Additionally, among the 11 surviving victors, several won by hiding for most or all of the game. Therefore, camouflage, rope courses and climbing trees are also priorities.

Giving you both offensive and defensive tactical advantages, and speaking of offense, let's talk about weaponry. Let's say you're a fast learner and you have all those other skills under your belt. The other big statistical advantage comes from studying the blades. Of the 27 known victors, eight, surprisingly, won through the use of swords. That's almost thirty percent of the total. Whether it was knives or even swords. Realistically, you won't become a swordsman in a week, so learning how to use a normal knife will be your best option. In addition to being the weapon of choice for the victors, it is also statistically the weapon most likely to appear in the game.

There are 25 known weapons that have appeared in the Cornucopia in the two Hunger Games we see on screen. If you specialize in any other weapon like, come on, slingshot, scythe, you have a 1 in 25 chance of coming across that weapon. But the Cornucopia has housed three different types of knife blades. Single-sided knives, daggers and throwing knives. Choose to specialize in knives and you'll triple your chances of any weapon you find being a weapon you can use. Sure, you can find a dagger instead of a throwing knife, but any blade you have will serve roughly the same purpose.

That is, kill other children. Eh yes? but since they are also so versatile, other tributes will carry knives as tools. That is, if you come across a dead body, the chances of it carrying a knife are much higher than any other type of weapon. I mean honestly. What are you going to do with a trident? Roasting three marshmallows at the same time? Knives are also one of the best offensive weapons that can be used to prevent another person from killing you. Five of the 27 winners are known as victors based on brutality. Meaning they fought using brute strength and their raw athleticism.

These are usually their careers or just their usual psychopaths. Statistically you want to do everything you can to avoid getting close to these tributes because they do everything they kill melee style. On the other hand, you still need a method to remove them if necessary. Because the odds are not in your favor to kill them up close, remember how I mentioned throwing knives? You can double the use of knives to train knife throwing. Giving you a weapon that can be used at any distance. Whether you're throwing from 20 feet away, or just you know... usually stabbing! The final word of caution here is that you need to make sure you don't shortchange your odds.

Avoid wrestling, weight lifting, and training with heavy weapons such as axes. These will build your bulky muscles, which won't give you a statistical advantage, but will increase your metabolism. So you end up burning more calories when you hit the sand, reducing your time to starvation. And that is. Your time has come. You are well trained, ready to enter the Arena, right? You will grab the last of those cream puffs from the Capitol, run into the arena, grab your knives, stab everyone, and then spend your days on Victor's Row in abject guilt and isolation. Truly a winner are you!

Well, if you're going to live to see that day, you'll need to survive the first 10 minutes of the games, which we all know are the deadliest. So you've just climbed the pipe, the clock is ticking, and you're faced with one of the most important decisions in the game. Do you come across the cornucopia or not? If you're not ready, you have 10 seconds to make that decision, but lucky for you, you've watched this video and know the correct answer. Hell no! Statistically it doesn't make any sense. At the 74th Games, 11 of the 24 tributes died at the Cornucopia.

In the Quarter Quell the following year, 8 of 24 died. That's an average mortality rate of forty percent! Which immediately says that if you don't get involved in the Cornucopia, your chance of winning instantly doubles, going from 1 in 24 to almost 1 in 10. That's huge. Sure there may be a significant weapons cache there, but handheld athletes and racing have a huge statistical margin here. Of the Cornucopia deaths in two

film

s, almost eighty-five percent of the deaths were committed in confined spaces by professionals. They are not hungry. They are working at close range and are full of adrenaline. So it's literally the worst time to face those guys.

Yes, this significantly decreases the probability of grabbing a weapon right away, but during the first days of the arena the lack of weapons does not matter. Your in-game priorities are the same as your training priorities. Survival first. In an ideal scenario, you'll want to grab a bag of supplies, a box, a purse, whatever, from a completely unoccupied corner of the cornucopia. It's definitely possible because we've seen it twice in the first movie. You're not going to interact with another tribute while doing this, and seriously, if it feels like a competition, it's statistically better to abort than fight.

So play it safe, stay alive and run away. And with that, congratulations! You have successfully overcome the deadliest 10 minutes of gaming. Now you're a well-nourished survivor ready to outlast the other scared kids, but seriously, what do you do now? Where are you going? Do you harass other tributes? Or do you run and hide? Should you form an alliance or go it alone? Are tracker-jackers edible? And most important of all, what is the almost foolproof strategy that will ensure you survive much longer than anything else you can do in games? Longer than anything we've discussed today. Well, Katniss put an arrow on the subscribe button to make sure she gets notified next week when that video is posted.

And in the meantime, climb a tree and hold firm to this

theory

about how the Beast really gets screwed in "Beauty and the Beast." And hey, remember, that's just a theory, a film theory. Aaaaaaaaaaaand cut!