Becoming Batman

by E. Paul Zehr

  A remnant of this practice of body conditioning can be seen in the common practice in many martial arts of using knuckle push-ups, which we discussed earlier in the chapter. The idea is to get used to proper hand alignment for punching, to deal with contact on the fist, and to work on wrist and forearm strength. A related practice is that of a particular challenge called “knuckle hopping,” which is part of the yearly World Eskimo-Indian Olympics. In knuckle hopping, participants get into a prone position supporting themselves on their knuckles and toes in a kind push-up-like formation. At this point, the resemblance to push-ups ends and the relationship to body conditioning begins. That is because the next step is to move across the floor by hopping on the fists! So, the fists are repeatedly hit against a hardwood floor. The world record for this event, held by Rodney Worl, is almost 57.6 meters (192 feet). As you might clearly have guessed, callused knuckles are the most minor of outcomes from this form of training. Split skin and bleeding are indeed very common. It is really quite similar to the “savage” technique of hand conditioning mentioned above.

  Beefing Up the Buff Body

  OK, so far we have talked about some ways to condition and harden the body. Probably body toughening is the best term. But Batman doesn’t usually engage in combat with the inmates of Arkham Asylum dressed simply in his boxers (or briefs) and nothing else. He has done some body hardening, but he also gets some help from using a special suit. I refer of course to the iconic batsuit.

  There really is no doubt about it. Bruce Wayne uses his fortune to benefit his alter ego Batman’s toy collection. The batsuit is one of the coolest of those toys. In this sense I mean “cool” as in hip, awesome, and fantastic—not cool as in temperature, which you’ll read about in a few moments. That suit can do all sorts of stuff and seems to have an almost inexhaustible capacity for hiding things and for taking a real walloping. In all seriousness, I, personally, would like to have one of those suits. I admit that I am not sure what I would do with a batsuit. I would definitely stand out a bit too much wearing it around the university during lectures or in my lab. It would also look out of place for teaching martial arts. It would be fantastic once a year at Halloween, though!

  Putting on a batsuit every day isn’t a decision a person would make lightly. First, it is what scientists would call an “exoskeleton.” (I apologize for inadvertent negative flashbacks to high school biology and grasshopper dissections that this word may have conjured up. I am hopeful the positive associations won out.) So, wearing a second skeleton would be much more of an effort than sporting a suit and tie for the office or throwing on old clothes to clean out the garage. It is really a suit of armor. Yes, the armor is light and flexible, but it is still armor. This creates some real challenges for Batman when he moves. This issue was well-captured by the quote from Michael Keaton included at the beginning of this chapter. That Hollywood batsuit was clearly not that light or easy to maneuver in. However, we will assume that the “real” batsuit that the real-fictional Batman wears is the best it can be. Despite that, it is still out of the ordinary range of human experience to wear that kind of gear. Unless you spend a lot of time in a HazMat suit, or working as a mascot for a sports team, or perhaps testing out some new combat suit from the army, you just aren’t used to being inside something like the bat-suit. That is the best descriptor, by the way. Being inside the batsuit, rather than wearing the batsuit.

  From the time you were a little kid, your body has adapted to staying fairly well calibrated for how big you are and how your body moves. When you put an armored suit on top of everything, you throw off this fine calibration and you are just asking for problems. Just consider it from a movement control perspective. For example, recall from Chapter 7 that you have sensors in your arms and legs that tell you about movement. Well, wearing any kind of suit means adding on an additional layer that doesn’t have any sensors in it. This reduces the kind of feedback you might get from moving your body.

  Some people actually have to deal with wearing an exoskeleton. There is a very large emerging field related to robotics that has to do with interfaces between humans and external devices that support the body. These exoskeletons—a kind of wearable robot—have important applications for helping to restore and recover movement when it is lost after injury or damage to the nervous system, such as happens after a stroke or a spinal cord injury. These exoskeletons aren’t nearly as grandiose as a full body suit like Batman’s batsuit, though. In contrast to the tools mentioned above, the batsuit is a “passive” device; it doesn’t have motors to assist with movement such as is being explored for use in rehabilitation.

  Astronauts also use a kind of exoskeleton. The bulky suits they wear create many of the same issues as wearing the batsuit—controlling movement and regulating temperature. However, a recent innovation is being worked on by Dava Newman, who is a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT. She is incorporating spandex and nylon into a new space suit design called the “BioSuit.” Although it is still some years (probably about ten) away from actual use, it was designed for protection with mobility and will weigh much less than the current 45-kilogram (100-pound) suits worn now.

  Batman uses a powered robotic exoskeleton in Frank Miller’s graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns (1986). In this story arc, Batman has been retired from crime fighting for some years. However, he makes a comeback when he is older. He is a sort of enemy of the state, however, and Superman is called upon to rein him in. To fight Superman, Batman designs and constructs an exoskeleton, and there is a climactic battle between the two. “The Dark Knight Falls” is the specific story in which this occurs. Having an exoskeleton powerful enough to attempt to fight Superman needs a lot of power. In fact, it is plugged right into a light standard! However, this isn’t the kind of suit that we typically think of when we hear “batsuit.”

  Let’s be more realistic as to the composition and function of the batsuit. The best details on this come from Scott Beatty’s The Ultimate Guide to the Dark Knight. The batsuit encompasses both the body suit and the cowl that covers Batman’s head. The powered exoskeleton that Batman built to fight Superman had to both protect Batman and provide more “oomph” for his attacks. In contrast, the standard batsuit is really mostly for protection. Two things it protects Batman from are bullets (remember the criminals Batman fights don’t share his disdain of the gun) and heat.

  The batsuit isn’t a 100% preshrunk cotton garment. It isn’t a 50-50 polyblend either. It is instead composed of Kevlar and reinforced Nomex, which are both “aramids” (a contraction of “aromatic polyamide”). These are strong synthetic fibers that are resistant to fire. Nomex has the highest fire resistance and was first discovered in DuPont labs in 1961. It is used in the hoods of firefighters and the facial cowls of NASCAR drivers. The very strong fiber Kevlar was created in the DuPont labs in 1965 and is five times stronger than steel, when compared on a weight-to-weight basis. However, unlike steel, Kevlar is light and flexible and can be knitted or “spun” into fabric ropes or sheets to be used in a variety of applications, for example, body armor of police, the military, or Batman. Batman’s cowl has Kevlar-reinforced inserts for when he has to head butt someone or takes a blow there.

  As an aside, you might think of Kevlar and bulletproof vests. Something to keep in mind though is that bulletproof vests aren’t really bulletproof. They don’t really deflect bullets but rather absorb and deform the bullets by spreading the force of impact over a large body area. This makes sense if you think back to the concepts of impulse and break-falling we talked about in Chapter 10. These vests usually protect the wearer from the piercing injury of the bullet itself. However, all that force still has to be absorbed and can often lead to dramatic bruising or broken ribs. In “Reasons” (Batman #604, 2005), Batman takes a few direct shots from a handgun. He says “Kevlar protects me but my ribs are cracking.” Bulletproof vests may be made from materials such as Kevlar but are often reinforced with steel or titanium.

  Now
let’s look at what it must feel like to prowl around in a batsuit.

  Is the Batsuit a Batoven?

  At this stage I want to talk about how uncomfortable it would really make you feel to wear something like the batsuit. To be effective it has to be close fitting and follow your body movements. No matter how “breathable” the fabric may be, it is still another layer on Batman’s body. So, what I want to consider is how that suit would affect body temperature. Scientists call this thermoregulation, or the ability to adjust your body temperature within a normal range. Kind of like a room temperature setting for your internal organs!

  Recall in the beginning of the book we discussed homeostasis. But our system of regulation was certainly not designed for a person wearing a batsuit! So, putting one on and then doing maximal exercise might be expected to cause a few problems. The kind of problems the Batman would experience in the batsuit are similar to what happens to athletes like speed skaters who wear aerodynamic “rubber” suits or to firefighters who wear heavy and very hot protective gear.

  Two main concerns for Batman to contend with are the possibility of the suit’s interfering with breathing and its overheating. Restrictions to the movement of your chest wall can affect exercise performance. If you have ever had to wear, even briefly, a life jacket that was too small, you know how uncomfortable this can be. This is actually very much like what happens in morbidly obese people where the body fat begins to interfere with elastic movement of the rib cage. We’ll assume the batsuit is very well designed—and tailored to fit—and doesn’t affect breathing that much.

  Temperature, though, is a very significant issue. Let’s talk about what it means to be a homeotherm, from two Greek words meaning “same” and “heat.” That is what you, I, and Batman (and bats too) are. This means we regulate our internal body temperatures within a very narrow range. Typically this is between about 35.5 and 37.7°C, or 95.9 and 99.9°F. If we were a vehicle motor we would call that the operating range. It is tricky to keep our internal temperature within that band. We are constantly producing heat through metabolism and as a byproduct of muscle contraction. We are also receiving heat from the environment in terms of radiant heat (think of the sun or a hot fire) and conductive energy (think of sitting on hot sand). At the same time we lose heat as radiant, conductive, convective, or evaporative heat loss. These sources of heat loss or heat gain in the body from the environment are nicely summarized in Figure 11.3.

  Figure 11.3. Loss and gain of heat during exercise.

  The really cool thing—no pun intended—about our bodies is that we can operate over a very wide range of external temperatures and still keep our internal temperature inside that “operating range.” Our bodies can regulate between about 10 and 55°C, or 50 and 131°F. Receptors in the arms and legs and in the body core help inform the central nervous system (actually the hypothalamus) about temperature. Then we either try to gain or lose heat. We can quickly do so by bringing more blood to the skin to help cool off or by reducing blood flow if we want to keep ourselves warm. This is why your fingertips are cold when you are cold. You are unconsciously reducing blood flow to the skin to keep your internal organs warmer. The goose bumps we get when we are cold are an attempt to reduce the area of our skin to again help preserve heat. This is also why you shiver—to generate heat as a byproduct of muscle contraction.

  The opposite happens when we are hot. We sweat to help cool us by evaporation of water off the skin. In fact you can actually lose as much as 1.4 liters (50 ounces) of fluid per hour with heavy sweating in the heat (at about 43°C or 110°F). This is summarized in Figure 11.4. This figure shows how much water loss can occur at different temperatures (shown along the bottom) and at different intensity levels of exercise. A quick glance at the top right-hand corner, which is for the highest temperature and moderate activity, shows significant water loss. It is important to realize that this water loss is what helps cool the body and keep it in the operating range. A lot of this is in the form of evaporative (think sweat) heat loss. This gives you a good idea what kind of potential temperature-regulation problem Batman might have to contend with when he is out fighting crime.

  However, there are a couple other considerations that make Batman’s potential difficulties here less of a worry. Right off the bat (OK, sorry about that pun; I have been waiting to use that line for the whole book so far and couldn’t wait any longer), Batman is almost always out at night when the temperature is much lower. In fact, he is likely well below the minimum shown on Figure 11.4. Also, according to Batman expert Scott Beatty, Batman’s newest suit includes an internal cooling (and I guess heating when needed) system.

  A final consideration for Batman and overheating is that we need to assume that he has become acclimatized to the hot and humid environment that the batsuit could be. I say could because even if it has a cooling system, it could fail! The concept of acclimatization is one in which there is a gradual (and homeostatic) shift in things like sweating rate that occurs when we humans get used to different climates. If you have ever traveled from a cold and maybe dry place to a hot humid place for a vacation you underwent an acclimatization just like this. Let’s say you went from Chicago in February to the Cook Islands in the South Pacific. You probably sweated like crazy for the first number of days. Then you got used to it and adjusted to the temperatures after about a week. This wasn’t just you thinking it was better; your body really had changed the way it handled the new heat stress in the climate you found in the Cook Islands. Then, when you went back home again, you probably felt much colder than you normally would in a Chicago winter. After about a week, though, you would have adjusted again to the new climate.

  Figure 11.4. Fluid loss during exercise at different temperatures. Data from McArdle et al. (2005).

  Sports teams try to make use of this by traveling to hot environments to train and get ready for competition well in advance of the competition itself. Batman would need to train in the full gear often to maintain adaptations in light of the cold climate of Gotham City. As he wears his batsuit each and every day, we will assume he is well acclimated to it.

  I mentioned earlier that a major consideration for body temperature regulation for Batman is that he is usually out at night when it is cooler. Well, it is exactly that nocturnal aspect of Batman’s life that we turn to next.

  CHAPTER 12

  Gotham by Twilight

  WORKING THE KNIGHT SHIFT

  Sleep is at best a necessary evil. Bruce Wayne sleeps, and one less crime is thwarted, one less innocent life is saved.

  —From “The Sleep of Reason” (Detective Comics #598, 1989)

  It is clear from the quote above that despite his monetary wealth and resources, sleep and rest are not luxuries that Bruce Wayne indulges in. Instead, he takes a rather Spartan and frugal approach to sleep. This might not be such a problem if Batman and Bruce Wayne didn’t have such an odd existence. Obviously that is actually a bit of an understatement! What I mean to say is that Batman lives a large portion of his life at night.

  Typically, we human beings operate as diurnal animals. That means we are active during daytime and rest at night. This, by the way, is a common feature of many mammals, birds, and insects and can be contrasted with nocturnal animals such as the bat, sea turtle, or owl. I guess instead of saying that Batman has an odd lifestyle, we might be charitable and call him a “night owl.” He is named Batman after all! In any event, working the nocturnal beat of the Batman can be considered an extreme form of shift work. He punches the clock when others get ready for bed, hangs out all night dealing with the criminals of Gotham City and all over the four corners of the world, and then hits the sack early in the morning. He does it day after day, year after year.

  In this chapter, we will look at the cumulative effect of this type of lifestyle. One of the advantages we have as warm-blooded mammals is the ability to function at night despite the cooler air and decreased temperature, but does the “batshift” push this too far? To explore
these issues we are going to take a journey and look at jet lag and shift work and have a little chat about sleep itself.

  It’s as Different as Night and Day

  Our bodies work according to prescribed rhythms—called circadian rhythms from the Latin words for “about a day”—across a period of about 24.5 hours. For example, your body temperature fluctuates in a very consistent pattern throughout the day, rising and falling between about 36.5 and 37.5°C (or 97.5 and 99.5°F). Remember that these numbers are within the carefully regulated operating range we touched on in the last chapter. Our sleeping and waking cycle is the most obvious example of a circadian rhythm. This cycle is regulated by the pineal gland and a cluster of nerve cells called the suprachiasmatic nuclei, which are located in the base of the brain in the hypothalamus. These nuclei are the home of the body “clock” that sets circadian rhythms.

  American biochemist Julius Axelrod made key contributions to our understanding of the role of the pineal gland and of the hormone melatonin, which it secretes, in our sleep-wake cycles. In addition to this work Dr. Axelrod shared the 1970 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his studies on adrenaline and noradrenaline.

  The suprachiasmatic nuclei change their activity in response to the level of the hormone melatonin in the blood, which is in turn affected by the amount of light that the eyes receive. Melatonin is thought of as a “dark hormone,” because the more light there is, the lower the release of melatonin. This hormone is involved in circadian rhythms whether we are talking about Batman, actual bats, or algae clumped together in a batlike form.