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Netflix’s Project Power tells the story of a world where superpowers have been unlocked via a special pill that users take to gain unique abilities. As one scene in the film explains, the selection of powers stored in the pills are all derived from real-life animals with special gifts or abilities (chameleons, wolverine frogs, etc.), and that these manifest in select individuals, while potentially killing others. However, as one of the first people experimented on with the Power drug, the main character Art, aka “The Major” (Jamie Foxx), came to learn that he has the powers of one of the most deadly (and unlikely) creatures in the animal kingdom!
Warning: Project Power SPOILERS Follow!
The backstory of Art “The Major” is one of the central mysteries of Project Power – as is his reasoning for never wanting to take the Power drug ever again. In his chats with his partner/hostage, young Power dealer Robin (Dominique Fishback), The Major hints that discovery of his superpower resulted in massive destruction and death, which still haunts him to this day.
In the film’s climactic showdown between The Major and the mysterious Teleios corporation that developed the Power drug, the Major reveals that the animal he got his power from was none other than… The pistol shrimp! What’s more: the power of the pistol shrimp proves to be the most powerful in the bunch: by taking the Power drug during his climactic face-off with Teleios operatives, The Major generates a destructive shockwave that disintegrates the soldiers, using the explosive energy of the rain and even their own bullets!
As you can see in the video above, Netflix‘s Project Power is actually drawing upon a real phenomenon in nature, from one of the most unlikely sources. The pistol shrimp has the unique ability to form “bubble bullets” using a plunger-socket mechanism within its snapper appendage. The plunger hits the socket and expels water with violent force and speed, either stunning or outright killing prey so that the pistol shrimp can drag it back to a burrow and eat it.
At approximately 105 feet a second, pistol shrimp’s shot is so fast that it creates a pressure differential so great that bubbles in the water swell and then collapse with rapid speed. Those cavitation bubbles collapse in milliseconds, and in doing so, generate a temperature on par with the surface of the sun (8,000°F ), while also generating a sound (210 decibels) that is significantly louder than a gunshot (150 decibels). In fact, a colony of pistol shrimp having a shootout is so overwhelmingly noisy it can disrupt naval sonar equipment!
Obviously, Project Power takes the concept of the pistol shrimp and gives it a fantastical human application. However, Project Power manages to teach us a little something about nature and the animal kingdom that a lot of people didn’t know before.
Project Power is now streaming on Netflix.
Disclosure: ComicBook is owned by CBS Interactive, a division of ViacomCBS.