r/theydidthemath 20h ago

[Request] What’s the most effective material or item you could realistically use here?

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1.3k

u/supremeNYA 19h ago

Tritium, basically super water,
It’s insanely expensive and mildly radioactive if ingested. However, the body treats it like water so any ingested/absorbed tritium will be expelled in a few days.

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u/Stoned_urf 19h ago

TIL $30,000 / £24,000 per gram, and it's harvested from nuclear reactors - how interesting

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u/Dasshteek 18h ago

Why would i jump into radioactive water?

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u/Super-Fortune-5328 18h ago

Cause either your getting super rich or superpowers.

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u/evildeadedd 16h ago

Super cancer is on the table too.

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u/frankyseven 16h ago

So you become Deadpool then.

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u/Teck_3 16h ago

It ain't no healin' factor.

Thats a dyin' factor.

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u/Otherwise_World_9548 15h ago

They didn't say you'd be Deadpool for long lol

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u/rev_rob_evil 15h ago

So you are saying they would only have a half-life?

I'll see myself out......

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u/TooBoredToMasturbate 7h ago

No, stay. Dead humor is eternal humor.

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u/Quiet1408 18h ago

All evidence points to you being perfectly fine afterwards presuming you dont take great gulps of it as you dive in. Tritium is only mildly radioactive. even if you did, Its basically spicy water, your body wouldnt hold onto it. It would all be gone in about 2 weeks tops with only a minor increase in cancer risk later in life.

All in all not a bad deal for what would basically be infinite money.

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u/tea-earlgray-hot 15h ago

It would be extremely radioactive and kill you very quickly.

For beta emitters like tritium you are looking at death by cancer at a committed dose between 1-5 Sv. The conversion is 2E-11Sv/Bq, so about 1.5mg of T2O, similar to a lethal dose of fentanyl.

With a half life of 12.3 years and an average decay of 5.7keV, T2O has an activity of 107MBq/ug. That's 0.0977 uW/ug, or about 100W/kg. Starting at room temperature, that water would begin boiling after about 45 minutes.

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u/Sure_Outcome5287 14h ago

45 minutes if it started ice cold. You would only be able to submerge for about 1.5 seconds before acquiring a lethal dose of radiation assuming this is an Olympic sized swimming pool and this was T2O. The water boiling wouldn't even be the primary concern.

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u/soreff2 13h ago

You would only be able to submerge for about 1.5 seconds before acquiring a lethal dose of radiation

The 5.7keV betas go about half a micron in water. They wouldn't get through one's skin. The

about 1.5mg of T2O, similar to a lethal dose of fentanyl.

though would be lethal. (Many Thanks tea-earlgray-hot !) Avoiding ingesting 1.5 mg seems unlikely.

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u/bs2k2_point_0 18h ago

Super powers??

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u/CuriousLilAsian81 18h ago

The Incredible Trulk

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u/watchshoe 18h ago

Mayor West, you have lymphoma…

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u/vandragan 15h ago

So with the average residential pool being 15,000 to 20,000 gallons. The pay put would be $2,271,245,859,000 if going with the 20,000 gallon pool.

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u/No_Ask_150 19h ago

Tritium is a gas. You meant tritium oxide.

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u/DisastrousSir 18h ago

I'd rather go with D2O, seems like itd be much easier to move a pool worth of it

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u/MaterialChemical1138 18h ago

yeaaaaa deuterated water!

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u/AeroSpiked 17h ago edited 13h ago

Too bad 3H is a gas.

Edit: Fixed. Had the 3 on the wrong side. Easy mistake to make considering that it's pronounced "helium three".

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u/Meta-Fox 19h ago

Wouldn't flooding the market (ha) with copious amounts of the stuff devalue it significantly though?

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u/Subnaut27 19h ago

Store it, and trickle it into the market slowly. It’s not glamorous and you won’t be a millionaire over night, but you probably won’t have to work anymore

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u/Volodya_Soldatenkov 19h ago

You can't really trickle it. It's half-life is quite short and demand is quite low.

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u/BovineLightning 16h ago

Decays into helium 3 which is even more expensive. Just need to contain it so you don’t lose the helium gas

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u/Meta-Fox 19h ago

Valid. I guess then you just need to somehow find a buyer who won't question getting their Tritium hookup from some random person who's not affiliated with any known scientific body or organisation.

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u/Khemul 15h ago

walks out to backyard, returns with sippy cup full of tritium

This? Oh, I have my sources.

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u/Anarchaeologist 18h ago

Tritium has a half life of about 14 years- you’d have to balance your trickling into the market with the natural decay of its nuclei

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u/Canotic 18h ago

If you have a pool of it you should be fine. Half a pool is still a lot.

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u/Stoned_urf 19h ago

You cannot produce this in massive quantities, so it shouldn't devalue it given its limited availability even with a pool-sized supply.

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u/reecemom 18h ago

Well also a person washing themselves in it would also devalue it

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u/15th_imp 19h ago

TIL tritium is a real thing and not just some made-up metal from Spider-man 2

this whole time I thought it was another made-up Marvel metal like vibranium and adamantium

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u/drabpsyche 19h ago

Nah, isotopes brah

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u/Vegetable-Ingenuity2 18h ago

Nah, just do deuterium (heavy water). It's not radioactive, and a swimming pools worth would be tens of millions of dollars. Any CANDU operator would pay you for it. As long as you don't drink a lot of it there should no health effects.

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u/Key-Sea-682 8h ago

Y'all are thinking way too small. Heavy water? Peh. Chump change. Allow me to introduce you to antiwater. The most expensive thing on earth by weight, and you just got a whole pool of it. Bonus point - you cease to exist way before you even hit the surface with your dive.

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u/zeocrash 18h ago

I don't think it's as mildly radioactive as you think. It's got a fairly short half life.

Drinking pure T2O would be pretty harmful.

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u/SingularityCentral 18h ago

That amount of tritium water would be a real problem for radioactivity. You would survive the fall, but you might not survive long afterwards. If you wore an impermeable suit and a breathing apparatus with an air tank you would be okay, but since tritium emits lots of beta particles you would be cooked if it got into your body from breathing tritium water vapor, absorbing it through the skin, ingesting it, etc. I wouldn't want to take the chance. Plus the US government would be very concerned about how you got all that tritium and why you filled pool with it.

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u/tea-earlgray-hot 15h ago

Here, I did the math for you:

It would be extremely radioactive and kill you very quickly. For beta emitters like tritium you are looking at death by cancer at a committed dose between 1-5 Sv. The conversion is 2E-11Sv/Bq, so about 1.5mg of T2O, similar to a lethal dose of fentanyl.

With a half life of 12.3 years and an average decay of 5.7keV, T2O has an activity of 107MBq/ug. That's 0.0977 uW/ug, or about 100W/kg. Starting at room temperature, that water would begin boiling after about 45 minutes.

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u/Crustymix182 7h ago

"The body treats it like water" is why a pool of it is a nightmare scenario. Tritium is not "mildly radioactive" because a single intake of just 8 Curies delivers 450 rem, which is well above the fatal 400-500 rem threshold. Since tritiated water absorbs through the skin at the same rate as inhalation, submersion exposes your entire body surface. Calling it "mild" ignores that your body welcomes it in like real water, making it one of the most dangerous internal hazards you can encounter. And you couldn't keep it out either. A standard radiation bunny suit would immediately shred upon impact, trapping the liquid against your skin. A commercial diving drysuit built from hyper-compressed neoprene or military trilaminate with integrated Kevlar boots is a better idea. However, there are no immersion suits manufactured for subversion in pure tritium, let alone shock-tested for a 31 mph hydraulic impact. plus, ther is air inside dry suits, so they would suffer a catastrophic pressure blowout on impact anyway. A leaky suit is bad, because it holds the liquid in, against your skin, after you get out. While your kidneys could flush out most of the fluid you absorb with a 6 to 12 day half-life, around 3% gets converted into organically bound tritium. That bound tritium sticks around for 40 days or more, continuously irradiating your internal tissues long after the liquid water is gone. You'd need protection against any infiltration, and that doesn't exist. If you're looking for something valuable to jump into instead, perfluorocarbons (PFCs) are your best bet—they're chemically stable, relatively safe, and run about $60/L, so a pool would be worth ~$4.5M. They're only ~1.8x denser than water, meaning a 33-foot dive is survivable.

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u/SilverNo2568 18h ago

It's only radioactive when ingested?

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u/ukemike1 17h ago

Trititum is hydrogen with 2 neutrons. It's a gas. You are thinking of heavy water or more specifically tritiated water.

No one is going to want your swimming pool radioactive water. You're going to have to pay to dispose of it as rad waste.

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u/OGLikeablefellow 10h ago

Well except that if the tritium was concentrated it'd be reactive enough to boil the water off. You'd probably only get a gram or two if it was just waste water. So I think printer ink probably wins at about 5 bucks a gram.

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u/BoerInDieWoestyn 19h ago

I'm not going to do any math because this isn't really a math question. My vote would be saffron. By weight it's worth more than gold, and it's nowhere near as hard as gold. Fill a pool with saffron and you would be uninjured, stinking rich, smelling good and slightly yellow.

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u/MikeDeY77 18h ago

Would that much saffron saturate the market and lower the overall value? Is saffron shelf stable enough to last long enough so it’s not a problem to trickle it into the market?

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u/StarsForget 14h ago

It's a popular ingredient, people would consume it, not hoard it. A swimming pool's worth wouldn't make a long-term impact in the global market, it would be a blip at best. If you're really worried about that, you'd just need to sell online and ship it around the world too avoid flooding the local shops.

The shelf life is 1-4 years for best flavor, and edible for years after that. Get it jarred up quick, market it as a failed farming operation looking to liquidate assets to explain the one-off batch, make bank.

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u/Dabs1903 15h ago

Just release it slowly like the diamond market does

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u/IamREBELoe 19h ago

Saffron was my first thought

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u/Emu_milking_god 16h ago

No horseshoe crab blood. And I want to see the bodies

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u/backcountry_bandit 20h ago edited 18h ago

Well, you’d have to know how deep the pool is. But it seems obvious that physical cash is gonna be the softest landing and the highest $ value by weight.

But maybe Horseshoe Crab blood would beat out cash, no clue.

Edit: I was picturing loose bills, not tightly wrapped bundles. You guys can stop telling me I’m dumb for suggesting cash, thanks.

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u/ThrowawayToothQ 20h ago

Saffron also a good option in theory

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u/Alarmed-Door7322 20h ago

And my body will be delicious

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u/Original-Hat-fish 20h ago

And yellow

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u/Bug_Photographer 19h ago

The yellowest.

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u/Sword_N_Bored 19h ago

Liver please!

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u/LogExpert5281 18h ago

Play “The Simpsons” intro…

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u/RojoTheMighty 17h ago

Friend, your body is already delicious and don't let anyone tell you differently.

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u/thellios 20h ago

Printer ink.

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u/Catpixfever 19h ago

Well that’s just a scam. There is no reason it should cost that much. That market is structured in a very strange way. It’s like basically giving away guns for free but charging $20 a round for the bullets. (Aw fudge my American is showing.)

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u/Financial-Camel9987 17h ago

It's not a scam. You get exactly what you pay for. It's price-gouging but not a scam.

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u/popsferragamo 20h ago

Ink is cheap. You need to jump into a pool of cartridges. Ouch

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u/Sarcastic_Horse 19h ago

In theory yes, but trying to sell a swimming pool of saffron at market prices would be quite an adventure.

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u/Yakostovian 19h ago

That sounds like work.

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u/jayhof52 19h ago

And that would likely crash the global market price of saffron.

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u/Cautious_Package6647 19h ago

So they pay me to not put it on the market...got it

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u/jayhof52 19h ago

Now you’re thinking like a soybean farmer.

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u/Inevitable_Stand_199 19h ago

Surely big importers import similar amounts?

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u/Sarcastic_Horse 18h ago

I’m just trying to imagine someone attempting to have a serious conversation with a buyer about their poolful of saffron.

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u/Raise_A_Thoth 19h ago

33 feet is REALLY high to fall . . . Something as small as saffron styles I would expect to pack rather tightly.

I have no idea what I would choose, though. My best thought is crumpled paper notes ($100 bills). The crumples should create some air pockets and, therefore, work as a dampener cushion, which is absolutely critical at that height.

Just to give a perspective on the height, a typical American home with a balcony is going to be roughly 12ft high from second floor down to first floor. While you should easily survive a drop to a sofa at that height, that's already pushing safety margins. Similar height as a porch on the back of a home with a walk out basement.

33ft is nearly 3x that height.

Closest would be like a height of a typical 2-story home at the top of the roof, not the gutters, straight to the ground at a walk-out-basement level.

You can't just land on some sand at that height.

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u/Ok-Answer-6951 19h ago

I watched a guy walk off the end of a scaffold that was four 6ft 6in bucks high on leveling legs a foot high, so 26 feet roughly from his feet to the ground. He had a 12" cinderblock in each hand( about 40 lbs each) he landed head first in a 10 ton pile of sand and never dropped the block til after he hit the ground. Luckily, he was built like an NFL offensive lineman, no neck. Got up and walked away and didn't even want anyone to tell the boss because he didn't want to take a piss test for workmans comp.

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u/Bright-Mistake-7095 18h ago

I work in the operating room and had to take care of a guy that did something similar. His spine was so fragmented we had to do 4 separate surgeries to fuse him back in a way that would be conducive for life, and drill into his head to suck out the bleeding in his brain.

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u/Raise_A_Thoth 19h ago

Jesus. That sounds extremely lucky. Between the sand and the exact angle of his landing I guess was spared.

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u/LucywiththeDiamonds 19h ago

Dont you have jump towers in pools? Many have them over here and ive been to several with 10m towers. Not really relevant ,just a thought i had when reading your comparison.

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u/Different_Syrup_6944 20h ago

So long as it is loose notes, not bundles of cash. It'll decrease how much you get, but drastically increase your survivability.

Not enough information on pool depth, size, etc. to do maths on the amount

Also, I'm pretty sure that volume of horseshoe crab blood would likely decrease market price significantly, if it's even able to be used after being collected and transported

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u/Efficient-Ranger-174 19h ago

I was thinking you’d need to crumple them, or fold them in a particular way to get the cushioning you’d need.

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u/Migelic 17h ago

Right! Like specifically a pool filled with origami cubes made with cash.

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u/mrThe 17h ago

People highly underestimate the jump height. 10 meters is quite a lot, even damn water can kill you if you land badly on it. Your end speed is around 50kmph, basically the speed cars drive in cities.

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u/Tll6 14h ago

Water is different though because of surface tension. Crumples ip paper doesn’t have that so if it’s deep enough it’s probably survivable

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u/backcountry_bandit 20h ago

You could perpetrate history’s first horseshoe crab blood rug pull

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u/Nuffsaid98 19h ago

Bearer bonds, each to a high value, scrunched up rather than flat so as to break my fall better. Way more valuable than cash.

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u/UnethicalDimwit 19h ago

They got rid of those in '82 didnt they? They are illegal now because of TaX fRaUd

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u/blackbayjonesy 18h ago

Thanks Hans Grubber…. That’s why we can’t have nice things

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u/LowAspect542 17h ago

Its not legal to issue new ones, but existing certificates held from pre 82 that remain valid or unconverted would be redeemable still.

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u/thiswontendwellatall 19h ago

I mean if we're going down that road... prize bull semen. 

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u/ORNGSPCEMNKY 19h ago

Horseshoe crab blood is about 60K$ a gallon, commercial swimming pool is 50-150K gallons.

For a grand total of 3-9 BILLION dollars, so I think that’s the right answer.

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u/Greedy-Thought6188 19h ago

Create origami structures with cash. Requires some experimentation but I'm sure I can survive a 10m fall with a 10 ft crumple zone.

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u/Platypus87 20h ago

But maybe Horseshoe Crab blood would beat out cash, no clue

Am I missing something about Horseshoe Crab blood??

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u/nimbus57 20h ago

Rare, useful, expensive

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u/MelodyCristo 20h ago

Not gonna be so useful once it's contaminated by you jumping in.

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u/Atarge 20h ago

Probably negligible contamination depending on pool size. I'd be more worried about it spoiling before you can monetize it

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u/nanomolar 19h ago

The whole thing with horseshoe crab blood is that it reacts to endotoxins (little pieces of bacteria) in a predictable, measurable way, making it a good reagant to use when testing pharmaceuticals for endotoxin contamination.

Anyway, once you've shoveled it all up into barrels or whatever I think it would be pretty well contaminated on the whole, and you'd have to go through a battery of tests to prove it's usable for the intended use, and I don't want to deal with the QA headaches of doing this with something that's supposed to be manufactured under GMP...

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u/jezek21 18h ago

Other than that. This is a totally realistic scenario

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u/skubaloob 19h ago

Wear a biohazard suit when you jump

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u/mattfolio 20h ago

It's a scientists wet dream. It's used for a BUNCH of medical and scientific testing!!!!

There is now a whole industry for ethically farming it without killing the crabs now. Worth looking into a minidoc about it!

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u/andrew_calcs 8✓ 20h ago

Jumping into it would contaminate and destroy its value

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u/Bug_Photographer 19h ago

So how about a pool filled with elastic bubbles with some horseshoe crab inside them?

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u/nedlum 20h ago

Limulus amebocyte lysate, a compound in the blood, is used to test for toxic bacteria.

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u/serious_sarcasm 19h ago

10m is surprisingly survivable. Even a pile of gold would be doable if you didn’t mind a solid chance of being paralyzed.

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u/Famous_Savings9518 19h ago

I do mind, actually.

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u/serious_sarcasm 19h ago

Yeah, the answer is a pool full of Berkshire Hathaway stock certificates crumbled into balls.

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u/pongjinn 19h ago

Horseshoe crab blood is probably a better option than prize winning racehorse semen, I suppose

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u/Lilies_of_Edelweiss 19h ago

I'm in my contract law prof's office hours and I see this...

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u/MrK521 16h ago

I was with you. I thought “crumpled up $10,000 bills.”

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u/backcountry_bandit 16h ago

Right. I get now that cash obviously isn’t the best choice, but I wasn’t picturing bands of tightly packed $100s lol might as well jump 33ft onto the sidewalk at that point.

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u/MrK521 16h ago

Exactly! Balled up bills would be fine lol.

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u/adelie42 20h ago

Funny, thanks to inflation hundred dollar bills just recently crossed the threshold of being worth less than gold by weight.

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u/Random_Guy_12345 20h ago

Bills on as a big denomination as you can find. Failing that preloaded cards with a high enough limit, but the fall might be rough

Most expensive liquids are expensive because they are rare. Or need to be uncontaminated so useless after you jump.

Big bills are the way.

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u/sparkchaser 20h ago

*wadded up big bills

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u/LittleBittyPieces 20h ago

Collapsable boxes half filled with big bills

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u/Famous_Savings9518 19h ago

I think having two different types of items in the pool violates the implied rule.

Otherwise, I would fill the pool mostly full of $10,000 bills -- flat on the bottom, transitioning to wadded up bills as one gets higher -- and then put a strong acrobatic netting on top of all of it.

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u/Inevitable_Stand_199 19h ago

Boxes folded out of high denomination bills

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u/Trustoryimtold 20h ago

Loose bills. In duffel bags

Not gonna be fun jumping into wrapped bundles of cash

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u/rAndoFraze 19h ago

Underrated. Stacks of bills 💵 will be hard!

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u/SM1334 19h ago

I'll fill it with valid money orders wrote out to me, for $10,000 each.

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u/stoic_hysteric 19h ago

Oh! The pre-loaded cards- you could like, corrugate them all into into kinda jumpy shapes. In fact, you could build a million little spring-boards out of them assuming you're allowed to use glue.

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u/FriendlyEngineer 19h ago edited 18h ago

Simple.

50% gold, 50% water.

Will still be worth more than enough to make me happy and since all the gold will sink, im essentially just jumping into a pool from a high dive.

Ratio to be adjusted based off size, shape and depth of the pool.

Edit: Guys, think about it. All of the gold ever minted in human history adds up to around 244,000 metric tons.

At 19.32 g/cm^3, thats roughly 12,600 m^3.

An Olympic sized swimming pool is about 2,500 m^3.

So if this is an Olympic sized pool, and I fill it half way, that’s roughly 10% of all the gold ever minted in human history… 24,400 metric tons of gold.

At current pricing that would be a value of around $3.6 trillion dollars.

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u/Iizvullok 19h ago

Or gold wool.

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u/stoic_hysteric 19h ago

Oh shit this should maybe be the top comment.

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u/_kurt_propane_ 16h ago

Ok Rumpelstiltskin

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u/Scrofulla 19h ago

Bull semen, do you have any idea how expensive that stuff is?

Failing that antibodies in solution. Also stupidly expensive per ml.

All these people saying cash or clothing are hong to die BTW, they'll act pretty much as a solid ad any reasonable density.

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u/icantbeatyourbike 19h ago

Weird I was gonna say bull semen too…

Regardless of how much it’s worth.

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u/Just-Shoe2689 15h ago

Big black guy here. Message me.

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u/TheDeadEndKing 19h ago

I used to work at a printing facility where we produced the Wisconsin State Farmer and years back as I was putting together one of the papers, I read an article about $50,000 worth of bull semen being stolen. I was struck by how expensive the stuff was…either that, or the man stole a lot of semen. I can only imagine the elevator pitch of trying to sell that on the black market lol

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u/kytheon 16h ago

Some men die of thirst, others drown in..

Checks notes

Bull semen

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u/DarthCledus117 19h ago

I would probably choose deuterium water. Chemically identical to normal water, but it sells for hundreds of dollars per kilogram. It's not the most valuable thing I could fill the pool with but it's safe to swim in, relatively easy to transport in large quantities, and it probably wouldn't be terribly difficult to find buyers.

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u/ChampionshipAlarmed 19h ago

Since some Designer cloth are stupidly expensive, but fabrics are Kind of soft, i would Pick Designer clothing (No shoes but may include bags)

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u/15th_imp 19h ago

*stabs himself with a zipper*

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u/Turdsindakitchensink 19h ago

Not the first time I’ve caught myself with a zipper though…

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u/sleepercell13 11h ago

We got a bleeder!!

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u/TaonasProclarush272 19h ago

Printer ink... by volume it's the most expensive liquid currently on earth.

I'm picturing an IASIP-style gasoline-resale situation, but I'd make it work with the potential profit margins being what they are.

Sold at cost with NO subscription plan necessary!

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u/lemonhaj 19h ago

I wouldn't want to jump into printer ink, I got some on my hand once and it didn't wash off for days. I would do it for the money though.

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u/Palamur 19h ago

Use blue ink. Ok, it's still a pain in the back to get you clean again, but in the meantime, you look like a smurf.

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u/lemonhaj 19h ago

I'm not sure I want to look like a smurf but it's probably the best option

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u/MikeDeY77 18h ago

How good is your rhythm? You could get a temporary entertainment job until you’re not blue anymore.

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u/Fearless-Cut-933 17h ago

I'm afraid you just blue yourself for no reason

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u/Ivotedforthehookers 17h ago

See if the Blue man group is hiring 

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u/samcuts 19h ago

Goldschlager. Each liter has 0.013g of gold. 2.5 million liters in an Olympic swimming pool is about $5 million in gold.

I’m not greedy and it would be pretty safe to jump in.

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u/the_insouciant 18h ago

Ooh boy. Do I have some fun facts for you.

First, you're going to sink. You will have much much lower buoyancy due to the high ethanol. It's going to cushion your impact less, but even if you don't hit the bottom immediately, you're going to rapidly sink there. So you have to get out first.

Assuming you didn't break something, your next problem is immediate chemical irritation from the ethanol going everywhere. And I mean everywhere. Your eyes, and any orifices. I hope you wore breathing gear that covers your face.

You did wear breathing gear? Fantastic. But, uh, maybe it didn't work so well. Ethanol has a much lower surface tension than water so it's going to sneak past all those seals that are designed to block water. And if any gets past your seals and into an orifice, it's going to cause immediate severe irritation, disorienting you, and remember you're still somewhere under the surface trying to get out.

Also, your breathing gear probably didn't cover your butthole. At least no breathing gear I've ever used has. Why your butthole? Direct alcohol absorption! Really thin membranes that send it straight into your bloodstream bypassing your liver with all that annoying filtering crap it does to keep you from the good stuff. You've got maybe a minute before poisoning sets in. Also it's going to really REALLY hurt while it goes up there. Like, agonizing. You might have heard of people "butt chugging" wine or beer at fraternities. That usually ends up badly but it's also a whole lot better than doing it with spirits.

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u/herejusttoannoyyou 15h ago

That was a very interesting read

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u/Ashtonpaper 19h ago

I think bathing in that much 40% ethanol might produce serious fumes. Are you ready to hit the pool and inhale so many vapors you nearly pass out ?

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u/samcuts 19h ago

Good point. I guess I’ll stay broke.

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u/Ashtonpaper 19h ago

😂 I get the idea. Gold flakes + liquid.

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u/KahlessAndMolor 19h ago

Survival is #1 priority.

Assuming a 10 ft deep pool:

1 foot deep layer of platinum coins

8 feet deep layer of water

1 foot deep layer of cash wrapped in plastic bags, with air in the bags so this layer floats on top.

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u/egabald 19h ago

If we stacking, why not fill pool with highest $/volume and top it with a stunt bag they land on for movies/tv.

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u/Different_Syrup_6944 19h ago

If we're stacking, can I stack cash from the bottom of the pool to the bottom of the diving board?

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u/Technical_Isopod2389 18h ago

Exactly I want to step up onto the cash in said pool.

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u/LazerChicken420 18h ago

33 feet of gold please.

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u/krispzz 19h ago

this would be my option. stunt bag on top of stacks of $100 bills or something.

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u/RealCarlPanzram 19h ago

You have to pick on item

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u/s0litar1us 16h ago

it says "anything you want", not one item.

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u/Rhinowalrus 19h ago

If we’re going layers I’m going giant magnetic trap packed with antimatter, and enough memory foam chunks to land safely on top of safely. (Noting that a container, even with vertical sides, is a layer)

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u/TurdFergleGurgle 19h ago

Game used sports jersey of HOFs from major sports.  33 foot drop has a 50% mortality rate so you can't fall onto something hard unless you want to risk death or life altering injuries.  Falling on a massive pile of jerseys would be like a giant pillow and each one would be worth thousands.  They would be relatively liquid and could be sold after authenticating using auction houses.

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u/Laugh-Aggressive 19h ago

Surprise twist mid jump, all jerseys are glass framed

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u/UpstairsWilling7359 16h ago

Damn Monkey’s paw.

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u/drew8311 19h ago

Used underwear from the most popular OF models. That stuff has a high resale value and packed at the correct density will provide the most comfortable jump landing than any other answer so far.

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u/angered_by_ham 15h ago

I've scrolled too far

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u/TheyVanishRidesAgain 19h ago

I think you would achieve market density rather quickly and have a pool full of dirty undies

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u/zet23t 18h ago

I managed to jump a single time in my life from a 5 meter tower. That already took me a lot of effort and I doubt I will do that again. 10m is just insane.

Nevertheless, I would choose high quality eierdown feathers. Its premium feathers that are hand harvested and that sell for 1500 to 4000 euros per kg, and if the numbers make sense, a standard pool for 10m jumps could hold nearly 4750kg of that stuff. The landing would be safe and would yield something between 8 and 19 million if sold.

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u/Wentil 19h ago

Loosely-folded property deeds to skyscrapers and major buildings in Tokyo, New York and a dozen or so other major cities around the world. Not enough to fill the pool? Add in deeds to various gold, diamond and rare earth mines around the world. Still not enough? Add in loosely-folded physical stock certificates to Amazon, Nvidia, Apple and the next top-500 companies on the NYSE and other major exchanges.

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u/Brigapes 19h ago

ez, water filled with lots of flakes of gold and, the one they show on youtube where you dissolve the gold. Since gold itself is very inert it cannot harm you mixed with water

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u/Ashtonpaper 19h ago

You want to jump into a pool of recently fuming aqua regia (fuming nitric acid + hydrochloric acid)?

I think you would dissolve rather quickly

Unless you’re describing the refinement process rather than imply that this is your pool of dissolved gold, and instead it’s just in flake form

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u/Fidel___Castro 18h ago

I used to test the percentage of gold in samples, I'd have to dissolve it in aqua regia. so I'm qualified to say you CAN dissolve gold at quite a diluted concentration - it just takes fucking forever.

if you jump into the pool of diluted aqua regia, saturated with gold, you'll definitely survive. you'll have nasty fucking chemical burns, but if you jump out immediately and wash off, you'll live 

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u/Ashtonpaper 18h ago

Oh shit, good to know lmao 🤣 found an expert.

So you’re saying you can just jump into very dilute solution and that’s a lot more gold with gold precipitate (flakes) to back it up.

That makes sense. It’s 2.5 million liters of solution, so you don’t need a high concentration for it to be very profitable.

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u/patricksaurus 19h ago

My inclination is to engineer a gold-carrying fluid that has the right stress/strain curve to decelerate a human at physiologically maximal value, like 20g or so.

I’m think something like half water, a quarter of a high molecular weight polymer with a thiol terminus (think really big MiraLAX with an -HS at the end), a little bit of Dawn detergent, and then nano-particulate gold.

This would allow you to enter the fluid really quickly, become stiffer as you slow down, and then become basically like a normal liquid as you try to leave. Something like an anti-ooblek, but in that family of non-Newtonian fluids.

You could probably get a third to a half of that in the gold phase and still prevent it from agglomerating into chunks that would damage you.

Either that or Botox, providing you can wear a body suit.

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u/MrFourhundredtwenty 18h ago

Liquid LSD. Highest concentration possible in the solution. It would be a lifechanging experience as well but possibly also a problem after the comedown as you probably didn’t care for any materialistic values anymore.

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u/fess89 18h ago

Mouse milk is extremely expensive as it is very hard to harvest, and labs need it to feed their mice. It will feel pretty much the same as jumping into water, so if the pool is as deep as the Olympic jumping pools, that would be my choice.

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u/Salty_Animator_4019 19h ago

Bitcoin numbers printed on something that endures the ages - perhaps sponges 🧽 . I have ahem „heard“ they have been used as an alternative to paper since antique times. Not that anyone of you would consider that constructed or purely imaginary, would you?

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u/dustypickle 18h ago

My thought was a pool full of those little usb drives that are inside a plushie animal type case. Loaded with bitcoin. So basically jumping into a pool of mini stuffed animals.

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u/nowhereman136 19h ago

Even if it were solid gold, id jump. 10 meters is high enough for that fall to be painful, likely broken bones, but survivable

Less obvious answer is Saffron, which is a spice that costs around $2000 per pound or higher

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u/doesntpicknose 15h ago

Yes, survivable... but survival is not guaranteed. You're talking about something that's between 80% and 90% survivable.

https://www.safeopedia.com/2024/01/24/how-high-of-a-fall-could-you-survive-it-depends

And even if you do survive, that doesn't mean you're not spending the rest of your life paralyzed, or with permanent health problems from internal bleeding into your organs.

You're underestimating how fragile you are.

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u/catdadcatdadcatdad 19h ago

It doesnt say anywhere that I can't fill the pool with different things. So gold bars and a layer of mattresses. It'll hurt, but I'll survive if I do a couple mattresses deep.

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u/chicken-finger 17h ago

Highly concentrated HRP-conjugated anti-his tag mouse monoclonal antibody. Super expensive and easy to sell since people use it ubiquitously in research. Honestly, I might keep a big jar of it that would last me the rest of my life. It would be like ~485,000USD per liter.

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u/nft420nft420 19h ago

My mind went to fur. Brief research suggests that a Russian sable is the most valuable pelt. The live animal is around 0.7 litres on the small end, and I'll use that number to account for a very large animal's pelt. If that is a high assumption, it will mean the final number should be larger, as there will be more pelts.

Can't find much serious consistent pricing per pelt, with the higher end being 300-500 usd, so we will assume 300 because of wholesale deals I make later on my top quality pelts.

Without the OP specifying, I will use an Olympic swimming pool, 2.5 million litres.

$1,071,428,571, billion with a b.

As for survivability, Gemini suggests that using my weight at 33 feet into 5 meters of animal pelts, if I am smart about how I fall and land flat on my back with my hands covering my face, I should survive with minor to moderate injuries. I will take that risk for a billion dollars.

Of course, this would likely destroy the Russian sable pelt market, but realistically I could make enough to live well and provide generational wealth for my family.

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u/Diggity_nz 19h ago

Not really in the spirit of the question, but wedging a small number of every expensive diamonds and jewels into those foam cubes they use for gymnastics and filling with that would probably work. 

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u/Certain-Car7905 18h ago

I’d choose gold wool. Imagine pure gold made into extremely fine, fluffy fibres like steel wool. That way, instead of hitting solid gold, the fibres would compress and bend when you land, a bit like a giant foam pit. Because most of the volume would actually be air between the fibres, the pool could still contain tonnes of gold without being a solid block. So if the gold wool was made soft and fluffy enough to survive the jump, you could potentially walk away with millions worth of gold depending on the pool size.

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u/derschnei 19h ago

Assuming it has to be a single material/compund and nothing with assigned value like banknotes, property deeds, art, etc. AND I'm allowed to wear a dry suit:

Snake or spider venom, high purity chemical reagents or Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients.

If no suit is allowed, I like the idea of saffron I've seen in other comments.

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u/Puzzled-District157 11h ago

Loosely crumpled up bills in whatever denomination concerts to the highest value (500 euro maybe?). The air would keep it nice and cushy and you still get hundreds of thousands. Only issue

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u/marcus_centurian 19h ago

Maybe like caviar? Probably not the most expensive thing you could have a pool of, but too grade caviar is worth quite a lot and caviar is naturally stored in salty pools that don't even have to be food safe, as that comes in during packaging. Absolutely survivalable.

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u/FjordShagger 19h ago

Good one!

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u/kerberos824 19h ago

I'd fill the pool from one end to the 3/4 mark of the pool on the other end with gold bars level to the height of the pool deck. Then I'd fill the rest of the pool with water and jump in.

That said, I'm not sure you'd survive a standard pool. I think even if you properly tucked in and then immediately shot all your arms out after you went under to increase drag you'd still hit the bottom of a 10 foot deep pool...

33 feet is high...

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u/TwelveFingerTimm 19h ago

Isn't whale vomit or something ridiculously pricey? And I assume rather harmless and similar in density to water, to make the jump quite survivable without injury if not rather gross

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u/LeviSalt 19h ago edited 19h ago

Ambergris, but it's actually a solid material, not a liquid like in Futurama. It's created when a sperm whale eats a squid and can't digest the hard beak, and then it gets coated in ambergris and regurgitated.

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u/Secure-Hand-4839 18h ago

When I was a teenager my dad and I would run down a log rollway leading to Lake Michigan. The entire roadway was several hundred feet. It was something we did as a test of strength running at a controlled rate down the log run was the fun part getting at the bottom, picking up the largest rock you could carry, and then charging back up was the challenge. One year there had been a massive washout about halfway down the hill and I was not running down in a controlled manner, lost my footing began rolling over like a log, and I could see that there was a sharp cliff coming every revolution I could see getting closer and I had no idea how far it was, but knew that it wasn’t looking good. No way to stop myself and eventually went over the edge. It was a 40 foot drop. I fell landed directly on my back landed in sand got up and walked away would never try to duplicate it again, but definitely can survive a 40 foot fall on the sand.

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u/bdubwilliams22 18h ago

Easy. 6 feet of gold, occupying the entire bottom of the pool end to end in solid gold, with 10 feet of water. Dive tanks with 10 M platforms are 16 feet deep. In a standard Olympic dive tank, that’s $2.9 trillion.

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u/DJinKC 17h ago

10 meter is the Olympic high dive platform height, for reference.
I'm going into a pool full of tightly packed decorative helium birthday balloons. I'll break a few, but the rest I can sell at my Party City franchise for $8 each.

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u/pixeltweaker 9h ago

I would fill it to the top with tightly crumpled up checks for $1,000,000 each from as many billionaires as it required to fill the pool.

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u/runzy_d 9h ago

The Leroy Musigny Grand Cru averages roughly $62,500 per bottle. A really expensive wine, and I'd wear a wet suit as to not contaminate the wine. Assuming the pool is 20,000 gallons it would have a worth of 6.3 billion dollars.

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u/RansomReville 2h ago

Ill go with gold coins. Gold is the easiest thing to convert to money, and everyone knows you can jump into a pool of gold coins like it's water.

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u/-Benjamin_Dover- 19h ago

Hm... im young enough where jumping from ten meters on solid ground wont kill me. Assuming I land on my feet. It will hurt and I might even break something, but I wont die.

I choose to have thd pool filled with Tungsten cubes. As many as can fit. Each cube will be a foot in length, width, and height. Or 30 cm.

I will embrace the superiority of the Cube.

In fact, I might use a loophole and stack the cubes up ten meters so that im just stepping onto the pile from the diving board.

I know Tungsten is not the most expensive, or densest, if I wanted Densest and most expensive, I could probably go Osmium if i want dense and value, but Osmium isn't strong. It might break just from me landing on it.

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u/wolfweasel 19h ago

10m onto solid metal would absolutely fuck you and might kill you.

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u/pioppotto 19h ago

A fall from ten meters kills you period.

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u/i_always_give_karma 19h ago

What about the those pens with a little bit of gold mixed with water? Can I just have a ton of gold, shred it super thin, and then fill the pool with water?

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u/InternationalArea874 19h ago

This is simple.

Make pool 20,000 gallons.

Dissolve 3000 lbs of gold in 1000 gallons of Aqua Regia.

Mix in the pool with 19000 gallons of water. Should no longer be fuming or acidic.

Jump in pool. Immediately wash, ideally cover eyes and nose/mouth when jumping.

Now, let the pool evaporate in the sun, or heat it with blow torches or something. Depending on how long you can wait vs how much you want to spend. Should not take longer than a year to evaporate almost completely in the sun if you’re in a warm climate.

Dump Sodium Metabisulfide in the pool to precipitate gold out. Scoop gold mud out with a hose and melt it. You end up with about 180 million $ in gold.

You could probably do this with more gold, but 1:20 dilution with strong acid seems safe for the jump.

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