James Bond, the bungee-jumping, womanizing, crack shot super-spy, would in reality have a pretty tough time doing any of those things because of how much he drinks, according to a new study by the British Medical Journal. Plus, he would have a ton of DUIs.
The (sort-of joking) study looked at Ian Fleming‘s 14 007 books, and found that excluding days when James Bond was incarcerated or otherwise somehow prevented from drinking, his “weekly alcohol consumption was 92 units a week, over four times the recommended amount. His maximum daily consumption was 49.8 units. He had only 12.5 alcohol free days out of 87.5 days on which he was able to drink.”
At this level, Bond is at a “high risk of multiple alcohol related diseases and an early death. The level of functioning as displayed in the books is inconsistent with the physical, mental, and indeed sexual functioning expected from someone drinking this much alcohol. ”
BMJ also includes this graphic outlining the health risks for Bond, complete with puns like “The Man With the Golden Liver,” “Drink and Let Die,” and “Drive Another Day” — which points out that Bond probably had a blood alcohol level well over the UK’s legal limit of 0.8 on the many occasions that he got into a car. Or a car chase, for that matter.
Indeed, the study posits that Bond’s alcoholism is so extreme that perhaps his famous spin on the martini is just a sad consequence of his constant state of drunkenness. “Ideally, vodka martinis should be stirred, not shaken. That Bond would make such an elementary mistake in his preferences seemed incongruous with his otherwise impeccable mastery of culinary etiquette. We examined Bond’s alcohol consumption to determine whether he might have been unable to stir his drinks because of the persistent shaking of alcohol induced tremor, making it more socially acceptable to ask for his drinks ‘shaken, not stirred.'”
Last year IGN put together a video of some of the best Bond moments, and with this study in mind it is pretty tough to imagine that Bond could traverse a river by jumping on the heads of angry crocodiles, while completely smashed:
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