What Knowledge Do You Need to Pull Off a Successful Prison Break?

What Knowledge Do You Need to Pull Off a Successful Prison Break?

If you were going to infiltrate a prison to rescue someone, then unless you were a Scofield-type genius, most people probably would not do something so recklessly self-destructive. But then again, you never know how one day you might end up behind bars yourself—like Andy, suddenly accused of murder, or like Edmond, condemned because of a malicious denunciation letter. Life is long, and often far more dramatic than we imagine. Probably no one will become famous for escaping prison the way brothers Lincoln and Scofield did, but if, like Andy or Edmond, you are driven into a dead end by injustice, then escape may become the last option in an endless darkness. Even so, even if you harbor such thoughts and, like Scofield, believe you have prepared for everything, the road before you is still long and punishing. From the standpoint of knowledge alone, the difficulty is no less than China’s college entrance exam—and the stakes are even higher, because doing badly does not just mean failing to get in; it can cost you your head.

Among all the subjects on the prison-break exam, the first would be a combination of geography and geometry. Scofield tattooed the prison’s floor plan on his body as a cheat sheet, which says everything about how difficult and important this subject is. In The Count of Monte Cristo, it was precisely because Abbé Faria made a miscalculation—he himself said it was because he lacked proper ruler-and-compass tools—that Edmond happened to meet him, setting off the reversal of Edmond’s fate. Of course, Faria’s mistake was not just about tools. More importantly, he had never had the chance to observe the prison as a whole. It was like going into the exam room without ever having opened a geography textbook: no matter how good your geometry is, you cannot draw a world map from imagination alone. Scofield, by contrast, was incredibly lucky: not only did he get the test questions in advance, he even had time to prepare his cheat sheet.

The second subject is physics. If Scofield did not understand Hooke’s law, smashing through the wall might have taken several times more effort. But the exam time limit is fixed, and relying on luck is a guaranteed failure. Abbé Faria was even more impressive in physics. Not only was his theoretical foundation solid—he could calculate the time needed to swim to a nearby island with something like t = s / v—but his hands-on skill in physical experimentation was first-rate as well. As if by magic, he managed to make sewing needles, chisels, daggers, crowbars, and a whole array of tools by himself. With a mentor who was practically a master of physics guiding him, it would have been hard for Edmond not to succeed. Although in the end Edmond escaped in a completely unexpected way, everything he learned and accumulated in prison became the foundation for facing everything that came afterward.

If geometry and physics rank so highly even in prison breaks, then the slogan “Master math, physics, and chemistry, and you can go anywhere without fear” clearly has real value. The third subject, appropriately enough, is chemistry. If you needed to corrode a water pipe, what chemical substance could you think of using? Even if sulfuric acid came to mind, do you know where you could buy it—even outside prison? And how good would your chemistry have to be to do what Scofield did: write down the reaction in which phosphoric acid, calcium sulfate, and water produce sulfuric acid, and then use that equation to identify calcium sulfate in weed killer?

Of course, just like the college entrance exam, prison breaking also has its special admissions track. If you understand economics and are good at accounting, so that you can help the warden with bookkeeping and asset management, then you might get a special opportunity the way Andy did, and slowly begin putting your plan into motion. But times have changed. Nowadays financial advisers are everywhere, and the warden could probably walk into any bank and be immediately pitched an investment product. Andy would likely have no chance of getting special treatment that way anymore. Still, since all of us will sooner or later have to deal with our own finances, even if the college entrance exam does not include such a subject, learning a bit in advance can hardly hurt.

And yet, no matter how solid and comprehensive your knowledge is, the most important test in the prison-break “college entrance exam” is psychological resilience. How do you stay calm at the most nerve-racking moment? How do you think quickly under pressure instead of going blank? How do you seize every second to organize every resource available to you, and fight for even the slightest shred of hope in the middle of despair? That mentality is the key to a successful escape. Scofield liked to think he had prepared and planned everything, but every critical moment still required improvisation. Edmond also did plenty of homework, but in the end he only escaped because he suddenly realized he could switch places with Abbé Faria’s corpse. Clearly, those two words—“in the moment”—matter enormously.

Recently I heard that Prison Break, absent for so long, is coming back, and that another batch of high school seniors are about to undergo the baptism of the college entrance exam. That made me want to sort through this whole knowledge structure, only to discover that my own knowledge is not even enough for a successful prison break. Instantly I felt nervous and wished I could go back to school and study properly, though of course that is no longer possible. So now I can only hope that after all these years of experience, the writers of Prison Break will tell a good story—and perhaps also slip in a little more science education along the way.