What Kind of Abilities Would Lara Croft Need to Survive Her Adventures?

Lara Croft is a brilliant archeologist, a rugged adventurer, and a dogged protector of history, her friends, and priceless artifacts. She’s one of the greatest heroes in contemporary film, games, and comics, and she pulls off some incredible feats of strength, putting words like “parkour” to shame.

The new games (Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider) in particular show Lara tackling insane tasks and pulling off some stunts that are, frankly, a bit superhuman. Of course video games aren’t here to be realistic depictions of real life — if that were the case we’d be doing a lot more searching for ATMs without fees and a lot less jumping from cliff face to cliff face and climbing up solid sheets of ice. But because we can, let’s take a look at some of the abilities Lara Croft would need to survive the stories in Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider if she were a real person.

Speedy Healing

This goes for most video game characters, but there’s no way Lara’s just going to casually walk off a few gunshots, stab wounds or broken ribs. I mean, at one point she gets a bit of rebar through the abdomen and just wraps some cloth around it before hobbling away to have another few days worth of escapes, sneak attacks and death-defying stunts.

She’s definitely going to need the ability to mend herself on the double.

Enhanced Strength

Lara definitely has to be crazy strong. And with the stuff we see her do, there’s no way anybody in their right mind would challenge her to a pull-up contest. She’s always pulling herself up by her fingertips on one hand after an almost-missed jump or a wall run, she can hold an aimed arrow for a crazy amount of time and she carries a bunch of weapons around with her without ever losing the ability to break out into a run. She can also scale rocks and ice damn quickly and never seems to slow down. Pretty impressive stuff, but it’s probably going to require some crazy strength to keep all of that going. Speaking of…

Stamina

Pulling yourself up from the brink of death once? Seems plausible. Twice? Pretty incredible? A few dozen times? One-handed? Within a few-hour period? We’re definitely going to need some boosted stamina to keep performing at top speed and strength.

Resistance to Infection

There’s a point where Lara gets shot at and then goes wading through some of the dirtiest water I’ve ever seen in my life. Beyond that, shes always hanging out in dirty places with a bunch of rusted metal, dust, and other contaminants. And unless she has that speedy healing, shes doing it with open wounds. She’s going to need some help staving off infection — say, perhaps, the ability to sweat Bactene?

Thick Skin/Durability

This goes back, in part, to Speedy Healing, but theres no way that Lara takes the full brunt of every bullet, fist, boot, poison dart, knife blade or shrapnel she gets hit with. She’s almost definitely going to need some thick skin to repel the many, many attacks and projectiles that come her way.