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Comment by source99 | Hacker News Reader

The heart rate numbers themselves don't seem to make sense to me. 164 at the peak seems low for the drama/gravity of the situation.

I work for a very large wearable company so I have some knowledge of how heart rate sensors work

How did he know the timing of the peak? If he had a log it most likely simply had a time stamp of seconds. How does he correlate a random time stamp to the specific moment days after the event. Same comment about his heart rate hitting 130 when he shoves the gun into his ribs.

In general the story just feels fake.

Edit: do thieves really ask you to unlock your phone and banking apps? What app lets you send money that can't easily be traced?

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I'm sure you're right that the exact timing is speculation, but a peak of 164 for an active individual seems quite reasonable to me (he did state bus resting heart rate is 58).

It's pretty pointless stealing a modern phone without getting it unlocked, isn't it? If anything that's a detail that someone making up a story would forget about.

The timing of those events relative to his heart rates does seem like, at least, embellishment.

> 164 at the peak seems low for the drama/gravity of the situation.

Would you think it's more reasonable to reach ~190-200? (Assuming the writer of the Medium story is ~25.) My only perspective comes from running with my fitbit, where it's pretty easy to reach 170.

I'd say 200 is reasonable. 140-160 is jogging/running, which is not that fast. When you're about to die and fight-or-flight reactions kick in (i.e. your whole entire body shifts to "OH SHIT" mode), I'd expect your HR to be through the roof.

Yeah, for men, 220 - age is your max heart rate, in theory. And "going to die suddenly" = max heart rate.

The other thing that's bullshit about the graph is that there are only 4 evenly spaced data points for what sounds like a 5-10 minute encounter. Don't believe it at all, why wouldn't you show real data? Or talk more about the data if that was the point of it?

Everyone's heart rate is different and I don't think with any certainty you can expect to predict what someone's HR is in any particular situation. Personally my absolute max HR I've seen in my whole life is 166 yet I regularly cycle with guys in their 50s that can reach 180-190. The only way to find your max HR is by measuring it.

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