How to Survive a Time Loop Scenario

A guide, in case it happens to you

Columbia Pictures

I’ve always thought I’d do okay in solitary confinement.¹

That’s an easy thing to say, sitting here, eating a Tootsie Pop² while refreshing Reddit to see if America discovered any new cliffs to jump off. I’ve never done time, hard or otherwise, unless you count sitting through Donnie Darko.³

I just enjoy my own company. My interior spaces are lavish and well-appointed, and forever beckon. This publication is mostly a looking glass into those private amusements. Narnia with a peephole. Though maybe Porky's is the better comp.

I’ve come to realize that solitary confinement is a desert island scenario with fewer amenities, and that the ultimate expression of both is the time loop.

As depicted in films like Groundhog Day, a time loop is when someone is trapped in a day-shaped vortex, from which there appears to be no escape. The day repeats endlessly, suffocating the protagonist with sheer mundane repetitiveness.

I'll be honest. I don’t hate the idea of getting trapped in a time loop.

There are definitely loops to avoid. I love Edge of Tomorrow, but even if you’re a fan of Emily Blunt combat yoga, that’s not a place you want to get stuck.⁴ Ditto Boss Level or Happy Death Day. If the loop exists specifically to kill you in lots of crazy ways, count me out. But if you could land in a mundane loop? One with decent Wi-Fi? Maybe pre-2016? I mean… twist my arm. I could use a lot more regular tedium, and far less fresh hell served daily.

Against such an eventuality, I have closely studied time loop films for textual clues. I’m like Bear Grylls but without any discernible survival skills.

After extensive study, I’ve determined there are 4 distinct phases of time loop acceptance. Know the signs. The life you save just might be your own.

Phase 1: Tomorrow Never Dies

The most unbelievable part of Groundhog Day is how long it takes Bill Murray to realize consequences no longer apply. Maybe it’s the gamer in me, but it would take me exactly two loops to embrace the central time loop tenet: every day is exactly the same.

When Bill finally awakens to this truth, he immediately starts enjoying his new existence. Seems like a good place to start.

Almost every decision you and I make is based on there being a tomorrow. Don’t eat too much delicious junk. Don’t bet it all on one spin of roulette. Don’t challenge someone to pistols at dawn. A time loop throws all our natural instincts out the window. The chickens will not be coming home, to roost or otherwise.

Time loops force us to live in the moment because we have no other option. Though a world without ramifications can get super hedonistic, super fast.

We take Batman’s side in The Dark Knight, but there’s no denying the Joker’s allure. The way he completely disregards conventions is breathtaking and, in a way, aspirational. His chaos manifesto fits perfectly with a time loop. The things normal people get up to when they think nobody is watching is shocking. People would be doing all manner of crazy shit if nothing stuck.⁵

Palm Springs posits that what keeps the time looper from doing truly heinous stuff is that they will remember doing it. That’s baggage they’ll continue to carry, no matter how many times the day resets. That checks out. I’m the guy who can’t bear it when a computer NPC thinks I’m a jerk. How much more if it was a real person.

At the same time, I’m also the guy who fires rocket launchers into crowded streets in Grand Theft Auto, just because it’s funny. Some level of hijinks should be expected.

Who hasn’t contemplated a bank heist? Staking out the place, gathering intel, figuring out escape routes. Even just as an intellectual exercise, a puzzle with moving parts, it’s interesting to think about. Can you pull off the perfect crime?

Is it possible to kick-off a food fight at an upscale restaurant and, if so, what is the exact tipping point? A specific number of diners, or is it a type of food? Is there any scenario in which the staff get involved?

Can I evade police pursuit with evasive maneuvers and power slides? Basically: Do my Grand Theft Auto skills translate to the real world? In that vein—if I drive my car into the ocean during the chase, can I swim to freedom by escaping their search radius? Let’s real-world test GTA’s logic.

The next phase is a clear escalation of this “anything goes” mantra.

Phase 2: Me Love You Long Time

In his stand-up special Delirious, Eddie Murphy makes a joke about the sexual proclivities of the rock ‘n roll band that opened the show.

“The BusBoys will f*** anything that moves. Come to my house, the fish stop swimming.”

BusBoys have got nothing on dudes caught in time loops.

At least in theory.

The movies make it seem really easy to talk your way into a stranger’s bed; you just need to accumulate enough information to bluff your way past their better judgment. I’m not saying it can’t happen. It probably helps to be Bill Murray or Andy Samberg—relatively attractive, incredibly hilarious.

So shoot your shot. You might consider this an opportunity to develop a shot. Maybe a personality. Go big or go home alone. Somebody cue the “Shout” montage from Wedding Crashers.

However.

Maybe I’m moralizing, but battering your way into someone’s holy of holies using intel you’ve pried loose over hundreds of previous encounters strikes me as more than a bit sociopathic. At least a peeping Tom has some skin in the game—he might get caught.

A time loop quickly becomes game-like: repetitive elements, progression of skills, people locked into a few responses. That’s not to strip away anyone’s personhood, but the loop does cap their agency; they’re trapped just as much as the time looper, they just don’t know it. Most of us tend to see ourselves as the main character in our own stories. A time loop codifies it. The world really does revolve around you.

Seducing someone in a time loop is materially no different than mastering the jump ability in Super Mario—it’s all about timing learned through repetition. Once you’re on that path, how do you not see other people as something to game? And therefore no longer as people?

Time loops get super messed up when you start thinking about the ramifications where other people are involved. People think they can just wild out, Vegas style—whatever happens in the time loop stays in the time loop—and that is certainly true. But I can’t believe running around, dicking down everything in sight won’t have some long-term consequences. Humper beware.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this phase leads directly to the next.

Phase 3: Suicide Squad

A couple of weeks ago, I accidentally cut myself with a razor knife. Blood everywhere. It was like the hallway scene in The Shining. You think I’m joking but apparently your index finger contains 90% of your blood, and also the blood of everyone in a 3-mile radius.

I had to sit down.

Movies like Die Hard have trained generations to believe you can get shot and just Energizer Bunny that shit. But the equivalent of a bad paper cut took me out. It was a sobering moment, shattering all my action hero fantasies. I just don’t like seeing inside stuff on the outside.

Little surprise, suicide is where time loop movies lose me. I’m just too squeamish to kill myself. I get nervous just doing things that might be dangerous, like driving too fast or eating Taco Bell before a meeting. Scaredy-cat is the medical term. Maybe you’re different. Hello darkness my old friend, and all that. If so, welcome to paradise.

These movies are very flippant about death. It makes sense—death loses its sting when it doesn’t stick, and is therefore really funny. Also, 90% of the fun in Edge of Tomorrow is watching Tom Cruise die. Largely because it’s Tom Cruise. I’d argue the movie doesn’t land the same if it’s Tom Hanks, Tom Hardy, or Tom Holland getting run over. Tom Selleck strikes me as a fun alternative; how long before he shaves his legendary mustache—suicide of a different kind—just to inject some variety?

Movies depict time loops as quietly excruciating hellscapes that drive people to continually attempt suicide.⁶ The time looper wants the carousel to stop because they just can’t take the routine.

The one undeniable fact of time loops: eventually they drive everyone a little mad.

Phase 1 & 2 are all about fun and games. Phase 3 is where depression sets in, when the pleasures of the flesh and the simple joy of police chases fade. You’re left facing an uninterrupted procession of todays, each identical to the last.

Remember in Attack of the Clones, when the giant emaciated alien proudly showed off all the Jango Fett clones to Obi-Wan Kenobi? He said something like, “A million more on the way.” Obi-Wan was horrified, possibly because of the alien’s spindly spider-limb vibes, but mostly because they copy-pasted a human a million times. It’s unnatural.

Imagine staring down that barrel, but with days. But it’s actually more than a million. It’s infinity. The volume alone threatens to crush the psyche. People start looking for exits.

Phase 4: These Go To 11

Having gone through the gauntlet of pleasure and pain, the time looper arrives at the final stop.

Phase 4 forces the looper to address a simple yet heavy question: What would you do if you had literally all the time in the world? Once the novelty wears off and you’re bored with the obvious stuff. What’s left?

Mastery. The simple satisfaction of getting really good at something through regular practice. Not to get too high brow, but I’d suggest the habit of losing yourself in the process offers the only true escape from the time loop, however fleeting.

Skills and memory are the only things you can carry forward from one loop to the next. As a writer, that’s a painful reality. Having all the time to hone your craft, and none of the distractions that get in the way, but needing to start on page 1 every day. I hate losing a paragraph. Trying to commit your magnum opus(es) to memory so you don’t lose it is terrifying.

Everyone has things they wish they could learn—guitar, Italian, car-surfing, programming, knitting—but lack the time or have other priorities. In a time loop, all excuses cease to exist. You either do the work or you don’t.

What’s fun are the really esoteric skills. You have to be incredibly bored to master full-contact juggling or booger sculpting.

All time loopers wind up here and find contentment, if not peace. In the process, they learn acceptance, and something-something personal growth, and then they finally escape the loop.

I guess the moral of the time loop story is: if you have all the time in the world, eventually you’ll become a better person just for lack of other options.

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Time loop movies are a specific kind of fantasy, but they only work because they speak to a universal human condition.

It’s fun thinking about what we’d do, in the same way that it’s fun to imagine winning the lottery. But here’s the Tony Robbins of it all—we don’t have to get stuck in a flimsy sci-fi plot to experience Phase 4 living. We could just decide, and do it.

BRB, going to try Jedi mind tricking my wife into making chocolate chip cookies.⁷

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1. I say this, but a childhood memory just came to mind. I’m 10 or 11 and grounded to my bedroom for reasons lost to time. My brother is also grounded. Probably my fault. Our bedrooms are next to each other. My dad and stepmom leave to run an errand. We’re expected to stay in our rooms.

It’s summer and 1990-ish, so no AC. Our windows are open, so we start yelling to each other. As you do. That, quite naturally, leads to us climbing out on the roof.

We’re still sitting there when my parents pull up in front of the house. We all make eye contact. It’s a scene right out of a comedy.

You may wonder why we didn’t just leave our rooms the normal way, and return to them when we heard our parents come home. Great question. Don’t have an answer.

2. My official ranking of Tootsie Pops flavors: Grape, Cherry, Raspberry, Orange, Chocolate. I was eating Raspberry when I wrote this, which is to say, mid.

3. Three footnotes in the first three sentences. Might be a new personal record.

Donnie Darko: I know the film has its defenders but I’m sorry, it’s so bad. It’s confusing and morose. Apparently the bunny suit guy is a time traveler, or maybe he’s just a guy with a rabbit fetish, I honestly don’t know. I’m very open-minded when it comes to movies, but I spent the time watching Donnie Darko actively hating it.

This is probably one of those “you need to see it twice to understand/appreciate it” movies. That’s not usually a sign of quality. It’s like getting food poisoning and thinking, “I should eat there again—maybe my stomach just wasn’t ready to handle that much salmonella.”

I saw it in my 20s and maybe just wasn’t seasoned enough to enjoy it. But the experience was so miserable, I can’t make myself revisit it. The Rotten Tomatoes ranking on this movie is insanely positive, so odds are you’ll take umbrage with this. I’m fine being in the minority.

4. Edge of Tomorrow easily offers the best explanation for why a time loop happens in the first place. We just sorta take it on faith in movies like Groundhog Day and Palm Springs.

5. Imagine a serial killer running around in 1990s Punxsutawney.

6. How many times do you need to die before accepting you can’t die? Or are we to believe suicide becomes a hobby for the time immortal, no different than Bill Murray learning piano?

7. It worked.

In all fairness, it was my birthday. Obviously the moons were aligned and my chakras were in orbit, bestowing greater power to the Mind Trick.