He has survived an exploding fish tank, free climbing, moving train top fight, climbing the Burj Khalifa, hanging from a plane about to take off, holding his breath underwater for six minutes, a HALO jump and a high-speed helicopter chase. He also survived a building-to-building jump, but breaking an ankle in the process. And all these impossible things have been possible only for the Mission: Impossible movies.

The official trailer of Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One promises more such insane stunts, like fighting on a moving train and jumping off a falling train compartment. But all we want to talk about is the motorcycle jump mid-trailer. Cruise, who we hope has twice the lives of cats, has undertaken the most dangerous stunt in his career yet — jumping off a cliff on a motorcycle with mere seconds before ground impact. Not surprisingly, it not only takes up quite a bit of time in the trailer, it is on the official poster for the film as well.

In a chat with Jimmy Kimmel, Cruise took him through the action sequence talking, very casually, about making sure he would not get entangled in the motorcycle in anyway — “even my shoelaces were taped” — and how he had six seconds to open the parachute before he hit the ground, and no he wasn’t “counting the six”. And no, he still doesn’t have a stunt double.

But it isn’t just about jumping a motorcycle off a ramp on a cliff in Norway and pulling a chute open in Dead Reckoning Part One. A video released by the makers a couple of months ago shows what actually went into what will probably be a few seconds of screen time in the movie. For one, it took months to train for the stunt — something Cruise in the video says he has wanted to do since childhood. Before the actual jump, Cruise did skydives to get a feel of the “rock bowl” he had to get out of after safely deploying his parachute.

“There is a lot going into this stunt. So Tom put together this master plan to coordinate all of these experts in each of the particular disciplines involved to make this happen,” said director Christopher McQuarrie, who had the added responsibility of making sure all the cameras were in the right place to capture every moment of this dangerous task.

How do you survive a stunt like that? “You train and drill every little aspect over and over and over again,” says Cruise in a video on the stunt released by Paramount Pictures. By the time they shot the actual scene on location — which was on day one of principal photography in “classic Mission form” — Cruise had done over 500 skydives and 13,000 motocross jumps.

They recreated the ramp off location to measure elevation, speed, wind and camera positions to make sure that they were able to capture the shot properly. Oh, and Cruise always wears his earplugs “so I can’t hear myself scream,” he laughs before jumping off a ramp on his motorcycle! That bike doesn’t have a speedometer, so to keep things at a consistent speed he has to do it by the sound of the air and the feel of the bike!

So, what were the odds that Cruise was fighting when he did this stunt? Oh, nothing more than making sure he rode the bike right, didn’t go off the elevated ramp, didn’t get tangled in the motorbike while he jumped, deployed his chute at the right time and flew out of the bowl. And he did that six times for the perfect shot. We have to wait till July 12 to see how, why and where this happens in Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One.

“This is far and away the most dangerous thing we have attempted. The only thing that scares me more is what we have planned for Mission 8,” said McQuarrie. And we are out of our wits already!