"Crushing Rubik's cube & playing cards with hydraulic press"

I'm gessing that with enough pressure the deck of cards starts acting more like a black of wood. Picture a block of wood under the press. Enough pressure on the block of wood and the matter that makes it up starts seeking a way to escape itself. Since the pressure is uniform it starts by first escaping the outer edges of the deck but is met with the friction of the press itself.

So unlike smashing the black with a swift blow of a sledge hammer where the matter has enough time room to escape in larger peices, the matter of the black trying to escape must overcome the obstacle of escaping not only itself, but the friction cause by the pressure of the press itself.

It's a bit like a crowd of people in a short amount of time trying to escape a small condensed space, like a cage with a low ceiling that forces people on top of one another instead of uniformly standing. Once the cage is lifted people will one by one be able to escape the outer edges until enough room is created for the people more towards the center to escape, but every person will have not only the obstacle of having to wait for eachother to leave, but they'll also have the low ceiling to deal with forcing them to have to crawl over eachother instead of uniformly running outward.

Replace the cage with a low ceiling with a cage with no ceiling. The cage is lifted and people come rushing out. Enough vertical room is available for people instead of scrambling over eachother to come running out instead. So in the time they have to escape, the escape itself is more uniform, (think large chucks of blocks) where the people in the cage with a low ceiling come stumbling out one by one (think small feagmebts of block).

Since the time limit for both escapes is the same the people with more vertical space to escape do so with fewer injuries while the people with less room come out with bruises, arms and legs broken, etc.

Not a perfect analogy, but close enough...

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