Your collective theories neglect Coulomb's law of friction which states that, for two surfaces in relative motion, the force of kinetic friction is almost independent of the relative speed of the surfaces. He recognized the distinction between static friction (the force to start two surfaces in releative motion) and kinetic friction (the force to maintain the two surfaces in relative motion). He showed that kinetic friction could be much lower than static friction. Now Nick would say "that is why I had Niel jump in a vacuum". Well, I submit to you that (Paul) Dirac applied a quantum tratment to Maxwell's electromanetic field and described it in terms of a large number of oscillators with discrete energy levels (like, oh, I don't know....maybe atoms?). According to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, there is an intrinsic limitation to the precision in specifying both time and energy, which permits the law of conservation of energy to be suspended for very short time intervals. Each oscillator has a fixed minimum energy therefore, with the result that even a vacuum is filled with virtual activity and virtual particles. So, through out the vacuum-there is no perfect vacuum.
Now Nichole Kidman, she could do it.....oh yes....she does it for me!