Another day at work ...

[bigguspickus]

My question is at that height would you actually be alive till you hit the ground.  What is that 1500 feet or so?  My quick math says about 46 seconds worth of flight assuming 9.8 meters per second.  That is what frightens me....... the fall and the sudden stop at the bottom.

You can get a lot of prayin' done in 46 seconds.

You can... but you may want to hurry it up a bit, because you'll actually have closer to 10 seconds.

[nerd mode]

g is not 9.8 m/s but rather 9.8 m/s/s, and the time t taken for an object to fall distance d is the square root of 2d / g.

The tower in the video is 1700 feet, which is a little over 500 m.

Plugging the numbers into the equation, we get √( (2 * 500 m) / 9.8 m/s/s) which is approximately 10 s.

In that time, you will reach a terminal velocity of 100 m/s or so, depending on the position of your body, or about 200 mph.

[/nerd mode]

Now you know, in a free fall, pray fast.

 

[JaySwear]

Now you know, in a free fall, pray fast.

perfect. i prefer to do most of my praying in a panicked scream anyway.

 

[mullyman]

[quote author=JaySwear said[/quote]

there are tons of recounts of pilots in WWII (and WWI before it) bailing out without parachutes. when your options are sit alive in a burning plane all the way to the ground or fall fire-free to your death instead i think i'd pick jumping. terrifying, and awful, but true.
[/quote]

Not to make light of it but 9/11 proved straight away that people will choose jumping over burning to death. I'm guessing the heat was so intense that the fight or flight response takes over and you just try to run away. I bet they didn't even realize they were jumping from 80 stories. Even if I'm wrong about that it at least makes me feel better than the alternative.
MULLY

 

[Cagey]

It's just a matter of making a rational decision about how you're going to die if death is inevitable. Jumping doesn't hurt, and neither will hitting the ground. Fire, on the other hand, hurts like hell and takes a lot longer to kill you. So, the apparently suicidal choice isn't suicidal at all, it's a form of voluntary euthanasia.

 

[OzziePete]

[quote author=JaySwear said

there are tons of recounts of pilots in WWII (and WWI before it) bailing out without parachutes. when your options are sit alive in a burning plane all the way to the ground or fall fire-free to your death instead i think i'd pick jumping. terrifying, and awful, but true.
[/quote]

Not to make light of it but 9/11 proved straight away that people will choose jumping over burning to death. I'm guessing the heat was so intense that the fight or flight response takes over and you just try to run away. I bet they didn't even realize they were jumping from 80 stories. Even if I'm wrong about that it at least makes me feel better than the alternative.
MULLY
[/quote]

Ugh, I've seen some footage about these poor people, and the thud at the end of the fall is sickening.....just sickening. I dunno how I'd react when faced with only two options - and both of them grisly deaths..I have read that being eaten alive by a wild animal is perhaps the worst way to go, but falling 80 stories or being fried alive must come close second. Ah this is morbid just thinking about them.... :sad:

 

[mullyman]

The worst one for me is that poor bastard that had a sheet or curtain, or whatever it was, and tried to use it as a parachute. God bless him, he had a good grip on both ends but as soon as he jumped it pulled right out of his hands. Really really sad.
MULLY

 

[line6man]

The worst one for me is that poor bastard that had a sheet or curtain, or whatever it was, and tried to use it as a parachute. God bless him, he had a good grip on both ends but as soon as he jumped it pulled right out of his hands. Really really sad.
MULLY

To be honest, I would not have wanted to try something like that.

Anything that slows your fall is going to increase the chance that you hit softly enough that it won't kill you instantly. You would break all of your bones or something from the impact and then sit there and bleed to death instead of just dying instantly.

I highly doubt it if you could just jump out of a building with a sheet or a curtain and just slowly drop down to the ground and survive it.

 

[Cagey]

I highly doubt it if you could just jump out of a building with a sheet or a curtain and just slowly drop down to the ground and survive it.

No. Even with a big parachute designed specifically for the purpose, you hit the ground pretty good. Broken legs and backs are not uncommon. It's not a sport for anyone but the young and very fit. With a sheet or curtain? Fuhgeddaboudit. Unless you're Mary Poppins <grin>

 

[Velcro]

The videos been removed. :doh: :icon_scratch: :dontknow: