Re the tragedy of the people killed by jumping out of the WTC on 9-11 would parachutes, parasails, giant slide tubes of some kind been able to save people or is a 500-1000 foot jump too short for a parachute to open reliably and slow you down safely?
No reliable way.
Parachutes are a logistical nightmare to provision. How many? Where would they be located? How could you store them? Who would inspect them? Training?
Same with parasails.
Tubes? How do you angle them safely. How do you deploy several tubes per floor without tangling. And, again, where would they be located and stored? How would they be inspected?
This has been asked before. IIRC, the average city skyscraper resident with no experience in parachutes or parasails would be no match to jumping into the canyons of a large city with its unpredictable winds and their personal fears.
What the hell, in the interest of fighting ignorance and all that, I’ll give it a shot. The IDS building isn’t too far away from me in Minneapolis. 775 feet, 57 floors…that should be good enough for an experiment.
Now where’s that old parachute of mine? Must be in the storage room…here it is. Hey, I’ll take this umbrella too, might as well try it twice.
Ok, I’m off to the IDS building. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Splat.
Get your own escape parachute here. Only $1500.
To answer the OP: Land on something very, very, soft.
Whether any major city is prepared to start building airbags into its road surfaces is doubtful, though.
I guess, if you had a pair of shoes, sorry, parachute (don’t wanna get those two confused) then it’d be preferable to take your chances with the chute rather than just jump on out.
I don’t think there’d be any practical way to make them freely available though, as it wouldn’t be long before some idiot tried one out and hurt themselves.
Perhaps we could use [thread=248151]kites?[/thread]
Cynic.
A quick google pulled up this gem. It seems to be different to other chutes in that it can be deployed straight.
I’m not sure how you’d deal with the traffic jams and other problems that might occur (claustophobics and others freeking out, you must be |–This–| wide to enter, etc.). Still, if you’re going to die in an office fire, at least something like this gives you options. If it became a mainstream product, then you could legislate the health and safety aspects.
Some excellent information from a previous thread, including the five-point fall:
checking for red S on my chest
splat
Get a job on the ground floor.
Did you hear about the guy who jumped off the top of the Empire State Building and lived to tell about it?
. . . He told everybody on the 101st floor, he told everybody on the 100th floor, he told everybody on the 99th floor . . .
If you had a cape & a big “S” on your chest, you’d have had better things to do on 9/11,
I wish. 
taking it for granted that a 50-foot fall (let alone 500 or 1000 feet) would kill most people in most circumstances, i read the original post to be a question about practical survival technology: parachutes, escape slides etc. i wonder if there is a limit to how far someone could rappel down a rope? 1000 feet of standard climbing rope would fit into a duffle bag, would probably weigh around 50 to 60 pounds and wouldn’t cost very much. it also wouldn’t require any upkeep; you could stash it under your desk for years. is there any practical reason why someone at the top of a skyscraper couldn’t anchor the rope to something solid, strap on a harness and slide out a window?
Maybe if you built the 1000+ ft skyscraper in the middle of a triple-canopy rainforest. (And I mean “trees scraping the windows” middle of the rainforest.) You could count on the tree branches to slow you down enough to survive. (After probably breaking all your arms and legs. And maybe your neck.)
I’d take the sofa ( or chair or whatever) cushions with me, as many as I could carry. If I had alot of time, I’d cut up a bit of the carpet and take that too, maybe staple it to my body to help hold on to it. Maybe wrap myself in carpet and cushions. Anything to slow the fall and impact. I might be able to get the odds of suvival up to 5% from 0%.
The Guiness Book of World Records showed (on my old 1984 copy) the highest survived fall without a parachute, as a WWII bomber crew member who bailed out over snow covered ground from about 30,000’.
IIRC he was a tail gunner, they don’t wear their parachute because there is not enough room in the tail turret. The aircraft was breaking up and burning and he couldn’t get to his parachute. Preferring death by falling rather than burning, he jumped out. His fall was reportedly broken by pines and then ultimately by a deep snow drift.
I’m not sure exactly how reliable this story is. My opinion of the Guiness World Record people went down significantly when they started that stupid TV show.
The suits worn in the base jumping stunt in the new Tomb Raider are a real product.
They have “wings” that connect from arms–>torso and between the legs. You just jump, go into the 5 point fall, and glide down.
The inventor said they are only for people with a large amount of skydiving and BASE jumping experience, but I’d rather take my chances with one on than without.
Not a “jump” per se, but if a tube is allowable, why not a long rope and some thick gloves?