Wow. This is right across the street from the building I work in. I just looked over and they’re examining the body. Not to sound cold, but not nearly as messy as I would have expected.
According to the story, it happened right as I was getting into the office. 
I’ve always thought that would be one of the more horrible ways to die because on the way down you know “Here it comes.”
I agree. The weird thing is that I always look at the buildings around here & wonder if that will happen. Bright ray of sunshine, I am.
They just packed him up. First dead body I’ve seen outside of TV & funerals.
Poor guy.
On the plus side (if one must consider the plus side of a method of death), the fall goes by pretty quickly, and death is pretty much instantaneous and almost certain.*
I don’t mean to make light of this death. It’s an awful thing to have happen.
*I know there are isolated cases of people who have fallen immense distances and lived. There always seems to be some mitigating circumstance, though – a relatively yielding landing material, or something. Everyone I hear of who fellfrom a tall building has died.
I always heard that, in falls from a very great height, the person is almost always dead or at least unconscious before they even hit the ground. I wonder if that’s true?
I hope so. His legs were destroyed, so I hope it was only a split second of pain if he had to have any at all.
I’m back and forth between morbid curiosity and feeling sad. Not that I could have done anything. It’s very interesting, though.
This question was addressed by Bergen Evans, the Proto-Cecil, in one of his books ( The Natural History of Nonsense, IIRC.). The answer appears to be that it’s not true – the belief is just hopeful thinking by bystanders who’d like to think the victim was spared unnecessary pain. The evidence suggests that you’re conscious all the way down. Certainly there’s no mechanism that would cause death. Or (unless your particularly sensitive, and prone to swooning) even unconsciousness.
Doesn’t seem to effect parachuters in that way, and they fall from higher for a lot longer. Given that terminal velocity is only 120 mph or so, there’s really no mechanism (aside from sheer terror) that would result in unconsciousness or death.
And I’ve heard there is no scientific basis for that beyond “wishful thinking”. When I was a kid, the variant I heard was “you die of shock near the top.” As a kid I thought that was hogwash because it meant that stuntmen who jump off buildings for the movies would die way before they hit the big airbags.
I suppose some people would faint though.
A guy I used to rock climb with, Eric, had some protection pop out when he fell from a high cliff face. He dropped about eight feet, heard the first PING!, dropped eight to ten feet more, heard the second PING!, and continued to plummet. He said at that point the thought that went through his head as his pro was failing was a very calm: “Well, this is it…” and that the rest of the drop felt like it took a really long time. He said there was a jolt of “Ohshit!” panic when he heard the first ping, and the rest of the drop was just “calm waiting”.
His next piece of pro held, and in total it looked to be about a 40 foot whipper when you include all the stretch in the rope. Shawna, his belay (the person controlling his safety line) was probably in worse shape than he was, it scared her so bad. Eric was physically fine and eerily calm, Shawna had the shakes and we were afraid she was going to go into shock, and the rest of us were whiter than the Pillsbury Dough Boy.
After 9/11, when discussing people who jumped from the towers, they interviewed survivors of suicide attempts: people who jumped off the Brooklyn bridge and survived. I remember one guy was quoted saying something along the lines of “it was very Zen” because the absolute certainty of death made it so surreal and relieved him of any panic.
Funny, having a name like yours and all…
:eek:
Well, outside of the bodies of my fallen enemies is what I meant.
Somebody jumped off the top of a building and landed about thirty feet away from me while I was in college. A ten story fall, and he was still alive and moaning. He died (I am told) on the way to the hospital. I was on my way to lunch. I never made it.
The back story was that he was pre-med, but got a C on a chemistry test.
Regards,
Shodan
A guy here in my town committed suicide by leaping off of a five-story parking garage. Only five stories! If he weren’t an old man, in poor health, I think he could have lived.
I’ll never understand why people would kill themselves by jumping. It seems like it would be the absolute scariest, most horrible way possible.
I had a dream once that I was driving when I lost control and went flying off a cliff. On the way down, I had a sudden calm as I realized I was about to die and I thought of all my friends and family.
Then I hit the bottom and woke up in a house a la Beetlejuice. :smack:
I used to work in an office block near a multi-storey carpark that had a steady trickle of pavement divers. One poor woman survived a combination of pills OD, cut wrists and jumping from the top - there was a diversion in place when I arrived at the start of the day. Another time I saw someone being talked down.
Got to admit, if I felt I had to go I’d prefer not to use a method that gave me time to think “Wait a minute…” right when it was too late to do so.
The story goes that, the instant they go beyond the point of no return, they immediately wish they could take it back. This would apply to those bridge jumpers who manage to survive the impact with the water and live to tell the tale.
Where my sister goes to school, a guy decided to end it all on a parking garage of about that height. All he managed to accomplish is being completely paralyzed from waist down and limited movement in his arms. A 20ish guy who wanted to die instead ended up living each day in hell.
Really? My google-fu fails me, but I thought anything over 30 feet made risk of death high.
I dunno. In my experience, that “prize” goes to the girl I went to high school with who sat in her car, doused the interior with gasoline, and lit a match.
What the hell is up with these google ads? Dentists and copier toner?
I think I would be one of those people who would pass out on the way down. Let’s hope I never get to check that theory out.