Sorry for the awkward thread title. OK, after watching the 9/11 The Falling Man doc I can’t help but wonder…would the rapid descent from 100 stories render someone unconscious? I’m hoping those poor souls weren’t conscious as they fell from the building. Also, would there be any recognizable remains on the ground? I’m hoping the answer is no…
While they might have passed out from panic, there is no physiological reason that they would pass out. Skydivers often free fall much greater distances and don’t pass out.
I could be wrong, but I was told that suicide jumpers often die of heart attacks while in the air. Skydivers are expecting a chute to open at some point.
That could be right, i guess, but until someone posts a link to some evidence, i think it’s more likely that this is one of those things that people hope is true.
But… a heart attack isn’t a necessarily particularly quick or painless way to go, is it?
True, but i still suspect that some people prefer the idea of dying of a heart attack to dying by going SPLAT on the sidewalk.
It dosen’t matter what people prefer to think, this is about facts. They died going splat. Jumping out of an airplane isn’t that traumatic after the initial leap, so I’d like to see a cite where someone died of a heart attack BEFORE they hit the ground from a plane. The WTC wasn’t as high as most plane drops btw. People also died by burning, getting cruched and lack of oxygen. I’d have choosen splat myself.
Agreed. I mean, I might say that I’d prefer to go by being smothered by the breasts of leggy Swedish blondes, but there’s no point pretending that happens as you fall from a tall building.
However…
How do we know this? Jumping out of a plane wearing a parachute might not be traumatic after the jump…
Which was pretty much my point.
Skydivers generally fall for quite a ways once they get out of the plane – farther than the WTC was tall, anyway.
Even with a parachute, it’s pretty intense if you’ve never done it before.
I’ve done one parachute jump. My friends bought it for me for a birthday. It was not a tandem jump, where i was attached to someone else. I had my own parachute, and jumped out of the plane with two instructors who monitored my freefall and helped to keep me stable in the air. Then, at about 4,000 feet, i deployed my own chute, and followed the landing arrows into the landing area.
The day before the jump, i had to do a full-day lesson to prepare me for the jump, and the instructor told us that, in the first few seconds after you jump out of the plane for the first time, you experience a sort of sensory overload. And that’s pretty much exactly what happened. I literally didn’t remember the first few seconds of freefall later on; it was all a sort of telescoped blur.
I had done basic rock climbing, repelling down 300-foot cliffs, and bungee jumping before, but none of those compared with the adrenaline rush of stepping backwards out of a plane at 13,000 feet.
Yes, but what does it feel like to jump out of a plane without a parachute?
Right.
I think we can safely conclude that nothing about the fall itself (the speed, the height, the distance) has any direct physical effect on the body sufficient to render a person unconscious. Otherwise skydivers would pass out all the time.
The question, then, is whether the psychological trauma of impending death is sufficient to cause a physiological response in the body that might lead to unconsciousness–whether it be a heart attack, or something else.
Even if they did have heart attacks, that probably wouldn’t render them unconscious in the time it takes to fall from the top of even a very tall building.
Skydiving without a parachute might be a different matter, but there aren’t many cases of suicide skydivers, are there?
Only one that I know of
Same here… I remember walking toward the door, then probably 5 to 8 seconds are gone until I’m in freefall. It’s a lot to handle and overload is a very real possibility.
I’d imagine (or at least hope) that most everyone that jumped suffered some form of mental impairment just because of the sheer enormity of the situation. While they may not have experienced medical unconsciousness, neither would I suspect were they at their analytical best.
There was another one a few years back where the harness had been damaged and foul play was initially suspected, but in the end, I think it was concluded that the guy had done it himself.
As mhendo just said so well, there is no physiological reason to expect unconsciousness.
That leaves pyschological reasons. IANA expert, but …
What possible survival value would there be in fainting under extreme stress? None. So its likely that any proto-humans (all the way back to the early worms) which had a tendency to faint under stress got eaten & did not pass their genes on to us.
Watch any nature show. Do the prey animals faint when doomed? Nope. They stop thrashing when they’re out of blood or their neck is broken.
There are a couple of prey species that do something like faint under stress. Google [fainting goats] for more (although I always urge caution when Googling anything relating to goats, lest something NSFW appear).
These prey species are interesting precisely because their behavior is so weird, not because it’s normal.
Other data points:
People don’t faint under trauma. Car accident victims are consciousas long as they have sufficient blood & breath, regardless of the damage & pain.
The news tells us tortured people don’t generally faint either.
I fail to understand why people would concoct this fallacy about fainting while falling. Being burned alive isn’t pleasant or instant either, but people don’t assume there’s something magical about fire which would cause unconsciousness before the damage became catastrophic.
My take is those people were alive and aware until the ground arrived. They chose 5 seconds of being “trapped” in freefall followed by near-instant and presumably nearly painless destruction & death at the bottom over being trapped for an uncertain term in the building & possibly lingering painful death in the wreckage.
Perhaps a reasonable choice in the circumstances. Let’s not sugar coat it with fantasy.
My gut is with you on this one. From the top of WTC One, I figure it’s roughly 8-9 seconds before the big finale. I’m not a medical expert, but I’ve read that heart attacks usually last a bit longer than that, and spontaneous unconsciousness is rare.
Any doctors want to chime in?