Disclaimer: I’m not advocating for anyone to jump off a bridge. It’s a very dangerous and illegal activity. This question is asked strictly for curiosity sake.
Here’s my question: Why have so many people died jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge?
I mean, it would seem to me that if you did it just right you would have no problem surviving. IMO you would have to:
Wear shoes
Hold your arms straight up over your head
Lock your feet together (put your left foot on the right side of your right foot, or vice versa)
Remain straight and vertical (this would be the hard part)
Malden pretty much said what I was going to. Keep in mind that (assuming suicide) it’s a pretty effortless way to die, and access is easy as well (as opposed to most high rises that have non-openable windows). Plus you don’t have to worry about killing someone else.
I don’t know if you’ve been up there, but there may be a few things contributing that haven’t been mentioned. It is very cold and windy, even in the summer and the water in the Bay is frigid. Even if you survived the shock of the fall, you would die very quickly of hypothermia or drown.
There was a thread about the optimal way to fall from great height into the water a few months ago. There actually are people who do this for fun, and someone posted the “instructions”. Here they are, IIRC:
Cross your feet as suggested by Crafter_Man. This prevents a massive jolt to the genitals as you hit the water.
Tilt your head so your chin is close to your chest, and then place your hands so they cover the gap between your chest and your face. Your arms should be held close to your body. This helps prevent a huge uppercut to your chin as you hit the water.
Otherwise, remain straight and vertical. If you have time (such as if you’re falling from an airplane), start out horizontal, spread-eagle, to slow your fall, then switch to vertical (and do steps #1 and #2) at the last minute.
Wear tight-fitting rubber pants (such as the pants from a dive suit). This helps prevent a forced-water enema as you hit.
Arjuna34
People do survive a jump from the Golden Gate. Not many, but some.
It’s easy, not messy, and irreversable, once you let go.
For the record, it would be hard to FALL off the bridge. There are suicide barriers along the length of it, and now people jump off at the ends, onto the rocks, more than in the middle of the span.
There are no bridges around here, to speak of, and people jump off Shasta Dam instead. Even worse, in my mind, as you hit the concrete several times on the way to the water.
IIRC the deck of the Golden Gate Bridge 220 feet above the surface of the water. The sheer fall would kill you. It does’t matter how straight you keep you body. From that height it would be the same as landing on concrete. And even by some chance you didn’t crush you skull in the fall either your arms and/or legs would be crushed you would not be able to swim to safety.
My sister used to be a “Coastie” (member of the U.S. Coast Guard). She was stationed at Fort Point. Her crew (small craft, not a “cutter”) was regularly dispatched to pick up a “jumper” or a “floater”. A jumper was someone who had just jumped off (most usually) the GGB. A floater is a dead body in the water, and might’ve been there awhile before someone spotted it. Once she was dispatched to pick up a jumper, and the crew was pleasantly surprised to find a live, intoxicated (type of chemical recreation unknown) person swimming happily beneath the bridge from where he had jumped. While he was a little worse for wear, it was a relief to have a live one for a change.
More usually, a recovered body had been in the water for some time. The water was so cold that a jumper would sink after drowning and not rise until the body began to bloat from bacterial action. One time a co-worker’s crew recovered a body that had been in the water for quite some time. The search for effects with which the body might be identified (wallet, I.D., etc.) revealed that, although this body had been in the water for at leats a week (judging by the state of decomposition), his watch was still merrily ticking away, showing the correct time.
It was a Timex.
Another factoid she mentioned is that there has been no known case of someone jumping off the ocean side of the Golden Gate bridge. The supposed reason for this is that even if you’re committing suicide, you still want to see signs if human habitation, so the jumper goes off the bay side of the bridge.
Note that skydivers routinely fall from much greater heights than 220’ using no special breathing apparatus. As long as their parachute functions properly, they suffer no ill effects.
Even if you could survive the contact with water after falling/jumping off the GGB, the cold water and currents would probably kill you. It takes a shocking strong swimmer to get around in the bay.
There’s a reason Alcatraz was widely believed to be an inescapable prison. You could probably get away from the gates and the guards, but the water held you in.
The average height of the bridge is 220 ft above water during high tide. This would mean you’d be going about 80 mph by the time you hit the water. Not something you’d be too likely to survive.
This could also be because the ocean side of the bridge is closed to pedestrians. It’s open to bicyclists on the weekends.
Seriously, you won’t catch me about to jump to my death. I’m mildly acrophobic, and just the thought of standing in front of a large drop is enough to send a chill down my spine.
Why so many fatalities? Well IANAE, I’ll make a guess:
When the person freaches the water his skeleton and musculature decelerate rapidly. However, much like a person who keeps moving when his car hits a wall, the internal organs inside of the rapidly-decelerating structure will try to keep moving. They are resisted in this by the connective tissue that holds them in place during normal operations. But the connective tissues were not designed to support the organs when they are moving at 80 mph. The connective tissue tears, allowing important structures to become detached. The lungs are ripped from the brachea, the heart is ripped from the arteries… that sort of thing. Assuming the person is conscious for a moment, he’ll experience not being able to breathe and/or a tearing pain his chest.
Johnny L.A. is pretty close. I used to fly hang gliders, and of the 20-30 fatalities reported nationally each year, almost all of them were from a ruptured aorta, due to the hydraulic action generated by the incredible G-forces on impact.
