Please tell me you’re kidding. Are you seriously implying that a large percentage of the people who jumped thought to themselves, “Hmm… this building’s burning, and I don’t really want to live anyway. This is a good time to kill myself”? Do you really think that?
In order for someone to jump out of that building, I assure you, they had to be HIGHLY motivated. Highly motivated as in the room they’re in is burning, there’s no way out and they’re either being singed or about to catch fire. Their choice was jumping or burning to death. It’s a horrible, horrible choice to have to make. Was some of it motivated by panic? I have no doubt. But they were paniced for a reason.
Don’t minimize their horrible deaths by implying they were merely overreacting to a “small fire”, or even worse, were “given the option” of surviving and decided to jump anyway.
Well, I hate to bring it up, but extremist “Islamic” psychos, of the type like the guys who brought down the towers in the first place, would probably say that the jumpers are in hell.
And RingOfFire…how do you know that the jumpers didn’t think that they were going to be burned to death, or that rescue was impossible?
As I remember, at least one police helicopter tried to land on one of the towers, but the fire was causing such strong updrafts that it was impossible to do it (without probably crashing the chopper, too).
And about the makeshift parachutes—well, that goes to state of mind, doesn’t it? “Hmm, I’ll probably burn to death if I stay…but there’s a chance that I might make it with a parachute.” So, they weren’t jumping to die quicker—they were jumping on the chance to live. And a (marginally) better chance than if they jumped without a chute.
I know we had a thread like this before, but I can’t find it.
Anyway, my answer again, briefly: Catholic, church in Columbus Circle, NY, lost several people from the parish. In not one sermon or discussion of the many we had after 9/11 were the people forced to jump called “suicides”. Suicide to us is the willful throwing away of the gift of life from God; these people were faced with inevitable horrible deaths and chose the relatively quickest one. That’s not suicide by our definition, and anybody in hell after they jumped was going to go there anyway when they walked into the building that morning.
If you are in a room that is on fire you will NOT be calmly, rationally sorting through your options. You will be looking for a way out. ANY way out. People panic and jump in much smaller fires. Almost everyone seems to choose death by gravity over death by burning.
Or are you suggesting that it would have been morally superior to simply stand there and allow yourself to burn in place?
Yes, it would be unreasonable. For starters, one roof was covered in antenna for various TV and radio stations - absolutely no place to land a chopper. Secondly, it would have been impossible to land a chopper on the other one. There was a thread about this, but the crap search engine can’t find it.
Well my husband is dead. He may or not be in hell. Dead is what he wanted to do and that is what he did. In no way, no matter what relegion you are, can you even think about comparing suicides with “which way is the worst way to die…Maybe this way will allow me a hope of survival”
People who commit suicide choose to DIE. Those people were panicing and trying to survive. It isn’t even in the same ballpark.
I’m not sure what show it was but they claimed that many burning building “jumpers” are actually people who are hanging out the windows for cool/fresh air when they are rendered unconcious due to overwhekming smoke and actually fall out…
Most tall building do not have windows that open for several reasons:
Prevent accidents and suicides.
Cost of windows excessive compared to continuous glass.
Simpler to keep clean.
Maintains integrity of HVAC systems.
In the event of a fire below the heat would rupture the glass on higher floors and/or occupants could break glass with any heavy object if the so desires.
P.S. There are NO entrance requirements for hell, only heaven requires a “Ticket.”
I will bet if you try to find a Church (or Temple, or other religous group) that has more than a couple dozen members, you won’t find one that will state that those jumpers went to hell just for jumping.
Of course- there are some who think that everyone outside of their small faith is going to hell :rolleyes: - but that’s different.
I don’t mean to doubt our OP - after all there are always a few weirdoes out there, but as had been made clear here, no large organized faith would say they went to hell just for jumping. :dubious:
If I was super-skeptical, this would sound like an attempt to turn dudes away from religion. Before we start getting het up about this, maybe we can find some group that really does have this belief, hmm?
That’s a sop. I was not physically close enough to see people crouch and jump, but I was sure as fuck close enough to see them fall.
There are people I’ve spoken to who were both FDNY and civillian who were in a position to watch, NOT TO MENTION the fact that there is videotape that hasn’t been aired anywhere since perhaps September 14th or 15th, 2001. Someone got a smidgen of morals after a few days and stopped airing everything.
There were people who jumped holding hands. There were people who jumped trying to use rigged cloths as parachutes. There were people who jumped after gasping at the windows ( or, holes where windows had been more accurately ) and jumped out. There were people who fell out, overcome with smoke.
DelwareEng, you are simply completely wrong in your assertion. It is unquestionable that there are some people whose bodies were obliterated and their body parts were shoved through walls and windows into air, falling down to the ground as each airliner struck the towers. So yes, some people fell out of the towers without meaning to. Those are not the people addressed in the O.P. of this thread.
The wind shear and velocity of the air flow around the towers every day, not just that day, guaranteed that if you crawled along the floor to a hole where a window used to be, and you lay with your face next to the bottom of the hole, you’d be sucking cold crisp air, dampened with the moisture evaporating off of New York Harbor. You’d also still be laying there with a firestorm behind you.
I would not presume to understand what those victims were thinking. The victims I had my hands on were a mess enough, but were ( except for one woman ) walking wounded immediately post-collapse. It’s a fair bet that not more than one in one hundred went blissfully unconscious from smoke inhalation and fell out a window unaware of their impending death.
Hmmm. Lemme modify one part of that. The people on the side of each tower that was covered with the smoke from the fires below obviously did not lean out and gasp cool clear air. That part is mistaken. They were thoroughly trapped.