Is it even possible to survive in a falling elevator? Modern elevator technology make these incidents super rare but if you find yourself in an old, malfunctioning elevator, then this list is for you.
A falling elevator has people thinking that they can hold on to the sides or even jump at the moment of impact but you’re not a cartoon nor an action star so those options are moot.
Take a quick read and see what actually happens to the body in such a scenario.
The G-Force On Impact Would Crush You
It is a highly unlikely event but being trapped in a free-falling elevator, without the numerous safety features found on modern elevators, means there’s zero chance you’ll survive.
Why? Physics.
An unobstructed fall from nine stories up, according Mythbusters, would have you hitting the ground at around 53 miles per hour.
That’s going to hurt as seen when they tested it themselves, decapitating and ripping the arms off of Buster, their crash test dummy on the show.
Lying Flat On the Floor Might Save Your Life
If you really hope to survive, the best bet you have, according to Eliot Frank, a research engineer at the Center for Biomedical Engineering at MIT, is to lie on your back right in the center of the elevator.
The reason being that, “This will distribute the force of impact over the greatest area of your body so that no particular part of your body is subjected to the weight of any other part of your body.”
If something should happen that slows the elevator down, this position could save your life.
You Could Be Lacerated If Enough Debris Collects On The Elevator Floor
Even if you lay on your back with your body weight equally distributed in a falling elevator, you could still be injured.
The elevator cold be filled with broken parts and debris during the fall, and those shards are dangerous as they could impale you.
When Betty Lou Oliver fell 75 stories in an elevator, the small space had an inordinate amount of debris.
If she had been on the floor, her body would’ve been crushed by those bits and pieces.
The disconnected elevator cable coiled near the bottom of the shaft which ended up softening her landing.
You Would Feel Weightless
Once that elevator starts falling, you would feel an exhilarating feeling of “weightlessness,” since there’s no “force of support” on your body. That’s assuming that the elevator’s fall is unobstructed.
Dr. Rod Nave of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Georgia State University explains, “accelerating downward at the acceleration of gravity” with no feelings of so-called “apparent weight.”
The reason we feel the sensation of apparent weight day-to-day, is the support from the floor, your chair, and so forth.
Take all that support away and you will feel “weightless” like an astronaut.
Time Would Appear To Move More Slowly
Truth is, NASA has done research on what happens to the body under sudden weightless conditions, or as they put it, “a rapid, abrupt occurrence of the absence of gravity.”
Those first few seconds of weightlessness sounds awesome: “…time appears to move more slowly; and a unique insensitivity to pains and feelings of displeasure appear.”
NASA also says that “a certain feeling of elevated vitality and physical fitness…perhaps similar to that experienced after taking a stimulant” happens when you get used to it, which you wouldn’t have a chance to do since you’d be literally crushed.
Your Organs Would Shift Around
Like riding a super-tall roller coaster, the free-fall in an elevator would make your guts shift around in your body, giving you that stomach “dropping” sensation.
The intestines are “relatively mobile,” says Dr. Brad Sagura, a surgeon at University of Minnesota’s Amplatz Children’s Hospital.
No one knows “with absolute certainty” what causes the “stomach drop” feeling, but it’s probably organs shifting around and sending a message to your brain, according to Sagura.
Then you have all that liquid in your organs shifting around, as the rest of your body is held in place during the free-fall.
A roller coaster’s seat belt causes the feeling by keeping the rest of your body almost immobile.
In a free-falling elevator, it would be the railing you’re holding on to, or even the arm of the stranger next to you.
Your Memory Shifts Gears
Neuroscientists say the terror experienced in a fall would cause your memory to “shift gears” and stop acting “like a sieve,” which is your memory’s default state.
That means you would accumulate lots of memories you would normally discard. It’s the brain’s way of finding useful information to keep you alive.
It’s not “turbo perception” as much as it is turbo memory.
Not like you’d become the Terminator, scanning the area for information with your supercomputer brain.
You really just start remembering way more stuff.
Jumping At The Last Second Is Basically Useless
And what about jumping up at the last second like everyone says?
That really won’t help, unless, like the Mythbusters, you can jump at 53 miles per hour at precisely the right moment. Then somehow stop yourself from hitting the roof.
You would have to be John Wick or an Avenger to survive a fall. And then there’s the crushed elevator car with all its debris collapsing in on you.
You’ll Never Know What Hit You
And as to the feeling of dying in a free-falling elevator? It feels like nothing at all, according to neuroscientist David Eagleman who explains that our brains are so slow, we’re “always living in the past.”
A fall at more than 55 miles per hour would likely be painless.
As the Mythbusters showed, your head could possibly be ripped clean off, so it’s like passing in a terrible car wreck.
The fatal results, according to Eagleman, won’t be perceived by your brain.
It takes 150-300 milliseconds for the driver of a car in a head-on collision to even be aware of what just happened.
The crash is over at around the 70 millisecond mark, so dying in a falling elevator would be like a fast ride then a quick, painless death.
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