Man Awake, Talking After 47-Story Fall

[Aaron]

Bah, insta-post for the lose. I meant to ask, "Is it really reasonable to hold it against them?"

If they kept it to themselves and never mentioned, maybe. But the claim is being made in the media and no doubt to everyone around them who will listen, including their children (if they have them). That encourages lunacy and is creating a new generation of religious wackos.

[Ryan Thunder]

Really, who gives a shit what they attribute it to?

Don't be a moron. Crediting God for "medical miracles" takes the credit away from the people most legitimately responsible: the people who performed the various procedures necessary to keep this man alive.

Good point.

I hadn't thought of it that way, that's all.

[Winston Blake]

But without bothering to do that work, if the lower limit is around 400 feet, I don't think it would sound too unreasonable to guess that you're at or near terminal velocity at 500 feet.

Further, since the platform fell with him, we're not just looking at the terminal velocity of a falling person, but that of a much larger structure. In a sense, he may have had a 'parachute'; it was just made of metal and he was on top of it instead of under it.

Another factor is the strength of upward winds when wind flowing along the ground hits a big vertical plane like the side of a skyscraper.

[Oskuro]

All these calculations about falling human bodies are reminding me of the MythBusters....

...except that they never rely on the infuriatingly obscene catchphrase "Science may never explain how this happened".
Is it me, or does it feel like, when someone uses that phrase, its done with a certain glee, as if proud of having found something that "debunks" science?

Talk about their true colors showing...

[Netko]

But without bothering to do that work, if the lower limit is around 400 feet, I don't think it would sound too unreasonable to guess that you're at or near terminal velocity at 500 feet.

Further, since the platform fell with him, we're not just looking at the terminal velocity of a falling person, but that of a much larger structure. In a sense, he may have had a 'parachute'; it was just made of metal and he was on top of it instead of under it.

Another factor is the strength of upward winds when wind flowing along the ground hits a big vertical plane like the side of a skyscraper.

Something like that happened to Vesna Vulović, the holder of the Guiness book of records title for the highest fall without a parachute - over 10km! Apparently, as her plane exploded, she got stuck in a part of debris which, with a pretty large surface area, acted like a parachute. Still got badly beat up in the fall, with, actually, very similar injuries to our window washer. She later recovered fully - and what might be more interesting, she never claimed God as the reason she survived, nor good luck, especially with the other 27 people on the plane dead - she feels it was just one of those things, a very pragmatic viewpoint.

[Oskuro]

Something like that happened to Vesna Vulović.

Funny you mentioning that incident, and me mentioning the MythBusters before, as they did research the issue in an episode.

[Feil]

Before you go burning too many news studios, I'd point out that they're not all full of sensationalist religious bullshit. ABC, for example:

http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/TurningPo ... 086&page=1

"Evolution didn't give us a body that could survive a drop from that distance but with a combination of luck and physics you can in fact survive one of these falls," said Michio Kaku, professor of physics at City University of New York.

Moreno was working with his brother washing windows, as they had done for the last 12 years, when their scaffold collapsed. His brother was thrown and died instantly. Moreno luckily managed to hold on.

Window washers are taught to lie down on their scaffold in emergencies like this, as happened in a similar fall in Denver two years ago.

"The plank will help to absorb and spread out some of the impact," said Kaku.

Moreno fell so far that the force of gravity maxed out and air friction even played a slight role in softening the blow. "At a certain point you just don't go any faster. … You hit terminal velocity." Kaku explained.

[Edi]

Yeah, the religious bullshit annoys me too. Want to see a real miracle survival from a long fall, look up a guy named Nicholas Alkemade. Survived 5400 meter freefall with negligible injuries, as in, serious concussion was about the worst of it. And that one was also explained easily back when it happened, which was during WW2.