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Mythbusters Take Note

Brown

Penultimate Amazing
Brown
Joined
Aug 3, 2001
Messages
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The Mythbusters have done pieces about: (1) a lawyer falling through a window of a high-rise, and (2) whether an awning can help break one's fall.

Now there's this story from the Minneapolis Star Tribune:
A 29-year-old man who was apparently horsing around with some friends crashed through a window and fell 16 stories at the downtown Minneapolis Hyatt Regency early Saturday morning.
...
It appeared Hanson fell forward from the side of the building a few feet and then landed through the awning of the overhang, which is a floor up from the street. Shards of broken glass were littered around the collapsed area where he fell.
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The individual in question survived, with his most serious injury being a broken leg.
 
Supplemental coincidence: When James Randi came to Minneapolis in 2003, this is the hotel where he stayed.
 
Jackie Chan, eat your heart out.

  • from wikipedia:
    Though Chan's willingness to do his own stunts was originally the trademark feature of his movies, he has sustained various injuries over the years which render him incapable of performing certain stunts. He tries to avoid stunts where he may suffer severe head trauma due to a near fatal incident that occurred while shooting Armour of God. He has also broken his left ankle so many times, he can no longer rely on it while pushing for a jump and must use his right foot instead. Over the years, he has been forced to use body doubles on various occasions. He has also dislocated his pelvis and broken his fingers, toes, nose, both cheekbones, hips and sternum, and broken his neck and ribs on numerous occasions while filming.
 
I think the Mythbusters are slipping a bit. In recent special they did on pirates, they allegedly debunked the "myth" that the splinters and shrapnel from cannon fire killed as many, if not more sailors than the cannonball itself by looking at a restricted special case that seemed rigged to fail. Not only does history (and the journals of numerous ship's surgeons) disagree with their assessment, this video: http://www.brigniagara.org/virtualtour/fightingsail.htm would suggest otherwise as well.

As a rabid Patrick O'Brian fan, I took great umbrage.
 
Brown said:
The Mythbusters have done pieces about: (1) a lawyer falling through a window of a high-rise, and (2) whether an awning can help break one's fall.

Now there's this story from the Minneapolis Star Tribune:The individual in question survived, with his most serious injury being a broken leg.
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Heck, he has internal injuries and is an an induced coma according to the article. This is a hell of a lot more serious than a broken leg. Head injuries appear to be deceptive. The broadcaster Richard Hammond (the guy who crashed trying to break the Bristish land speed record a few months ago) wanted to do a piece to camera before he was brought to hospital. He suffered serious after-effects which inlcuded coma and he remembers very little of the events now.

Did Mythbusters asy that survival was impossible or improbable? I can't imagine that they said "impossible" as there are records of people surviving free-fall accidents and wasn't there some guy who survived a 21,000 foot fall during WWII?

To cite one survivor looks like selection bias. I would like to see figures for all falls this year (including a roofer in my neighbourhood who fell 10ft to his death last August) before drawing even the most tentative conclusions. In this case, however, I think experience leads me to the conclusion that surviving a fall from that height is extremely (if not vanishingly) unlikely. Not without strong updraughts and other undocumented evidence anyway.
 
I helped recover the body of a mountain climber who was killed by an eight-foot fall. 'Taint so much the fall, it's what what part of you hits.
 
Tonight's TV news reports the guy who took the fall is going to be all right.
 
Well, if you think about it, past a certain point it doesn't matter how high up you are. Hitting terminal velocity means past a certain point it's all the same. 1000 feet or 21,000 feet...you're going the same speed at impact (unless I'm missing something).

Athon
 
If you miss hitting something hard or pointy, you can survive. Not likely, but it's been done.
 
I think it's been done in snow, trees and fenland, as far as I recall. I don't think anyone has ever landed on hard ground from more than a few hundred feet and survived. I may be wrong.
 
Mythbusters didn't say anything about the fall. They tested if it was possible to go thru the glass highrise window...answer, yes, because the stress razors formed from the repeated bouncing off weakened it from it's normal strength.

People have survived spectacular falls: many MB have tested. The stewardess that fell 25000' in a piece of fuselage (compression of luggage compartment took the force), Empire State building worker that fell in that elevator (Narrow elevator space caused cushion of air to build up underneath, plus the cable coiling like a spring slowed it), 22000' airman dropped into a glass train station roof at the moment a bomb went off (bomb didn't help, he apparently snagged a tree & the station roof which slowed him), plus all the parachutists that survived chute failure. None escaped without MAJOR trauma.

Mattfn: MB fact source
 
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now with cats, sometimes the higher the fall, the better!

This could be a myth, but I heard cats need time to do the "turn" and get situated. So cats falling say from a second story window tend to have more injuries than those falling from a 4th story window.
 
IIRC, kitty, it's not the turning -- most cats can right themselves in about .5 meters (and for gawdssake, when will "science and/or nature" shows stop repeating the myth that the tail acts as a counterweight?!) -- it's that in longer falls cats tend to spread-eagle, which prevents or mitigates the joint damage that is caused by landing legs-straight-down at higher speeds, as well as offering greater air resistance.

The Straight Dope
 
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SkeptiKilt said:
IIRC, kitty, it's not the turning -- most cats can right themselves in about .5 meters (and for gawdssake, when will "science and/or nature" shows stop repeating the myth that the tail acts as a counterweight?!) -- it's that in longer falls cats tend to spread-eagle, which prevents or mitigates the joint damage that is caused by landing legs-straight-down at higher speeds, as well as offering greater air resistance.

The Straight Dope
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They told me it's because a cat has such a short attention span. Cat: I'm falling, straighten up, legs are down, I'm OK. Oh look, a bir*splat* :D
 
Buckaroo said:
As a rabid Patrick O'Brian fan, I took great umbrage.
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Walt Disney has shown that you can miss a cannon ball just by jumping high enough. Also, Pirates of the Caribbean clearly illustrated that a wooden ship can get into cannon shot range in minutes, not hours or sometimes days as O'Brian says.
 
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