Picture the WTC. Picture the people trapped, all the way up at the top, hanging out of the windows, wondering where to turn... Fire Service ladders not long enough, not enough helicopters, no parachutes, no rope and no hope :-(

If only they had the Funnel Plunge™!

This device is situated in a small room, every 10 floors on the perimeter of a tall building. Once the unit is manoeuvred outside, the interconnecting/nested funnels made from flexible lycra type material, drop in perfect alignment to the Funnel Plunge™ below and the one below that and the one below that, until it reaches the street or a designated area on the roof below.

The top of the Funnel Plunge™ measures 3m in diameter (so you can throw children and grannies into them etc), but like nested Russian Dolls, the funnels get smaller and smaller and tighter and tighter, eventually the bottom exit measures only 30cm in diameter, therefore reducing the speed of your decent to an eventual slow squeeze. Like cream from a pipe, you eventually plop out into the next 3m wide Funnel Plunge™ 10 floors below and your descent continues.

Every ten floors you would go through 15 funnels, each getting tighter and tighter until plopping you out into the next 3m wide Funnel Plunge™ unit 10 floors below.

Upon activating the Funnel Plunge™ on your floor, the others below it automatically activate first. The bottom one opens and drops into place first and your floor last. This is to allow the funnels to drop inside each other accurately. Even on a windy day, the exit of the bottom funnel (measuring only 30cm diameter) would easily fall into a 3m wide funnel entrance directly below.
-- grippit, Jan 30 2004

escape chutes http://www.halfbake...0evacuation_20shaft
sort of fully and halfbaked [FarmerJohn, Oct 17 2004]

emergency exit http://www.halfbake...ea/emergency_20exit
Another related idea. [kropotkin, Oct 17 2004]

We've done this idea to death already. (Well, we didn't actually do it to death, but we threw it down a chute and it has long since clunked its way to the bottom.)

See links, and follow the links on those pages, and so on...
-- kropotkin, Jan 30 2004


having experienced the exit fromt the WTC, I'll settle for lit stairwells.

Had the 93 attack not happened, we'd all be dead, as the stairwells were dark in 93
-- theircompetitor, Jan 30 2004


Why didn't the people at the top of the WTC use the stairs instead of jumping? I'm not trying to be funny, I'm just seriously curious.
-- grippit, Jan 30 2004


They knew there was a fire engulfing the floors beneath them and that they weren't going to get out. I understand they decided it was better to jump than to wait.
-- hazel, Jan 30 2004


I keep reading this as 'Funeral Plunge'.
-- oneoffdave, Jan 30 2004


Haha! For Mr Stick Man maybe! :-)
-- grippit, Jan 30 2004


grippit, the fire heat was such that it contributed to the melting of the columns and the eventual collapse. I don't think that covering yourself in a blanket and running through was a realistic option.

We lived and died by the floor. I was on 68. Most people above the 72nd floor didn't make it.
-- theircompetitor, Jan 30 2004


I'm sorry to hear that, [theircomp]. I am glad you are here.
-- k_sra, Jan 30 2004


//Why didn't the people at the top of the WTC use the stairs instead of jumping?//
The planes sliced through most of the stairwells, which were only surrounded by sheet rock.
-- krelnik, Jan 30 2004


thx. btw, in 93, we had to stay on our floor and wait for the firemen to show up. This because the stairwells were dark and you didn't know if they had smoke in them. I'll never forget the door opening in pitch black and the fireman that has just CLIMBED 68 floors telling us that it was safe to go down. I don't have any way of knowing if that fireman survived 9/11.

But somehow, even though I work nearby and have visited the site many times, the worst of it is driving over the Verezano bridge. Just the memory of every time my excited kids would yell, daddy, daddy, that's the building were you work.
-- theircompetitor, Jan 30 2004


Somehow I don't think the Funnel Plunge would withstand that kind of heat blasting out through the windows. I don't think any of the solutions would for that matter.
-- grippit, Jan 30 2004



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