"I want to build a fantastical building" the architect said. "It will span 2000m in width, long and thin, like a needle on its side, and it will have door only at one end!"

Needless to say, a fire safety engineer stepped in at this point, and pointed out the glaringly obvious safety issue with this design.

"But people construct buildings like this all the time!" replied the architect. "Ok, they put them the other way up and call them skyscrapers, but it's the same concept".

Which is the issue i would like to address.

The problem of limited building ground space, and the increasing demand for more interior spaces has plauged architects for years. the solution: multistory construction, high rises, skyscrapers.

However, this now lends us the problem of evacuation in the case of an emergency.

For some high rises, in the instance of a normal fire, over, say, 3 floors the building can burn for days, and the fire will stay contained and the building remain standing. Clearly, in these cases, there is ample time to evacuate those inside.

However, many buildings are not so well constructed. an obvious example here is the WTC, which would, it appears, have collapsed even if it had been subject to just a normal fire over a single floor, irrespective of the aeroplane.

Clearly there is not enough time to evacuate fully buildings of this type.

What do we do? knock them down and rebuild them better?

Or, install some new evacuation method. Lifts don't work in a fire. stairs are good, but they take a long time. And what if you have mobility problems. No good at all.

I would now like to tell you a story about the sky diver who jumped out of a plane and several 1000ft an whose parachute failed. Hurteling towards the ground at however many miles and hour, he knew he was a gonner. Miraculously, he landed on such an incline, that, he simply rolled down the side and off the bottom, unscathed.

This works in a similar way to death slides that you find at kids adventure playgrounds. They're the ones that go straight down, and then curve slighty at the bottom, breaking the fall of the child.

Why not attach death slides to the outside of tall buildings, providing an efficient, disabled-friendly exit in an emergency
-- daaisy, Oct 30 2005

slide http://www.kisselbr...om/ride%20slide.jpg
[po, Oct 30 2005]

death slide http://roxworld.com...images/image12x.jpg
Curved as the author describes. [jutta, Oct 30 2005]

http://www.ingstrom...e.com.au/index.html [2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 30 2005]

Emergency Slide Emergency_20Slide
by arghblah. [calum, Oct 31 2005]

emergency exit emergency_20exit
by egnor. [calum, Oct 31 2005]

Optional Exit Optional_20Exit
by goober [calum, Oct 31 2005]

I guess that solves the problem of what to do at lunch time, but I am concerned about how all the different floors can use the same slide.
-- Ling, Oct 30 2005


i'm desperately trying to find a link to show you what death slides are, but can't find any. they definately exist though, they used to have one where i worked when i was 16...still looking...
-- daaisy, Oct 30 2005


this reminds me of the child at nursery school that told me that the marmalade dessert if eaten would result in certain death - I think death as in "death slides" is an exaggeration.
-- po, Oct 30 2005


Is this not baked in the form of escape chutes? [link]
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 30 2005


thanks for the links, that second slide picture is the kind of thing i'm refering to, and no po, i didn't mean a LITERAL death slide, it's just their name. i think they also get called drop slides and vertical slides.

i hadn't heard of escape chutes before, though from looking at that site they're pretty different to what i'm suggesting. they look pretty claustophobic too. and they don't seem very fast either:

"All you need do is sit on the edge of the chute with your feet in the chute, lower yourself in and feel the chute grip you.

YOU HAVE CONTROL OF THE SPEED YOU ARE DOING"

might as well just use the stairs.
-- daaisy, Oct 30 2005


I am sure that this exact idea has been discussed at length on this site but I am buggered if I can find the thread in question. There are lost of similar ideas in the public: emergency exit category.
-- calum, Oct 31 2005



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