Oho! Your physicist brain is yet no match for the Puzzlemaster, who presents a superior solution!

Beat down all the other people on the elevator and use them as a cushion.

I'd also add that you should make sure the elderly are on the bottom.

Everyone expects them to die anyway and they're just too boney to be up higher.

This is my favorite elevator scene from any movie and possibly my favorite movie scene ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqIBGEcKhGs

You Polanders, you kill me.

Actually,that is very believable with you.

MythBusters: Elevator of Death

I know it was just a joke, saw the mythbusters episode Slaugh posted back in the day. Never heard of stacking luggage before I guess it has to be soft to be effective. Holding yourself up by the handrails seems counterproductive, or at least for it to be worth it you'd have to land on your legs after breaking your arms which probably isn't the easiest feat.

GOG didn't reply to any of my five removal requests. I think he's a covert op blue that GOG will later use as an excuse to pull a BioWare and close the entire forum.

On topic: Falling elevators are not literally unheard of, as I told my brother just this weekend, but it's exceedingly rare thanks to an invention by Elisha Graves Otis from 1853. It's a purely mechanical safety device that stops the elevator within a few inches when the cable snaps.

hm.. i don't know if this is sad or funny. did you really make 5 attempts to get me banned? usually people learn by experience - you fail once, maybe operators didn't check your request. you fail twice, you think maybe it's not a priority. but 5 times! dude you're fucked up in the head! maybe merkel is your grandma.. and even if she wouldn't be, i said it before - germans have bad genes they're ALL fascists, gays etc. and starting from the next generations, they'll probably be terrorists too because of the arab inheritance

Don't you have any regulations in US how often elevators much be checked and maintained and shit? The elevator at our home was just inspected two months ago (they apparently also changed some parts), and now there is a sticker when the next inspection is. All the lifts here have that kind of sticker which tells when was the last time it was inspected (and by whom), and when it will be inspected the next time.

I never recall seeing or hearing a lift breaking down unexpectedly here. Not sure if it is the same in some very old buildings with very old lifts, but I presume they need to be inspected and maintained just the same.

Yeah, I've been in some pretty old and shaky lifts (including an antique "open cage" one at my grandmother's appartment), but never heard of a cabin falling.

We sometimes have lethal elevator accidents, but they're mostly the "door to the shaft was open for maintenance, a child/old lady/guy checking his mails entered it without looking ans splattered him/herslef at the bottom".

And of course the occasional "people getting stuck a whole weekend" stories (which can be pretty dangerous when said people is a diabetic grandmother like my neighbor), but it's not the same kind of stuff as the "freefall cabin" nightmare

I was actually referring also to these. Ok maybe it happens here sometimes that an elevator goes out of commission while people are using it (I just never reacall reading or hearing of such cases here). but it seems very improbable anyone would be stuck in there for more than, say, 30 minutes.

First reason being that all elevators here are inspected and maintained quite often, even the old ones. And if it happened that an elevator breaks down while someone is inside (and it isn't a new lift where you could e.g. force the sliding doors open), they always have alarm systems which either make a loud alarm sound in the house, or in any more modern elevators it connects you to someone.

Ok a power outage could certainly be a case where people get stuck in elevators, not sure if modern elevators have some safety systems for power outages, like enough battery power to bring the elevator to at least to the next floor (and open the doors there).

I think it's pretty easy to get stuck for a few hours, even in a well maintained building (happened at several occurences to people I knew) : The alarm button might not be very responsive, the people in a near-empty building might not notice you (or not know who to call), the support number might take some time before they answer your call, the phone might disfunction, the people being stuck might be an old sick grandma or a child who don't know they have to call the help center...
Or the classic : The repairman needs to cross the whole Paris metropolitan area (a 2-3 hours roadtrip at peak hour) to get to you

Or the problem is due to a general power outage, in which case you're stuck until the building is powered again or the firemen break you out.

They don't. At least not in France. Stuck is stuck, and the warnings in the elevators heavily discourage you to try and get out on your own. Which makes sense : If the elevator is stuck between 2 levels, opening the doors without the help of a rescue service sounds like a nice way to have someone trip and fall into the shaft uner the cage. Or getting hurt when the elevator is powered again...

that's how technology sometimes works - it can save you time and effort but it can also kill you. the society was made to be lazy they only think of benefit not risks nobody thinks it can happen to them until it's too late :-/ it's all for the money i think... in US some years ago there was a vaccine for women to protect them against breast cancer but that vaccine sometimes made you health problems which are just as bad - i'm talking about problems "a la tete" as you french might say

That plane is back.