Friday, May 06, 2011

The Euthanasia Coaster



Suppose you could choose how you wanted to die. What if one of your options was death by roller coaster? Imagine slowly moving up the lift to a height of 1,673 feet (almost the same as the Sears Tower). This climb would take about two minutes, which is plenty of time to think back over your life. Then there's a ten second drop where you reach a top speed of 220mph. After this drop, you enter into seven consecutive loops where you experience 10g, and eventually pass out (G-induced Loss Of Consciousness). Except that you pass out permanently.

Julijonas Urbonas designed the "Euthanasia Coaster." It is "engineered to humanely – with elegance and euphoria – take the life of a human being." Apparently, the loss of oxygen to the brain creates a state of euphoria and then the passenger just loses consciousness and dies. Not a bad way to go?

At any rate, the coaster is purely hypothetical and will probably never be built. I just thought it was extremely interesting (although sort of sick and morbid), so thought I'd share. Below is a quick video of Mr. Urbonas explaining the design.



If you're still interested in more, here is a link to his site where he goes into all the details about the "Euthanasia Coaster." It really is interesting if you can get past the purpose of the whole thing: Euthanasia Coaster


And for fun, here's a video of a pilot experiencing GLOC:

3 comments:

Joel and Tessi said...

So... what happens when you get to the top and want to get off?

Arthur said...

Actually, this guy thought of that. Once you get to the top, you sit there until you decide you want to go through with it, then you push a "FALL" button. So, there's still a last second opportunity to change your mind. Once you hit that button though, it's all over in like 15 seconds.

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