Kid survives Golden Gate Bridge jump

Dumb question, but is it the height or the impact that messes up your body that much?

 

The impact. You're going about 75 mph when you hit the water, which basically makes it as hard as asphalt.

 

One of the first Mythbusters episodes dealt with the myth that one of the bridge builders survived the fall because the hammers attached to his tool belt broke the surface tension of the water.

They couldn't replicate the result, but force of the impact on the test dummy was unreal.

 

Boooooooo

 

Tad Friend had a tremendous story in the New Yorker about jumpers on the Golden Gate Bridge.

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/10/13/031013fa_fact

The whole thing - which talks to survivors, about guardrails, about the romance of the bridge - is chilling. But this is the passage about what actually happens.

 

I remember that New Yorker article, it was tremendous. The Bridge I also highly recommend as a film.

The one thing I'll always remember -- even though there's a decent chance it was simply written for effect -- was the jumper who said, I am going to walk to the bridge and if anyone smiles at me along the way, I will turn back and not jump. Anyone who's lived in SF would understand why that's such an arresting and entirely conceivable sentence. SF is one of my favorite places on the planet, but I could never live there again. Too many people are too miserable in paradise.

I don't want to turn this into an anti-SF rant but I have so many stories. I'll just say the movie is worth watching.

 

SCS, I moved to the Bay Area on Jan. 1, 1972 and lived there more on than off for almost two decades.

It's a broad generalization, but Bay Area residents have an incredibly overinflated opinion of themselves and their standard of living; are quick to criticize others who don't agree with their viewpoints and at the same time, unwilling to see their own faults; and almost unapproachable in public, almost to a fanatical paranoia.

I lived in one apartment complex in Pleasant Hill for four years and only spoke with two other people in that entire time: brief pleasantries with the woman who shared a kitchen wall and a grievance with the woman who lived downstairs who complained that I "turned the lightswitch in the bathroom on too loudly."

Contrast that to the first 12 hours in Raleigh, where all eight other occupants not only came up to say hello, but helped unload the U-Haul van and provided me with food and drink on a hot and sticky July afternoon.

It's typical around here -- north Georgia -- to strike up idle conversations with strangers in line at the grocery store just to pass the time. The last time I was out there in 2001, I made a comment out loud to no one in particular on BART during rush hour and you would have thought I was a serial rapist. Nobody looks anybody in the eyes. The idea of actually smiling is probably worthy of a lawsuit. They sneer and snarl and boast about their soy diets and their exercise regimens and how nothing can compare to where they live.

I moved to Walnut Creek in ninth grade, and only had a few close friends -- most of those also transplants from other areas. I just figured back then it was just a clique thing.

I made a special effort to get back for the 25th reunion -- was on the first plane out of Atlanta following 9/11 -- and the people who still live there don't know anything outside of their own little world, and basically don't care.

When they were 16, I assumed it was immaturity. Now that they're in their 50s, I realize they're permanently stuck up.

 

Maumann, clearly you get it. As soon as you mentioned the unapproachable in public thing, I was going to post about trying to talk to someone in any checkout line in SF. I'm glad other people have noticed that, too.

And the thing is, I still have a lot of friends in the Bay Area, and many of them are quite easy to talk to one-on-one or over dinner, etc. But there isn't one of them who's doing anything but keeping their lips pursed in the Safeway checkout line.

 

Speaking of "incredibly overinflated opinions of themselves," why do you two feel your mundane lives are so important that you should inanely babble about them to complete strangers in a grocery store? I think it's more of an inability to keep your mouths shut for five minutes.

 

http://www.hulu.com/watch/95971/the-bridge

 

Uh, I don't. I generally don't say anything. But if someone says something to me, I respond with warmth and courtesy. That's the point.

And by the way, how would you know if my life is mundane or not? Thanks for projecting, I guess.