How to survive a plane crash

[giza]

While searching for "odds of a plane crash" on Google, I came across this article, which talks about surviving a plan crash -- something I find far more useful! In the article, the FAA gives the following 5 tips:

1. Count the number of rows between your seat and the nearest exit. This is because if there is a fire, the cabin will fill up quickly with smoke. Between that and walking hunched over so as not to breathe the smoke, it can be hard to tell where the exit is.

2. Read the safety card. It sounds stupid, but it's recommended anyway. It's not like it is a huge effort to read it.

3. Brace for impact. They FAA suggests that you cross your hands on the seat in front of, put your head against your hands, and hold that position until you are on the ground (or in the water). This reduces the distance your head will travel, and how much damage you suffer. Decelerating from 300 Miles per hour to 0 Miles per hour involves just a bit of force.

4. "Get the fuck out!" Not only do I get to talk trash in this rule, the language used in the rule underscores the importance of getting out of the plane quickly. In the event of a fire, according to the FAA, the seats start to emit poisonous gas after only 20 seconds. At 50 seconds, the FAA uses the lovely term "gas chamber" to describe the cabin. And at 90 seconds, a flashover happens. At nearly 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, anyone inside WILL become a crispy critter.

5. Run like hell. After getting out, the FAA warns that, "It's going to become a very lethal environment". With thousands of gallons of burning fuel, bits of twisted and jagged metal all over the place, and an impending explosion from the flashover that's about to happen, the plane and the surrounding area is about to become a war zone. You don't want to be there.

I hope you all found this informative, or at least amusing.

Comments

[skippyfox.livejournal.com]

*shudders* If I ever visit the Eastern hemisphere I'm going by boat. O_o

[giza.livejournal.com]

Just to quantify this scenario, your chances of getting killed in a plane crash are 1 in 354,319 (http://www.anthrocon.org/node/798).

The chance of getting hemorrhoids, on the other hand, is 1 in 25. I'd be far more worried about that.

[skippyfox.livejournal.com]

I am miserable enough with pruritus ani.

Insane.

[lionman.livejournal.com]

So, how do you suppose an airline gets away with using materials inside a 'gas chamber' that are:

1.) Apparently not flame retardant/resistant, and
2.) emit a poisonous gas when they start to burn?

Re: Insane.

[giza.livejournal.com]

I should caution you that I'm talking out of my ass in this reply. But, if I were to speculate:

1) I did some Googling and found this page about "flame resistant fabric". They can't stop the fire, but they can slow it down.

2) "poisonous gas" is kinda vague. It could mean carbon monoxide or cabron dioxide. Both will kill you if a high enough concentration is inhaled long enough, and both come from many forms of combustion.

At least that's my non-expert understanding of those two issues. I'll shut up now. :-P

[unclekage.livejournal.com]

I always, always do the first two.

Just about polymer is going to produce a poisonous gas when it burns. It is not practical to make all of the fixtures in an airplane out of wood and cotton. The fabrics used today are better than the ones they used to use 30 years ago, which were mostly urethanes that produced hydrogen cyanide when burned.

Canadian folk singer Stan Rogers died in a passenger jet that caught fire on the runway at Cincinnati Airport in 1983. It didn't crash; it just caught fire. Few if any of the passengers died of burns. Most were asphyxiated because they could not get out in time.

[lionman.livejournal.com]

I suppose I'm just amazed at how quickly the atmosphere in the cabin is likely to become deadly. 90 seconds, that seems like a very short time in an emergency situation. Imagine if you have a fire before you're on the ground.

[triggur.livejournal.com]

Also worth noting, tho I suppose the finding isn't terribly surprising...

They did a study of assholishness in flight evacuation scenarios and found a huge difference in survival rates between you being the nice guy helping everyone else get off the plane (low survival rate) versus you being the asshole who climbs over the top of elderly women to get out first (much better odds).

Obviously in a lot of crash scenarios it doesn't really matter; when I was in college I lived south of the Colorado Springs airport. I heard the impact just a couple blocks down the hill from my house of this crash: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtxxRhGRvK8. They actually had to _dig_down_ to get to the wreckage.

No surviving that one!

[giza.livejournal.com]

Somehow the assholeness angle doesn't surprise me. But fear of being burned alive can be a powerful motivator, I guess.

Now that you mention it, I wonder how much of a factor that plays in PTSD.

[simbab.livejournal.com]

While the information is certainly useful, one must ask why you were consulting the Great Gazoogle (http://sadlyno.com/wordpress/uploads/2007/03/greatgazoogle.jpg) on said topic in the first place.

[giza.livejournal.com]

I got tired of searching for beowulf clusters of Gary Colemans.

[boixboi.livejournal.com]

In the book "Crash," J.G. Ballard mentions a hospital just outside the airport in London with two wards permanently reserved in case of an "air-crash." They are described as each having twenty-four beds, supposedly representing the maximum number of anticipated survivors. It's a work of fiction, so I don't know if he just made that up-- and even if he didn't it was published thirty years ago and things may have changed since-- but given the typical number of passengers on a plane, it still really creeps me out.

[rikoshi.livejournal.com]

I suddenly have a hankering to watch the pilot episode of LOST.