[Harry Callahan]

Many Americans have rejected the jumpers and called them cowards as they viewed jumping as an easy way out, which it obviously wasn't.

Even a lot of the jumpers' families have disowned their family members that jumped, or some plainly refuse to accept that their family member/s jumped.

[spex]

(Original post by Alt__x)
I'm pretty sure that if you jump from a height you die of fright or something before you hit the ground. I could e completely wrong, but thats what I have been told


This was posted from The Student Room's iPhone/iPad App

Think about it. When was the last time you ever heard of anybody dying of fright. It just doesn't happen. Even if you have a heart attack, you don't die instantly, and certainly not in the several seconds it would take between jumping and landing

[Sophia1994]

First off, many of the 'jumpers' did not choose to jump. People who were in the buildings said most were either blown out by force or couldn't see through the smoke and fell.
To the idiot who said jumping out of a building 100 floors high is the 'easy route', have you seen the photos and footage of the people hanging out the windows trying to get air?! Those poor people hardly had a choice, either stay in a building so hot that your flesh would melt and burn or jump out of a skyscraper. They had to choose how they would die, what is easy about that?

[cyfer]

(Original post by spex)
Think about it. When was the last time you ever heard of anybody dying of fright. It just doesn't happen. Even if you have a heart attack, you don't die instantly, and certainly not in the several seconds it would take between jumping and landing

Dying of fright happens very often to the old and infirm with heart problems.

[blahblah772]

It was incredibly brave of those people to jump and heartbreaking to think that that was the better of the two choices

[willbee]

When I saw the title I imagined something like this:


I was going to say that they're probably frowned upon because it's offensive.

[Tabris]

I think it's down to the large risk they were putting on other people who were trying to leave the building. An 80kg weight falling at terminal velocity isn't going to leave a pretty mark, more so if you were to land on someone.

Pretty sure they slowed down some evacuation efforts too by keeping people in lobby areas due to the risk.

[Sophia1994]

(Original post by spex)
Think about it. When was the last time you ever heard of anybody dying of fright. It just doesn't happen. Even if you have a heart attack, you don't die instantly, and certainly not in the several seconds it would take between jumping and landing

They wouldn't of been falling fast enough to pass out but they hit the ground at such a speed that death was instant, they wouldn't of felt a thing

[blahblah772]

(Original post by Tabris)
I think it's down to the large risk they were putting on other people who were trying to leave the building. An 80kg weight falling at terminal velocity isn't going to leave a pretty mark, more so if you were to land on someone.

Pretty sure they slowed down some evacuation efforts too by keeping people in lobby areas due to the risk.

80kg? This is america dude

[sammy-lou]

I don't think anyone alive has the right to judge people who jumped. I consider myself very tolerant of other people's religious beliefs (and beliefs generally) but I cannot even contemplate how someone could actually look down on these people's decisions when they quite clearly have no idea what that situation was like.

[CantThinkOfaUsername]

Was it necessarily an act of suicide for all of them though? Obviously it's impossible to say seeing as it would depend on the person, but considering that they probably knew they wouldn't have stood a chance if they stayed in the building, maybe they were clinging onto a faint hope that if they jumped, there might be a chance (however slight) of being caught somehow.

[ALazyThracian]

Thanks for clearing that up people i was right but one of my classmates insisted that they would pass out before hitting the ground.

And as for family members disowning them for "easy way" out that honestly is disgusting! Just think of the pure pressure and horror of the people who did it its heartbreaking!

[HeyyImRyan]

Take into account the thick, black fumes polluting your lungs with every breath, and the burning at your eyes, the constant 911 calls that just couldn't help you no matter how many times they said "We're coming".

No one can even imagine how hard it must have been to be trapped a thousand feet above ground with no air to breathe and no way of escaping - I think it was a tough decision to make and I doubt it was made lightly or as a cowardly way out.

[Dr Good Manners]

(Original post by cyfer)
From what I have heard Americans generally prefer not to talk about them, perhaps due to the fact that they chose the option of suicide/an easy route out

You're mistaking "Americans" for "brainless bible bashing psychos". No true American holds that opinion.

[LostPlanet2Luke]

I would honestly hit anyone who came out with the statement that the jumpers were selfish. They were normal civilians who left their families not knowing that they would never see them again. They were trapped from floors 84-110 in the south tower and floor 91-110 in the north tower and had to decide if they wanted to cough and die an agonising death, melt and combust or end it quickly and jump. The jumpers were frightened people who either were pushed out when people scrambled to the windows for air, were blown out due to explosions or could not feel they could go on and wanted to end their suffering. 1 person; a fighter got killed by a jumper, how was the jumper meant to know?

Since the 10th anniversary, i do not think there has been 1 day that i have not thought above how them people suffered that day and how i would have loved to have visited the towers, New York simply is not the same anymore. What made the 19 hijackers feel their religion demanded them to kill 3000 people, can't remember that being in the Qu'ran.

[whyumadtho]

(Original post by Harry Callahan)
Many Americans have rejected the jumpers and called them cowards as they viewed jumping as an easy way out, which it obviously wasn't.

Even a lot of the jumpers' families have disowned their family members that jumped, or some plainly refuse to accept that their family member/s jumped.

That is unbelievable.

[suffocation1992]

I thought this was going to be another weird Fashion and Beauty thread...

[benkopite]

Don't you think it's funny when people say people who hit the ground really fast wouldn't have felt a thing.. or like the same with car crashs or getting shot execution style..

Seriously how do we know? It could have been the most painful thing imaginable. How the hell do we know what it felt like.. and we couldn't be told cos they're dead.

I never find that sentence comforting.

If there is something to tell me that we do know, somebody enlighten me.

[Cll_ws]

Many people didn't choose to jump over burning alive as such, they were just forced out of the windows by the extreme heat and fire inside the building. You can see how they all crowded in the windows, looking for air and an escape from the heat.
They weren't necessarily thinking, I can stay here and burn, or jump. It was more, I need to get away from the heat. A natural human instinct when faced with pain, you get yourself away from it.

[Cll_ws]

(Original post by LostPlanet2Luke)
Since the 10th anniversary, i do not think there has been 1 day that i have not thought above how them people suffered that day and how i would have loved to have visited the towers, New York simply is not the same anymore. What made the 19 hijackers feel their religion demanded them to kill 3000 people, can't remember that being in the Qu'ran.

I'm the same, it's something I seem to think about so often. It's probably the one thing that's happened in my life that I really struggle to get my head around, the sheer scale and destruction of it all.
Things like wars and natural disasters are things that we've become desensitized to in a way, due to the constant media reports and such. I mean every now and again there is something that really shocks you, the Japan tsunami for example. And i'm in no way belittling how bad wars and other attacks are around the world.
But 9/11 is unlike anything most of us will of ever experienced, it's hard to imagine what New York was like on that morning for the people there. And the world coverage of it, the amount of people that saw it happening live right in front of them. I was only 11, and I can still remember now watching it live on tv and amazed by it, I was old enough to understand the horror of the whole situation, but i'd say amazed would be a good way of describing how I felt, I couldn't take my eyes from it. And to this day it's still something I think about, it's one of the most horrific things i've ever seen.

I also would of liked to of visited the towers, they were great. I loved them.
The new world trade center is a good tribute to what was there though and it'll look awesome once it's finished, i'm looking forward to seeing it finished.