Elevator Disasters

[00:00:00] Astonishing Legends Network. Disclaimer, this episode includes the usual amount of adult language and graphic discussions you've come to expect around here. But in the event it becomes an unusual amount, expect another call from me. Hey everybody, welcome back to Scared All The Time. I'm Chris Collari. And I'm Ed Vecola. And today we are plunging from the top floor of fear and straight into a terrifying look at elevator disasters.

[00:00:26] You ever have that moment when you step into an elevator, the doors close, and there's that little lurch as it starts going up? And for a split second you might think, this is it. This is how it ends. Well, for some people, it is. Today, Ed and I will be your guides through the fascinating and terrifying world of elevator disasters. And not just getting stuck in one, which is honestly bad enough. We're going to the extremes to focus on full-on elevator catastrophes. Falling cars, snapped cables, screaming, crying, gnashing of teeth. The works.

[00:00:55] We'll explore the deadliest elevator accidents in history, calculate your odds of experiencing one yourself, and even debate the best way to survive if you find yourself in a free-falling metal box of death. Spoiler alert, the odds of survival are not great. So strap in because this episode is going to have a lot of ups and downs, mostly downs. Horrible cataclysmic downs. Hang on tight and pray to whoever you'd like. Not that it'll matter because nothing can save you now. What are we? Scared. When are we? All the time. Join us.

[00:01:25] Join us. Now it is time for... Time for... Stand over the time. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show. We are going to keep this quick. We have a great show for you today, but we feel like we always have to do some, a little bit of housekeeping to lead you into it. So, you know, we've got Five Star Review Corner. I think today we really have a review that is both... It is both complimentary. It's literary.

[00:01:55] It's really, I think, a shining star example of the kind of five-star reviews that we love to get. So, Ed, would you like to read this for us? Yeah, sure. I think above all else, it's succinct. So, five stars from Mike69420F. That's Mike69420F. F. Okay. That's not how I read it. I read it very robotically. You read it very human. Oh, I recognize those numbers anywhere, my friend.

[00:02:25] Oh, Jesus. Okay. So, subject. It's the word also, all lowercase. Body of the review, the word fart, all lowercase. So, if you put them together, five stars, also fart. Fantastic. That's good enough, baby. That's good enough. I wonder if the F in Mike69420 actually stands for fart. That makes sense. It was either cut off or he wanted to abbreviate, keep it as punchy as his review. Yeah, exactly. Thank you, Mike. Thank you, Mike.

[00:02:52] I also just wanted to give a quick shout out to Alicia, who sent Baby Kalari a little Loch Ness Monster and a Loch Ness Monster book. We love it. It, Baby Kalari isn't here yet, but he loves it already. Thank you so much. And I know a couple other people have reached out. We'll thank you on the show when we get things and we can talk about how awesome it is. And I'd like to thank Josh and Brandy for a very fun time in Vegas, who are absolutely responsible for why this has to be a very short housekeeping.

[00:03:21] Thank you guys for listening, for being fans. Sign up for the Patreon if you haven't. And without further ado, Ed, should we take a look at some elevator disasters? Yeah. So here's a fun fact to get us started. According to the Center for Construction Research and Training, incidents involving elevators and escalators kill 31 people each year and seriously injure about 17,000 people in the United States alone. Escalators are obviously motherfuckers and we'll maybe do an episode just about them someday.

[00:03:51] But according to these statistics, elevators are the prime culprits here, causing about 90% of the deaths and 60% of the serious injuries. So about 28 deaths and 10,200 injuries in the United States per year. According to the paper, most of those deaths and injuries are related to construction workers, but there are plenty of civilians in the mix too. There's a fun and helpful chart published in the report that gives us an even more detailed

[00:04:15] breakdown and it is headlined deaths among elevator passengers while at work by cause 1992 to 2009. Oh my God. CPWR analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed 89 elevator related passenger deaths from 92 to 2009 among people using elevators while at work, an average of five deaths per year. These included supervisors and managers, clerks and stock handlers, janitors, cleaners, and their supervisors, plus a wide variety of other occupations.

[00:04:42] This feels like a came off of a elevator lawyer website where it's like, this could happen to you with 28 people die at work. If so called fucking Brillstein and Stevens. I mean, look, some of these blogs may or may not have been sponsored by law firms. I'm sure they fucking were. It's amazing how often like I'll be searching for something where I'm like, what's a good helmet to buy for my bicycle? And it's like, oh, here's a, here's a link for top 10 helmets. And it'll be like on fucking Sullivan and Sullivan's lawyer website. Yeah.

[00:05:11] You know, we haven't been on the, uh, remember that, remember that website we found last season that was like the, just like lists of top 10 lists. Oh, list of, list of hers. No, no, it was, it was like top 10, something or other. They had like top 10 lists of everything. I have not been on that site in a while. Maybe I should check them out instead of some of these greasy lawyer sites and they can give me some info, but three fifths of these deaths or 52 of them involved falls and almost all of the falls into elevator shafts, including 30 deaths that occurred when an elevator door

[00:05:40] opened and there was no elevator car due to the car leaving the floor in question. And people are just walking in. Yes. Which is basically what happened. There's a very famous episode of LA law, which is an old David E. Kelly show where a character is famously killed off by walking into an empty elevator. Like the door opens and they're like, well, see you next week. And like, just step in and plummet. There's no elevator there. I'm trying to think like, I don't know.

[00:06:05] I think when an elevator opens and you're not a blind person, you'd look not even that you'd look. It's like, it's all open. There's nothing hiding in an elevator. Like you, you're going to see the floor. You're going to see the walls. It's maybe you're just not paying attention. I guess you're just not paying attention because I have to imagine an elevator shaft has none of the nice, you know, design of the inside of an elevator. Yeah, no, an elevator shaft is pretty barren compared to the inside of an elevator. Yeah.

[00:06:33] Where there's like mirrors in there and nice paint and yeah. Or in LA, tons of graffiti and piss. Yeah. I mean, if you're, I guess if you're tired, if you're distracted, I mean, the number one lesson you should take from this episode is. The stairs. Well, yes, take the stairs, but also if you are going to take an elevator, make sure you're facing those doors when they open and you are observing what's on the other side of them. Yeah. Because it seems like at least 30 people a year don't do that. That's wild.

[00:07:01] The 24 caught in or between elevators and five struck by elevator deaths mostly involve people getting caught in the elevator door or between the elevator and door or shaft. The other category included six elevator collapses, which is really the nightmare I think we're all most scared of. Yeah. So I guess that's good that as far as elevator deaths go, full on elevator collapses are at the bottom of that list. I experienced it once. We'll talk about it soon.

[00:07:27] Well, I was just going to say, have you ever found yourself in an elevator disaster or a near disaster? I definitely was in a near disaster. It was the scariest thing. It's going to be high in the future. All right. Well, then maybe I should say mine first because mine's really not good. Mine's short, but it was real. Okay. Well, mine's also real, but it wasn't very scary. I did. I was just going to say I got stuck. So in college once, it didn't fall, but Ed and I both went to Emerson and I was living in a building called the Little Building.

[00:07:55] Which later would have many deaths attributed to it. Well, a crane fell off of that building. Yeah. But I was very sick my first semester at Emerson. I got like some throat infection or something and I went into the elevator and accidentally bumped. Spread it. No, I accidentally bumped the emergency radio button or whatever. Like a fire department? Yeah.

[00:08:19] And so the elevator stopped and I'm trying to explain what the problem is, except I can't, I have no voice. Oh no. So I was just like, I'm fine. I'm fine. And they were like, sir, sir, can you hear us? And I was like. Oh my God. So eventually. Did it have like a ringing bell and stuff too? No, there wasn't, there wasn't a, it didn't set off any alarms. It just called and I eventually convinced them I was fine and everything was fine.

[00:08:46] But, uh, and then just the other week I actually got stuck in an elevator at the OBGYN. It wasn't very tall, but my wife and I were going to an appointment for the baby and we got in an elevator with a woman and her two kids and the doors closed. And as soon as the elevator starts to move, the kids reached out and just start hitting all the buttons, you know, dragging their hands. And was that love actually? No, serendipity happens in serendipity. It was only like three floors, but the elevator stopped halfway between the first

[00:09:16] that, you know, at first I kind of smirk at the lady like, well, you know, kids will be kids. And cause like, obviously they fucked it up and she's like, oh, well, you know, stop it. And then it still doesn't move. Still doesn't move. After a good, like 30 seconds to a minute, we started, I think collectively getting a little nervous. Yeah. And then it did, it like, it went like chunk, you know, and then it started to move again, but it was a little, it was a little tense for a minute there. And it definitely made me, uh, prepped me for this episode. Wow. But it doesn't sound like anything compared to what you experienced.

[00:09:46] I was at Sony pictures. I had to go deliver something on like the, I think it was stage six. So, which is used to be a stage and now it's like office buildings for screen gems or whatever. And I went to the top floor. It's only like, I don't know, four to six floors. I don't know. And did my thing, dropped it off, got back in the elevator to go back down, down or either way, I was either going fucking up or down, whatever, whichever direction I was going in. It just fell like, it fell like a floor, like a full floor.

[00:10:14] Like it just went. And I was like, this is it. Yeah. Like it's, it's not empire state building. Yeah. But still, but it was like, oh my God. Like my, like my stomach. Did you feel weightless? Not even weightless, but I felt like. Because you were going to heaven? Yeah. No, I didn't feel weightless, but it was, it felt like a roller coaster. Like you definitely were like, oh shit, like G-forces. But it was only a floor, thank God. And then it stopped for like a super long time. No, I don't know, 20, 30 seconds or whatever. And I was like, oh geez.

[00:10:43] And then it like slowly just continued and went to the first floor. And I got out and I was like told the, there was like a security guard at the front desk. And I was like, it's fucking elevator just fell. And the guy was like, what? And I was like, yeah, elevator just fell. And he did all he could do, which is, oh, okay. Like, I'm like, you should tell someone. You should, this should be like some tape or something here. And there were actually a lot of elevators at Sony.

[00:11:09] I remember the one at the Overland garage always had like crime scene tape for like a year on it. Like you never figured out how to fix these elevators. This whole studio is filled with bad elevators. I mean, allegedly. I mean, from a lot of the research I did for this episode, it seems like a lot of places, I mean, you know, you'd think a film studio would be a little bit more responsive. But a lot of these accidents do happen at places where a lot of people report there's problems before an actual bad accident happens. Yeah. What's because they keep the certificate in the office? Every time I'm in an elevator, I'm reading that little science certificate. Yeah.

[00:11:39] It was genuinely top five scariest things that ever happened to me. Yeah. And I was alone. And again, the guy was like, okay, I'll tell someone. But you know, what am I supposed to do? I'm just a guy sitting at a desk. Yeah. You know, it was so crazy. That's very scary. I probably wouldn't have died. But if it felt like three floors, I'd probably fuck a bunch of shit up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You would have been fucked up.

[00:12:00] My sister worked in events for a while and she told me a story once about how they were at some like arena. It was like some big, you know, for like Microsoft or Hewlett Packard or something. And they were loading in and out of some big convention center or an arena or something. And the workers took the forklift into the freight elevator. And it immediately broke.

[00:12:29] Broke and fell just one floor. But with the guy in the forklift in the elevator, it just went boom, like down. And they ended up having to, it cost some obscene amount of money because the only way to get it back up once at, you know, because the forklift was broken and everything and they couldn't get it out. So they ended up having to deconstruct the forklift inside the elevator and take the forklift out piece by piece. That's like everything. And then fix the elevator. That's like everything I buy on Craigslist and I get there and realize it won't fit in the car. And now I'm sitting there with fucking drill.

[00:12:58] Well, but forklifts, people don't know. They're heavy as fuck because you see them carrying. It needs counterweight to carry the crap they're fucking lifting. Yeah. And so, I mean, I'm sure there are elevators rated for heavy machinery. I assume that they thought this freight elevator was. I mean, I think freight elevators tend to have. They're usually very big. Yeah. I've had, there is an elevator. Speaking of studio elevators, the elevator in the universal tower, the black tower in universal city.

[00:13:27] I never did any really work in universal. It's like 40 or 50 floors or something. And when I tell you the elevators zoom up and down that building, I don't ever want to be in an elevator that zooms. I mean, my. Either direction. Does it have windows going out or anything? Or is it just like you're inside? You just get in and you can, it's almost like getting in like a pneumatic tube. You know, like at the bank, you know, you used to put the thing in, it would take your checks. It feels like that for people. Like you step in, it's just like whoop. Holy shit.

[00:13:53] My best friend Dan in New York, his building, he lives, he lives on the 20 somethingth floor and it goes higher than that. You know, it's like in the Vidi or whatever. They're big buildings. And my ears like pop. Yeah. It goes so fast. Yeah. Like up to the 23rd floor, 24th floor. And I'm like, every time I'm in, I'm like, this is a rocket ship. Yeah. But I also, if it's slower, then you're there all day. But I will say this, this is a thing I just heard the other day.

[00:14:22] And I thought it was interesting. There was a company complaining about like people, either residents or employees of this big building were complaining that the elevator was too slow. And so the company, you know, the building manager or the company who owned the building was like, okay, I'm going to go talk to the elevator company and say, this is too slow. We're getting a lot of complaints. Like all the time we're getting complaints. It takes forever to get up to, I don't know, the 20th floor or whatever.

[00:14:47] And their elevator company said, hey, it's going to cost $28 million to fucking redo them all, get new cables in there, stronger, faster, whatever. And then they're like, okay, that's a lot of money. We'll go for a second opinion. And I don't know exactly the players involved. I read this a while ago. But some genius, I love any kind of like genius ideas that are like simple solutions.

[00:15:11] Some guy was like, you can spend $28 million fixing this, or you can pay a million dollars and install floor to ceiling mirrors in every one of the elevators. And you're like, what? And he was like, yeah, just put floor to ceiling mirrors in every fucking thing. And they did. And all the complaints stopped. Right. And it was because people are just checking their hair. They're doing things. Their vanity takes over. Wow. And they feel that they have something to do, and they don't notice the passing of time. Interesting.

[00:15:40] So that was like, they'll be checking their hair. They'll be checking their teeth. They'll find other things to do if they give them a reason to look at themselves. I hope they're checking their hair when those broken-ass elevators plummet into the basement. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know if they ever broke, but I always like little solutions like that. That was like an elevator story I heard recently. That's cool. So I don't really have, you know, nearly as frightening an elevator experience as you, but I do. I would say elevator disasters are one of my like top five recurring nightmares.

[00:16:07] I have lots of nightmares about being trapped in elevators that are plummeting, broken, stuck. Weird. And I don't know why. Usually about the elevators at Emerson for some reason. Well, you had that incident. Kind of, but that wasn't like. But that wasn't scary. I don't remember it being scary. Yeah. Was one of the elevators in the building where they had all the editing suites kind of janky? Yeah. That whole building was fucking janky. Maybe that's why. Maybe that's why. I worked on the eighth floor or seventh floor or whatever. Because I kind of remember that building having elevators that were a little sketchy sometimes.

[00:16:37] They felt like. They kind of have the jerkies. They did a lot of jerky. There's a lot of jerkiness in those for sure. I mean, I haven't thought about them in a long time, but they were jerky as shit. Yeah. I constantly have nightmares. Not just about those elevators, but yeah, I don't know. So it's something that's definitely on my mind on a regular basis. As a person who fell a floor, I'm not taking the stairs still. Like if we're going up, it did not affect. We're Americans, goddammit. Yeah. It did not affect my ability to step into an elevator without worry. Yeah. Good for you.

[00:17:06] But if I feel a little jerky, it just takes me back there. Yeah. It probably doesn't help that we see terrible elevator accidents in movies and TV all the time. Obviously, that one from LA Law that I mentioned is a big one for anyone probably in their 40s or up. So is the elevator death, the beginning of Mission Impossible. Yeah. Emilio Estevez on the top. That's one of your foundational elevator fears, right? Yeah. Because the thing comes down from the ceiling. They have weird. The elevator has weird teeth. It has like teeth that come down to stop it.

[00:17:36] And I was like, what? I mean, I guess it is a scary moment. You know, it's less scary in reality because like I don't think I'd ever find myself on top of an elevator. Yeah. Which is how he ends up dying. But that is a scary moment. You also told me about a relevant schlock film for this topic called The Dark Tower. Yeah. It's a Michael Moriarty movie. No relation to the literally only other Dark Tower. No, no relation to Stephen King. No relation to Stephen King. Maybe it's better than the fucking Dark Tower movie they made though. It's a horrendous film.

[00:18:04] I think it was like a Barcelona movie for some reason. But they're like, here we are in America. And like they hired one American actor and everyone else. Is it about a haunted elevator or? It's about a building. I don't remember much. The only reason it comes up is because my friend Dan, interestingly enough, the same Dan with the fast elevator. He and I, we keep like a log of the movies we watch. And I think Dark Tower was movie like 168 or 169 or something. And we keep little notes.

[00:18:32] If anything like pops into our brain, we'll write it into the notes section of this Excel spreadsheet. And the note in that movie is that the film features six minutes of elevator footage. And I only know this is because they kept cutting to the same shot of like inside an elevator shaft that shows like the machinery starting to spin that like the wires move. And I was like, I'm pretty sure that was the same shot we saw earlier. And then later in the movie, it's like, there it is again.

[00:19:01] And then there it is again. And so I, after we watched the movie, I went to each one of those and it ended up equaling six minutes of the film. It was the same shot of the, like anytime someone pressed a button in that movie, they cut back to that. So the elevator is, is not relevant necessarily to the plot. It's just that there's so much. I couldn't tell you a frame of that movie. The plot might've been about fucking airplanes. I mean, I assume something dark was happening in this tower that necessitated all the elevator travel.

[00:19:31] I think if I'm not mistaken, and I very well could be, cause I, like I said, this is 160 something movie. Yeah. And we're, we're past 200 and we're probably at 300 now. But anyway, I think the building was sentient. Gotcha. I think it was one of those. Yeah. I think there might be a, an elevator, a sentient building elevator death in an X-Files episode. Ghost in the Machine. I wrote a sentient elevator sketch for something like some, like elevator type. I think it was a show maybe.

[00:20:01] Like I had really. Elevator was a show. Yeah. And I think I was either, I was doing a packet and I think I was trying to find relevant stuff and there was like ads for that show on TV. So I think I wrote like a sketch on like a fucking Colbert packet or something about, about a sentient elevator. Well, hopefully there are no sentient elevators. That's one invention we don't need to apply artificial intelligence to. I prefer my elevators. Dumb as a rock.

[00:20:27] We already took away the human elevator operator job years before AI. Yeah. So yeah, there's tons of other elevators. There's Towering Inferno. A lady falls out of an elevator. I don't know. There's, there's tons of very upsetting elevator deaths in film and television. And then there's also a whole subgenre of thrill and horror movies that take place almost exclusively in elevators. Really? Apparently not including the Dark Tower, but Devil is I think probably the best of them with Chris Messina. It's produced by M. Night Shyamalan. M. Night Shyamalan.

[00:20:56] I never watched it. Written and directed by the Doubtles, I think, who made As Above, So Below. It's all in an elevator? All in an elevator. There's one called Down that came out a few years ago that I have heard okay things about, but I haven't had a chance to check out. But if you know of any good elevator horrors we're forgetting, send them in. Send them in. Let us know what we should watch as Nightmare Fuel in the future. Elevators are a character in many a meet cute, stuck in an elevator, met my boyfriend type movie too. Yes.

[00:21:24] I think Down is one of those, but then one of them or both of them end up being serial killers or something. Wow. You can't open yourself up to people. Never. Just keep it all inside. Don't look for love in literally any place. But I think as we often do near the beginning of our episodes, I want to go back into the history of elevators. You know I'm curious about how long we've had elevators. Who invented them? Why were they invented?

[00:21:52] It seems like they got to be older than skyscrapers at least or nobody would have had the idea that we could put people up there. That's true. Newer than stairs, older than skyscrapers. Yes. And in that way, the elevator is actually one of the most important inventions of the modern era. I found a 2014 piece in the New Yorker written by a writer named Nick Palmgarten all about the social, cultural, architectural impact of elevators. It's a really great article.

[00:22:21] I'm not going to quote the whole thing. I mean, it's a building's town square. That and the lobby are two places you're going to meet your neighbors, I guess. He says,

[00:22:53] If you love it so much, why don't you marry it? Look up So I Married an Elevator? Yeah. I'm sure that's a schlock movie. Oh my God. It's definitely a triple X movie. Because of their importance to modern society, I figured elevators would be from like the 1800s, maybe the 1700s. I mean, how far back is, what's his name? With enough pulleys, you can raise the world. Archimedes? You figured Archimedes would have been on top of elevators. Archimedes, my man, was on top of elevators. There you go.

[00:23:23] Actually, Emilio Esteve was on top of that. Emilio Esteve, yeah. He's on top of an elevator. Hopefully Archimedes was staying, keeping a safe distance. But the earliest known reference to an elevator is actually in the works of the Roman architect Vitruvius, who reported that Archimedes built his first elevator somewhere around 236 BC. So elevators are fucking old. They might be older than bridges. Honestly, I'm not sure. I don't know if we've done bridges yet or if this is pre or post bridges, but they might be older than bridges, roads. Fuck, dude.

[00:23:52] Elevators. I guess you could, I guess an elevator. Do you think an elevator by, it's kind of a train, like downtown LA, there's like that in Chinatown, there's like that gondola essentially that goes up from like- Oh, the Angel's Crest. Yeah. Angel's Crest. Like that's technically, I think a train, like it's on rails. Yeah, it's a train car. But if it wasn't on rails, if it was like a sky driven gondola, would that technically be like elevator technology? In which case, I'm saying is, does it have to go vertical to be an elevator? That's, I mean.

[00:24:22] If it can go like up a hill still, then I can- Can an elevator go to, I mean, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, his elevator went up, down, left, right. Yeah. There you go. And that crazy one, you're talking about in Charlie and Charlie Factory. Yeah. Because I'm only asking because I can see if Archimedes was like, oh, I can get you up this hill faster, then I could see how you'd need an elevator in like 630 BC. Well, so what's interesting is I couldn't find why he built it. So my guess is that it was more out of curiosity and the pursuit of science than a concrete need

[00:24:50] to get somewhere tall, unlike bridges, which were like, oh, we need to get from here to there. You know, I think he saw the use for it, but you know, it didn't say he built it to move grain or reach the top of a cliff. He just said he built it. So- I got, I fumbled through all of that to get to the point where I really could have just said move grain. Yeah. Because that's like a way better, like moving someone up a hill- At an angle or- Yeah, I really, yeah, getting grain into a second floor of a barn makes a lot more sense. If a car didn't have wheels and it was on a pulley system and you put it at an angle up a hill-

[00:25:20] Yeah. The Roman Colosseum completed in 80 AD- That's pretty tall. Pretty tall and had roughly 25 elevators that were used for raising animals up to the floor. Each elevator could carry about 600 pounds, which was noted as roughly the weight of two lions and was powered by eight men. Based on what we know about Romans, Christians, and lions, I imagine the cats were a lot lighter going up than they were coming down. No, I think they're- I mean, how much do you think blood weighs? They fed.

[00:25:49] They ate, as they say. Oh, yeah. I see what you're saying. It wasn't just the promise of violence that drove elevator science either. Horniness- There it is. Played a big role too. In 1743, a counterweighted man-powered personal elevator was built for King Louis XV, connecting his apartment in Versailles with that of his mistress, Madame de Chateau, whose quarters were one floor above his own. He called it the flying chair. I guess he sat as he went up, yeah.

[00:26:19] I guess, yeah. I mean, talk about being king though. You don't even have to walk up the stairs to go bang your mistress. You just get in your flying chair and- Wow. Weep, weep, weep, boop, boop. Up one floor. Wouldn't be too long before their heads are getting cut off. Yeah. People are in gold tins. It wasn't until 1793 that the more modern screwdriver elevator was invented, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Moving the elevator car up a central shaft, much in the way a nut moves up and down a screw as you turn it.

[00:26:48] These elevators never caught on as much as the pulley and rope systems that Archimedes originally tinkered with way back in the BC days. For a long time, elevators weren't really considered to be devices to move people. Despite some of these examples, they were really more useful for moving grain and cargo and that kind of stuff. They'd be used to get heavy items in and out of buildings and ships when they pulled in the port, but not so much for people, mostly because of the fear that getting in an elevator could kill you. Yeah.

[00:27:16] Because it could fall and then you would die. So according to an article in SF Gate, the public remained understandably wary of such devices since a single broken rope could send the hapless passengers plummeting to their doom. This attitude, though, began to change in 1853 when Alicia Graves Otis... Added a second rope. ...demonstrated... I mean, basically, demonstrated his safety elevator featuring the first fail-safe means of arresting the elevator's fall should a support rope fail. There it is.

[00:27:44] Otis' elevator went a long way toward... Hey, Otis! That's like the most popular fucking... Yes. It's that Otis. Holy shit. You know how many Otises I've been in? All of them. I had an opportunity for you to make a joke, but you didn't. If you said that shit, I would have pounced on it. The way you pounce on Otis'. Uh, Ed, I don't have it. Otis' elevator went a long way toward easing public anxiety about riding on such contraptions, and in 1857, Otis installed the first public elevator in a five-story department store in

[00:28:12] New York, and in 1861, he patented an elevator powered by steam. Hydraulic and electric elevators eventually followed, finally obviating the need to climb endless flights of stairs in tall buildings. Steam is awesome. Steam is like... The shit steam can do, but when it goes wrong, don't be anywhere near it. Yeah. It's powerful for just boiled water. I mean, boiling people, but it's like steam-driven cars.

[00:28:37] Like, the Stanley Steamer held the land speed record until modern era, basically, on like a steam car. Oh, no shit. From like the teens or 20s or something. I didn't know that. I mean, they weren't doing a lot of the land speed records. I'll have trivia about put something in. Now, while the Stanley Steamer's land speed record set in 1906 may have been broken by a gasoline car just four years later, it remains significant for being the longest standing FIA-recognized land speed record, having not been broken by another steam-powered car

[00:29:06] until 103 years later in 2009. So, per usual, Ed was not 100% right, but also not 100% crazy. Yeah, just shit where like steam got after it. Hey, TriviaBot, how many Otises has Ed been inside of? Don't you answer that, TriviaBot. I'm in charge now, TriviaBot. Anyway, interestingly, socially, culturally, this invention, in turn, made the top floors of buildings much more desirable places to live.

[00:29:36] To this day, it's penthouses. Until the invention of the elevator, all that hoofing up and down meant the rich wanted to live on the first floor closer to the street. And the pours went up top. Wow, yeah. All of a sudden, though, higher floors, which provided nicer views, were on the menu and all the pours were forced back down to the stinky, shitty street level. Wow. So funny how that happens. Holy smokes. They went from eating lobsters up in the penthouse to going down and letting the rich people go eat the lobster up there.

[00:30:05] Why are there always lobsters in each scenario? Well, I'm just saying because lobster used to be for the poor. Really? You didn't know this? We never did an episode on fucking lobsters. The only things Ed knows about the world he's learning from this show. Yeah, no, lobsters, and I don't know if this was a worldwide thing or if it was just in like areas like Boston that were near the sea, but lobsters were considered peasant food because they were literally like the bugs of the ocean. Yeah, and in the Bible, you're not supposed to eat crustaceans and stuff. Yeah, and so I guess I don't actually know what changed that. And who knows?

[00:30:35] Maybe this is someone can write in and tell me if this is just some like some bullshit story that you read about in like a factoid book on the toilet. But I'm pretty sure that it was considered kind of disgusting eating lobster. And at some point that changed. I still fucking think that. They're good, man. I don't care. They still look like bugs. I feel bad. They can feel it. Crabs can feel it and lobsters can feel it. So I feel pretty bad. Sounds like they feel pretty bad.

[00:31:01] Yeah, I think they feel much worse, but I love crab and lobster. I don't need it. If it disappeared from planet Earth tomorrow, I wouldn't even notice. Good for you. And I do it strictly because of a love of crustaceans. I don't want to see them hurt is what I'm going to start telling people. So that's that's roughly how we got to a point in history where by the late 19th century, elevators proliferated in large cities and soon spread across the world, which means

[00:31:29] the age of the elevator accident had officially begun. That said, we would be remiss to stoke panic and fear nationwide to the millions and millions of our listeners if we suggested that elevators are dangerous. I mean, they are. And for the purposes of this episode, they're one of the most dangerous things, one of the scariest kinds of transportation imaginable. But the reality is there's very little to worry about again. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead.

[00:31:55] Do you think the elevator operator is a job that was invented to lay blame in the event of a accident? Be like, hey, hey, Otis makes a quality product. This drunk operator must have hit the wrong button. I mean, I don't know if they were invented for that, but I'm sure a lot of people are of elevator operators took the blame. Yeah, don't get me wrong. I think it's a cool job, but I also think a button can do it. You know, a lot of those elevator operators were lived on the first floor. Oh, that was a good thing.

[00:32:24] Once the elevator went in, they were at the bottom. But you're getting tips. You're like a bathroom attendant. That's true. Bathroom attendants also famously aren't rich, though, so I'm not sure. I didn't say. They're getting tips. That's all I was saying. Again from The New Yorker, ask a vertical transportation industry professional to recall an episode of an elevator in free fall. The cab plummeting in the shaftway, frayed rope ends trailing in the dark. And he will say that he can think of only one.

[00:32:50] That would be what has got to be one of the craziest accidents we've ever read on this show. The day of the Empire State Building incident of 1945, in which a B-25 bomber pilot made a wrong turn in the fog and crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building, snapping the hoist and safety cables of two elevators. Both elevators plunged to the bottom of the shaft.

[00:33:17] One of them fell from the 75th floor with a woman aboard, an elevator operator. The operator of the other one had conveniently stepped out for a cigarette. And if this were happening in modern day, would immediately be the person that everybody said, hey, how'd that guy get off the elevators? What was he doing? He knew. He knew it was coming. By the time the car crashed into the buffer in the pit, again, 75 floors below, a thousand feet of cable had piled up beneath it, serving as kind of a spring.

[00:33:46] A pillow of air pressure as the speeding car compressed the air in the shaft may have helped ease the impact as well. The landing was not soft. The car's walls buckled and the steel debris tore up through the floor. And it was the woman's good fortune to be cowering in the corner when the car hit. She was severely injured, but alive. Wow. They did just make things better back then, even when they're breaking. So yeah, this woman essentially survived the prequel to 9-11. Yeah. I mean, I wish you wouldn't bring it up because now people are going to be like, how'd a B-25 hit it and it didn't fall?

[00:34:16] Fucking jet fuel doesn't get that hot. That is crazy though. I can't, I could not picture the rope coiling up beneath her in my brain, in my mind's eye. Yeah, the physics. No, regardless of how it got there. Yeah. I only pictured it in Looney Tunes cartoon drawing. Yes. For some reason, that entire rope and it landing on it was all done in the classic style of Looney Tunes. I mean, I believe the story. It's fairly well documented. And the air makes sense.

[00:34:45] The air makes sense. I'm just, because like things fall at the same speed, right? No matter, like that experiment, if you drop like a bowling ball and a penny from the same height or whatever, they fall at the same speed. But how many movies have you seen, whether it's a chandelier or a fucking elevator where the spy like clicks something to it and then shoots the elevator and flies to the top? No, I know. But how does the cable end up below the elevator? Because I think in my brain, I think it's connected at the top and bottom. Oh, I see what you mean. It's like this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:35:15] It's like a belt. You're right. You're right. And so if it cuts one way, then it would probably even shoot down because it's so tight. Yeah. No, you're right. You're right. So yeah, that's how that would happen. All right. Beer break. So if an elevator in 1945 can survive basically the prequel to 9-11, I'd like to think elevators now can survive almost anything. Their safety and resilience is partially due to the way modern elevators are constructed.

[00:35:45] Was it an Otis that she lived on? That's a good question. I would assume so because it doesn't seem like anyone else is making elevators. Well, I'm just saying because that's – do you remember in the – was it the sinkhole episode where like the Corvettes all fell on the ground? Yeah, yeah. And then Corvette used that as in like it still started after it fell on the ground. Like if I'm an Otis, I'm like you got to get to the newspapers like woman survives an Otis elevator. Maybe that's how he launched his empire. Maybe that was the happy accident that made him indestructible literally. That's what they named the building after. It's the Otis Empire of State Building.

[00:36:14] I'm taking this again from the New Yorker article. Quote, traction elevators, the ones hanging from ropes as opposed to dumbwaiters or mining elevators or those lifted by hydraulic pumps, are typically borne aloft by six or eight hoist cables, each of which according to the National Elevator Safety Code, and the code determines all, is capable on its own of supporting the full load of the elevator plus 25% more weight. Man, I wish everything was designed to be that good.

[00:36:44] Most things are barely designed. They're designed to just function. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think planes are. I think like, yeah, because they have to take into account. That's why it's like, oh, your bag has to be under a certain weight. But technically, even if your bag is one pound, they're always looking at it as 100 pounds. So that way, if everybody brought a thing, did you ever see the movie Stroker Ace? This is going to get us in trouble. Stroker Ace? Yeah. No. It's an old Burt Reynolds movie. It replays like a NASCAR driver. Okay. And it's shocking to me. First off, error.

[00:37:14] Audio file corrupt or missing. In the 70s. I was waiting to see how this was going to come back around. Yeah. Error. Audio file corrupt or missing. That's a, all right, well, Ed cut all that stuff up. Anyway. But I'll bring it up in a different episode for sure. There is another line, the governor cable, which is connected to a device that detects if the elevator car is descending at a rate 25% faster than its maximum design speed.

[00:37:39] If that happens, the device trips the safeties, bronze shoes that run along vertical rails in the shaft. These brakes are designed to stop the car quickly, but not so abruptly as to cause injury. They work. This is why free falling, at least, is so rare. So it sounds like what you experienced at Sony may have been the governor cable in action. Sure. Something went wrong. The governor cable recognized that the elevator was descending too quickly. Which is why it only went for like that half a floral floor.

[00:38:06] And it's why you didn't bounce your fucking head off the ground when it stopped because the shoes, the safeties on the sides slowed it. The governor, there's a golf carts have governors. Yes. And you can take them off and fucking really whip around. Yeah. Yeah. You can disengage a governor. Yeah. Uh, we do not recommend disengaging the governors on your elevators or your golf carts, but definitely not your elevators. One makes you cool.

[00:38:30] There are also hydraulic elevators, which quote, lift and lower elevator cars using a piston jack similar to the one auto mechanics used to lift automobiles. These are unlikely to fail and generally lack the safety features of traction elevators unless the builders install special aftermarket safety brakes. Wait, you said they're unlikely to fail but have no safety measures? Correct. Because they are unlikely to. But when they do fail, they do so more catastrophically than traction elevators.

[00:38:58] Although the good news here is that it's very impractical to build a hydraulic lift higher than six stories. So if something goes wrong, you're only going to fall 60 to 90 feet. The article notes then again, that means you'll hit the basement doing a brisk 48 to 53 miles an hour. You're going to hit it faster than a moped. Yeah. But yeah, I can't, I guess I can't help but notice that every car I've lifted also requests you put jack stands underneath it in the event that this thing fucking breaks. Yeah.

[00:39:25] I, I don't know that I've ever ridden in a hydraulic elevator. I mean, maybe I have, I guess I wouldn't know, but it seems rare that you'd ever be in one. So I feel like it's probably just the jack people being like, we got the technology. What else can we sell it for? Yeah. So due to the safety systems, like the ones found in traction elevators, the worst elevator accidents in history tend to be extreme outliers. A combination of various safety features failing at the same time.

[00:39:50] And just like with planes and other complex machines, every time you do have one of these combinations of problems that causes a disaster and deaths, engineers learn from what happened and they go, oh shit. Well, those four things all failed at the same time. I guess we better, you know, build in another redundancy or build in another way around this. So just like lots of other technologies, elevator failures tend to make elevators better. Yes.

[00:40:16] That said, there are still dozens or if not hundreds of elevator disaster stories to choose from. But I thought we'd start with the worst elevator accident in history, partially because it's, you know, the worst, but partially because it's so insane that it leaves us with some more practical and thus for my money, scarier elevator accidents to get into after. Okay. So the worst elevator accident in history happened. Well, what makes it the worst? The deadliest? The deadliest. Okay.

[00:40:46] Happened in South Africa in 1995 at the Val Reefs Mine. Yes, the worst elevator accident on record is also a mining accident, which is not exactly what you think of when you think of elevator disasters. In an apartheid state. In an apartheid state. Although in 1995, they were coming out, they were going to come out of it soon. Oh. I think. Don't tell the people who died in the elevator. If you had only hung out a little longer. Well, so get this. I mean, this is fucking crazy.

[00:41:11] So the day had just finished and over 100 miners had loaded into a two-floor elevator that was to take them a mile and a half back to the surface. Two-floor elevator? That's huge. Massive elevator. It's like a double-decker bus. Double-decker bus elevator. Lots of people. Long, long trip to the top. This mine is a gold mine. Yeah, that tracks. It's huge and very busy. So there's not just one way in and out. There's also trains running underground.

[00:41:39] So if you imagine a cross-section of the mine, you have elevator shafts going up and down. And then you have these trains crisscrossing horizontally through various layers of the mine. It's an underground city. Basically. One of these trains lost control and hurtled through the mine where it careened into the goddamn elevator shaft. Oh, no! Instantly severing the elevator cables and sending the elevator plunging back to the floor of the mine.

[00:42:05] This was more than 1,500 feet, which was enough to kill the occupants on its own. But then the fucking train fell into the mine shaft and landed on top of the elevator. Oh, my God. You're not doing a second take of that. I don't care how fucking bridge over the river Kwa you want to get. According to the New York Times article about the disaster, James Mott Latisi, president of the 339,000-member National Union of Mine Workers, was quoted as saying,

[00:42:32] Pieces of flesh were scattered all over the floor as a two-floor mining carriage was crushed into a one-floor tin box. In order to reach the site of the accident, rescuers had to walk two miles underground to Shaft 2, where the wreckage of the crushed elevator sits buried under the wreckage of the locomotive. As miners from other shafts milled about, seeking word of the fate of friends and answers about how the accident occurred, rescue workers removed 13 badly mangled bodies.

[00:42:58] Those who were able to reach the site at the bottom of the pit said the Shaft elevator had been squashed, the New York Times' words, squashed beyond recognition, and had been reduced by the impact of the train to less than half of its original height. Each of the two levels of the elevator is thought to have carried about 50 workers. Rescuers said it would take at least 24 hours to cut through the wreckage and remove the bodies. It's just a heap of mangled steel, Garth Ellis, a rescue team worker, told the South African Press Association.

[00:43:24] The bottom of the pit, he said, quote, is just full of blood and water. So fucking grizzly. Yeah, like 90% of our body is water. Well, I think the water might have just been from other mining activities, but... I guess the best thing in terms of like a rescue mission, it's like we got to get down there. Miners know how to navigate, stuff like that. Like it's, that's good, but you know, I don't know.

[00:43:48] Now, if you're telling me that each floor had 50 occupants, so we're looking at 100 people potentially who are squashed beyond recognition. Yeah. To me, I'm like, fill it in. This is their final resting place. But you know, in a greedy South African gold mine, there's like, there's gold under that wreckage. Fucking pick them up and go back to digging. Yeah. Like you're not gonna, like a little blood and water isn't gonna stop us from getting this gold.

[00:44:14] No, and the official statement about what happened raises a lot of questions that I'm not sure were ever really satisfactorily answered. First, it notes that the steel safety blocks that should have broken the 12-ton train's fall were inexplicably missing from shaft number two where the accident took place. Nothing like that can be anything more than negligence, Mr. Maltlizzi said, or Maltlizzi. The safety mechanisms were not in place. On top of that, the energy and mineral affairs minister said in a statement,

[00:44:41] the locomotive could not have moved as it did had it been properly controlled. The driver is alive, so he must have either jumped out of the locomotive or in any event was not in it, the statement said. Bro, how about that survivor's guilt? Yeah, I mean... Also, what are you, drunk? Officials indicated that the driver had been hospitalized for shock, but it remained unclear when he had left the train. And so then I looked and I couldn't find any follow-up about this guy or what happened to cause the train to lose control.

[00:45:08] Some people at the time speculated that maybe it was some kind of sabotage, but that was never followed up on either. So... I mean, that's a lot of coordination in terms of sabotage, like remove the things at the bottom, make sure this guy hits this thing. It seems crazy that you would build trains... Without a governor? No, well, yeah, trains that dead end at elevator shafts. That's why I think it must have derailed or something.

[00:45:33] Yeah, I think it did crash through more than it was supposed to, but it didn't crash through solid rock. You know, like it had a path to the elevator shaft, you know? So... That's probably the floor the movie theater was on. Like they had everything else in this mine. Yeah. So that is the deadliest elevator disaster. Another awful mining-related elevator disaster happened 50 miles south of the Val Reefs gold mine in a town called Welcome. Oh, shit. Welcome to... Welcome to hell.

[00:46:03] Welcome to hell, dude. Much like Orkney, one of Wellcome's biggest industries is and was gold mining. An industry that this article notes is not known for its elevator accidents, although maybe it should be because there's been two of these now. Are they both in South Africa? Yeah, they're 50 miles apart. That's what you're saying. Yeah, and this one was what? A blimp hit the elevator this time? This one... Close. What mode of transportation hit it? Close. Cement truck? On August 31st, 1987, it welcomes St. Helena gold mine.

[00:46:30] An explosion from a buildup of methane gas ripped through a part of the mine, killing 10 workers. The explosion also severed the cable of a mining elevator... These cables? Which was sent plummeting a full mile to the ground. I feel like that's funny, and I'm gonna interrupt real fast. I feel like what's crazy, not funny, but crazy, is this is the third story in which... Like, you start the whole thing by being like, elevators of all this redundancy. There's five of them. Each one can carry way more than it needs to.

[00:46:57] And yet, zero protection for severability? Like, yeah, five things don't matter if they're all severed. We got a fucking B25 or whatever, sever them all. We got a train, sever them all. We got whatever the hell this is, sever them all. Well, that's kind of why I'm saying, like, that's why I'm kind of doing these first, because the ultimate elevator nightmare is that you're in an elevator that just malfunctions and crashes, whereas these are these extreme outliers of... What's it cost to make them non-severable? 20 bucks?

[00:47:26] Throw, like, a metal sheet around it to help with this. Once you're tossing trains and methane explosions at them, it's harder to, you know... Sure, there should probably... Look, do say... There could be a rat eats them. Are South African gold mines famous for their safety precautions? Not necessarily. No, no. But I do think these are wildly, maybe not completely unpredictable, but wildly violent occurrences that I'm not sure there's much you could do.

[00:47:54] I mean, one thing you could do is have a wall so that the train doesn't have a path to the elevator shaft. That's true. I mean, I guess you might interview someone and be like, give me the top 10 most dangerous things in a South African gold mine that can kill you. And like, the elevator doesn't even make the top 10. Yeah. Yeah. Greed is at the top of that list. Hell yeah. All 52 workers on the elevator were killed. Too cheap to buy rope shields that were the fuck we were trying to develop.

[00:48:23] They should have covered the ropes in unobtainium paint. Oh my God. Unobtainium comes from a different episode, I think, at this point, but... All 52 workers on the elevator were killed, bringing the death toll to 62. 300 workers also working down the shaft managed to escape, including one person dubbed the Solitary Rescuer, according to the Minerals Council of South Africa. This rescuer managed to save several injured workers while hanging from a rope. And while their name isn't in any official sources, they were awarded a well-earned medal for bravery.

[00:48:52] It's fucking Mel Gibson going to make a movie about him? Pretty sweet. I mean... Did you see that movie? That's a good movie. Which one? Hacksaw Ridge. It's a good movie. I liked it. He hangs from a rope in Hacksaw Ridge? Yeah. There's a lot of rope-based heroism in that film. Oh, okay. And it's also... The thing that made me think of it is the term soul rescuer. Oh, yeah. It's definitely a good movie. I mean, I think Comic Steve was like he poo-pooed it, but I liked it. Nice. I'll have to check it out. As far as fears go, the body counts in these elevator disasters were very high, but they

[00:49:21] were caused by such an incredibly unlikely turn of events that it's a little less scary than some of the more common elevator failures and disasters out there. The worst non-mining elevator disaster happened more recently in China, Wuhan of all places. Oh, I like that. They have places where everyone makes the news for something good? So, the worst non-mining elevator disaster to happen in the world, but maybe not the worst disaster to ever happen in Wuhan, theoretically. Who knows? There's not much information out there.

[00:49:49] This happened in 2012, and there's not much information out there other than it happened at a construction site. It killed 19 people. The description I found of what happened is crazy. It reads, quote, according to local media, a malfunction occurred as the elevator was going up and it began to accelerate until it reached the top of the 34-story structure. When the elevator's ascent was halted at the top of the building, the steel cable snapped

[00:50:15] and the car plummeted 100 meters down, carrying all 19 workers to their death. That's an elevator that got possessed by a ghoul. That's a real life Tower of Terror. Yeah, it's Tower of Terror. The ghost of Rod Serling's Twilight Zone's Tower of Terror went to China and said, fuck you guys. You're going up. You ever been on Tower of Terror? Yeah, man. That's a great ride before they turned into Guardians, which sucks. Well, now all I'm going to be able to think about are these fucking poor 19 souls that

[00:50:41] went on an elevator to go hammer in some nails and got a... We ain't going. According to unnamed sources, the elevator was only supposed to be carrying a max of 12 people, so 19 would be way overstuffed, but there's... But that wouldn't make it go up faster. There's no indication what would cause such an insane malfunction. That's like a movie malfunction. Like a... Yeah, that's like an Angels in the Outfield if it was the opposite. The only thing I can think... And again, you know, we always like to put the caveat on this show. Ed and I aren't physicists.

[00:51:11] We barely have educations. But to me, it seems like that's some sort of weird counterweight thing that like... Like something dropped that would make them go up fast. Yeah. And then they hit the top. And then when they hit the top, everything just broke. And then they just fell. Yeah. Counterweight sounds right. But, you know, I don't know what kind of crazy... I don't know China. I'm not trying to say nothing about China and their construction. But every year there's like a new video of like...

[00:51:39] China puts up 2 million square foot warehouse in one day. It's like always like... Speed seems to be very important to Chinese construction. Yeah. And so maybe it's like... Where'd you put that counterweight? I don't know. Somewhere. I didn't have time to think about it. Well, they certainly went up fast. If speed was of interest to them, they got to the top real quick. They're breaking a lot of records and a lot of fucking elevator cables. They broke the sound barrier. It sounds like I'm way up. Shit. RIP God bless those people. RIP God bless. Now, look.

[00:52:09] I don't like how the worst... The two worst with a bonus third worst elevator disasters in history don't have much in the way of clear explanations about what went wrong. No. And you know that they... I don't know how courts work over there or companies or blame, but you know that company was fucking pumping their fists in excitement when they saw that it was 19 people when the thing was clearly labeled 12 or whatever. Yeah. Again, I don't see how it makes this incident happen,

[00:52:38] but you know they're like, oh, these idiots, they overloaded it. The company's not in trouble. No workman's gone. You know, the problem was that 19th guy was wearing his anti-gravity shoes. Oh, shit, dude. He had just won them in a raffle and he wanted to show them off at work. Yeah. From here, the news actually gets a little better for any of our elevator phobes out there listening. We're leaving China in gold mines? We're leaving China in the gold mines because the worst non-mining, non-construction elevator accident

[00:53:07] happened all the way back in 1904. Oh, wow. At a brown shoe factory in St. Louis. Like Brown Shoes was the name of the company? Or they just made brown shoes? No, the company was called Brown Shoe. Okay. They may have made brown shoes and named themselves Brown Shoe because that's what they did as companies want to do at that time. But I don't want to be misleading, darling. On January 13th of that year, a crowd of employees... You think it was a Friday? Friday the 13th? Ooh, maybe. 13th floor of an elevator? Maybe.

[00:53:36] Well, this wasn't the 13th floor, I don't think. But on January... I'm just saying if elevators, there's a famous 13th issue and there's Friday the 13th, it's happening on the 13th? On maybe Friday the 13th, but definitely January 13th of 1904, a crowd of employees... 1904 is 13 if you add it up? Is it? No, it's 14. Nine. One plus nine is 10 plus zero plus four. I was so close. You... Holy shit, I was so close.

[00:54:02] On January 13th of that year, a crowd of employees was waiting for the elevator at the factory when someone raised the elevator gate, causing 10 people to fall down the shaft. At least eight people were killed and the other two were described as fatally injured. Wait, I'm sorry. So there was no elevator there at all to begin with? Or there was an elevator? No, so... Because how do you fall down the shaft if the elevator's there? Hold on, we're going to get to that in a second. Was there 13 elevators? There were not.

[00:54:30] 13 elevators at 13 Dead End Drive. Do you remember that game? I do by name. I just remember the commercials. But yeah, I don't remember playing it. It doesn't matter. I found this kind of funny. The Wikipedia says that eight people were killed and two other were described as fatally injured. Do you find that hilarious, you sick fuck? No, it's... You found it funny? According to Wikipedia, it's unclear if those two succumb to their injuries, but I'm pretty sure fatally injured only has one meaning. Oh, yeah, true. So I don't think... Yep. So listen... No, I take it back. It is funny.

[00:54:58] Whatever nerd out there is updating the Wikipedia elevator accidents entries, get it through your head, buddy. Yeah. There's one kind of fatal injury, and it's the kind that takes you off this earth. Yep. So I did a little digging, and to my surprise... If that ceiling wasn't there, that elevator would have taken those people off the earth and woo on. It would have just gone all the way to space, dude. Yeah. I did a little digging, and to my surprise, the text of the article written about this disaster

[00:55:26] by the Decatur Herald in 1904 is actually available online. That's awesome. The headline reads, 10 dropped to their death. Employees of the Brown Shoe Company at St. Louis crowd at elevator, break down the guards, and then in smaller letters, and shove those next to the carriage into the shaft into a fatal fall of six stories. So what was this like, there were too many people, and then they got like accidentally pushed in? The story doesn't detail much more than the Wikipedia page other than the following, which I think clears a few of these questions up. Quote,

[00:55:56] James Johnson, the elevator operator, this fucking guy who was arrested pending an investigation. Oh, so he didn't die? No. Johnson said, the elevator door did not break, but that it had been raised by the employees while waiting for the car to descend to the floor, and suddenly the employees in the rear of the crowd began pushing, precipitating them down the shaft. Factory Superintendent Frey corroborated Johnson's story. So it sounds to me that what happened is there was an elevator packed full of people, the door was raised by accident,

[00:56:26] the people in the back for some reason panicked, and pushed the people in the front out of the elevator, is what it sounds like to me. No, they can't fall down the shaft. In my, are you sure it's not the people who were waiting for a slow thing, and they got tired, and they raised it, and then they got pushed in, and people in the back. Oh yeah, no, no, I guess it could mean that they were waiting for it to come down to their floor, and they were tired that it was slow. Oh, that's, this, your, your theory makes a lot more sense. They were tired it was slow,

[00:56:53] the doors opened before the elevator was there, the people in the back didn't realize that. We're just like, oh, I guess we're moving, the doors open. They start pushing, and then it pushes the front people into an empty shaft. Yes, Ed's correct, ladies and gentlemen. 10 points to Ed, my version doesn't make as much sense. But what the fuck was going, was it free money day in the lobby? Like, what were they, and it's like, oh, I can't even wait for the elevator to get here. Open the gate, and then it's like, oh, let's get, we gotta go right now. Do you know how miserable it probably was

[00:57:20] to work in a shoe factory in St. Louis in 1904? They probably wanted to be anywhere. Those people in the front probably jumped. Yeah, they were all, the door opened, and they were like, see ya. They were all homeowners. They bought their first house on discarded soles of shoes that you can turn in six shoe soles can get you a fucking two bedroom. Probably. So they were fine. They all wanted to get home to their homes. But realistically, yeah, they wanted to be like, just take the stairs. You're going down.

[00:57:50] True. It's a lot easier. Despite the relatively high body counts in these stories, I still wasn't finding the sort of nightmare everyday elevator disasters that I know are out there. You mean like just an average person like at the mall or something? Sure. Maybe those stories only end up with one person killed or maimed or maybe two. But if that person is you, it's still pretty bad. So I kept looking. I found a good Reddit thread called r slash elevator gore that I had to dare myself to open. And it's not nearly as bad as it sounds.

[00:58:19] It's mostly just security video of scary elevator happenings. I didn't see really much actual gore in there. Lots of near misses and people getting stuck. Was I on it? No. Was there me being like, Oh, I didn't see Ed. There weren't any good stories in there. It is. If you, if you enjoy freaking yourself out and elevators do it for you, r slash elevator gore is, is a subreddit you want to be in. But then, Ed, I found the good shit, the terrible shit, but the good, terrible shit, the shit that really keeps me up at night.

[00:58:49] There's a blog from, and once again, depends what order we air these episodes in, but a law firm of all places. Oh shit. I think this episode had the law firm talk. I can't remember. That's fine. There's a blog from a law firm, like we said. Yeah. Fucking law firms. They're really keeping those blog space alive. They are. Called 10 US elevator accidents since 2019. They're really keeping an up to date record. And they really deliver. Were you one of them? Call us. It's Sullivan. Yeah.

[00:59:19] Yeah. Now I'm not going to go through all of these because it turns out when you just start reading elevator accidents, a lot of them basically sound the same, but I'll cover the highlights here. So you can really get some elevator horror. Yeah. Very few of them are going to make the elevator fell out of the building into another building. Very few of them have elevators shooting up into space like Charlie and the chocolate factory. That might be the best one. You got to go to Asia for that. The first story on the list is the tragic story of Sam Waysbrin,

[00:59:48] who was crushed by an elevator in August of 2019. And this wasn't some raggedy ass elevator in the middle of nowhere or at Sony Pictures. This was the elevator of Sam's luxury apartment building in Manhattan. I know that's a notice. Where one bedrooms were going for almost 4,000 a month in 2019. Which means there's 7,000 in 2023. Which means probably renting the elevator would probably be 4,000 a month now in 2024. There's video out there of this accident. Wake up and get out of here.

[01:00:16] You know you can't be an elevator between office hours. Yeah. There's video of this elevator accident out there if you really want to feel bad. It's not gory, but it's very sudden and shocking. You do sort of see a guy get folded in half, but it's like very quick. I'm not watching it. So proceed with caution. I think I have the New York Post or the Daily Mail article linked in the notes and the video is in there. The New York Post has a pretty good description of what's on the security footage based on a building worker's description. He said,

[01:00:46] One woman stands waiting. The elevator door opens into the lobby and a man wearing a backpack emerges, then wheels around as the lift gives way and Waze Brand and five others go rocketing downwards. So woman's waiting, elevator door opens, guy comes out. I think he wheels around because he hears something. There's no sound in the security video, but he hears something. I don't know if it cracked or snapped or what, but so he turns and when he

[01:01:14] turns to see is Sam Waze Brand instinctively shooting his right hand out to grab the frame of the elevator door and he plants his right leg onto a sliver of lobby floor, but the elevator just keeps going down. Oh, so he's in the opening to get out, but the thing is not going to accordion accordion accordion. Yes. He just gets folded right in half. So he tries to jump out of it. Basically. He's like, oh, this he feels that this is happening.

[01:01:42] His initial reaction was to put his arm out so he could get off. The building worker said at that point, the elevator took him down. Now I feel I am always letting people go ahead of me when they leave. I'm always like after you. Yeah. Now I'm going to start pushing people out of the fucking way. I don't want to be the last one that he's the last one on the elevator and he fell. No, there were four other people, five other people in the elevator. It's a safety measure for you to push the other people out first because if the elevator falls, it's going to hit them. No, but did it continue to careen to the floor? Yes, but everybody else.

[01:02:12] So they all dead. No, they survived. Get the fuck out of here. How much rope bundled up below him? First, before we get to that. So did no one get out of the elevator? One guy gets out. Yes. That could be me. I could be the first one out. It could be. Yes. That's what I'm getting at. But that guy's also lucky that he didn't get folded in half because if he'd just been a second later. But he wasn't. That's true. He didn't let anyone go ahead of him. But listen, Ed, I want to share with you the wise words that the building worker quoted in the New York Post leaves us with. Okay.

[01:02:41] He says, jumping out of the car while it's still moving, you just don't want to do it. So building worker, you know, he's right. I will say in Sam Waysbrin's defense, RIP, God bless, anybody would. If you're at the edge of the elevator about to get out and you feel it buckle beneath you, you're not going to go, let me jump back in here. Let me ride this. Yeah. Like he made the right call. It's just, you know, he got fucked.

[01:03:05] It's just one of those things where if you ever showed a professional athlete doing something and then you just asked a person off the street to do the same thing and you like filmed it from the same side angle of like Michael Jordan, dunk a basketball, Chris Killary. Now you dunk the basketball and just look at the side by side photos in your mind. When you go up to dunk that basketball, you're like, I'm going to look like Michael Jordan. And then you watch back the footage and you look like a fucking idiot.

[01:03:33] I bet you that's what jumping out of an elevator is too. In his mind, he's like, I got this. I'm going to fucking, I'm going to leap out like it's nothing. I'm going to do a roll and I'm going to be like, did you guys see that? I almost died. But then they like cut to the footage of like not the image in your brain. And it's like, oh, he barely got out of that. I mean, yeah, the whole thing happened so fast that I'm not even sure there was no thought. It's just instinct. You know, it all happens in a split second.

[01:03:58] So in this case, the five people who remained in the elevator were rescued safely at the bottom of the building, probably because the governor and the brakes and like the whole system probably worked. It just didn't work fast enough. You know, it still fell a certain distance before it slowed down. Oh, you don't think it hit the floor? No, it didn't plunge out of control. It just descended way too fast. But they all got hurt. Oh, they remained also by the door closing. Like they also had like limbs and stuff. No, they stayed in the elevator. But then why were they maimed?

[01:04:28] They weren't. I didn't say they were maimed. Did you say named? No, I said they remained in the elevator and they were rescued safely at the bottom of the building. Okay, guys, I heard that they were maimed in the elevator, which is not the craziest thing to miss here because you just told me about a guy who was accordioned. Play it back in slow mo. I will. The five people who remained in the elevator remained.

[01:05:00] So they survived, but they have to go to like therapy because now they're sharing an elevator with a man who's been cut in half. Yeah. As to what went wrong, wouldn't you know it? Our old friend, we aren't sure exactly, is back. According to the New York Post, Kevin Doherty, a Rockland County based consultant who viewed the video several times on Thursday and has testified in hundreds of elevator accident cases. How did he get on that list? Like, how are you the guy, the expert? He's probably writing this blog. Yeah, for real. Probably his law firm.

[01:05:30] He said similar incidents he's investigated involved, quote, somebody manipulating the elevator safety circuit in the elevator machine room to troubleshoot the elevator. He says elevator controllers and computers are designed to prevent motion of the elevator when either the inside car door or the outside hoistway door is in the open position. In order for this event to occur, you would have to have a number of mechanical and electrical failures occur simultaneously barring human intervention. The odds of that happening are almost incalculable. Incalculable.

[01:06:00] So God, like God came for these people in Wuhan. God came for this guy. Yeah. Like God came for the fucking train elevator, like the sheer number of incalculable things that have to happen. I think what Kevin Doherty, Rockland County based elevator accident consultant. The mic work of his time. I think what he's suggesting here is not that an operator tried to kill anyone or did anything on purpose.

[01:06:25] I think he's suggesting that someone in the machine room saw there was a problem or I dug a little bit deeper and it does sound like these elevators, even though they were in a brand new luxury building, were reported to have some weird malfunctions over the years. And so I think somebody noticed, maybe not in that instant, but something probably happened that day and somebody was maybe trying to keep things running smoothly by like overriding something. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. If you're trying to troubleshoot something, I'm sure it's like, oh, well, I'm trying to figure out why this is happening.

[01:06:54] But the way to figure that out is to turn off the governor so I can count out. Okay, so it wasn't the governor and I'll turn off this thing to see if it was. And then it was five o'clock. So we went home. Oops. But yeah, as with all these other elevator disaster mysteries, we may never know. I did not find a lot of follow up about it. I mean, I think what happens in a lot of these cases is like there's probably lawsuits, there's settlements, there's hush hush, you know. Did you find any like culprit companies where it's like, well, you should have bought a notice because they went with us a galutha thu.

[01:07:24] No, I didn't. I didn't find 85% of these fucking. Wish.com elevators. Yeah, I should have. I should have Googled like most dangerous elevator company or something. I didn't. I think a lot of times it's not necessarily the elevator construction. It's the maintenance and upkeep of the elevators that seems to be the problem. It's everything. Life is maintenance and upkeep, bro.

[01:07:53] This list highlights not one, but two Philadelphia elevator disasters since 2019, making it one of America's worst cities for elevator accidents. It's one of America's worst cities for a lot of things. So that's in keeping with its reputation. They throw batteries at people. When they win. First, we've got the story of a man who sustained injuries after plummeting 10 floors within an elevator. This episode occurred on August 7th, 2020 at a construction site located in Kensington, Philadelphia.

[01:08:22] That's a bad neighborhood. Bad neighborhood. That's arguably one of the worst neighborhoods in all of America. Yeah. This guy also, he had the worst day ever in the worst neighborhood. It's the classic elevator nightmare in that he was in the elevator. He was on his way up. The cable snapped and descended or let's call it what it is. Fell 10 floors. And did it, was he, did he live?

[01:08:48] Because it fell on all of the Trank heads that were using Trank at the bottom of the elevator shaft. It fell on the 10 feet of flesh piled at the bottom of the elevator shaft. All these Tranked out Kensington. Uh, no. That's where, that's when we did the, whatever episode that was, or we talk about Trank, that was Kensington. Yes. Yes. That was, it's Kensington Ave, which I think is probably in the neighborhood of Kensington. But anyway, he did survive. I don't know what kind of injuries, but he survived. The next guy in Philly wasn't so lucky.

[01:09:16] On November 24th, 2023, a man was working inside a commercial warehouse undergoing renovations in Philadelphia and was within the elevator shaft when he either fell through the open shaft or was in an elevator car that plunged through the open shaft. It's a little unclear. Either way, he died from head trauma. So Philly just killing people left and right in the elevators. Another tragic. Philadelphia. Philadelphia. You're the first person to think of that, by the way. I think there was a comment called that.

[01:09:46] One way I don't usually imagine dying in an elevator accident is having the elevator fall on top of me. But that's what happened to a 72-year-old woman in Wichita County, Texas in 2021. Even worse, this was an in-home elevator, which is one of the last places that I would think an elevator would kill you. Would be in your home, falling on top of you. So it's like an older woman who needs an elevator to get to the second floor. Yes.

[01:10:12] I assume she had some mobility issues because no one is exactly sure how, but she somehow ended up beneath the elevator when it descended from the second floor to the first. That's murder. And remained trapped there, crushed for an indeterminate amount of time. And when she was discovered by a family member, help was called, but it was too late. It was the family member who killed her and waited an hour. Yeah. Because again, how did she end up under the elevator? And also, why wasn't her life alert on? I don't know. Maybe she fell asleep down there? Help me, I've fallen and I'm definitely not getting up.

[01:10:41] There's a bunch of other elevator tragedies discussed in that blog and all across the internet. But as I said, a lot of these tragedies start to blend together. Some of the details are different, but death is always dealt through a variety of free falls, crushings, suffocations, and manglings. If you want to read them all, the link is in the show notes. You could also just Google elevator deaths and choose your own adventure. There's plenty of them and they're all very frightening and horrible.

[01:11:08] You can also just add to your online dating profile, looking for someone to talk about elevator deaths with. Yeah. And they might have a bunch of stories you don't know. Yeah. So look, could be a great date. Take the stairs. Take the stairs. As I was going through these accidents though, I started to wonder how I could survive in a falling elevator. And I thought that might be a good place to wrap up this episode with some practical advice that you will almost certainly forget should you ever find yourself in an elevator plunging to the ground. Yeah. I'll start going to bridge things.

[01:11:37] You're like, open the window. Yeah. Honk the horn. Honk the horn. Depending on when this episode comes out, you either totally get all the bridge references or you're waiting for that glorious day when you do. Again, in an elevator, free fall plunging to the ground is the least likely way to die in an elevator. It has rarely ever happened. And the New Yorker tells us the only time that people even are sure that it did was when the B-25 crashed into the Empire State Building. Yeah.

[01:12:07] Trying to shoot down King Kong. Yeah. But, you know, the reason that I want to bring you survival tips for that particular instance is because there aren't really any survival tips for what happens if the doors close on you and fold you in half against the inside of the elevator. Yeah, I know. There's no, unless you're fucking Iron Man or Colossus and you can as quickly as a blink of an eye turn into steel. Yeah. Yeah. I'm pretty sure you're just going to get cut in half. Yeah.

[01:12:34] So really the only kind of elevator accident you can survive is the plunging to the ground one. So I wanted to try to bring you guys some tips. One of the best descriptions I've found for how to survive an elevator crash comes to us from LiveScience.com and they suggest the following. Quote. So you're in a falling elevator. That's how it opens? Yeah. So you want to be an elevator man? As if you'd be Googling this while it's falling. Like, so you're in a falling elevator. I do love, that was like a popular thing.

[01:13:02] Like the Simpsons always like had that whenever they had to have like a pamphlet or something. Yeah. So you're in love with your coworker. Yeah. So it's like always was the name of the pamphlets. Also, if this is intended to be read whilst falling in an elevator, they take a real long time to get to the lead here. You got to do like the airplane thing. Just have it all pictures. Yeah. So you're in a falling elevator. Life has given you proverbial lemons and you have seconds to make some lemonade or end up as pulp. Oh my God. What? What to do?

[01:13:30] Some people advocate jumping upward a split second prior to impact to reduce your impact speed, which is what I've always heard. That's what I thought. Yeah. But I, you know. I don't know how you know you're at the bottom. Yes. I don't know. Yeah. You kind of are just like, unless you're at like the, um, that like Westin hotel downtown from like true lies and stuff. Or if they're doing the like ding, ding, ding, ding on the, like in the movies where it's like boom, boom, boom that. Or I guess you just jump as much as you can and hope that the impact hits. At one of those intervals.

[01:13:59] This article says, assuming you retain the presence of mind and Olympic reactions to pull this off and x-ray vision, like we just said, you wouldn't know. You're pulp baby. Um, great. However, the best speed reduction you could hope for would be two or three miles an hour. More likely you'd hit your head on the ceiling and land badly exacerbating your injuries. So this article is saying jumping, even if you could do it, it's not going to help. It's not going to slow you down that much because you're still falling at the same speed as the elevator. Sure.

[01:14:25] Another suggestion holds that you should stand with your knees bent to absorb the impact like a skydiver. Theoretically, your legs would flex as you in the elevator touchdown, spreading your body's touchdown is a real. Yeah. It's not, it's not Eagle One or whatever. As you in the elevator explode upon impact. Theoretically, your legs would flex as you in the elevator touchdown, spreading your body's deceleration over a longer period.

[01:14:51] Impact force is proportional to speed and mass and inversely proportional to time and stopping distance. The longer the time spent stopping, the less the force. Yeah, but you're still going to break your ass though. When your ass comes down, your ass. The article tells us that the effectiveness of this approach at high speeds, however, remains unclear and research shows that you would likely be subjecting your knees and legs to greater injury risk at low speeds. This approach also keeps your body parallel to the lines of force, which increases the

[01:15:19] chance of bone breakage as you crumple to the floor under high load. With these factors in mind, the consensus view holds that your best bet. So remember this, if you leave this episode with a fact that you want to remember, it is this. If you find yourself in an elevator plunging to the earth, your best bet is to lie flat on your back on the floor and cover your face and head to guard against debris. Hitting the ground floor in this position spreads the force of impact across your body.

[01:15:48] It also orients your spine and long bones perpendicular to the impact direction, which will better protect them from crushing damage. Your thinner bones like ribs might still snap like twigs, but you're picking your poison here. Wait. So we have thong bones. Long bones. We have long bones and thick bones. No, we have long bones and thin bones. Yeah. Why wouldn't it be long bones and short bones and thin bones and thick bones? I don't know. Because they're not opposite. It sounds like we're making a witch's brew. Yeah, we're making homunculi.

[01:16:19] I guess. But the thing is, the woman who survived on the B-25 accident was cowering in the corner, like, was sitting on her ass, like, with her knees in her. That's how I imagined cowering. So there's a couple problems with this approach. This was actually listed second, but we'll hit it first since you just mentioned it. There's always the possibility that no matter how well you cushion for impact, something else will do you in. For example, the elevator car might be destroyed on impact, transforming the floor into a zone of impaling, lacerating, and crushing debris.

[01:16:49] Live Science mentions our old friend, Betty Lou Oliver, whose name I actually may have left out earlier. You did not mention it. I would have remembered that name. Her name was Betty Lou Oliver, who holds the Guinness World Record for longest fall survived in an elevator. And the article notes that had she been lying on the floor, she probably would have been killed. Oh, wow. So while the article is recommending that the way to survive an elevator plunge is by laying on the floor, the only person to ever survive an elevator plunge... Was not. Was not.

[01:17:18] So it also notes that another problem with this is that with your body positioned flat on the floor, your soft tissues, including your brain and organs, absorb the full impact. What about the hard tissues? There's a long bone, short bone, thick bone, thin bone, hard tissue, soft tissue. Get a big fucking hard on and lay on your stomach, and then it'll boing. I don't think that's how... We're don't... I don't think our dicks work like Tigger. Considering that even low speed fender benders can cause severe damage, it's easy to imagine

[01:17:46] the consequences of a sudden stop at 50 plus miles an hour. They would be dire indeed. Yeah. Like, that's the biggest bullshit thing about Iron Man. The guy... You land once in that suit. You're goo, bro. Yeah. Like, he slams down on the ground for 100 miles an hour. And then, finally, you have to remember that in a falling elevator, I think I sort of mentioned this a minute ago, you are in free fall relative to the car. In other words, you feel weightless and experience no force pulling you towards the floor.

[01:18:13] So, in order to lie down flat on the floor, you'd have to find some way to pull yourself down and then hold yourself there without bouncing off the floor. Oh, wow. Yeah. So, it's like Inception where they're all kind of flowing up. Yeah. I mean, now you fell a little bit... I mean, you'll find the floor real fast when it lands. Yeah. No, I know. For sure. So, maybe you could just, like, spread your arms and prepare yourself to be on the floor sort of, like, face down and... I mean, that's just... I don't know. Get liquefied. You're going to get liquefied. You're getting liquefied no matter what.

[01:18:42] Even taking all these factors into account, lying flat on your back, if you can manage it, is still probably your best bet for surviving a falling elevator. Realistically, if you're just trying to survive and the supine approach... If you're just trying to survive. No, I had a couple other things I wanted to do well. I wanted to make a salad on the way down, too. You could be reading this article. Realistically, you're just trying to survive and the supine approach gives the best odds. It might also be the statistically best option for reducing injuries over a shorter drop.

[01:19:10] Honestly, I think the on-your-back option, the nice thing is, like, at the end of the day, it's impossible the time to jump anyway. At least with this, you're not trying to... You just get down and hold on. That's it. Good luck. Now, have you ever seen video of the, like, wearable helmet that it recognizes you're falling off a bike and then it, like, inflates around your head? No. It's real. It's a real thing. I don't know how it works exactly, but I've seen some video. I'm going to start wearing one of those for, like, my whole body. Yeah.

[01:19:37] So in the event that it realizes I'm falling, it, like, just inflates and I bounce around. That'd be pretty cool. Yeah, I'd be sick. I'd buy one of those. I'd buy it and wear it every day. And then everyone was like, why do you wear the same outfit every day? But yeah, how bulky would it be pre-inflation? Would you be walking around looking like a big old jelly bean? Yeah, I think you would. I think you'd be the Michelin man. But, you know, jokes on them when the elevator breaks and you're the only one in the piles of goo who survived. Dude, I'll tell you what. Otis made his name on elevators.

[01:20:05] Hose Boys Industries will make our name on this little jelly bean suit. People will be like, is that a Hose Boys? Yeah, it is. Is that a Hose Boys? Oh, yeah, it is. I only go with, you know, I like to go with the classics. It's the new one. Yeah. Hose Boys Mach 2 jelly bean protector suit. Yeah, Mach 1 was 44 inches thick. It turns out Mach 1 kept catching on fire, so. Yeah, I survived a lot of accidents, but if it got hotter than 71 degrees outside. The entire suit burst into flames.

[01:20:33] But Mach 2, about the same result. So you're actually just less people that are bursting into flames. So, Ed, where would you place elevators on the fear tier? Not as high as wearing the Hose Boys jelly bean lights on fire suit. Like I said, I've been in it and it felt like a 9 at the moment. In that moment, it was a hard 9. But like I said, I'm not taking the stairs. So it kind of lives at a 4 otherwise. Interesting.

[01:21:03] Yeah, I would say that the idea of it is definitely like an 8 or a 9, especially because you experienced it and put it at a 9. That kind of tells me how scary it is. But the reality of it is in terms of... Are you thinking about it when you get on? Yeah. Like, I mean, I am thinking about it when I get on. Will it ever make me not get on? Probably not.

[01:21:27] I'll probably always get in an elevator and zoom to the top and hopefully not through the top. Yeah. But yeah, I guess I'll put it at like a... I'll put it at a 3. I'll go one lower than you out of respect because you experienced it. So... I almost got that Wuhan whiplash. No, mine was going down. Well, yeah. I mean, RIP God bless to all the victims in this episode. We're sorry that you went out this way, but look, we all got to go sometime and getting

[01:21:55] a train falling on your head is not half bad as far as these things go. It's pretty quick. Yeah, let's hope. But I guess that's it for this episode, Ed. Yeah, we've got a couple this season of, you know... Modern Marvel's gone wrong. Yeah, modern Marvel's gone wrong. Transportation terror. Yeah. What did you say earlier that a guy referred to himself as a vertical transportation expert? Oh, that was... I was... I don't know if that's a real term from the industry or if that's just a term that the

[01:22:24] writer in The New Yorker was using. It seems crazy that anyone would just like be like, what do you do? What does your husband do? Oh, he's a vertical transportation expert. Yeah. He doesn't do anything horizontal. He said, ask a vertical transportation industry professional to recall an episode of an elevator in free fall. Vertical transportation industry professional. If I met someone who told me that that was their job... You'd push them down an elevator shaft. We'd get married. No, it's just a crazy... Why would you say I do elevators? I think it's just a made up.

[01:22:53] I think he's just being a little... A fucking little stinker. Yeah, he's being a little stinker in The New Yorker. Fair. All right, guys. Well, that's it for this episode. Stay safe. If you feel an elevator collapsing beneath your feet or if you feel an elevator falling away, get to the floor. We love you. I'm Chris Killari. And I'm Ed Ficola. And the show, as you know, is scared all the time. And we will see you next week. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Scare All The Time is co-produced by Chris Killari and Ed Ficola. Written by Chris Killari.

[01:23:23] Edited by Ed Ficola. Additional support and keeper of sanity is Tess Feifel. Our theme song is the track Scared by Perpetual Stew. And Mr. Disclaimer is... And just a reminder, you can now support the podcast on Patreon. You can get all kinds of cool shit in return. Depending on the tier you choose, we'll be offering everything from ad-free episodes to producer credits, exclusive access, and inclusive merch. So go sign up for a Patreon at scaredallthetimepodcast.com. Don't worry. All scaredy caps welcome.

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