Odd Images of Escape Chute Lead to Better Story

Jason Torchinsky is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Jason has a book out now, Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is a tinkerer and artist and writes for the Onion News Network. He lives with a common-law wife, five animals, too many old cars, and a shed full of crap.

I originally scanned these images from yet another old 1970s Popular Science from my big stack purely for aesthetic reasons: these illustrations, out of context, are baffling and oddly appealing.

But then I read the article, about the Zephinie Escape Chute-- a sort of flexible nylon and fiberglass tube used to rescue people from emergencies in skyscrapers and other situations where the big problem is the distance between the people and the hard, unforgiving ground. There also seems to be a story behind this all-- a bitter, determined story, as Zephinie never seemed to have gotten certification in the US, and feels that sinister, unfair forces were at play.

The website has a bit of that Dr.Bronnerish rambling quality, but the idea certainly seems sound, and is in place in Europe and Asia. Plus, the site references some fascinating metrics like "90 teenagers evacuation per minute." I think the "x teenager evacuation/min" standard is one that probably has lots more use than we think.

For something that I thought was just a funny visual image, I stumbled upon a very interesting device and a compelling story. Not a bad deal from a 32-year old magazine.

• [deckard68]

  In America, the rate would be 1x fat person clogging the tube.

• [mrgaric]

  I remember this article and think of it often. It would have required several stops to excessive speed, but it would have better than what was had on 911. These things (or any other means of escape) weren’t used for aesthetic reasons and because it was assumed that any fire could be contained.
  That’s a lot assumptions.
  Most skyscrapers have no realistic contingency or any unforeseen accident or emergency. If accidents don’t happen in the way the architects would like, there will be lives lost.

• [its_called_liberty]

  These things look great and they do exist! I did a quick search and found

  Awesome 70′s style promo video:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTXq9ilCPDg

  Manufacturer site:
  http://www.escape-chute.net/neu/uk/products.php

• [redesigned]

  Alternate Title: How to give birth to a 6 inch high fully grown man with clothes on.

  Seriously though, the escape chute rocks!

• [Mark Temporis]

  I think the ‘fat guy clogging the tube’ issue could be easily solved by kicking him in the head. If the velocity isn’t an issue, it wouldn’t be all that painful.

  Besides, you’d have regular ‘fire drills’ which would probably attract crowds and be a whole lot more fun than the normal kind.

• [Bucket]

  That’s exactly what it’s like when I have bad heartburn – a three inch tall Mandy Patinkin wedged in my esophagus kicking me in the esophageal sphincter.

  Usually means I’ve eaten too much lamb vindaloo.

• [Losrandir]

  My High School got this kind of emergency exits in all classes (it was a nine-storey building) that neves was tested, but all of us decided not to use it in case of emergency ’cause it looked like a suicidal machine.

• [Takuan]

  at least Lemmiwinks had a helmet with a candle.

• [nanuq]

  Disaster survivors have a hard enough time without having to relive their own birth as well. Does someone slap them on the behind when they crawl out?

• [Brainspore]

  @ MrGarlic #2:

  How do you make a contingency plan for an unforseen emergency? If you can plan for it then the emergency is no longer unforseen.

  I kind of doubt these would have done much good for most of the people killed in 9/11 anyway. Even if it was possible to make a tubular slide long enough to get down from the top of the WTC, the evacuees would have had to pass through a hellish inferno of burning jet fuel and debris on their way down.

• [Takashi Omoto]

  Look like 70′s Vorarephilia to me:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vore

• [nehpetsE]

  if the people didn’t look so square, these could be stills from “The Forbidden Zone”

  http://www.forbiddenzonethemovie.com/

• [IamInnocent]

  With my luck I’d hit some hammerheads or others before coming to safety…

• [sg]

  Looks like the friction would BURN YOU ALIVE. Or at the very least BURN YOUR ELBOWS.

  @11, I accuse you of making up that wiki page for the sole purpose of posting that comment.

• [Takuan]

  fifty gallon drum of KY at the top should solve that.

• [Anonymous]

  I’ve been in one of these at a theme park somewhere as a kid. Recall them being shown as a way to quickly get crews off oil rigs as well.

  You got into a denim bag to ride down, sorta like riding those big slides at a carnival. We were maybe 3-5 stories up and it seemed scary at the time, but it was kinda cool.

• [Anonymous]

  My school in Japan used an escape chute (I lack the memory to tell if it was close to one of these); and it was strong enough to hold up a 200 pound foreigner. Definitely not 90 people per minute-you had to twist yourself manually several times-but certainly seemed capable enough to do the job.

• [TheCrawNotTheCraw]

  @14,

  I agree.

  And elderly people would be unable to maintain whatever posture is necessary to use the device, so I think I know why the unit was never certified: it doesn’t work. Children and the elderly would plunge to their deaths; Darwinism in action. And the claustrophobic would probably have heart-attacks, but who cares about them (sorry, just a bad joke).

  But I’d pay money to see 90 teenagers try it. Wonder how many pregnancies would result “on the way down.” ;-)

• [Takuan]

  heh! it ends in a garburator mounted on a garbage truck.

• [LYNDON]

  I think the “x teenager evacuation/min” standard is one that probably has lots more use than we think.

  I once heard of an author being fascinated with all those girls/boys-own stories of children tying their bedsheets together and climbing out the window.

  He though the phenomenon deserved its own name. He wanted to call it juvenile auto-defenestration

• [Anonymous]

  I recall seeing on BBC’s Tomorrows World a similar idea, although it involved a deployable tube with a series of fabric diaphragms to break the fall of the escapee, the idea being a lot of short falls is better than one big one…
  There was also an older idea that replaced a stair-well with spring loaded wooden platforms in a zig-zag fashion, the escapee would roll from one platform to the next. Reckon that idea would have caused some dislocated limbs at least.

• [Rustle-T]

  I love how most of the people in the chute seem to be enjoying the ride. In some ways I think that’s appropriate, since every fire alarm we had at our office was a fun excuse to get coffee or smoke. Even the baby loves it.

• [middleclass]

  I recently saw a TV programme on the Guiana Space Center, which uses chutes like these in their sattelite fueling building. While filming, there was an emercency alarm and everyone evacuated via the chutes in minutes. It seemed to be a very effective method.

• [Takuan]

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASrvaPiYw6M

• [bentleywg]

  Tall office buildings with windows that open?

• [Takuan]

  you throw someone through the glass first.

• [Anonymous]

  It looks like a perfectly happy middle aged man working his way up a big intestine. Alert Richard Gere!

• [Anonymous]

  If the fall didn’t kill you, the static buildup would.

  Note to self: never wear wool or silk in skyscrapers equipped with ZEC. Definitely not both at the same time.

• [aeon]

  It looks like a lot more fun than queuing up in a dark stairwell waiting to burn alive. The demo videos from different companies do seem to feature slim Asian escapees though. Here’s another:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8g7AXTzD_I

  The (loudest) male instructor tells her to “Pull your arms in to go faster”, and on exiting she jumps up and down exclaiming “Wow, what fun!”…

  @18 THECRAWNOTTHECRAW – video of a small child using one solo:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoCnV_bKa2M

  I guess kids smaller than him could be carried in an adults arms.

• [findmorefollowers]

  I know it is just an illustration, but it looks as though the man is making some effort… like he’s stuck!

  more followers on twitter

• [Takuan]

  my suggestions never catch on
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AETyNpe4LE

• [Anonymous]

  Can’t they make it fully transparent, or at least with “windows” every feet or so? It would be less freaky for the claustrophobic.

  And the idea of diaphragms every few meters is also interesting, maybe figure out how to open up the hole only when the segment below you is empty, that way you can feed it even more people…

• [Anonymous]

  had jump out from 15th floor whilst stay in Islamabad, pakistan in other design without burn my elbow. Zep is not the inventor as japan has it long before 70′s.

• [Marky]

  Didn’t the jewel thieves in “A Fish Called Wanda” escape down one of these?

• [Eric K Hooper]

  The Vertical Escape Chute was invented by Gerrard Zephine in 1973 and patented in 1976.

  Today there are in excess of 100,000 escape chute installations, most being in Asia.

  The vertical escape chute developed by Gerrard Zephine can evacuate between 25 and 33 evacuees per minute.

  To date the highest unit installed is around 50 floors high.

• [Anonymous]

  These are standard tech on oil rigs. They are slightly different, with more of a corkscrew shape, but essentially the same thing.

  You don’t die when you use them, contrary to some of the comments here ;P

  http://www.hermesenterprises.in/escape.htm

• [Anonymous]

  As a kid I remember seeing that graphic (or something that looked remarkably like it) in a high-rise in Benidorm, Spain back in the mid-1980s. We were visiting some friends there and I was fascinated with the idea that everyone could escape from the building in a big tube (plus I totally wanted to try it out). I always thought it was weird that I never saw a system like that in North America.

• [jtegnell]

  At the high school where I teach in Japan, every year they set one of these up, and 10 out of each class of about 40 kids get to go down the chute.

  Ostensibly if there is a fire, and all four sets of stairs are blocked by flames while access to the single chute packed in the middle of the third floor is somehow not obstructed, and the kids have the presence of mind to unpack it, toss it down, and someone down below opens the base and latches the somewhat complicated set of hooks and eyes up and then goes and fetches the large mattress-like landing surface stored in another building (which, hopefully, is not on fire also), everyone will be okay.

  In reality, though, it’s a reason not to have fifth-period classes and to go zipping down a chute, so this activity gets high approval from the kids.

  The faculty room has one, too, but we don’t get to use it unless there actually is a fire.

• [Anonymous]

  I was in one! They used it in an amusement park in Jersey for a ride at the end of a haunted house. I actually liked it (and got a date with Darth Vader at the end of the day).

• [Klink]

  Parachutes?

• [monstrinho_do_biscoito]

  FRICTION BURNS