[ANON POST] Effects of falling on bodies/corpses

Jun 04, 2013 07:29

Setting: This isn't really relevant, except that I am referring to bodies falling off/out of buildings in a city (as opposed to airplanes)

Search attempts: I googled "what does a body look like after falling from a building" (surprisingly Google auto-filled this for me) and "how can the body survive freefall" and "from what height can a body survive a fall." I got forum posts with warning headings like "NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART" which unnerved me. I checked the "~forensics: corpses" tag and didn't find anything, BUT my Google search DID turn up THIS post: http://little-details.livejournal.com/2447392.html but it didn't quite answer my question. I also found this thing (http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2004/may/20/thisweekssciencequestions2) in The Guardian which was sort of helpful in answering my second question.

Here are my questions:

1) What does a body look like after WALKING (not jumping) from a building that is say, 15-stories high? Would it look differently than a body that was thrown or pushed or the body of someone who jumped? I want to describe this in my story, where it is a traumatic incident witnessed by a character.

2) How many stories could a person survive a jump? Floors 1-3? What bones are likely to break? (Sorry if that's a dumb question, but I really don't know!) After suffering that kind of break, would the bones ever regain their original strength? I am assuming, but not sure, that bones that had been broken more than once or even twice are easier to break successively?

Thank you very much!

~medicine: injuries: broken bones, ~medicine: injuries (misc), ~forensics: corpses

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