Julijonas Urbonas is a PhD candidate in London’s Royal College of Art Design Interactions department. He calls his area of specialization “Gravitational Aesthetics.”
On the CBC Radio program Day 6 (October 28, 2011) Urbonas told host Brent Bambury that the concept was to design the “ultimate roller coaster…in terms of thinking of a roller coaster as a horrifying, thrilling machine.”
Perhaps, he’s channelling John Allen, former president of the Philadelphia Toboggan Company and a roller coaster designer. Allen once said that, “the ultimate roller coaster is built when you send out twenty-four people and they all come back dead. This could be done, you know.”
A Purely Theoretical Exercise
Urbonas has invented a theoretical roller coaster that would be lethal to anyone riding it. Writing for Discovery News (September 2011) Amy Enchelmeyer notes the coaster would involve a lengthy ride up to a height of 500 metres (about 1,600 feet). (The tallest amusement-park roller coasters in the world rise a mere 110 metres).
The climb would be “followed by a massive fall and seven strategically sized and placed loops. The final descent and series of loops take all of one minute. But the gravitational force - 10 Gs - from the spinning loops at 223 miles per hour (358 km per hour) in that single minute is lethal.”
There are seven loops and the designer says that if the rider doesn’t die in the first or second loop, “the third or fourth will do the job for sure.”
Death by through Loss of Consciousness
Urbonas explained to the CBC that the half-kilometre plunge, followed by the series of loops, would generate centrifugal forces so huge that, “blood is rushed towards the extremities, so there is no blood left in your brain.”
The condition is called cerebral hypoxia and is said to be one of the least unpleasant ways to die. First, vision starts to change with blurring and loss of colour though a process called g-force loss of consciousness and, just before passing out, there are dreamlike experiences.
“This series of experiences are quite unique,” says Urbonas, “and quite pleasurable and most interestingly accompanied by euphoria.”
Writing for New Scientist (October 2007) Anna Gosline describes the sensations people have who go through a near-death by drowning when the brain is starved of oxygen: After panic “a feeling of calmness and tranquility” sets in. Similar euphoric conditions have been reported by astronauts subjected to G-force tests in centrifuges.
Death comes very quickly as the brain is starved of oxygen.
The Ride to the End
On his website Julijonas Urbonas describes the roller coaster ride: “Seated, harnessed with a health monitoring system, and strapped to the seat of a single-seat coaster vehicle, you are slowly towed to the top of the drop-tower.”
The trip up takes about two minutes and gives the passenger time to contemplate what she or he is about to do. At the top, “You relax and press the FALL button. Whirrr…swish – the ultimate surrender to gravity!”
The designer stresses that his machine is purely hypothetical and he has no plans for building the ultimate roller coaster. However, this has not stopped several people from contacting him and offering to be guinea pigs in the first trials of the device that Urbonas says would cause a death of “elegance and euphoria.”
Cultural rather than Medical Euthanasia
Urbonas says his design is a departure from the medicalized form of euthanasia that is legal in countries such as Switzerland and the Netherlands.
He writes that, “There is no special ritual, nor is death given special meaning except that of the legal procedures and psychological preparation. It is like death is divorced from our cultural life…But if it is already legal, why not to make it more meaningful?"
The designer is quoted by Metro (U.K.) as saying his machine celebrates “the limits of the human body but also the liberation from the horizontal life, this ‘kinetic sculpture’ is in fact the ultimate roller coaster.”
Dr. Peter Saunders hopes it never goes beyond the designer’s imagination. He’s with anti-euthanasia group Care Not Killing and he told Metro: “Euthanasia rightly remains illegal. Let’s hope this imaginative method never becomes legal.”
Sources
- “Suicide by Roller Coaster.” Amy Enchelmeyer, Discovery News, September 19, 2011.
- “Terminal Rollercoaster.” CBC Day 6, October 28, 2011.
- "Death Special: How Does it Feel to Die." Anna Gosline, New Scientist, October 13, 2007.
- "Ethanasia Roller Coaster Designed to Kill Riders." Metro, April 26, 2011.
Rupert Taylor - Rupert Taylor is the editor of a magazine that provides background to current events.
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