If I was in a building with 6 floors and it collapsed, what floor would be most likely to have survivors?
In: Engineering
First floor. Falling buildings have inertia, and by default the highest floors gain the most inertia when collapsing.
Since your probability of survival mostly depends on variables like not receiving a deadly blunt trauma from falling structures, and not being violently crushed by collapsing debris, there is undenyable more probability of survival on the ground floors.
If your fear of being crushed by 6 floors ahead of you sounds deadly, that’s because it is very deadly. Probability of survival if a building with 6 floors collapses is low in any case, but there are pockets of liveable space that form, which is where survivors can be found.
These pockets will most likely form in the lower levels, where the building is already reinforced to support the weight of superior floors.
I think in most cases where large structures collapsed survivors ended up being from the bottom or even the basement where people just ended trapped under rubble that arranged itself in such a way as to not pres down on them.
Of course a repeated pattern in those cases is that people who survived the initial collapse ended up drowning, which is not really an improvement.
Mostly I think it depends on the building and the circumstances, but I have never heard of anyone who was on the top of building and survived riding the collapse of the structure down.
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