building help: If you want to commit suicide, how tall of a building would you need to jump off of? - Help.com

We’re not allowed to actually say because although this is your post anyone in the world could theoretically read it which would not be good. And I think everyone has a good idea of just how tall something has to be in order for that to be the result.

Well, if I were to jump off a building, wanting to die, I would not go for anything less than freakishly tall. Like, Empire State Building height. But, logically, you could die off of falling something only like 10 feet, depending on how you land… O.o

Better to have it too tall rather than too short.
Don’t want to accidentally survive the fall, become crippled for life and then not even have the ability to suicide anymore, thereby making your life a living hell. Maybe even become a vegetable.

There is one more thing to think about. The taller the building, the longer the fall, the more time you would have feeling sick inside, thinking about all of the things you are going to miss, thinking about the grief you are going to give to those who love you and wondering how much the impact is going to hurt. The more time you would have to regret your action. The more time you would have to contemplate your imminent death, had you decided, the moment you slipped off the roof, “Oh no, I don’t want to die!”

There is one more thing. Can anyone really be sure that there is no afterlife? Many cultures believe that if one commits suicide one can have a very unpleasant experience in the after life. I have no idea what the reality of the situation might be. Life after death is a matter of pure speculation to most of us. We have never met anyone who has visited the after life and come back to tell the tale. No, I will let Shakespeare thick your blood with cold instead, here are the words he put into the mouth of his Prince Hamlet, who speculated on this very question thus:

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

Seriously, if I was to leap off a building to die, I would make sure to go in style. Get a running start and do as many flips and spins as I could before I hit the ground. X_X
A fool be he who commits such an act, however.

No need to think about the fall if you inhale some chloroform on the edge of the building.

mmm… hard question why a building and not a bridge? anyway it has to be 15,20 i guess just so u can be sure to die of a hart attack before u hit the ground, or to think how stupid it was to jump… instead of doing something more clean.. blood everywhere..guts…people watching ur guts noooooo¡¡¡¡

True,

But the dread of something after death,
That undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, might sill puzzle the will

Sorry, I meant “still puzzle the will” not “sill puzzle the will”. I hate my computer keyboard. It keeps trying to make me look dyslexic! I think I might have to throw it off of a high building.

chata wrote:
mmm… hard question why a building and not a bridge? anyway it has to be 15,20 i guess just so u can be sure to die of a hart attack before u hit the ground, or to think how stupid it was to jump… instead of doing something more clean.. blood everywhere..guts…people watching ur guts noooooo¡¡¡¡

I’ve seen people jump from 30 feet and come out without even a broken limb… -_-
But, of course, they know what they are doing and rolled out of it…

Richard2000 wrote:
Sorry, I meant “still puzzle the will” not “sill puzzle the will”. I hate my computer keyboard. It keeps trying to make me look dyslexic! I think I might have to throw it off of a high building.

I know what you mean there! XD

I lived in Highgate once, next to a bridge over the A1, which is officially called the Archway Bridge, but which everyone knows as the suicide bridge, because of the number of people who have committed suicide by throwing themselves off of it.

When I first moved to Highgate, a taxi driver told me a story about a chap who tried to throw himself off of the bridge just as a lorry full of hay was going underneath it. Apparently he broke his thumb but was otherwise unharmed.

I don’t know whether the story was apocryphal or not.

Richard2000 wrote:
I lived in Highgate once, next to a bridge over the A1, which is officially called the Archway Bridge, but which everyone knows as the suicide bridge, because of the number of people who have committed suicide by throwing themselves off of it.

When I first moved to Highgate, a taxi driver told me a story about a chap who tried to throw himself off of the bridge just as a lorry full of hay was going underneath it. Apparently he broke his thumb but was otherwise unharmed.

I don’t know whether the story was apocryphal or not.

:D Poor guy. Pretty lucky though.

4real??? i had never seen people jumping from buildings, i was just guessing honestly. in my country they all go to a bridge named el puente del incienso and most of them dont die is so sad¡¡¡¡

Richard2000 wrote:
True,

But the dread of something after death,
That undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, might sill puzzle the will

When I said the above, it was in answer to Anonymous’s clip about the chloroform.

Unfortunately, Chata beat me to the draw, which makes my answer looks rather silly. Sorry chaps.

In Istanbul there is a huge suspension bridge over the Bosphorus. It must be nearly a mile long. One side of the bridge is in Europe, the other side is in Asia. There is a walk way at the side of the road, on which it would once have been possible to walk from Europe to Asia, or vice versa. One cannot do it any more. They had to close the walk way. Too many people were jumping off it to their deaths.