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In a falling elevator, lying on your back and covering your head is the best strategy to distribute impact throughout the body. Standing or jumping can cause serious injury. Betty Lou Oliver survived a 75-story fall in 1945, but wasn’t lying down.
There are no good options when you’re in an elevator that has somehow broken free and is hurtling downwards at breakneck speed. Scientists say the best strategy is to lie on your back and cover your face and head. When you reach your destination, the impact will be distributed throughout the body, more or less, and the spine and the longest bones will be perpendicular to the force of the impact. If you simply stand up during impact, your legs and knees will likely snap like twig. If you try to jump upon impact (good luck), your body will still take a terrible blow. Survival should be the goal, and trying to stay prone is probably the best way to do this, other than taking the stairs next time.
On the other hand:
With your body flat on the floor, your soft tissues, including your brain and organs, will absorb the full impact.
In a falling elevator, you will be virtually weightless. To lay down, you’ll need to find a way to pull yourself down and keep you there.
Betty Lou Oliver holds the Guinness World Record for the longest surviving elevator fall. She survived a 75-story fall (more than 1,000 feet or 305 meters) in an Empire State Building elevator in 1945. The coiled disconnected elevator cable at the bottom of the shaft softened her landing. She wasn’t lying down.
