The dawn of the 21st century brings with it a haste toward optimizing the delight and efficiency of every aspect of life with Silicon Valley precision. Companies across the globe want to make everything from the perfect phone to the perfect car to the perfect thermostat to the perfect payment system. But what about the perfect tool for committing suicide?
In writer/director Glenn Paton’s new short film—shown below and entitled H Positive—a very well-off Wolf of Wall Street type of guy finds out that he has a terminal illness, and wants to end his life on his own terms. He’s never played it safe, though, and he’s not going to start now. And that means building a gigantic roller coaster that will plunge him down a monstrously steep incline, and then rocket him around a consecutive series of loops that will starve his brain of oxygen and ultimately kill him off swiftly and painlessly.
And if you think this literal deathtrap sounds insane, you may be right. But somebody still wants to actually build it.
The “Euthanasia Coaster”—which has already been designed and modeled—is the brainchild of Julijonas Urbonas, a Lithuanian designer, engineer, theme park aficionado, and PhD student at the Royal College of Art in London. And according to Urbonas, it is a ride “engineered to humanely, with euphoria and pleasure, kill a human being.”
The Euthanasia Coaster kills by inducing brain hypoxia—a shortage of oxygen flow to the brain—by sending somebody off a roughly 1,600-foot 90-degree vertical drop, and then exposing users’ bodies to 10 Gs of force for a solid minute as its wound through a series of shrinking loops. For reference, the most gnarly of theme park roller coasters top out at around 6.3 Gs, and only deliver that force for a few seconds.
Urbonas claims that this is a good way to perform euthanasia, because it’s been documented that when people lose oxygen to their brains, they experience euphoria. So theoretically, somebody who went on this rollercoaster would experience immense pleasure before bowing to the final curtain. Although there’s no mention of what riders may feel during the clackity ascent up a 1,600-foot incline at the beginning of the ride…
Urbonas explains the thinking behind the coaster in the video below:
What do you think about this short film? And is the Euthanasia Coaster the best way to peacefully end a person’s life, or should we just get crackin’ on Futurama suicide booths? Let us know in the comments section below!
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Images: Academy Films
