The sturdiness of the human body

[Jeffala]

But Rodney did end up getting smooshed by Keller, if you look at how they were laying on him after the credits

He liked it.

[1138]

I've been trying to find data (I have a passing interest in occupational safety studies) that shows the percentage of fatalities for all falls under 20 feet in order to see just how severe the falls were but I haven't found anything yet.

I did find that falls of the height seen in the episode account for a large proportion of fatalities from falling.

The CDC has data that confirms this:

- In Massachusetts, out of 56 fatal falls ranging in height from 3 to 130 feet, 52% were from a height of 20 feet or less
Source: http://www.cdc.gov/eLCOSH/docs/d0700/d000731/3.html

- Different study shows that 30 of 91 fatal falls were from a height of 20 feet or less.
Source: http://www.cdc.gov/Niosh/pdfs/00-116b.pdf

This suggests that falls from those heights can be fatal; but it can also indicate that such falls are more common and makes them over represented in the overall fatal fall statistics.

[andromeda_dan]

She may have partially landed on him but im talking about completely landing on him. That would have been funny to see, not only McKay's reaction as Keller was falling but also his reaction about having a beautiful woman on top of him

Rodney can brag to Shepard that he's had women fall all over him.

[Avenger]

Rodney had two ladies fall for him, if you will.

[Cory Holmes]

He liked it.

I know I wouldn't mind those two ladies smooshing me...

[ykickamoocow]

I know I wouldn't mind those two ladies smooshing me...

Agreed. There would certainly be worse ways to die.

I stand by my statement that it would have been really funny to see Keller land completely on top of him as both Keller's and McKay's reactions would have been hilarious

[HyperspaceDaemon]

If you don't think the human body can take that much damage you should check out some behind-the-scenes stuff on a lot of action movies. Espescially Tony Jaa or Jackie Chan.

I'm not saying the average person can land a 20 ft fall without breaking anything, I'm just saying it's not nearly as impossible as it may seem.

I'm not saying that it's impossible to be "lucky" and escape unharmed from such a fall.

But I'm claiming that it's weird to see 5 falls in a row (in the same place and in almost identical conditions) resulting in only one broken leg.

Please believe me that I wouldn't have bothered to complain about the exaggerated situation if they had initially fallen on something smooth , not on solid concrete/wood !

[KindlyKeller]

I'm not saying that it's impossible to be "lucky" and escape unharmed from such a fall.

But I'm claiming that it's weird to see 5 falls in a row (in the same place and in almost identical conditions) resulting in only one broken leg.

Please believe me that I wouldn't have bothered to complain about the exaggerated situation if they had initially fallen on something smooth , not on solid concrete/wood !

I didn't mind, but that's a reasonable complaint. When Sam fell during the first crate-stacking effort, I remember seeing her hold her arm/side and being surprised that she was up and about moments later. I can dismiss everyone's initial falls into the holes because of the backpack theory mentioned above, but the crate falls offered no such padding.

[That-scary-insane-girl]

It was probely just pure luck that nobody broke anything before that. Also, I have had a friend who fell of a ladder that was about as high as the hole and did not break anything. I have also had a freind who fell of a small (2 foot high) brick wall and broke her arm. So you see, it all depends on how you fall and how lucky you are.

[gopher65]

They didn't have to break an arm or a leg the first time they fell, but I'd have found it much more believable if someone had fractured a rib or a toe or something. 20 feet is a long, long way to fall on to solid metal. And Carter and Keller fell face first. At least Rodney fell straight down.

This same thing bugged me with Zelinka in Quarantine. He falls like 20 feet straight head down, smashes his head into the ground, and then bounds up not even bruised or cut. Uh.... right. *That* didn't jolt me out of the story and kill my suspension of belief. Someone want to test this? Dive head first off a 10 foot diving board into a 10 foot deep empty concrete pool and see if they survive?

[HyperspaceDaemon]

It was probely just pure luck that nobody broke anything before that. Also, I have had a friend who fell of a ladder that was about as high as the hole and did not break anything. I have also had a freind who fell of a small (2 foot high) brick wall and broke her arm. So you see, it all depends on how you fall and how lucky you are.

That's precisely what bothered me : they were *too* lucky. And for me
too much luck translates into a too convenient/exaggerated plot .

[KindlyKeller]

That's precisely what bothered me : they were *too* lucky. And for me
too much luck translates into a too convenient/exaggerated plot .

I think your complaint is perfectly fair, but the more you stop and think about it, there's a LOT of things in the Stargate universe that are pretty convenient. I try to just tune that aspect out.

[HyperspaceDaemon]

I think your complaint is perfectly fair, but the more you stop and think about it, there's a LOT of things in the Stargate universe that are pretty convenient. I try to just tune that aspect out.

Thanks for your comment.
I know that there are many issues in SG ... too many .

Sometimes it's hard for me to ignore such elements : if the flaw
is too obvious I don't try to ignore it , but instead I'm blaming the
writers for not avoiding the obvious logical flaws in the plots.
Particularly when the issues could be easily avoided if someone
bothered to think about them and do something.

Unfortunately these small convenient/lucky elements add up ,
with unfortunate results : i am having trouble with watching SGA
together with my girlfriend who is now considering that the whole
show got too "boring" . Sometimes I can raise her interest if it's
a Wraith episode , but overall she'd rather do anything else.
A few years ago we were watching 3-4 episodes in a row (SG1) ...
I guess that the whole Ori business was a big step in the wrong
direction and made us much more alert to the frequent
lucky=convenient part of the SG episodes : things are simply
getting less and less credible.

[gopher65]

i am having trouble with watching SGA
together with my girlfriend who is now considering that the whole
show got too "boring" .

This likely has less to do with the quality of SG-1 and SG:A changing (it's always been cheesy and stupid, but I liked it anyway) than it does with "burnout". It is only natural that that happens to people. You start to selectively remember past episodes, filtering out the garbage and remembering the good times, so that the current episodes seem bad in comparison. Now I'm not saying Trio wasn't bad, cause it was (among the worst episodes ever), but the tendency to judge each episode more harshly than the previous episodes is normal. We all do it.

As an example, I did it with Enterprise. After that many continuous years of Trek I was just burnt out, even though I still liked Trek in general. Now Enterprise wasn't a perfect show by any means (no shows are), but I'm liking it a lot more in reruns after 3 years Trek-free than I did while it was on the air. Now I judge each episode on its own merits instead of selectively comparing each episode to to the very best of the hundreds upon hundreds of episodes that had come before.

Burnout.