Emergency Evacuation And Operations Plan. Building Name: Fill & Download for Free

You more or less described the Freedom ShipSide view, to appreciate how long this thing is (it basically has a fully-functional airport on top)It’s “Free” from any country, hence the name. And it is supposed to be permanently mobile, going around the world and stopping every now and then at ports. The project had been mothballed for a while, but supposedly they are reviving it again.The idea itself is pretty old, first envisioned in some form by Jules Verne:(Basically a mobile island full of millionaires)Here is a pretty good documentary on how it turned out:First of all, making something this enormous is near-impossible, from technology, cost, and even safety standpoint. How do you even dock this thing? And if it got damaged, there is no dry dock in the world that can accommodate something this big.Secondly, making this a country would be difficult. This thing will have enormous operating expenses just to run safely, so it has to be operated as a private enterprise with an eye for profit. Making this a country means that it has to set up all kinds of infrastructures, none of which is going to pay for itself. And if the country can’t pay for itself, who will? The UN? Why would they? It’s not their project.Thirdly, what purpose will it serve? I could see it being a luxury holiday gateway (a bit like Dubai, but at sea), but nothing else. And unlike Dubai, I don’t think this ship will have any other means to earn money to maintain itself.(I could also go into a very long technical rant on why this particular “floating airport” design will fail on every count, but suffice to say that anyone who suggest a moving sea runway for commercial airliners don’t have the first clue on how airplanes and aircraft carriers work)If we are going to make something like that, it has to be smaller and run for profit. That said, I don’t think it will ever happen.Quick Edit (03/21): Since the answer seems to be quite popular, I decided to expand it.What I’m not worried about:The country needing a proper military. Since the question assumed that all countries around the world agreed to let this country-ship to exist, I’m not worried about someone attacking it with military-grade hardware. A country trying to sink or take control of this ship is like an adult bullying a toddler; nobody likes seeing that.What this ship will need is anti-piracy defense force/shipboard police. This is well within the realm of possibility as it does not require the country to have anything heavier than a few rocket launchers and helicopters with machine guns.Likewise, I’m not worried about the vessel needing to fly a flag. Since all countries agreed to this, the UN could grant special permission and let this ship, and maybe a few of its tenders, fly their own flag.What I’m worried about (especially with the Freedom Ship design):It’s mostly technical stuff. Basically, a ship this size is impractical even if somehow someone managed to build it. I’m going to assume that one way or another, there is a company that managed to figure out how to build it and got enough money to do so.First of all, how do you power this ship? For a maritime vessel, power is life, quite literally. Without power, the ship can’t move and is at the mercy of the elements; it is nothing more than a hunk of steel drifting in the ocean. Everyone on board would be living on borrowed time. Given the massive size, the only source of power that looks feasible is nuclear. But try selling that! Many people around the world are (wrongly) afraid of nuclear reactors, try convincing them to invest or hop on board. Also, nuclear systems can only be operated by highly-trained personnel, which there are very few in the world. The owner of this ship will have to set up a specific training facility—somewhere in the world, on land—so that they have a constant supply of trained mechanics and engineers.A ship this long is bound to have structural issues. A lot of people in the comments pointed out to hurricanes, typhoons, and other extreme weather phenomena, but my concern is more mundane. A ship this long is like a beam, and even a moderately strong current hitting the bow (or stern) of the ship will generate massive bending moment due to the sheer length of the ship.This problem is far from unknown; skyscrapers face similar issues with wind gusts and earthquakes. This is why skyscrapers are designed to sway (and have some damping mechanism to prevent it from swaying too much). The problem is that water is 1,000x heavier than air for a given volume. Correspondingly, the bending moment is going to be much, much higher.Given that the ship is meant to have a runway deck long enough for a twin-engine passenger turboprop plane (roughly 1 km long), which are supposed to be straight, how do the engineers plan to deal with this issue? I have serious doubts that we can make something that long perfectly rigid. On the other hand, I doubt that a flexible ship is going to be watertight.Another big issue I have is with the airport on top. There is famous saying in aviation: ‘Air Force pilots land, Navy pilots arrive’. Landing in a ship is halfway between a proper touchdown and controlled crash, so it goes without saying that not only it is dangerous, but you have to be specifically-trained to do this. Very few pilots around the world are qualified to make this kind of landing.Along a similar line, the other issue with this ship has less to do with the ship itself and more about the airplanes that are supposed to land. Aircraft designed for carrier operations have strengthened landing gears because of the impact they’re expected to take. Normal airplanes do not. Even if you somehow managed to collect all former carrier pilots around the world to work for you, you also need to invest in modifying hundreds of planes to be able to land on your ship.That said, in theory, you could have an average commercial pilot land on the ship on a perfectly calm day. But that means that you’re extremely dependent on the weather, which is not a good idea, obviously.Lastly, how do people disembark from this ship? Since there is no way we can dock this ship without constructing a dock the size of a small city, the ship has to stay some distance away from the coast line. So, are we going to use full-sized ferries as transfer ships? Will those ferries be carried on the ship or are the docks expected to provide them?It gets worse when we consider emergency. Evacuating something this large is going to be horrendous (think about those who are trapped on the upper decks for whatever reason, like fire in the middle decks, how do we create an escape system that works for them?). But with some clever design, this might be solvable.The real issue is what to do once the passengers got evacuated, especially if the ship sank far out in the middle of the Pacific or Atlantic. Life rafts are meant to stop people from drowning before they can get picked up by another ship to carry them to shore. Historically, other ships nearby would come to their aid like when the Titanic sank. However, this ship is meant to have something like 50,000 people onboard. Your average large cruise ship can carry about 5,000 passengers. That means in case of an emergency, we have to send more than 10 nearly-empty cruise liners to the middle of nowhere and hope they can make it in time. Any tragedy far from shore is bound to kill thousands, if not from the sinking itself, then during the rescue effort.

Not too long after the towers collapsing it was suggested that people could’ve used bail-out rigs, that is a specific type of parachute system, to escape the burning tower. I believe it was even marketed for a short while, I wasn’t skydiving back then, and clearly neither were the marketing/inventors of this concept.A bail-out rig is similar to a BASE rig, that is they are designed to open quickly and reliable, with the primary difference between the two being the canopy design. BASE rigs use a ram-air style of canopy allowing a high degree of control to the operator. Conversely, a bail-out rig uses a round canopy that has greater reliability of opening under diverse conditions a stunt or air-race pilot may experience. The trade off is control, there isn’t nearly as much control with a round canopy as there is with a ram-air canopy. A bail-out style emergency use rig usually contains a parachute that does not offer the user any amount of steering control, it is meant to save a life by providing a soft enough landing to someone who is not an experienced skydiver.Ram-air canopy used in a BASE jump;Bail-out rig using a round canopy;In a situation like 9/11 where people attempting to escape the burning towers, but became trapped on the floors above the crash point and fire, both types of canopies have advantages and disadvantages. Lower Manhattan is extremely congested, not only with large buildings varying in height, but many ancillary objects such as power lines, radio towers, traffic signals, etc. This makes for a very tough landing with either style of canopy, ram-air or round, without contacting another object before landing. The probability of injury or death is extremely high choosing this method of escape.Plus, jumping in unknown wind conditions creates many issues, one of which is it could push the canopy back into the building someone jumped from, into the fire. Also, high rise buildings in this quantity and density will channel wind into fast moving air streams that could easily push a person into another building at a high rate of speed, enough to kill. Fire and heat create thermals which will affect the parachute system from functioning normally, it is possible that this added element could collapse the canopy crashing the user into the ground.An unskilled person would not be able to control the ram-air style canopy in the BASE rig effectively under duress or even during normal conditions with no previous experience. The bail-out rig offers no user control and may be ideal for an unskilled operator, but with all the variable conditions I mentioned, plus the many I didn’t, make this a coin-flip decision of survival. Compound this with many people using parachute systems at once, it will create another level of instant chaos on the fireground. Emergency personnel will have their hands full already, without adding this dimension to the equation, likely creating more victims that need to be rescued from many different locations. This would overwhelm the resources on scene.The cost of one rig, either a BASE or bail-out, is around $4,000USD, a complete skydiving parachute system costs around $10,000USD. Multiply this by the number of people above 300–400 feet in a high-rise the cost would be immense. Since this option needs a minimum elevation to be effective it would only be practical in a small amount of buildings around the world and still leave a deficit for those under the minimum height to safely deploy a parachute, but yet elevated high enough to still be in peril.The assertion of,”Obviously, if everyone had parachutes and jump training, most of them would have lived” is unfortunately false.Even as a trained and skilled parachutist, I would have a difficult time making this a successful jump under controlled conditions knowing all the variables and hazards on the ground. Battery park would be the only open space in lower Manhattan and it is a considerable distance away, especially if the wind doesn’t cooperate.Other options exist, you could rappel from the building as long as the static line rope could be deployed where there wasn’t any fire.This also takes some training, although not nearly as much as learning to control a parachute system. Under stress, a person would have to properly secure a harness, lock-in to a rope, remember to put on gloves, and finesse the trip down the rope. The static-line (rope) would also need to be secured to a proper anchor and not overloaded by people in a hurry to escape. It would be difficult to display enough patients to wait for someone, who is unskilled, to rappel several hundred feet before locking in and rappelling yourself all while the building is on fire and smoke is filling the offices.Lastly, means to break a window would have to be in place. While I realize people were able to succeed in doing this at the WTC with what was on hand, it would be much safer with a tool such as an axe or sledgehammer. Then you would work in an office with an axe, which may or may not be a problem within itself.I am an experienced skydiver, BASE jumper, and I have rappelled many times in my life. I guess if I were put in this position of course I would try anything to increase my odds of survival, but I don’t see these options as being viable ones for most people in these circumstances. Rather, we take what we learned from tragedy and build better buildings that are easily egressed, burn slower, evacuate smoke/gas, possess better fire suppression systems, etc. Most importantly, train employees to recognize emergency situation and evacuate orderly without haste. Many survived the 9/11 WTC attacks because of a man named Rick Rescorla - Wikipedia he held emergency drills for his staff and it worked, they lived. He died a hero trying to evacuate people from the tower.This man is my hero.Edit (2FEB17): It was suggested that I add details I provided in the response to a comment made.Soon after the event that unfolded at ground-zero engineers began examining all aspects of the attack and the various aspects that made the death toll very high. Perhaps the most influential piece of evidence was a two-fold factor:1) The Port Authority who had jurisdiction over public safety did not order an immediate evacuation of the complex. At that onset, during those precious few minutes nobody contemplated or considered the buildings would implode, there was a misled belief that the building could sustain such damage.2) Once a warning was ordered, it wasn’t immediately heeded by those in danger. Seconds were precious in this environment, but confusion, miscommunication, and of course fear/panic amplified all of this. People who could’ve survived made a decision that cost them their life, again there were misled beliefs about the structural integrity of the building and what was actually happening at the onset.As a result of this tragedy we learned that those who were drilled and practiced emergency evacuations, on 9/11 they lived while others died. Whether they were forced to jump or not is really moot. Today, in this different world we live with the idea firmly implanted that certain people do not like us and mean us harm. Tall buildings constructed today have wider stair wells for egress, robust fire suppression systems, insulation that is less likely to blow off critical support elements, etc.Though it comes down to training and practicing drills for evacuation whether it is a fire, active shooter, or any situation where people are safer outside the building. People be must be coached and counseled until they take such alarms seriously and they become habit. Then regular drills must occur to keep people in practice.The goal is to not put people in a position where their last resort is a parachute or long line rappel, both are very dangerous for untrained people to undertake and office apparel is not conducive to either. Even training someone has significant risk of serious injury or death. I’ve lost a couple friends in my sports of BASE jumping and skydiving and neither were rookies. Every skydive or BASE jump I perform is planned and calculated, safety is top priority.I am not a Professional Engineer (PE), but a portion of my education involves Industrial Health & Safety. I was also a volunteer fire fighter for one year. During these experiences this event was discussed in-depth over and over again. While I believe everyone should think outside the box from time to time, we must look at the practical nature of opportunities and prevention.

Douglas MacArthur. The man was an incompetent narcissist who kept getting lionized by the press (whom he played like a violin) despite repeated failures. Indeed, he set up a PR office just to polish and maintain his image. A military dolt, but a propaganda genius.He reminds me of Mark Twain’s satirical short story, Luck , about an august general, highly respected and revered despite being an idiot who repeatedly hurt the cause, because he looked like a hero and talked like one, and had an appeal and charisma that made people interpret his failures and other shortcomings as something deeper and more profound than straightforward ineptness and venality.Like Mark Twain’s general, MacArthur was the bumbling hero who kept falling forward, all the while winning praise and accolades for so doing.I won’t go into his shortcomings before WW2, such as recommending himself for a Congressional Medal of Honor for his role as liaison during a minor US incursion in Vera Cruz, in which he described a fantastic adventure he claimed to have undertaken (without orders or permission - or witnesses) in which he commandeered a hand pumped rail car, then supposedly went on a solo rampage through enemy territory, engaging in numerous shootouts with the locals and emerging victorious. Or ordering his troops to fire on the protesting WW1 veterans of the Bonus Army . Or the incompetence post WW2, such as his disastrous performance in the Korean War when he swore up and down that the Chinese wouldn’t intervene if he pushed up to the Yalu, only to get chased by the Chinese down most of the Korean Peninsula.Just looking at MacArthur’s lowlights during WW2, we get stuff like:Incompetent Defense of the Philippines: Despite warnings from Washington, plus news of the Pearl Harbor attack, MacArthur managed to let his forces get caught by surprise. He refused his air commanders permission to attack the Japanese airbases in Formosa. Instead, his air forces were destroyed on the ground by the Japanese and virtually wiped out in the first day of war.The US army and navy commanders in Hawaii were sacked for letting themselves get caught off guard by a strike out of the blue, during peacetime, from an attacker they didn’t even know their country was at war against. MacArthur, who was actually in receipt of warnings from Washington, who knew that his country was in a state of war with Japan, and was aware that the Japanese had already attacked US forces in Pearl Harbor, still managed to get caught off guard. But he was MacArthur, so unlike the Pearl Harbor commanders, he didn’t get fired.Although his forces outnumbered the Japanese invaders, he managed to lose the Philippines after making grandiose plans to defend on a broad front that were wholly unsuited to the actual forces under his command, only to have his defenses fall apart completely. He made head scratching decisions in scattering his troops and supplies all around the Philippines, and garrisoned outlying islands that the Japanese simply bypassed, leaving those garrisons isolated and useless, to be mopped up later at leisure.All in all, MacArthur wasn’t simply overwhelmed by a superior enemy: he was outfoxed and outgeneralled by the opposing commander (vindictively, he had him tried as a war criminal and executed after Japan surrendered). Granted, the Japanese had the advantage of better trained and prepared soldiers than MacArthur’s American and Filipino forces - but that’s just another strike against MacArthur, since he had been in charge of the military in the Philippines for years before the Japanese invaded, and training and preparing those troops had been his responsibility.In his haste to escape the advancing Japanese, he declared Manila an open city and hightailed it out of there so fast, without consulting US naval commanders in the city, that thousands of tons of valuable supplies and munitions that could have been evacuated and disbursed to US and Filipino forces to strengthen and prolong their resistance, had to be burned instead to keep them from falling into Japanese hands.And he somehow got a Congressional Medal of Honor for that incompetence:After being evacuated from the Philippines, leaving his troops to death and misery as prisoners of the Japanese, MacArthur was awarded the Medal of Honor for political reasons, despite the fact that he showed no heroism or particular efficiency in losing the islands. In fact, he was huddled up in an underground bunker and refused to go outside to see the situation or to rally the troops. He was derisively known as “Dugout Doug.” Dwight Eisenhower objected to this award personally to General Marshall, but was over ruled. - History and HeadlinesThat his own troops derisively referred to him as “Dugout Doug” says a lot.His dismal performance in the field of battle was in sharp contrast to his brilliant performance in the field of propaganda: in the dark early months of the war, with America reeling from numerous setbacks and panicky with fears of invasion, MacArthur issued press release after press release extolling the “heroic” resistance and brilliant deeds of valor of the forces under his command in the Philippines, slaughtering hapless Japanese by the thousand and sinking their fleets at whim. America, in desperate need of a hero, clung to MacArthur and took his ludicrous claims at face value.Thus, his charmed career survived his ignominious failure in the field - a field in which he had years to prepare his strategy and troops - despite a performance far worse than that which ended the careers of other WW2 commanders. And thus he ended up with the Congressional Medal of Honor, despite the fact that many senior commanders of the US armed forces thought he should have been court martialed for his incompetence in defending the Philippines.Accepting Gratuities From Foreign Governments: Despite getting two paychecks, as both a US Army general and a Filipino marshal, MacArthur accepted a $500,000 “bonus” (serious money in those days - Eisenhower was paid about $15,000 a year when he led the entire Western Allies’ effort in Europe) from the president of the Philippines on January 1st, 1942.In addition to the obvious connotations of corruption, what makes it worse is that this “bonus” was paid by the government of a country under attack to the American general who would decide whether, how hard, and for how long, to continue defending that country, and if he would attempt to liberate it after it fell. As it turned out, MacArthur would escape from the Philippines a few weeks later, leaving his troops behind to face misery and death at the hands of the Japanese. He didn’t leave his “bonus” behind, though - that, he took with him.The grubbiness of accepting that “bonus” can’t help but leave him open to questions and doubts about whether and how much his military judgment re the Philippines, from the “I shall return” bit up to the actual liberation of the islands a few years later, was influenced by that bribe.What would be the fate of a US general who accepted a similar “bonus” from a foreign government today? It would be a major scandal, resulting in court martial, demotion, dishonorable discharge, and probably jail time. With MacArthur, it was swept under the rug, and the sordid tale didn’t come out until 1979, 15 years after his death.It should be noted that Eisenhower was offered similar “bonuses” from foreign allied governments during WW2, but had the class to reject them.Diversion of Resources to Strategically Irrelevant Theater: Politics in the FDR era must have been weird if a general could wield as much political clout as MacArthur did. Both FDR and George Marshall had nothing but disdain for him and his inept performance in the Philippines. But he had a lot of support, particularly from congressional Republicans clamoring to bring him to Washington to run the war, so FDR and Marshall wanted him as far away as possible.As luck would have it, a panicky Australian government appealed for US aid. Not having much aid to give, and correctly assessing the Japanese threat to Australia as minor, the duo decided to give the Australians MacArthur instead, thus hitting two birds with one stone: placating the Australians, and keeping MacArthur on the far side of the globe.In order to placate him in Australia, and his supporters in Washington, the powers that be went and split the Pacific Theater of Operations into two and manufactured for MacArthur his own separate theater of operations, the Southwest Pacific. That drained men and resources from the shortest route of advance against Japan, which stood the best chance of taking the war directly to the Japanese home islands as speedily as possible - the Central Pacific.But MacArthur had said “I shall return” when he skedaddled out of the Philippines (note the “I”, not “we” - you’d think he was paying for it out of his own pocket, or that the thousands of sailors and soldiers and airmen necessary to effect such a return were his private army or bodyguard), so Washington couldn’t bruise his ego by making him out to be a liar.Thousands of Americans, not to mention Japanese and natives, paid with their lives in order to give MacArthur his own sandbox in which to play war.His PR department made a lot of hay out of the supposed brilliance of his “island hopping campaign” in the SW Pacific (a strategy actually decided in Washington, rather than being MacArthur’s brainchild - his idea had been to recapture them one by one, until told by Washington that he won’t be getting enough resources for that, accompanied with plans to bypass many of them, instead. He accepted, and took the credit), which detracted attention from the fact that the whole SW Pacific could have been hopped and skipped in its entirety without making a difference. It would have been wiser to simply send enough men and resources to defend Australia, and redirect the effort wasted in that theater to the venue which actually mattered, in the Central Pacific.Incompetence In Command of Allied Forces, Australia: Put in charge of Australian and American forces, MacArthur regarded the defense of Australia and the campaign in New Guinea as needless distractions from the need to retake the Philippines. Needless to say, that didn’t sit well with the Australians, who viewed the defense of their hearths and homes as warranting a bit more attention and consideration from the Supreme Allied Commander in the theater.MacArthur gave them short shrift, and dealt with them with the same disdain he showed everybody. It wouldn’t have been too bad if it was just poor manners. But he also proved himself a poor commander. In the New Guinea campaign MacArthur was unwilling to work with Australians and had little more than open contempt for them, was frequently indecisive, and kept blaming subordinates for mistakes of his own making. A reasonable argument could be made that the Australians beat the Japanese in New Guinea despite MacArthur, rather than because of him. Thousands of Australians and Americans needlessly died because MacArthur repeatedly failed to anticipate Japanese moves, refused to heed warnings of expected Japanese moves, failed to learn from his mistakes, and was inflexible in his tactics.The Australians had to grit their teeth and take it, since America was the only game in town. But to this day, Australian military historians have a hard time understanding why MacArthur garnered so much praise.Incompetence in Recapture of the Philippines: There was zero strategic purpose in recapturing the Philippines - retaking those islands did not bring the ultimate defeat of Japan one day closer. The Chiefs of Staff wanted to island hop the entire Philippine archipelago, and go directly to invading Taiwan instead, which would bring US forces closer to both China and Japan. But MacArthur insisted on not being made a liar (and who knows what promises he made when accepting that $500,000 “bonus” from the Philippine government), worked his voodoo on FDR and convinced him to override the Chiefs of Staff, and so the Philippines were invaded instead.Once in the Philippines, MacArthur consistently kept ignoring intelligence reports of gathering enemy resistance (something he would repeat in Korea re the Chinese), and so failed to adequately support his commanders on the ground and furnish them with sufficient forces to meet the challenges at hand, resulting in an unnecessary prolongation of combat and needless casualties. E.g.; MacArthur declared the island of Leyte to be secure in December of 1944, requiring only minor mopping up operations. Over the next few months, nearly 30,000 Japanese were killed in Leyte, along with numerous Americans.Also, his commander on the ground in Luzon estimated that there were 130,000+ Japanese on that island and sought reinforcements. MacArthur called that “bunk”. As it turned out, there were actually > 280,000 Japanese on Luzon.Narcissism: Examples include referring to himself in the third person; the PR team he assembled to burnish and polish his image; the corn cob pipe affectations; the boast of returning to the Philippines as if he was the protagonist of a heroic saga rather than a general in the army of a democracy; hogging all credit for victories to himself and prohibiting the press from mentioning the names of his subordinate generals doing the actual fighting, without his express permission; or the numerous restagings of his “return to the Philippines” so the cameras could capture him juuuuust so, with the landing craft lowering its ramp into the water so he could wade to shore.For all the preceding, I think Douglas MacArthur was the most overrated commander of WW2, and one of the most overrated commanders in history. Only saving grace for the man is that, in the aftermath of WW2, he proved to be an amazingly capable governor of Japan. Few, if any, have done “nation building” as well as he did, radically transforming Japanese government, culture, and society, and laying the foundations for turning that country into the success story it is today.Terrible fighting general, but an exceptional administrator and astute politician. Indeed, he might have missed his true calling and squandered his natural gifts by pursuing a military career instead of going into politics.