this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2026
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hmmm
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Gotta take a break now and then, it's a long way up!
Yeah, was gonna say. Neat idea for the elderly and the not-quite-able
It makes me nervous...
Every time I see a precarious stairs situation, I think of a Spider-Man novel I read as a kid wherein he descended a great number of floors very quickly by straightening his body and diving between the railings.
I've always been terrified of heights. Even disregarding the logistical questions I never liked thinking about that.
There was a cheesy 2000s action movie where the hero jumped down the stairway center hole to escape an ambush and used a bad guy's body as a cushion to survive the landing. I wanna say either Punisher or Shoot-Em-Up?
I remember thinking how much easier it would have been to simply dive out a window. Same distance, but without all the railings to avoid on the way down.
That was a lot of movies. I think the first Bourne had it.
I feel like all the parkour films (banlieue 13, Yamakasi) had a lot of staircase scenes
Hardcore Henry certainly does.
Your username is awesome.
And yeah, one of the non-height things that bothered me was how Spider-Man would recover from the fall. He didn't have a corpse cushion.
I think I read that book twenty-two years ago, so I might be forgetting some things, but I don't think the author described his landing. The only two options I could figure out were him grabbing a railing above ground level, in which case he'd surely flip around and slam various parts of himself against stair bits; or he could land at ground level (or wherever the bottom of the stairs was). In the latter case, being a superhero, I'm sure he'd negate the fall damage ... But given how narrow the space was described as being, it seems like he'd still be unable to avoid slamming into stair bits.
All that said, in the same book, the villain was described as being of an indeterminate size due to standing completely still. That made even less sense to me, but at least didn't trigger my fear of heights.
That has to be the most hilarious riff off of Heisenberg I've seen
Looks like it has iron supports, not wood, should be fine.
And yet we’ve all seen iron railings where the balusters are corroded through. That’s a big Nope for me dawg, and I’d like probably put flowers or something on it to save other people’s lives
Yeah, and marble floors and possibly polished concrete steps. This staircase looks like it was built like a tank. Or for an old courthouse or bank or something.
Lol kinda basic older apartment building made of stone, I think you might be American, lol.
Those stairs aren't even that thick, tbh.
I do get the vibe you're talking about, but honestly the stone buildings in my city have wider and more elaborate staircases even when they never had any sort od business in the building. I'd love an apartment in one of those, if they weren't solely in the center of the city, because the thick stone walls in them make it so you can hardly hear anything your neighbour is doing. Also the ceilings are tall af.
Yeah, those would be like the back stairs, in a nicer building. Good point.
Thanks, but I don't really know what you mean by backstairs, as most apartments I know just open to the one staircase. It's not way thin, but I'm just saying most of the ones in my city were wider and thicker. The ones which exist, that is. There's only some of them left in the center and other apartment buildings are basic concrete shits.
My point is rather that it needn't be a bank or anything like that to be somewhat fancy, that used to be in style... some time. Early 20th century, maybe?
OOh I can answer that one since it’s a conversation floating around Lemmy ……
There are different standards for apartment buildings, where US building code requires two means of egress and it can’t be a window if over a certain height (3 floors?). American apartment buildings will have two staircases (and the argument is you could have fit another apartment in there) whereas some other places might require only one (where the argument is modern technology like smoke alarms make the second exit less necessary)
On the bright side the trip down will be much, much quicker.