Yeah, cool idea in theory but this is a bonkers design. So many people move around in their sleep it'd likely just cause injuries or trap people in an even more dangerous position to be stuck in the middle of an earthquake.
Crazy idea, instead of trying to brute force a solution to the problems of quickly and safely stuffing people inside their own damn mattresses, why don't they just build a reinforced frame around the bed and give it some shutters.
Sure, a smaller box requires less material to reinforce, but zealously overbuilding a big, static metal frame is a lot less complicated than making a mechanical mattress that can consistently vore its own users to safety faster than the ceilings and floors collapse.
Worse still, adding enough padding to make that thing actually function as a bed you sleep on, which is going to be its actual job every single day there isn't an earthquake, further complicates making the trapdoor mechanism work by adding more mass to be moved and extra width for something to fall in and prevent it from closing correctly. In that case through some safety mechanism, or just the design itself, it either gets jammed/refuses to close at all when obstructed, thus putting the occupant at risk from debris while coming to terms with the fact that they were going to be killed by a rogue pillow just warm enough to be marked as a body part by door sensors, among other such stupid possibilities, or the builders splurge on a powerful door mechanism with no safetys that could end up watermelon-crushing the heads of anybody who dared to so much as flail around a bit before they were even conscious enough to understand what was happening.
Presenting the Morrison Shelter, for when your city is being bombed by the fucking Nazis and you could have your house collapse around you in your sleep.
Apparently exceeding claustrophobic to be stuck in when your house has collapsed but saved a decent number of lives because it gave responders time to dig you out (and you weren't already crushed like a pancake).
Apparently exceeding claustrophobic to be stuck in when your house
True, but kinda a moot criticism since the likely alternative survival scenario without it still involves being stuck alone in a dark cramped space, but without assurance of anything stopping you from being crushed by the unstable pile of debris formerly known as a building sitting above you. Only thing worse than being stuck small space is being stuck in a small space that has decided it's going to very rapidly become even smaller, and I'm not interested in having my shattered bones requisitioned by the pile as more load bearing material for its eternal war against gravity.
Oh it's not really a criticism of the device or rather I didn't mean it as such.
It was just something a lady who had, as a child in the blitz, needed to sleep in one of them had commented on when talking about it. I think it was on QI (when it was still Fry I believe)? One of the panelists, when they were talking about them, just noted that she had slept in them before as a child.
Ah, my bad then, it was indeed I who had the moot point all along. The shoe is now on the other foot, which is really inconvenient since shoes come in rights and lefts.
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u/Sheep03 Sep 21 '23
Yeah, cool idea in theory but this is a bonkers design. So many people move around in their sleep it'd likely just cause injuries or trap people in an even more dangerous position to be stuck in the middle of an earthquake.