Terminal!
Rollercoasters are not for the fainthearted. Not for me, that’s for sure.
But now for the really stout-hearted who want to end it all (so are they in reality fainthearted?), there is the Euthanasia Coaster.
Actually, you can’t ride it yet. It is only conceptual, but there’s a scale model. Both conception and modeling were the products of Julijonas Urobnas, a doctoral candidate at the Royal College of Art in London (and former amusement park employee). Here’s his proposal:
‘Euthanasia Coaster’ is a hypothetic euthanasia machine in the form of a roller coaster, engineered to humanely—with elegance and euphoria—take the life of a human being. Riding the coaster’s track, the rider is subjected to a series of intensive motion elements that induce various unique experiences: from euphoria to thrill, and from tunnel vision to loss of consciousness, and, eventually, death. Thanks to the marriage of the advanced cross-disciplinary research in space medicine, mechanical engineering, material technologies and, of course, gravity, the fatal journey is made pleasing, elegant and meaningful.”
Elegant? Euphoric? Pleasing? Meaningful? Really?
It ascends over 500 meters (just a bit shorter than the One World Trade Center; the tallest roller-coaser in the world, the Kingda Ka, in Jackson, NJ, only goes up 140 meters). Once at the top, it slows down and gives everyone a chance to change their mind. But if you decide to continue, you press a button and down you go at 250 mph through seven loops, each getting progressively smaller. The terminal machine gives you 10Gs of force for 60 seconds. Blood rushes towards the feet, starving the brain. You lose your vision, and eventually black out and die. After a sharp right-hand turn, the train enters a straight track that goes back to the station, where the dead are unloaded and new passengers can board!
Continued Urobnas:
Celebrating the limits of the human body but also the liberation from the horizontal life, this ‘kinetic sculpture’ is in fact the ultimate roller coaster: John Allen, former president of the famed Philadelphia Toboggan Company, once [said] that ‘the ultimate roller coaster is built when you send out twenty-four people and they all come back dead.’ This could be done, you know.”
The Euthanasia Coaster was first shown as part of the HUMAN+ display at the Science Gallery in Dublin in 2011. It doesn’t appear that Urbonas’s Euthanasia Coaster will become a reality any time soon.
But one thing is sure: death is coming, for one and for all.
Certainly, no person can redeem a brother or give to God a ransom for him—
for the redemption of their soul is costly, and he ceases forever—
that he should continue to live perpetually, that he should not see the grave.
For one sees wise men die; together the stupid and the senseless—
they perish and leave their wealth to those following.
Their tombs [are] their houses forever, their abodes from generation to generation.
They called their lands after their [own] names,
but mankind in [its] pomp will not remain; he is like beasts that perish.
As sheep they are appointed for Sheol—death their shepherd;
… and their form [is] for Sheol to consume—no exalted residence for them.
Psalm 49:7–12, 14
Unless, of course, you have placed your trust in Jesus Christ as your only God and Savior from sin. In which case, though one will still die, eternal life with God is guaranteed.
Yet God—He will redeem my soul from the hand of Sheol, for He will take me.
Psalm 49:15
SOURCE: Penn Live
Abe Kuruvilla is the Carl E. Bates Professor of Christian Preaching at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Louisville, KY), and a dermatologist in private practice. His passion is to explore, explain, and exemplify preaching.