How to make it rain men properly?

Question

In a certain world there is a ruler who runs a very powerful country with an iron fist. A faction of oppositionists has been giving her lip and has made some mean comments implying she brings the country dishonor due to not being chaste.

She wishes to punish those remarks by enacting a certain song in a literal manner over the opposition's headquarters. An amount of young adult men from the opposition is to be defrenestrated from cargo airplanes while The Weather Girls' It's Raining Men is broadcast on all TV and radio stations.

Question: Assuming the lads are dropped from 10 km up, over an area of five acres and for five minutes, how many men would she need to drop in order for their blood to cover the streets and form puddles as much as the water from a light rain would over the same area and span? And how spread apart should they be?

Assumptions:

Each body splashes half of their blood around upon impact and the blokes average at 70kg in weight;
She has a large enough fleet of planes (and as many men as she needs) to do it;
By light rain I mean small, shallow puddles on the asphalt. Also, if it were regular water instead of rain a simple umbrella would be enough to keep someone mostly dry.

I love this question, awesomely macabre and wonderfully gory but you do appreciate that depending on the surface impacted individual bodies are going to impart a lot more or less blood to more or less of their surrounds right? — Ash, Jul 08 '18 at 17:02
Cant look it up right now but the answer needs: average liters of blood of fully grown adolecent. Amount of blood that remains in a body on average after a terminal velocity fall. Average amount of rain in mm per cm^2 per mnute to translate to liters for the area that needs covering. That divided by the average blood that escapes after terminal velocity falls gets you the amount of men. But fair warning, considering the average amount of people per square meter you are going to need to fly in adolecents from surrounding countries as well. — Demigan, Jul 08 '18 at 17:05
Can you define a metric for "light rain" what I think of as light in the roaring forties and what someone from the Corn Belt considers light differ greatly. — Ash, Jul 08 '18 at 17:08
@Ash: thanks, I have refined the assumptions to include what I think to be a light rain :) — The Square-Cube Law, Jul 08 '18 at 17:13
Time to break out the turbulence equations. Anyone know the viscosity of a flow of ‘men’? — Joe Bloggs, Jul 08 '18 at 17:22
I think this is too close to real world atrocities to be a decent worldbuilding question — L.Dutch, Jul 08 '18 at 18:44
I feel like the use of a high altitude blender would increase the efficiency and verisimilitude substantially. — Paul, Jul 08 '18 at 18:58
Seems like it would be easier to cheat. If you dump 10% bodies, 90% preprocessed blood, who's going to call you on it? — Cadence, Jul 08 '18 at 20:07
Why so high? 10km is much higher than necessary, and would complicate things without providing much advantage. A falling human body reaches terminal velocity at around 500 meters or so. beyond that, they will not fall any faster. At 10km, the crew would need supplemental oxygen. Plus, it would be a lot easier to hit the target region with precision from a lower altitude. Also, if they kept the altitude lower, they could enhance the terror effect by blaring the music directly from speakers mounted on the aircraft. (think Apocalypse Now) — plasticinsect, Jul 08 '18 at 21:50
To get a bit pedantic and technical, "Defenestration" is throwing out a window. Airplane windows are generally fairly small, so this may be seen as a benefit. On the other hand, cargo aircraft generally don't have many windows, so it would not be a fast process. — Andon, Jul 09 '18 at 02:46
Related: How many people would have to be killed to make the streets 'run red with blood'? — Secespitus, Jul 09 '18 at 07:40
@Andon load them into a Hercules, open the back door, and go into a steep climb. Logistical problem solved. — pojo-guy, Jul 09 '18 at 12:10
The word is probably "defenestrated" and it only applies to windows, not doors on aircraft. No modern aircraft sadly has proper windows for defenestration due to issues with pressure differentials. May I suggest the use of a lighter than air craft? A hydrogen balloon would be fairly efficient way to lift people and if you anchor it to heavy trucks you can position it accurately from the ground. And you can give it proper windows to throw people out of. Maybe a system that lifts people up a cable to the balloon and then throws them out the window? Then you could just keep dropping people. — Ville Niemi, Jul 09 '18 at 12:15

Ash · Accepted Answer · 2018-07-09T11:46:34.687

14

The scrap paper math goes like this:

$5$ acres is $20234.3$ square meters, rainfall is reckoned in $mm/mm^2$, you're describing what I think is roughly $2.5mm$ of rain so that's about $50585750000mm^3$ of total liquids, (not accounting for any effective area reduction due to the bodies lying around afterwards). The average human has 5 litres of blood, at half value, per your premise that's $2500ml$ meaning you'd need to drop about $20240$ men to make sure you get the desired saturation, roughly one per square meter across the entire target zone.

Do check my numbers, I'm not at all sure they're completely correct.

It would probably be worth attaching a small drag to the ankles of the men you're dropping to keep them head-down, this will boost their terminal velocity by about $100kmh^{-1}$, from around $190$ to $300+kmh^{-1}$, ensuring the best possible splash on impact. For best impact results your city should put the concrete in concrete jungle as well, bodies that hit asphalt sustain less damage and sink in rather than mashing so much on impact.

Note: You might get away with a far smaller number of men if the streets are crowded when you drop them.

edited Jul 09 '18 at 11:46

answered Jul 08 '18 at 18:06

Ash

44,753
7
97
214

When first body hits the floor, the surface will kind of decrease, so there will be less to cover. So depending on how they fall and how much remains of then, you might need less than 20240. – Polan Jul 09 '18 at 07:25
4

This is disturbingly well thought out. – ironduke97 Jul 09 '18 at 09:29
1

@Polan That's why I said "not accounting for any effective area reduction due to the bodies lying around afterwards" – Ash Jul 09 '18 at 10:08
1

If they're going fast enough when they land they might splash a little and some of the solids may end up a little more liquid, reducing the need for quite so many unfortunate captives. If humans don't reach the terminal velocity to splash you could strap some lead to them if you wish. – Ynneadwraith Jul 09 '18 at 11:51
1

@Ynneadwraith Humans only need an average of 450-500m of freefall to reach terminal velocity, from 10km up there's no doubt they'll hit at full speed, while I agree that there will almost certainly be secondary fluidisation the OP set an assumption of half blood volume for splash so I worked to those numbers. – Ash Jul 09 '18 at 11:57
1

@Ash Absolutely, and the OP's 'blood only' stipulation should set a good upper bound for the macabre task at hand ;) – Ynneadwraith Jul 09 '18 at 12:39
3

Also, at ten miles up, they'd have to start dropping a couple minutes early to sync up with the song starting down on the ground. And has anyone considered missing the target thanks to wind resistance? – VBartilucci Jul 09 '18 at 15:34
@VBartilucci You'd probably want to run the song once before the bodies start to hit anyway and then have the rain come in on the second iteration. While that's totally a thing that could go horribly wrong with this plan I'm not going to think about it. – Ash Jul 09 '18 at 15:55
1

At the very least, you'd want it to sync up with the chorus, or it won't make sense at all. – VBartilucci Jul 09 '18 at 16:54

How to make it rain men properly?

1 Answers1