It's Better To Be the Hammer Than a Nail!

Extreme stunt performer Maximus WillHammer is currently training to make or break over 100 world records as publicity stunts to promote his new line of safety equipment - mainly new harnesses that overcome orthostatic intolerance. Maximus is a private product developer who has conducted research and development for the past 16 years. He has developed hundreds of products ranging from safety harnesses and tool pouches to holsters and ghillie suits: all of which he plans to implement into mainstream society. This new equipment is designed for aerospace, military, police, search and rescue, fire fighting, emergency response teams, residential, commercial, and industrial construction industries. Sport applications include parachuting, speed lining, bungee jumping, rappelling, mountain climbing, and any type of survival situation.

If you type in "safety harness" into a search engine on the internet, one of the first things you will find is an article by Bill Weems and Phil Bishop, both from the University of Alabama, posted in Electronic Library of Construction Occupational Safety & Health (eLCOSH) Magazine Volume 27 Number 3 Pages 86-90. They were the first test subjects in a NASA experiment performed in a safe environment of the research ward at the University of Texas medical branch hospital at Galveston. This study confirms the fact that safety harnesses can kill you by inducing death to the worker even after they survive a fall. The article is actually called "Will Your Safety Harness Kill You?"!

Suspension trauma death is caused by orthostatic incompetence, also referred to as orthostatic intolerance. Basically, when a person is suspended by a mount between the shoulder blades their body's entire weight transfers to the upper legs, near the groin area. The harness straps act as two tourniquets and create tremendous pressure around the legs, trapping a large enough volume of blood to starve the heart, which eventually causes the body to shut down. According to the eLCOSH study, the average person will fall unconscious within three to five minutes and actually die within eight to twelve minutes if the worker is not rescued within this time.

Max demonstrating, and falling victim to, orthostatic intolerance due to a flawed harness.

Most harnesses on the market today will save your life from most falls, but workers only have minutes to be rescued. Maximus has worked on harness systems for over 15 years due to a love of heights. However, even he has personal horror stories regarding safety harnesses. One day when he was seventeen years old and working on a 45-story building he was one of the first workers to find a man hanging dead in a harness. At first Max thought it was a suicide, but as he approached it became apparent that the man was suspended by a mount connected to his shoulder blades. He had a terrible ghastly face and had soiled his pants when he died. Later, another worker almost bled to death after cutting a vein in his leg while trying to cut his leg straps with a dull razor knife in a panic to keep his life. Maximus didn't see the man again for the remainder of his employment with the company. Five years later, while working on security detail at a major power generating station, Maximus watched a worker go out on a beam to adjust a component seven stories high. He only had to make a quick adjustment and did not feel it was necessary to tie off his safety line because it was a pain and time consuming. He reached out too far and caused the plank he was kneeling on to flip. Maximus watched in horror as the man fell, yelling for three stories until hitting his head on a crossbeam, spinning and ricocheting off more beams before pile driving head-first into the deck. These events had a major impact on Maximus when he started his research and development several years later.

Why must workers suffer endlessly and unnecessarily? Why are people considered disposable?

Maximus started working in construction when he was very young: his step-dad was a building contractor, his mother a painting contractor and his uncle a roofing contractor, all for whom he had worked. His real father, having a military background, greatly influenced Max's interest in military defense for American citizens. With this background and experience, Maximus has developed products that have the potential to save endless amounts of lives and prevent millions of injuries per year. He has developed a whole line of harnesses in which a person can hang for hours in the safety fall position and suffer no internal injuries. He truly believes in his products and knows that they will create a safer, more efficient work environment.