>> "Dad - could anyone survive being run over by a Hovercraft?"

Standard advice is the same as tanks.  Decent slit trench, keep head 
down, fire something large and noisy at the soft spot once gone 
over.

Like tanks, the point of hovercraft is that their ground pressure is 
low, IE they don't sink into soft stuff.  The bit that could bother 
you would be the skirt, (addendum deleted so as not to upset a) 
mailbase b) bits of skirt) as it rubs alongat ground level or 
thereabout.  Taking as an example the ones the Navy was playing with 
many years ago, the skirt stands taller than a man when fully 
inflated, and goes over quite large boulders without being damaged, 
or noticeably slowing the whole lot down, 
therefore if you lie down flat you might reasonably expect to just 
be scraped a bit on the back.  The sensation of having your face 
firmly pressed into the ground whle being trampled all over 
should be familiar to those of us mainly working inthe NHS.

The fans, unlike all currently marketed varieties of hand held 
domestic cleaning vacuum devices[1], are more than 6" from the opening 
and therefore should not be a problem - in fact they are at the 
narrow entry to the plenum chamber or above a set of ducts leading to 
the slots around the edge of the craft rather than anywhere near the 
base.


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[1] there is a BMJ paper saying so[2], but I can't find it just now.
[2]  well, only mentions vacuuming accidents rather than hovercraft, 
but you get the picture


--- OffRoad 1.9r registered to Adrian Midgley


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