This is a research paper that I wrote for a summer english language arts class. I didn't care about that class in the slightest. The teacher responded to this essay by telling me that I have a "very satirical way of writing," and gave me an A for it.

It's also a rough draft. I never really put any thought into making everything flow nicely when put together, so I left it in the separated chunks that I wrote it in. Also there's no introduction or conclusion, because I was never explicitly asked to write either.

I'm sharing this essay because it's a masterpiece.

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[​REDACTED] (your name)
[​REDACTED] (teacher's name)
June 26, 2024 (date of submission)
Gerald (name of assignment)



Thesis statement: Stairs should be banned from the United States because they are hazardous, severely outdated, and there are far better alternatives.



  Stairs should be banned from the United States because they present a large risk to the health and safety of the public.

Injuries relating to stairs are a fairly common occurrence. According to the National Safety Council, stairs caused an estimated 2,865,817 injuries in the year 2022. This means that for every 333 million Americans, 2,865,817 experienced injuries from stairs in 2022 alone.

Falling down a flight of stairs is extremely dangerous. According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, a study conducted in Germany found that 80% of patients who fell down stairs suffered a traumatic brain injury. The chances of suffering a brain injury increased dramatically with each additional step, making falls down stairs more deadly if there’s more stair to fall down. Bone related injuries predominantly included damage to the skull and spine, both of which are fairly important to the body and don’t work well when broken.

A fall down a set of stairs is not only painful and can lead to severe injuries, it’s also deadly. According to multiple law firms, roughly 12,000 people die from falling down stairs each year. Also according to multiple law firms, falls are the second leading cause of accidental injuries in the home and workplace, the first being motor accidents. How motor accidents happen “in the home and workplace,” I’m not entirely sure, but this is about stairs. 12,000 is a 5 digit number, that’s a lotta people.

While it’s clear that stairs are incredibly dangerous, they are also very common. According to the Commercial Real Estate Development Association, which is abbreviated as NAIOP for some reason, stairs are “present in almost every building.” Hopefully they know more about buildings than acronyms, because there doesn’t seem to be many statistics regarding how common stairs are. I mean, it’s pretty obvious they’re common. The school has at least 5 stairwells, and that’s just the main ones used for getting between floors.

Stairs are incredibly dangerous and are a risk to the safety of the public.



  Stairs should be banned because they are severely outdated.

Stairs are one of the oldest inventions for traveling to higher and lower elevations of a structure. They’re so old in fact that it’s impossible to tell when they were first created. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, created by people who don’t know how to spell “encyclopedia,” stairs have been found in ancient structures that date back thousands of years. You know what else dates back thousands of years? The fall of Rome. That was a bad thing. Just like the invention of stairs.



  There are plenty of superior alternatives to stairs that should be used instead.

There are far better replacements to stairs. One example is the ramp. A ramp is basically a much simpler version of stairs. Instead of being a series of steps that could easily injure or kill a victim that falls, it’s a smooth incline. Ramps are also more inclusive, as they are wheelchair accessible.

Another example of a superior alternative to stairs is the elevator. According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, elevators are not only easier to use than stairs, but also far more useful. Elevators can be used to travel between floors of a building, as well as transport things that would be too difficult to move up and down stairs. There’s even industrial elevators used to move several tons of material between floors. That’s not really possible to do with stairs, unless you have a winch or something.

Another alternative is to simply eliminate the need for stairs. If all buildings have only one floor, there will be no need for stairs. Genius, right?

Finally, the most superior alternative. The trebuchet. The trebuchet was designed to be a form of artillery weapon, capable of launching projectiles weighing several thousand pounds across long distances. This machine of destruction can be easily implemented into modern architecture as a safe method of transportation between floors. The trebuchet has benefits similar to the elevator and ramp: it can be used to transport heavy objects in addition to people, and it’s wheelchair accessible. But what really makes it stand out is its speed. With stairs or ramps, it may take several minutes to climb from the bottom of a building to the top. With an elevator, it may take an awkward 30 seconds of standing next to someone that smells bad. With a trebuchet, you can get there in a matter of seconds.

There are far better alternatives to stairs that should be utilized instead.