The “Euthanasia Coaster”: Art, Ethics, and a Roller Coaster Designed to Kill

 

A Ride Like No Other — and Never Built

In 2010 Lithuanian artist-engineer Julijonas Urbonas presented a provocative concept: a steel roller coaster engineered to end a person’s life “with elegance and euphoria.” The design (a scale model and technical sketches) proposes a 500-meter lift and a fatal series of seven decreasing-diameter inversions intended to generate sustained ~10g forces, causing prolonged cerebral hypoxia and, ultimately, death. The project is a piece of conceptual art and theoretical engineering — it was exhibited, discussed, and critiqued, but it was never constructed. Wikipedia+1

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How the Concept Would Work (At a High Level)

Urbonas framed the coaster as an engineered way to induce cerebral hypoxia (insufficient oxygen to the brain) by applying very high, repeated G-forces so that riders would progress through grey-out, tunnel vision, G-LOC (loss of consciousness), and — in the concept — irreversible brain oxygen deprivation. The ride’s geometry (progressively smaller inversions as speed drops) is meant to maintain lethal G-loads as the train slows. Exhibitions and write-ups describe biomonitoring suits and design “safety” redundancies — not to prevent death, but to confirm it. Wikipedia+1

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Art, Philosophy, and the Ethics of a “Beautiful Death”

That is where the Euthanasia Coaster moves out of engineering and squarely into ethics and art. Urbonas intended the project to be a philosophical provocation: if euthanasia is a legal and moral option in some societies, what would its form look like? Could death be designed to be aesthetic, calm, or euphoric? The concept asks uncomfortable questions about autonomy, spectacle, and whether society should sanitize or even ritualize the end of life. Museums and exhibitions have used the piece to spark debate rather than to promote building it. The Museum of Modern Art+1

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Public Reaction and Debate

Reactions have ranged widely: some commentators treat it as thoughtful critique or dark satire about how technology and design intersect with mortality; others find it grotesque or dangerously glamorizing a sensitive ethical issue. The coaster has been written about in science galleries, design exhibitions, and mainstream press — a recurring theme is that the design is intentionally unsettling so people will ask hard questions about assisted death, responsibility, and the role of aesthetics in ethically fraught decisions. WIRED+1

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Important Caveats — Safety, Legality, and Morality

• The Euthanasia Coaster is a conceptual artwork, not a medical device or an approved method of assisted dying. Wikipedia

• It does not provide guidelines or “how-to” instructions for causing death; reputable coverage focuses on ethics, not engineering replication. Science Gallery Melbourne

• Assisted dying laws vary widely by country; anything involving ending a life is governed by strict legal and medical frameworks where it is permitted, and remains illegal and criminal where it is not.

Because the topic touches on suicide and euthanasia, it’s worth being thoughtful and careful: discussing the coaster is an intellectual exercise in design and ethics — not an endorsement of harming oneself or others.

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Why This Story Matters for Your Readers

The Euthanasia Coaster sits at the crossroads of design, technology, morality, and mortality. It’s an outstanding example of how speculative design can force public reflection: on the aesthetics of death, on the responsibilities of designers, and on how societies choose to treat the most intimate of human decisions. For a blog audience, it sparks conversation about art’s power to provoke, and about how we balance compassion, legality, and dignity at life’s end. The Museum of Modern Art+1