Stairs!

Stairs. Wonder, wonderful stairs. 'What's so special about stairs?' one might ask. Well, where would you be without stairs?






Elevators: The plague of humanity

'What of elevators?' you may ask, 'They make travelling so much easier and faster!'

For many years people believed that to be so. Elevators began overtaking stairs as the primary vertical transportation method. Thankfully today, however, people have realised the terrifying threat of elevators and have begun spreading the word through posters and cautionary tags.

The below pictures are proof that stairs trump elevators:












Stairs: A History

"In 1857, a young bearded inventor named President Abraham Lincoln stumbled upon the answer: stairs. Unluckily, he never grasped the full import of his own invention, and died attempting to rocket jump up the world’s first staircase in his laboratory at Ford’s Theatre. Horrified by this tragedy, mankind agreed never to invent anything again, turning its many scientists and scholars to that most noble endeavour, astrology.

It would not be until 1921 when hot headed Pisces Franklin D Roosevelt, languishing in a hospital after losing both of his legs in a rocket-jumping accident, stumbled upon Lincoln’s notes and perfected the modern staircase, freeing people from the tyranny of the second floor as Lincoln intended. "

Source http://www.teamfortress.com/war/victory/




Escalators: The stairs of the future?

First patented in 1859, but not reaching their full potential until modern times.

Escalators provide many conveniences that stairs do, as well as extra.

1. Walk up escalators to be extra speedy
2. Tired? Just stand!
3. The joys of walking down up-scaltors and up down-scalators
4. The escalator spin- http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/escalator-spin (Check this out, it's awesome.)
5. Unlike elevators, they are still useful in case of fires and blackouts.

However, there are dangers of living in a world with only escalators. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVN-7h4YiAs




Stairs and You

Stairs are forever useful, but unless you have studied for seven years in the field of stairology it is hard for you to construct efficient stairs.

Unless you're in a computer game!

Computer games allow you to become a macho hero, an undercover commando, a automobile stealing hooker stomper and now a professional stair builder!

"Why ever would I want to build stairs in a computer game?" you probably didn't even ask, but I'm assuming you did.

Like in real life, stairs have many, many applications, like this one listed example:

1. Getting up to somewhere

However in the case of computer games we can change that too:

2. Getting up to somewhere not usually possible.

To show you what I mean, here is a gallery of stairs I quickly made up in computer games.










This simple stair case of a perpetual motion, cold fusion based dispenser and fully automotive turret (with rocket firing capabilities) allows the engineer to get to where only soldiers were meant to get to. This allows a whole new attacking angle for the 'ninjaneer', and with a teleporter can bring his whole team up to this strategically important point.










This stair case made up of the severed heads of security cameras and the forever lovely companion cube allows you to pass the level using a mere two portals! Getting you gold on the challenges!










A staircase up to that vent allows you to successfully ambush combine attackers!










This merely shows that staircases are not only for practical value, but are aesthetically pleasing too!











This is by far my favourite staircase as it allows you to survive the Combine onslaught at Nova Prospekt(sp?). Climb up the stairs with a couple of gun turrets and hide like the coward you truly are!

To conclude

Here is a picture of me... on stairs!



You may have noticed I have been cleverly MS-Painted out of this picture, that was due to me being nude at the time of taking.