God would REALLY have to be pissed at you! Taking your scenario, yes, the car could suddenly ascend at a rapid rate. The safety device is located on the bottom of the car and would probably not sustain any damage from the rapid rate of assent, therefore as soon as the car reversed to start the fatal plunge, the safeties would set and stop any further movement in the downward direction. You, however, would probably bounce off the ceiling and fall to the floor. Back to the scenario, if the cables came off as suggested, what would pull all the elevator equipment down on top of you?

METHINKS THIS WAS TRIED IN SEVERAL MOVIES AND ELEVATOR MEN EVERYWHERE JUST CHUCKLED AS WE WATCHED IT UNFOLD.

Here is something similar:
http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/accidentsmishaps/a/barrel_bricks.htm
-pk-

Thanks for your reply Johny....
The reason I thought this would be possible is, that I have stumbled across a documented case on the internet a while ago, in which the elevator at some sort of a textile factory in the US took a plunge and the machinery has followed shortly after...I will do my best to try and find that news article and will post a link.

The reason I personally thought that the machinery falling through the ceiling wasn't so far fetched is the fact, that just like any other structure, the ceiling of the shaft is not immune to being damaged...
Being that there is so much weight sitting directly on top of it means, that it already has some stress load on it to begin with...
I have no idea what the weight of the elevator car is, but I don't think it is too light to cause damage, especially if it has sufficient time to build up the upwards momentum.
I'm pretty sure that the mass X velocity of the car and the strength of the ceiling shaft could be brought to light through some sort of a calculation, which I'm unable to perform...
I will do my best to find you that link about this case..

pk125...Yes I'm aware of the barrel of bricks urban legend.
I think it was on Mythbusters when they put it through the test and found out that it was feasible, as they were able to replicate this sequence as described in the legend...:)

Ok...I was able to find the link for the machinery crashing down on the car.
I could not find a separate link, so this link gives you a list of 10 elevator accidents, all in one article...
This one is at number 9 and it is listed as "American Woolen Company"

http://listverse.com/2011/12/23/10-tragic-elevator-accidents/

I smell a lawyer......

@Postal...If you are suggesting I might be some sort of a lawyer looking for some mega settlement, let me put you at ease...
I wish I was a lawyer, but I'm not.

If I was a lawyer, I'm pretty sure I could hire one of you guys to consult me without having to join a discussion forum on the internet...
I'm just an average person, whom likes to analyze things in more depth than most people would ever bother...
I simply thought, that the best way to get the answer to my question would be going straight to the source and asking a bunch of professionals from the elevator industry...?

Back in the 20's 30's and 40's when this story supposedly took place they used a lot more timber in the buildings , overheads and machine rooms. Sounds like this is the case. I saw a composite about 10 years ago that had building beams made of wood holding up the overhead deflector sheave. The job was installed in the 70's .

This is dumb, Rope Gripper, CWT safeties, buffers, car safeties, buffer.....Elevators aka redundant safety factors in that order

I'm not sure what you meant by "this is dumb", as I have already admitted above, that my knowledge of elevator systems is very basic at best...

This however does not mean that I'm a complete idiot...it only means that I'm not familiar with the technical jargon and inner workings of the various elevator systems...
I was basing my scenario question on the known laws of physics and some documented cases from the past regarding elevator accidents...
Again, I have no idea by what you mean by CWT safeties or buffers, as I'm not an elevator tech...could you elaborate in more details?
All I'm looking for is for someone to explain this to me in laymen's terms, without insults or suspicions of having ulterior motives...

I don't chime in much here anymore but Driver, I think a lot of the hesitancy to address your questions, is that it just takes too much time to respond. For instance. The link below if just for the QEI recertification test.

https://naesai.org/UserFiles/5_Houston_TX_flier_2014_2.pdf

Notice all the books required just to prepare and take this test.

A17.1 / CSA B44 Safety Code for Elevators and Escalators
� A17.2 Guide for Inspection of Elevators, Escalators and Moving Walks
� A17.3 Safety Code for Existing Elevators and Escalators
� A18.1 Safety Standard for Platform Lifts and Stairway Chairlifts
� NFPA 70 National Electrical Code
� QEI-1 Standard for the Qualifications of Elevator Inspectors
� Elevator Industry Field Employee�s Safety Handbook
� And more

These books alone require a couple of grand and hour upon hour of study just to be up with the current codes, which are constantly changing.

And that's just to inspect them and be up on current code. And to work on them opens a complete new set of educational requirements. A rigoruous 5 year course with overseer's from the government, Companies and Unions. Course descriptions below.

http://www.neiep.org/courses/default.aspx

That's not counting all the company classes, adjuster classes,Night classes for advanced degrees (Usually in electronics or computer architecture, or programming).

And yes. In my 35 years I have witnessed the scenario you describe. An older open loop control from the 60's. Not seen it on any of the newer controls because of built in safety redundancy. There are just so many possibilitys to your scenario, I'm sure everyone here on this board could dream of this happening if X,Y,Z happened on Control type Q...

Probably wont post here for a long time again, but that's just too much hassle.

Hope that helps Driver

Driver, I followed that link and there several differences with the two scenarios. That car didn't go up before it fell down. The machinery (overhead drum) and the supporting members all came tumbling down. They said 500 tons, however even a tandem geared Otis drum would likely top out at about 5 tons, so weight is off a tad. Still, the scenario that you started with had some unique requirements and that was what I went by. Broke Sheave has some good points and is correct with his assessment. Buffers are the items that retard the elevator and counterweight at the extreme ends of travel and are checked regularly for proper operation. However, slower cars (under 200 fpm) have springs and these wouldn't help a lot if you had enough rise to gain momentum. Also, buffers are rated for speed and capacity. Obviously, rated speed would have been exceeded. If you have occupiable space below the elevator shaft, you would have to have counterweight safeties as well as car safeties, and that would have stopped the upward motion of the car by stopping the downward motion of the cwt. In late model elevators, you have rope brakes and sheave brakes that work independently of the safeties and stop the upward movement of the car. You also have UIM (un-intended motion) circuitry on later model elevators. Like I said earlier, If God has it in for you, it's gonna get messy.

Thank you guys so far for all your reply's.
As Broke Sheave has pointed out, I'm starting to get the hint that the answer to my question might not be easy, as there are too many factors at play.

@Johnny...good point about the CWT safety stops, as this single feature would likely take the wind out of the rapid ascend by stopping the counterweights before the cabin crashes into the ceiling, but I'm getting the sense that most shafts are not equipped with the extra space needed?

I think that for most part, I have enough partial reply's to be able to piece together that this sequence could occur (maybe in the past) under certain circumstances, as per Broke Sheave's quote:

@Broken sheave, I know that you said you are not likely to post again, but if you do I would like to ask you if you could confirm, that scenario you said to have witnessed also included the shaft ceiling caving in and spilling out the machinery down into the shaft (as per my scenario), since this is probably the only piece of puzzle that I'm still not sure about?
Postal has pointed out earlier, that in the link that I have provided, the fall of the drum machinery was most likely due to the use of timber in the overhead structure (yes I'm aware that the cab has never hit the ceiling in that case, but that is one of very few cases I could find, which involves machinery falling on top of the cab)....
At this point I'm still unsure, if a concrete ceiling of later construction could fail structurally, had it sustained a hard enough hit hit from the ascending cab?

Again, I very much appreciate all of your answers you guys provided to me so far...

And finally, I would like to reveal some of the links to incidents, which have lead me to asking my scenario question... just so you guys know where I was coming from:

This one showed me that brakes can fail and elevator can fall "upwards"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijLywn1-2Gg

This one showed me that the fail-safe brakes, which should stop elevators from plunging may not always work:
http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?id=8601546

And this one showed me, that an elevator car can hit the ceiling with hard enough force to kill:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/13/nyregi...s-sq-tower.html

All of these incidents played a part in my initial question above.