Meet Alex Honnold, a guy who makes normal people reconsider every life choice they have ever made while standing on a ladder. Honnold is already famous for doing things that should not be survivable, and now he has added another entry to the list, free solo climbing Taipei 101, a 1,667-foot skyscraper that most sane humans prefer to admire from the ground.
For context, Taipei 101 is not some quirky little office building. It is a 101-story steel and glass monument to modern engineering, designed to survive typhoons, earthquakes, and apparently Alex Honnold. It rises more than 500 meters into the sky, has ultra-fast elevators, a massive tuned mass damper the size of a small house, and an observation deck that makes tourists’ knees wobble. Most of us feel a little uneasy leaning against the windows near the top. Honnold decided to climb the outside. By himself. With no ropes, no harness, and no safety gear of any kind.
That is what free solo means, by the way. One mistake and gravity wins instantly. There is no backup plan, no second chance, and no inspirational speech waiting at the bottom.
Even more unbelievable, he did this stunt live on Netflix. Yes, live. Millions of people watched a human being cling to the side of one of the tallest buildings on Earth, while their palms sweated through their couches. Watching the footage is enough to make your hands tingle and your stomach flip. Typing about it is bad enough.
As if the height were not enough, there is also the wind. Anyone who has been on the roof of even a modest building knows wind gets mean the higher you go. Taipei 101 is famous for brutal gusts, which is why it has that giant golden damper inside. Honnold dealt with that while hanging off ledges the width of a welcome mat. At one point near the top, because apparently fear is not a thing for him, he even went no hands for a moment.
The climb ended successfully, which feels strange to say about something that looked like a physics experiment waiting to fail. According to TMZ, the Netflix paycheck for this death-defying spectacle was “embarrassingly small,” a mid six-figure sum. Honnold himself said the money was not the point and admitted he would have done it anyway if he had permission.
That part might be the most terrifying detail of all. When climbing a 1,667-foot skyscraper without ropes feels like a fun idea regardless of pay, you are operating on a completely different mental frequency than the rest of us. Wild does not even begin to cover it.