alt Hacker News>Strelzyk and Wetzel began research into balloons. Their plan was to escape with their wives and a total of four children (aged 2 to 15). They calculated the weight of the eight passengers and the craft itself to be around 750 kilograms (1,650 lb).
That feat would be impossible for the average US family
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Although you're probably less inclined to try to escape your country in a hot air balloon if food is so easily and cheaply available that it's made you overweight.
> That feat would be impossible for the average US family
Funny, except the US, despite being a supposed fascist dystopia, currently has the opposite problem: people trying to enter and stay illegally, hence the wall-building (to keep people out, rather than in) and ramping up of immigration enforcement. How bad must the GDR and its ilk have been (and in some cases, still are) that it's the other way around?
They could each have their own balloon. Your mom would be trapped in East Germany, however.