Atmospheric pressure vs elephant I read the claim that the total weight of the air above my (or rather: the average adult human's) body equals that of two elephants.
Now I am pretty sure that if two elephants would stand atop of me, I would get crushed. But does the above mean that this crushing is due to the combined weight of air and elephants (net 4 elephants) and that if two elephants would stand on me in a vacuum I would be perfectly fine?
Just to be on the safe side I thought I check it with the users of this site before trying it out.
 A: You don't get crushed because there is typically as much air pressure inside your body acting outward as there is air pressure outside your body acting inward, so that the typically cancel each other out. So there is no net force acting on you to crush you.

Right, I understand now that the pressure coming from the inside (that
balances out the pressure from the air) need not to come just from
air, but the entire body is helping. So far so good. Still the
question in the original post remains: if I would replace the air
above me by two elephants, would my body still be able to withstand
it?

In order to compare apples to apples, you would need to (1) remove the atmospheric air (create a vacuum about the body) and (2) somehow apply a force equivalent total amount of weight associated with the elephants uniformly over the entire surface of your body, so that you essentially create the same uniform exterior pressure over your body with the elephants that the atmosphere alone would have created.
Hope this helps.
A: The air pressure is coming at you from all sides. If you were standing in a vacuum and there was just a tiny opening in the top, you would not be able to block the opening with your head. The air pressure would cause air to rush in through the hole. If you managed to stick your head in the hole, you would indeed feel a tremendous amount of weight. When air pressure is coming at you from all sides, however, there is a lot of cancellation, and the pressure inside your body is enough to keep you from imploding.
