8 ms·
Why are so many BASE jumpers dying?
- sheraz 10y agoPlay stupid games. Win stupid prizes.
- finid 10y agoI think it's more dangerous than stupid.
- brahmwg 10y agoTo write off the whole sport as stupid is a bit unfair. Just because it is far outside of your comfort zone (and mine for that matter) doesn't mean it is stupid. These wingsuit wearing daredevils have the chutzpah to plunge into the void and experience soaring like birds.... Probably one of the best feelings a living being can experience. They may be bold, but I wouldn't call them stupid.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- s_q_b 10y ago...because it's hard to jump off a cliff and live?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Zuider 10y agoThis seems to be the key paragraph: "Most beginners who die appear to be making variations of the exact same error, according to Webb. “They jump off a cliff, get flying, and for some reason there's just this human reaction to try to hug the air like a big, gigantic beach ball,” he explains. “By hugging air you feel as if you're creating or catching more lift than you actually are. What ends up happening is your suit can only grab so much air, and it starts to stall. When it starts to stall, it loses lift, starts to drag, and then, splat."
- manarth 10y agoThat's an interesting point, which has a fairly obvious solution: train wingsuiters to find the stallpoint - and even stall their wingsuit - in controlled conditions, where they can safely recover from a stall.
- underwater 10y agoCan they really recover? There's really no margin for error when they're a couple of dozen feet off the ground.
- danielvf 10y agoTrain while jumping out of aircraft, not off cliffs.
- justinator 10y agoPlease, name me one person who started base jumping off a cliff, and not jumping out of an aircraft.
- frisco 10y agoWhile you're right that it's not very common, I know at least 3 (non-famous) people who did that. BASE and skydiving are pretty separate communities and there are a lot of people who make friends in base from cross over in things like climbing or snowboarding and don't do skydiving. Source: am a skydiver/base jumper
- manarth 10y agoIt's discussed in BASE-jumping forums, mostly for its historical value, and to answer the people who ask with all seriousness: "How can I learn to BASE-jump, without bothering to learn skydiving first". You'll also see it referenced on the websites of places that run BASE courses [1], where it's repeatedly acknowledged that it has been done in the past, but it's now seen as a reckless practice. You can still find people that will teach this way, but for the most part, it's underground, and described as a "deathcamp" [2][3][4]. [1] http://base-book.com/skydive-to-base-jump http://base-book.com/skydive-to-base-jump [2] http://www.basejumper.com/Articles/Getting_Into_BASE/Number_of_Skydives_806.html http://www.basejumper.com/Articles/Getting_Into_BASE/Number_... [3] http://www.dropzone.com/forum/Skydiving_C1/General_Skydiving_Discussions_F18/Deathcamp_BASE/Skydive_P2003436 http://www.dropzone.com/forum/Skydiving_C1/General_Skydiving... [4] http://erikroner.com/242/ http://erikroner.com/242/
- GirlsCanCode 10y agoToo bad Sat Dex already had a child. Stupid will remain in gene pool.
- finid 10y agoIsn't that like playing Russian roulette? I'm sure it's fun and exciting, but that comes with a major risk.
- oneloop 10y agoHahaha I just made a comment exactly like yours. I think we'd get along.
- wavefunction 10y agoI have a feeling that the ability to share 'experiences' via the internet and especially video of such experiences leads individuals who are adrenaline junkies to push the limits beyond what might be safer. The desire and push to "one-up" each other. "How close can I come to the cliff-face? How close to the ground can I skim? I've seen others who have gone this close, can I go closer?" It's right there in Sat Dex's narration. "Today you fly with me." In that phrase is both the sharing of the experience and the central-ness of that experience to the individual identity of the jumper. I was watching the Philando Castile facebook live video shot by his girlfriend and watched him get shot live, half-way across the country. What a queer and unsettling feeling to be sitting in my house and know that a human being is dying at that same moment so viscerally...
- Theodores 10y ago> I have a feeling that the ability to share 'experiences' via the internet and especially video of such experiences leads individuals who are adrenaline junkies to push the limits beyond what might be safer. It is not just adrenaline junkies that like to show off for their fans on social media, it seems that everyone is at it and the 'disease' is getting worse as time goes on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_selfie-related_injuries_and_deaths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_selfie-related_injurie... "See also: Darwin Awards"
- idunno246 10y agoI know somebody who recently trained for base, and skydiving, they don't allow you to carry cameras until you have a bunch of hours specifically to prevent this from rookies. Not that these are all inexperienced, but it's a risk the community acknowledges.
- manarth 10y agoIn the UK, you aren't allowed to skydive with a camera until achieving a "C" licence - minimum 200 jumps. That's a common requirements for many overseas dropzones too. Most BASE courses won't accept you without a minimum of 200 jumps either.
- pessimizer 10y agoThe biggest takeaway from the story for me is that Facebook is now micromanaging censorship so finely that it's now deleting anti-wingsuit posts.
- narrator 10y agoGetting angry about anything, even your friends dying, is no longer allowed. I sometimes go to http://voat.Co http://voat.Co and poke around when I want to remember what the Internet used to be like. It's one of the few forums that doesn't have a blanket ban on expressing anger. What's funny is that it's very Californian to never express anger. East coast culture is more direct. People will say to each other that they don't like something the other person did or are upset or angry at the other person. On the west coast, especially California, it's really important to be nice, so people will just cut off contact when they've been offended or decided they don't like someone rather than confront them. Those California social values seem to have migrated online.
- jerf 10y agoThis is why you can't leave culture to corporations. It is very difficult for them to resist the short-term calculus of "removing every post that is slightly negative to the brand", because Facebook doesn't want to be associated with rage or anger or anything negative. But what's left isn't culture anymore. I think they've still got at least another year or two before this becomes really obvious to the mainstream, but Facebook is definitely headed in a dangerous direction right now. Not to culture; it will survive. It can't be killed even if you want to kill it. (You can hurt it, but not kill it.) But to Facebook. The appeal of a space where you can't say anything that is negative that might be associated with Facebook isn't great to start with, but when you realize that it's Facebook that has sole control over what it considers negative you also get that helpless feeling. Most people aren't going to analyze this... they're just going to realize they don't feel good when they use Facebook, either because their posts are getting censored or because they are subconsciously self-censoring, and operant conditioning will lead them away. It's becoming more obvious every week that Facebook's instinctive reaction to everything is to control it with a heavy hand.
- mml 10y agoGravity?
- new_hackers 10y agoGravity is not the problem, the problem is the large mass
- Zuider 10y agoMomentum is the immediate problem, not large mass. Fatality due to large mass tends to take a little while longer.
- new_hackers 10y agoWhy yes, perhaps the lack of a safe process for the transfer of kinetic energy is the real culprit here :-)
- justin_vanw 10y agoThey jump off of things. Not to be too glib, but if it was, 'safe' nobody would be interested in watching them do it. If many didn't die doing it, well that is what safe means. For example, my 12 hour video "United Flight, Coach, Extreme Red Eye" got way less views.
- SubiculumCode 10y agofewer, not less
- grondilu 10y agoCan't help but think of Franz Reichelt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBN3xfGrx_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBN3xfGrx_U
- Daviey 10y agoWhen sport parachuting first started it was horribly dangerous with techniques and equipment mostly adapted from military procedures. As the sport grew in popularity, technology and training advancements made the sport what I would consider safe. BASE jumping is starting to go through this maturity process. When the sport first started, there was no known procedures and people died from 'silly things', which were easily avoidable.. There also wasn't purpose designed BASE equipment, people were using modified sport skydiving equipment. Now that BASE is going through this process, equipment and training is improving. There is quite a lot of peer pressure to not even start BASE jumping unless the person has a few hundred skydives... and even then, more people seem to be doing First Jump Courses, with experienced BASE instructors. However, some parts of BASE seems to be trying to grow too fast and use the technology advancements from skydiving too soon. Proximity BASE is really mental. It's super impressive to see, but a significant majority of recent deaths and injuries have occurred from this. This is why there has been a re-emergence of high death statistics.. The traditional BASE statistics were starting to reflect massive improvements in safety. One of the respected BASE instructors did a really useful talk here.. and it contains a bunch of advice which is pretty portable to general life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2O-Dpw0Yfc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2O-Dpw0Yfc
- cromulent 10y agoTrue. I would say that the equipment has been really good for a long time now. I can't think of a fatality in the last 10 years or so that was caused by gear failure, although there have been packing errors. The sport is very unforgiving of mistakes, obviously. Only today I saw a video of someone about to do a rollover without their legstraps on. Luckily the same guy as in your video noticed and yelled at him to stop. Fatality avoided. Most of the recent spate of deaths though don't follow any particular pattern apart from the wingsuit being the common factor.
- tedmiston 10y ago> To further complicate the issue, many died while working to create “content” in the form of films and Instagram photos for their sponsors. That's an incredibly complex ethical decision for the brand. I think Clif is doing the right thing by pulling out of sports with very low margins for error.
- jsprogrammer 10y agoThe right thing was not sponsoring. Pulling out is just limiting personal liability.
- tedmiston 10y agoThat's easy to say but it's not like they started sponsoring when things became riskiest.
- hanoz 10y agotl;dr: because they're now doing it in wingsuits.
- Spooky23 10y agoA: More people are jumping of the sides of things. This is pretty dumb in general, and particularly so when you aren't a skilled skydiver. Serious accidents are pretty common even among experienced military paratroopers.
- mseidl 10y agoSkydiving and Base jumping have very little in common
- dahart 10y agoI think most everyone watching the sport has been predicting a higher death rate, it's quite unsurprising, and why is not a mystery -- but this article was very well done IMO. It's clear from the explosion of wingsuit videos that the risk factor is dramatically higher, and that the videos themselves are going to be a factor in luring more people with less experience to try it. It looks amazingly fun, and very tempting if you're already or willing to start skydiving. I personally feel very lucky to have passed through the skydiving phase of my life alive. Every jumper I knew personally except one is dead now. Some died in the most crazy unlikely ways, and a bunch of them died together in a plane crash after a weekend boogie. Skydiving is super dangerous, and BASE is even more dangerous, and wingsuit BASE trying to buzz the ground within inches -- How are so many BASE jumpers NOT dying??
- clueless123 10y agoI strongly disagree with your statement. Skydiving is NOT "Super Dangerous". 1. it is highly regulated.. you actually need a license to practice it. 2. Statistically is a not more dangerous most outdoor sports. 3. Anecdotally, I've been a skydiver for over 20 years, in that time I've seen very few deaths. (much less than other adventures sports) The old saying goes. Skydiving is not inherently dangerous, but it is terribly misforgiving of your mistakes.
- dahart 10y agoAt least twelve people I used to know would say skydiving is super dangerous, if they were still alive. I don't disagree with you, but you're expressing (as well as disagreeing with) an opinion and subjective language. I'm not sure what you're trying to say exactly. You've disagree but not clarified. Are you saying skydiving is safe? It is objectively, demonstrably not "safe". Unless you define safe to mean it's possible to do once without dying. Your perceived safety level depends on how you measure it. You can measure deaths per participant, in which skydiving compares favorably to some other sports. You can also measure deaths per participation-hour, which some people feel is a much more accurate and fair way to measure, and in that case skydiving looks a lot more dangerous. No matter how you measure it, and no matter what license and training you have, skydiving is quite risky. I have a USPA C license, and every single person I've known who died skydiving had a D license (more than 500 jumps).
- oneloop 10y agoDoes it make me a bad person that I have no sympathy for these people? You're doing something quite dangerous, did you expect to survive every time? As a society we don't often show sympathy for people who die playing Russian roulette....
- Daviey 10y agoYes, you are a bad person. I assume you equally have no sympathy with people that die on non-essential car journeys that have crashes. Motorcycling, biking, scubadiving? You, walking down the street are equally playing Russian roulette.
- oneloop 10y agoWhen I'm walking down the street I'm playing Russian roulette? You are either completely numerically illiterate or so motivated by whatever ideology you're coming from that you'd go as far as uncritically parrot this such a laughable false equivalence. Lets consider just traffic-related accidents for simplicity. About 17 deaths per 100,000 people per year worldwide. Assuming that a person "walks down the street" twice a day, that's means that when you walk down the street the probability that you'll die is 2.5*10^(-7). By comparison the probability of dying from Russian roulette is between 1/6 and 1/2, depending the rules you're playing by. You've just made a mistake as big as 6 orders of magnitude. This alone should get you banned from HN.
- Daviey 10y agoYou asked if you were a bad person for not having sympathy for a death.. I believe this to be true. I totally agree that walking down the street doesn't carry the same magnitude of risk, but there is measured risk there. Just because someone is participating in an activity which carries more risk than you consider acceptable, doesn't mean we shouldn't sympathise for their death. My analogies were pointing out other activities, which also carry risk... and you've latched onto the one which obviously has the least risk. The point is, any activity has a calculated risk. You made the identical mistake.. by your own analysis, playing Russian roulette 6 consecutive rounds would guarantee a fatality... However, just 3 off the top of my head (for the avoidance of doubt, these people have died 0 times): - Miles Daisher has over 4000 base jumps. - Chris McDougall has over 3000. - Dan Schilling did over 200 in one day back in 2006. Talking of banning, If you think that my statement broke the rules of HN, then I ask that you make a complaint against me.
- fauria 10y agoI already sent that a couple days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12405048 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12405048
- woliveirajr 10y agoI thought HN prevented submiting the same link twice. Doesn't it?
- striking 10y agoIf something doesn't get enough attention within a certain period of time, it can be submitted again. Likewise, if it's been a while since HN has seen it, it can be submitted again.
- joeyspn 10y agoThe answer is rather simple: - Popularisation of the sport thanks to social media and silly videos with fancy dubstep music. - BASE jumpers trying to push forward the sport. - Irresponsible companies sponsoring pro jumpers in order to film "even more difficult yet" maneuvers. Personally I tried to get into BASE some years ago, but after watching a russian documentary with explicit and horrible scenes [0] made me seriously think. People in social media only get to see the successful jumps but not the dark side of the sport... [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/SkyDiving/comments/1etupz/russian_documentary_about_the_dark_side_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SkyDiving/comments/1etupz/russian_d...
- vorotato 10y agoI think the big problem is they keep hitting the ground.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- smoyer 10y agoIt's not like start-up founders and other types of entrepreneurs aren't also risk takers - different people get their adrenaline rush in different ways. The difference is that if (when?) you fail, you've lost your money (or someone else's if you're funded).
- justinator 10y agolosing your money (or someone else's money) != dying.
- smoyer 10y agoExactly ... There are many ways an adrenaline junkie can get their fix that doesn't risk life and limb.
- TheLarch 10y agoI found this article disappointing because there's no advancement of a thesis or journalistic investigation. The author could have tracked down any number of illuminating statistics: number of wing suits sold over time; BASE/wing suit deaths over time; number of live videos posted over time. As the piece lacks either of these, it's almost pointless and thus the author attempts to tie it together with a question, just as you often see in college essays. There's no honest attempt to answer the question. So it's neither an essay nor investigative journalism. It's Reader's Digest. The article cashes in on prurient interest in death without paying anything back. (To be clear this is an interesting topic to me. I followed Dean Potter for years, back from when he first made his name for slacklining and climbing.)
- xiphias 10y ago3:1 for horizontal vs vertical is quite dangerous, I guess the sport will get somewhat safer as this ratio improves, but it will take more material research probably
- manarth 10y ago> "3:1 for horizontal vs vertical is quite dangerous" I would suggest that the danger isn't the glide-ratio, but the proximity to the ground. Could better materials improve safety? If there were improvements in the predictability and consistency of flight characteristics, that might have a more positive effect, but I can't see improvements in the glide-ratio having an impact on safety.
- Asooka 10y agoOr bigger wings. I wonder if it would be possible to make a bat-wing-suit with giant wings with the bones of the membrane connected to your fingers. I mean, deltaplanners do something close to what wingsuit divers do, except their wings are huge and they can soar for hours.
- sizzzzlerz 10y agoWith due respect to the dead and their families, I just don't care. When you play in the deep end, you're risking every thing, and when you play long enough, you're going to lose. Long enough being once or more. I hope his family takes comfort with his last video that was so important to make since that and the hole in the ground he made are all they have left.
- nadezhda18 10y agowhy??? maybe because it's a risky sport???
- musesum 10y ago“Right now, wingsuit BASE jumping is, globally, the hottest thing going for the impressionable, 18- to 35-year-old single-male demographic.” I used to do free-climbing. The first time that I climbed with ropes was with friends. It was also their first time with ropes. They didn't know how to tie a knot. The first time I repelled off a cliff was with a gold line with partner feeding from below. The knot slipped. I felt a vibration and hands instinctively grasped. I was 4 stories up and hanging on literally at the end of my rope. I was 22. I started to look at my body as a resource. Climbing helped to fine tune a sense of balance. Kept the mind sharp. Then read that Chris Langton (an A-Life pioneer) had a hang gliding accident. Started to make risk-reward assessments. Changed sports.
- ahlatimer 10y agoYour first outing with climbing is like someone going out BASE jumping having never used a parachute before, accompanied by people who had also never done anything remotely akin to skydiving, who also didn't have the foresight to even do some research on how to rig or even put on the parachutes. Yes, that's dangerous. Climbing has some inherent danger, obviously, but with a bit of knowledge and staying within some reasonable safety limits, the likelihood of dying is nowhere near BASE. I think part of that is that, at least amongst the climbing community, the celebrities aren't wholly people pushing the limits with danger. Sure, we have Alex Honnold, but we also have Tommy Caldwell, Chris Sharma, Adam Ondra, Alex Puccio, and so on, climbers who are pushing the limit in difficulty but not really danger. Perhaps that's because "difficulty" and "danger" are not inexorably linked with climbing. You can have a close-bolted route in good rock with modern bolts that's not particularly dangerous that's still really, really hard. La Dura Dura is the hardest sport climb in the world. I probably wouldn't kill myself on it, even if it's way above my pay grade (assuming I could even reach the first bolt). I don't know that you can do the same with BASE.
- musesum 10y agoExactly. Trust someone that has survived their 20's. I now ask "So, how many times have you done this?" I really admire the focus and patience. Back in the 70's, my inspiration was Royal Robins. I like the idea of leaving no trace on the rock. Not sure what modern bolts are like.
- rdiddly 10y agoIn order of occurrence, starting with the smart-alecky and moving into the actually thoughtful (but still probably seen as trollish): 1) From BASE jumping. 2) For no reason. 3) From incomplete cognitive development (risk assessment, awareness of one's mortality etc.) 4) Because the world economy is sufficiently developed to keep them alive long enough to die this type of optional/discretionary death.
- schizoidboy 10y agoA good friend died a few years ago wingsuit BASE jumping in the alps. It hit me hard. He was incredibly smart. He was one of the top guys in the sport. He was careful and deeply researched and understood the physics of wingsuits. Thus why I think the following quote from the article is dangerous because it might give the impression to certain people that they will outsmart the complexities: "The simple truth is that wingsuit BASE jumpers don’t know what they are getting into, don’t know how to practice the sport safely, and don’t even know enough to know how little they know."