4 ms·
It is in the land of the free. It's generally not banned in Europe, so most BASE jumpers who are active spend at least a few weeks a year there. About 10 to 2
by base698 9y ago
It is in the land of the free. It's generally not banned in Europe, so most BASE jumpers who are active spend at least a few weeks a year there.
About 10 to 20 die world wide in about a population of 1000 or so active jumpers. It can be done relatively safely but the group isn't big enough to regulate effectively and most BASE jumpers are hostile to anyone mentioning the idea.
- sundvor 9y agoHow many would die of other causes, such as .. car crashes.
- Spooky23 9y agoProbably a much smaller numbers. Cars are engineered to protect all but the most reckless and negligent from death.
- Zigurd 9y agoInside the car. Globally about half of road deaths are outside the vehicle.
- emodendroket 9y agoOut of any given pool of 1000 people? Probably not as many.
- Piskvorrr 9y agoAnd out of a pool of similar 1000 people? I seem to recall that affluent young men used to kill themselves in sports-car racing in the preceding decades. Perhaps this is a confounding factor: as Spooky23 notes in a sibling comment, "Cars are engineered to protect all but the most reckless and negligent from death" - but indeed, who else would choose BASE but the reckless and the self-proclaimed immortals?
- emodendroket 9y agoIf we're talking about car racing, rather than just driving a car, yes, I agree it is pretty dangerous. Probably still not as dangerous as trying to navigate canyons in a wing suit.
- sundvor 9y agoI guess my point was to try to see through the attractive headlines, to compare base number deaths to a baseline. Looking at http://www.allcountries.org/uscensus/129_death_and_death_rates_by_age.html http://www.allcountries.org/uscensus/129_death_and_death_rat... For the age group 25-44 we have 269.8 male deaths per 100k, vs 114.8 female ones - or a total of 192.0 per 100k regardless of gender, or nearly ~2 per 1000. Looking at http://base-jumping.eu/base-jumping-fatality-list/ http://base-jumping.eu/base-jumping-fatality-list/ , which might be a bit dated, I see 26 fatalities listed for 2015 world wide. I tried to find how many base jumpers exist, and ended up on a forum where it was speculated upon. Perhaps 3000? In which case we have a mortality of ~9 per thousand , no age group discrimination. So.. from that perhaps naive collection I see a 4-5x increased risk of dying if being a base jumper compared to just being average. However one can ponder if it would help fight depression and such. And, looking at death rates for 45+ , cancer then becoming a major killer with obesity certainly being a factor. How many lives does the fitness regime of base jumping save?
- manarth 9y agoIt is in the land of the free I'm aware that BASE jumping is banned in US National Parks (and it's been argued that this increases the risk [1]), but it doesn't seem to be banned generally in America (see Perrine Bridge, or Bridge Day, for example [2]). [1] https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2015/may/22/did-rules-not-risk-cause-dean-potters-base-jumping-death https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2015/may/22/did-rules... [2] http://www.nerverush.com/base-jumping-locations-plan-jump/ http://www.nerverush.com/base-jumping-locations-plan-jump/
- base698 9y agoMost of the safe wingsuit flights are in national parks. The Perrine is fun but it's not a 3000 ft mountain with waterfall views on the way down.