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Still not as impressive as Vesna Vulovic, a flight attendant who holds the Guinness world record for surviving the highest fall without a parachute: 10,160 m (3
by whoisjuan 4y ago
Still not as impressive as Vesna Vulovic, a flight attendant who holds the Guinness world record for surviving the highest fall without a parachute: 10,160 m (33,330 ft; 6.31 mi)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87
- a4isms 4y agoThanks for the link, although I believe we're now in a place where "relative impressiveness" is all-but-meaningless. These are all impressive stories, and trying to figure out which one is more impressive is a little like sitting in a barbershop trying to figure out who is the greatest boxer that ever lived. My contribution to impressive feats of survival bailing out of an airplane is this story of a WWII ball turret gunner who survived a fall from his bomber without a parachute: https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/03/04/during-ww2-an-american-pilot-fell-20000-feet-without-a-parachute-before-smashing-through-the-glass-roof-of-a-train-station-he-survived-and-lived-to-82/ https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/03/04/during-ww2-an-amer... I think there are other such WWII stories, I seem to recall someone who fell into an evergreen forest in winter and credited the snow-laden trees for his survival.
- aliqot 4y agoDicky Ecklund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dicky_Eklund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dicky_Eklund
- a4isms 4y ago"Any time we talking boxers, East Coast Elites gotta bring up Dicky Eklund. Dicky Eklund, Dicky Eklund, Dicky Eklund, that's all you hear. Stop with your Dicky Eklund, everybody know it be George Chuvalo!" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Chuvalo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Chuvalo
- jrumbut 4y agoWhere is the quote from? Sounds familiar.
- genghisjahn 4y agohttps://youtu.be/gv7mO41bbPg?t=74 https://youtu.be/gv7mO41bbPg?t=74
- a4isms 4y agoGood call-out! That was the scene I had in mind when I mentioned sitting in a barbershop arguing about the greatest boxer who ever lived, and while I didn't want to repeat that speech word-for-word, I was most definitely thinking of the Joe Frazier Rocky Marciano line you picked out. Finally, for all three people in the world who care, I picked George Chuvalo as my reply specifically because he is famous for fighting Ali twice and staying on his feet both times.
- jrumbut 4y agoWow you two really understand each other! I was thinking "what movie did I miss where they discussed Dicky Eklund and George Chuvalo?" I was wondering if it was from that old Showtime documentary about Dicky's darker times.
- aliqot 4y agoIt's heart warming that people know Dicky in this context, it's tough to see him go from where he was to the person they saw during his appearance on HBO's "High on Crack Street: Lost Lives in Lowell" https://deadspin.com/the-real-dicky-eklund-in-hbos-high-on-crack-street-and-5773665 https://deadspin.com/the-real-dicky-eklund-in-hbos-high-on-c...
- jrumbut 4y agoMy memory of him is always going to be Mickey Ward's corner, I'm not old enough to remember his own career but he had some legendary moments as a second.
- LorenPechtel 4y agoI think you have the same story twice. The ball gunner went into an evergreen forest in the winter.
- a4isms 4y agoThe story I was thinking of is of Nicholas Alkemade, linked elsewhere in this discussion. He was a Lancaster tail gunner: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Alkemade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Alkemade The story I linked to above is of Alan Magee, a B-17 ball turret gunner who fell through the glass roof of the Saint Nazare train station. They’re not the same story, but boy are they similar!
- sixothree 4y agoJuliane Koepcke also credits the Peruvian forest trees as one of the reasons she survived her fall from an airplane.
- snarg 4y agoI think, once you've reached terminal velocity, all fall distances are equally impressive. At that point, it's probably best to judge by outcome.
- rtkwe 4y agoCliff was almost definitely falling slower than Vesna though because he had the partially deployed parachute providing extra drag.
- googlryas 4y agoBut vesna was stuck in the fuselage, not just free falling. So she may have had a higher speed, but she have experienced fewer Gs as the fuselage crushed upon landing, giving her a greater distance to decelerate. But really, it's silly to compare these. Neither relied on any personal qualities to achieve the outcome, it is basically just blind luck in both cases. Without Cliff's lack of spleen or Vesnas weirdly low blood pressure, both probably would have died. Or if they just landed oriented slightly differently.
- lazide 4y agoTerminal velocity varies a LOT based on body position and individual mass to surface area ratio, so honestly hard to know. A ‘standard’ human falls between 110-130 mph in a ‘flat’ belly to earth position (which actually requires non-trivial training to achieve reliably). Someone tumbling in an uncontrolled fashion will have wildly varying and often higher speeds. Someone ‘tracking’ can have highly reduced descent rates, even as low as 90mph (no wing suit required). Someone falling with a drogue chute or partially deployed chute can fall slower, or faster, depending on what body position it ends up putting them in and how much drag it actually produces. If it wraps around their leg or arm for instance, it can put them in a feet down or head down position, which will have them falling a lot faster. Head or feet down can easily be 150+ mph without special gear. Having done it, it’s quite noticeably faster, and you have to watch the altitude a lot more as your floor comes up much faster than your intuition expects. Source: licensed skydiver (C for anyone who cares), with a decent number of relative formation work and free flying in my logbook.
- 4y ago
- im3w1l 4y agoAn unopened chute has got to be better than none right? Edit: at slowing your fall I mean.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- lazide 4y agoSee my comment above - it depends on what body position it puts you in, and what body position you’d otherwise be in. In sports skydiving, it’s generally considered fatal either way to not have a fully functioning parachute above your head long before you come back in contact with the ground. A partially deployed parachute is also considered to be one of the most potentially lethal types of malfunctions, as it has a high risk of entangling the reserve parachute. Bailout parachutes often don’t have a backup.
- Someone 4y agoRemarkable, yes, but I wouldn’t use “impressive” for either fall. Surviving such ordeals is (almost) 100% luck. I would use impressive for cases where the main subject has considerable influence in the outcome, as, for example, Ernest Shackleton had, or as people lost at sea for months with very limited resources had. (In this case, the part where he survives while in the ocean may be impressive, but I have no idea how hard that was)
- throwawaymaths 4y agoI believe there was a woman whose parachute failed and she knew her highest likelihoog of survival was to find a big and fall into the bog. She survived with relatively few injuries
- pea 4y agoThere was also a lady who fell 15,000 ft after two parachute malfunctions, only to land on a colony of fire ants who preceded to sting her back to life (apparently). > Paramedics brought a barely conscious Joan to Carolinas Medical Center for emergency treatment. Doctors determined that repeated fire ant stings luckily shocked her heartbeat and stimulated her nerves. The insect assault kept her heart beating and her organs functioning long enough to keep her alive during transport, where she fell into a comatose state. https://web.archive.org/web/20180313145230/skydiving.com/news/2017/skydiving/accidents/female-skydiving-enthusiast-survives-plummeting-14500-feet-onto-fire-ant-mound/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180313145230/skydiving.com/new...
- mabbo 4y ago"Fortunately, I landed in a giant nest of fire ants" says literally one person, ever.
- mabbo 4y agoI'm even more impressed with Nicholas Alkemade: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Alkemade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Alkemade He was the tail gunner on a WW2 Avro Lancaster that was on fire and going to crash. So he simply opened the door and jumped. > His fall was broken by pine trees and a soft snow cover on the ground. He was able to move his arms and legs and suffered only a sprained leg. > Alkemade was subsequently captured and interviewed by the Gestapo, who were initially suspicious of his claim to have fallen without a parachute. This was until the wreckage of the aircraft was examined and his parachute was found as Alkemade had described it. The Germans gave Alkemade a certificate testifying to the fact. He was a celebrated prisoner of war, before being repatriated in May 1945. He fell 5 km and basically walked it off. Even the Germans were duly impressed.
- euroderf 4y agoHuh, the krauts didn't let him go back home ASAP ? He was a wonder of nature (a Naturwunder?).
- throwawaymaths 4y agoTerminal velocity is terminal velocity, so the speed at which you fall tops out relative to altitude pretty quickly Water is basically concrete at terminal velocity. I'm not an expert, but I wouldn't be surprised if he survived because he fell into the water at the location of his plane, which was emitting bubbles that break the surface tension and make water safer to fall into
- entropicgravity 4y agoAnd there were waves. He could have hit in the froth of a breaking wave. Waves must have been of decent size for the amphibious airplane to not be able to land.
- hn_user2 4y agoMy guess is it is very unlikely he hit where the plane did. More likely the rough sea and high swells created the turbulence needed.
- ars 4y agoThere's nothing whatsoever to do with surface tension, which is utterly minimal. The actual reason water is so hard is simply that the water need to move out of your way when you fall into it, and if you are moving faster than it can do that then you simply hit the water as if it were a solid. Both bubbles and waves make it easier for the water to move out of your way.
- yunwal 4y agoI imagine at 10s of thousands of feet, you're hitting terminal velocity easily, and the extra 20000 feet is an advantage in that you have more time to prepare for landing.