You'd be surprised how much having even a couple dozen square feet of canopy can slow you down (his full canopy was probably over 250sqft when fully open). Her

You'd be surprised how much having even a couple dozen square feet of canopy can slow you down (his full canopy was probably over 250sqft when fully open). Here's a video of someone whose reserve and main chutes get tangled, and despite them spiraling out of control into the ground, walks away without injury: https://jointheteem.com/videos/friday-freakout-skydiving/friday-freakout-skydiver-survives-nasty-double-parachute-malfunction-dual-rsl-jumpshack-racer/ https://jointheteem.com/videos/friday-freakout-skydiving/fri... You can search videos of "parachute double malfunction" to find other similar examples. The person in the video above certainly had a fair amount of canopy open, but there are others where the person has little more than some crumpled streamers. As far as opening at the last moment, if the person in the OP story had had it open above like 150 feet, it would have slowed him enough to have essentially no injuries. If they fell 15k feet, most of it unconscious, there's no reason it would have opened in the last 150 feet and not the 14850 feet beforehand.