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Extreme sports like this just feel so dumb. Why are you risking your life for a momentary thrill? You'd get a better rush and be safer taking heroin.
I've seen this mentioned before, it seems to be the main point. > 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 e…
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Why should it be? It's not like poeple don't understand the risk - especially by the time they get to the point where they can actually do it. What about all the other 'extreme' sports where death and/or serious injury is a possible outcome?
> Why should it be? Because someone one has to clean up the mess . And it wastes the coroners time. I'm not saying I agree that it should be banned, but those seem like two obvious angles.
Cleanup the mess is a valid point, but only justifies posting a bond at most.
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They said safer than BASE jumping, though they didn't capitalize it. BASE jumping is jumping off stuff, not out of stuff. It is an acronym. Building Antenna Span Earth, I think.
I'm aware of what BASE means. Grandparent post was comparing BASE jumping to wingsuit skydiving out of airplanes and helicopters. Parent said that BASE jumping off of mountains could be safer. I called bullshit.
I had a close call this summer whitewater rafting on the Upper Animas River in Colorado and it has caused me to re-think every serious risk I take and has changed me in a big way. I was participating in a multi-day trip run by one of the local guiding outfits through the Upper section of the river, a much more difficult and serious undertaking than the Lower Animas, which is frequently run by average day-tripping tou…
Nowhere near that close for me and a lot more soft, but still one of these “oh shit” moments was when I decided to go swimming when waves were bigger than usual due to a coming storm. It was all fun until I realized I wasn’t able to swim back to the shore to where I can stand. Every time I tried, a wave knocked me further into the ocean and my leftover stamina kept dropping. I was freaking out and had no idea how to…
Extreme sports like this just feel so dumb. Why are you risking your life for a momentary thrill? You'd get a better rush and be safer taking heroin.
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This reminds me of Freeman Dyson's research on British Bombers during WWII -- the data showed experienced crews didn't fair better than novices, but they didn't figure out why till after the war. > Bomber Command told the crews that their chances of survival would increase with experience, and the crews believed it. They were told, After you have got through the first few operations, things will get better. This idea…
That's a great story. My first instinct for where to look to find things that would affect experts and beginners alike is manufacturing defects or poor suit design. I'd say also weather but that seems more likely to be highly variable and prone to skill (i.e. experts know when conditions are poor).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why should it be? It's not like poeple don't understand the risk - especially by the time they get to the point where they can actually do it. What about all the other 'extreme' sports where death and/or serious injury is a possible outcome?
> Why should it be? Because someone one has to clean up the mess . And it wastes the coroners time. I'm not saying I agree that it should be banned, but those seem like two obvious angles.
Maybe instead you get them contributing to a local SAR organization. Maybe they have to get insurance. Or something else more constructive and less ham-fisted than just making it illegal.
Why is banning stuff so high on everyone's list of solutions to problems that don't really affect them?
Proximity flying is just inherently dangerous. Even with power, many people have died. Sparky Imeson, who wrote the "bible" of mountain flying, died from flying too close to terrain. The strange thing is that he was actually flying back to somewhere that he had had an accident in the past (the first time he just got seriously injured, the second time he died). If you look at the accident location, there is a valley a…
I was suprised to see no mention of VR as a potential alternative anywhere in the thread. I suppose realism still has a long way to go!