131–140 of 275 posts
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.
Perhaps for the same reasons certain people are attracted to service in the military. Some people report getting a massive kick out of participating in active armed combat situations, to the point that civilian life seems dull in comparison.
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…
> There's gotta be safer ways to get an adrenaline rush. 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!
I know in the early days of VR I had a helmet on and was walking between two buildings on a beam. Tricky bastards then made the beam (which was lying on the ground) warp so you lost your balance, I truly thought I was dying for 10 seconds.
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Eight or nine years ago, I lept off a tower from about 800 ft. After opening the parachute and scanning for my landing area I turned towards it to the left, which was slow and felt off. "Maybe I'll turn to the right and come around from the back", at which point the parachute collapses and spins violently from behind. I reach up and grab the left riser, the strap that connects you to the harness, and stopped the spin…
you mentioned seeing your shadow in your vision, what does this mean? That the way the sun was oriented compared to where you were in your fall, that you were close to the ground?
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It is better to swim parallel to the coast until you find an easier place to approach. Fighting the currents is exhausting.
I confirm. I grew up near the Atlantic Ocean, in an area of high current. It is something that was taught to us as teenagers.
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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).
I would look no further than the basic ingredients of the sport: speed, gravity, zero margin for error and over a long enough run of events you are destined for the morgue. This is not a sport, it is suicide in disguise.
You can't expect a big monkey to stick wings on their body and not die at some point.
The most telling fact is that there is no clear bias of experience in these accidents. This simply means that the method is wrong. For sure, this is a bit like calling water wet, but people will continue to turn themselves into high performance lawn darts until they change their approach to safety. I think a lot of them don't fully appreciate how little room for error there is. They fly at around 150 MPH which is 220…
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Eight or nine years ago, I lept off a tower from about 800 ft. After opening the parachute and scanning for my landing area I turned towards it to the left, which was slow and felt off. "Maybe I'll turn to the right and come around from the back", at which point the parachute collapses and spins violently from behind. I reach up and grab the left riser, the strap that connects you to the harness, and stopped the spin…
Just a nit, because I spent years not realizing this due to my accent, but it's "I'd have" not "I'd of". It sounds like "I'd of" because "I'd've" gz on surviving the fall so that you could have random people correct your grammar in the future. Glad to hear you kept with it-- people are surprisingly risk adverse yet will ignore passive danger
Probably because it's the most dangerous thing you can do short of actually attempting suicide
How are there so many people willing to do something so insanely stupid? I looked at the BASE fatality list. Vast majority of the names and nationalities are of European descent and/or nationality. Are adventure sports (risk taking for thrill) a white European thing? Do you have to have a sort of arrogance and privilege to disrespect risks like this? I personally have no desire for any of this stuff, as I'm quite awa…
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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.
How many would die of other causes, such as .. car crashes.