At least the life vest inflated!
Lucky devil!
I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived
41–50 of 252 posts
Re: I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived
#42Earlier this year on a white water rafting expedition I had the misfortune of falling out of the raft and into a series of category 5 rapids. It was absolute chaos. The force of large bodies of moving water is astounding. Any notion of "swimming to safety" is ludicrous. A more accurate description is "being washed to safety" because you have no control over the larger movements of your body. I've heard in avalanches…
I've also gone swimming in continuous Class V. And yes, there is no control. But hopefully, you're wearing a wetsuit/drysuit, helmet and life preserver. So as long as you can get a breath occasionally, you may well survive. Dead trees jammed among the boulders (sweepers) are probably the major risk.
Re: I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived
#43What about Luke Aikins, who jumped without a parachute into a net from 25000 feet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qF_fzEI4wU
Altitude doesn't really make a difference past ~1,500 feet. At that point, you've hit terminal velocity.
For downward velocity, it doesn't matter. But for lateral movement, where the wrong move 10k+ feet up could send you off course, it matters.
Re: I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived
#44Related: A Serbian flight attendant who survived a fall of 10,160 metres without a parachute. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87
Vesna only passed away late last year (of old age). I remember reading her remarkable story as a kid.
Re: I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived
#45That there was a mechanical failure, + 2 failures on the ejection, and a parachute failure - is not a fluke. This is an extreme dereliction of duty by design and/or maintenance teams. There would be blame to go around as a result of this, and surely some op changes.
This is why civil aviation is so safe, and why it remains dangerous. There is essentially no single root cause path to death in civilian aviation, you need multiple systems to fail (yes, including the pilot, because you have a copilot, medical tests, training, and related secondary systems all designed to prevent the pilot from failing or provide a secondary system if they do). Every aviation accident today is almost by definition a multi-system failure. It would be nice if multiplying two low probability events resulted in a zero probability for the combined event but unfortunately probabilities don't zero out that way.
Re: I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived
#46As with almost everyone who survives, note the missing spleen
That sounds extremely confident. I can google that it's a common area of internal bleeding but what is the exact likelihood in that particular instance?
Re: I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived
#47He fell in an ocean. I wonder, if you happen by some extraordinary feat of skill or luck to fall feet-down in a perfectly straight body formation, would the impact be too small to have any injury?
Re: I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived
#48That there was a mechanical failure, + 2 failures on the ejection, and a parachute failure - is not a fluke. This is an extreme dereliction of duty by design and/or maintenance teams. There would be blame to go around as a result of this, and surely some op changes.
> That there was a mechanical failure, + 2 failures on the ejection, and a parachute failure - is not a fluke. This is an extreme dereliction of duty by design and/or maintenance teams.
Re: Ejector seat, it could also have been pilot error, if he had forgotten to take the safety pins out of the ejector system during his pre flight check. They are there specifically to prevent the ejection rocket from firing while maintenance crew are working on the aircraft on ground, and should be removed (by either pilot or crew chief) before flight. I know that in Naval aircraft, the pilot has to replace these pins as one of the last things he does before leaving the aircraft after landing.
Re: I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived
#49Huh, an F-8, just like Lt Col William Rankin who spent over 40 minutes stuck in a thundercloud after ejecting from his F-8: https://www.damninteresting.com/rider-on-the-storm/
Nice, thanks for sharing! I also like Bill Weaver's story of ejecting from an SR-71:
http://www.chuckyeager.org/news/sr-71-disintegrated-pilot-fr...
and this one of a paraglider surviving a thunderstorm uplift: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/dead-luck-ewas-flight-of...
Re: I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived
#50He fell in an ocean. I wonder, if you happen by some extraordinary feat of skill or luck to fall feet-down in a perfectly straight body formation, would the impact be too small to have any injury?
Judging by his injuries (smashed ankles and broken hip), I guess that is exactly how he fell.