Why are fighter pilots such extraordinary story tellers?
You only read the stories written by pilots who are good story tellers; nobody shares the rest.
Survivor bias. Squared.
I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived
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Re: I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived
#72Related: A Serbian flight attendant who survived a fall of 10,160 metres without a parachute. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87
Nope, that story is probably a fabrication. Plane was likely shot down during emergency landing. Huge fuckup by communist forces that was covered up.
Reference?
Re: I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived
#73Why are fighter pilots such extraordinary story tellers?
Nice catch! I think they practice in bars
Re: I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived
#74Awesome read. Can anyone explain the quote below? I don't really understand how the minesweeper understood the signal. --- The Coast Guard amphibian gained altitude and flew off. (I learned later that he headed for a squadron of minesweepers that was returning to the United States from a tour of the Western Pacific. He was unable to tune to their radio frequency for communications. But this ingenious pilot lowered a…
if your experience (memory of error-correcting inter-ship communication procedures) is perplexed/high entropy, something unexplainable/miraculous/it is like a flare
Re: I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived
#75He 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?
Water is likely worse because if you get knocked out you’re gonna drown.
You want to maximize your surface area and protect your head. Let your body absorb as much of the impact as possible: Land almost horizontally, with your feet hitting first and your head hitting last. This way, you might only break every bone in your body instead of dying.
Re: I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived
#76Earlier 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.
There's also the fourth drop of Lost Paddle on the Gauley in WV. The whole left side of the river is a labyrinth of strainers. Thereby the name ;)
Re: I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Judging by his injuries (smashed ankles and broken hip), I guess that is exactly how he fell.
From cliff jumping 13 meters and nearing ripping my hip out of it's socket by having my feet ever so _slighty_ apart, I can't imagine the amount of injury from 15,000 feet.
Fun fact, there is no difference between 2000 feet (about 600 meters) and 15,000 feet, because of terminal velocity.
It also means that in a free fall spreading your body out horizontally to increase the drag forces, then re positioning just before landing would be the optimal choice. Not that you think of that in a free fall, but the physics are there.
Re: I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived
#78Earlier 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…
if your unlucky enough to be fully buried in an avalanche, it's not possible to dig, period. After everything stops moving, the loose snow refreezes almost instantly, locking you in place. Still, you're correct... Survivors often state they had no idea which direction was up.
Re: I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived
#79One important note is that this was NOT free fall as you'd expect. The pilot chute is still pretty large and provides a LOT of drag. Instead of 120mph, you'd be falling near ~90mph with just it behind you. That is 44% less kinetic energy!
Re: I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived
#80Why are fighter pilots such extraordinary story tellers?
Besides the obvious selection/survivor bias of good stories. It's likely that if anyone of a population (like say the airforce) is going to have good story telling it's going to be the ones that are the best out of that population in applying themselves (like jet fighter pilots). E.g. I doubt it's that they are good story tellers, I would bet that it's that they are just good at anything they do through applying themselves.