Comment by RealityVoid | Hacker News Reader

Comment by RealityVoid | Hacker News Reader

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Interestingly, this is NOT the first time tings like this happened. There are a few people that survived freefall from absurd heights [1]

My favorite website that documents all these things is the Free Fall Research Page [2] that to my dismay now seems to be on the bottom of the second google search results page.

Most people have this image about falls that you fall from heights you die, but some people are lucky and it really depends on how and where you fall. I was with some friends once and was mentioning about all these people that survived free fall and I was surprised to get some really incredulous looks of the type "Sure they did buddy, do you believe everything you read?" even tough these cases are well documented. I think it just goes to show that if something is deemed impossible in popular culture it might as well not happen at all, ever.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fall_survivors

[2] http://www.greenharbor.com/fffolder/ffresearch.html

And of course the manual on how do it: http://www.greenharbor.com/fffolder/carkeet.html

Well, I would have thought there'd at least be a TL;DR - time is of the time is of the essence when you need to consult that.

Ideally you look this up before getting started. But I feel like I am just missing a joke you are making :p

I know this lunatic who is into base jumping. And according to him, if the body isn't in the right position within a few seconds of jumping you are dead. Dumbest sport on the planet.

Not sure if you're interested, but the risk of base jumping comes from the fact that you're starting from zero airspeed, which means that all of your "flight control surfaces" (arms, legs, torso, etc.) that skydivers use to re-position themselves during falling are useless. There's not enough air flowing across your limbs to produce any usable force.

This means that there's a risk you're not in the necessary deploy position when the critical throw/survive moment arrives, and you carry an increase risk of not surviving.

I don't know about dumbest sport, but it's definitely dangerous. Also, not all BASE jumps are the same. The problem comes when people keep looking for that next thrill. I at least partly understand. I've sky dived before, and jumping out of an airplane is exhilarating like few things I've personally experienced.

With that said, the person who I first sky dived with is dead now. She misjudged the wind on a BASE jump and was blown back into the cliff.

Base jumping isn't just wingsuits although it's pretty dangerous in any case. From what I can see, at least the more extreme wingsuit jumpers (is there another kind?) pretty much all die jumping sooner or later.

> lunatic

> Dumbest

Stay classy.

"Able-ist" language is the crime that has gone on here.

Only learned of the ableist word recently and my spell checker has problems with it.

Calling someone who regularly risks their own life for no benefit other than thrill a lunatic is hardly “ableist”. It’s accurate.

It’s actually pretty interesting, but to your point, apparently children can tolerate a higher fall.

Here’s a reddit post where a kid falls from a window and a lady is trying to help her back home:

https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/c0j87k/kid_falls_from_...

It’s largely due to their lower mass and flexibility. It’s all about deceleration. Depending how they (and adults) fall how their chances of survival are impacted.

Air resistance goes by surface area, weight goes by volume. Terminal velocity depends on ratio of those two. And thats what matters on long falls.

The rule of thumb I heard is that a hamster survives, human dies and an elephant goes splat.

The orignal quote is quite poetic:

> "You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes." - J.B.S. Haldane

Thanks! I knew it sounded familiar. replacing elephant with horse does paint a ... Better?.. picture in my mind.

a hamster on a road will most likely die, a human with a wingsuit has good chances to survive

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