Still not as impressive as Vesna Vulovic, a flight attendant who holds the Guinness world record for surviving the highest fall without a parachute: 10,160 m (33,330 ft; 6.31 mi)
My contribution to impressive feats of survival bailing out of an airplane is this story of a WWII ball turret gunner who survived a fall from his bomber without a parachute:
https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/03/04/during-ww2-an-amer...
I think there are other such WWII stories, I seem to recall someone who fell into an evergreen forest in winter and credited the snow-laden trees for his survival.
That was the scene I had in mind when I mentioned sitting in a barbershop arguing about the greatest boxer who ever lived, and while I didn't want to repeat that speech word-for-word, I was most definitely thinking of the Joe Frazier Rocky Marciano line you picked out.
Finally, for all three people in the world who care, I picked George Chuvalo as my reply specifically because he is famous for fighting Ali twice and staying on his feet both times.
I was thinking "what movie did I miss where they discussed Dicky Eklund and George Chuvalo?" I was wondering if it was from that old Showtime documentary about Dicky's darker times.
https://deadspin.com/the-real-dicky-eklund-in-hbos-high-on-c...
The joke Eddie tells at the end in character as Saul cracks me up to this very day. When we succeed at tricking someone into recognizing an unpleasant truth, my entire family will waggle a finger and intone “Aha!” in tribute.
Example: “Hey, what colour is the rubber base of the dog dish?”
“Hang on… Ewww, it’s dirty, needs to be washed.”
“Aha!”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Alkemade
The story I linked to above is of Alan Magee, a B-17 ball turret gunner who fell through the glass roof of the Saint Nazare train station.
They’re not the same story, but boy are they similar!
> Paramedics brought a barely conscious Joan to Carolinas Medical Center for emergency treatment. Doctors determined that repeated fire ant stings luckily shocked her heartbeat and stimulated her nerves. The insect assault kept her heart beating and her organs functioning long enough to keep her alive during transport, where she fell into a comatose state.
https://web.archive.org/web/20180313145230/skydiving.com/new...
He was the tail gunner on a WW2 Avro Lancaster that was on fire and going to crash. So he simply opened the door and jumped.
> His fall was broken by pine trees and a soft snow cover on the ground. He was able to move his arms and legs and suffered only a sprained leg.
> Alkemade was subsequently captured and interviewed by the Gestapo, who were initially suspicious of his claim to have fallen without a parachute. This was until the wreckage of the aircraft was examined and his parachute was found as Alkemade had described it. The Germans gave Alkemade a certificate testifying to the fact. He was a celebrated prisoner of war, before being repatriated in May 1945.
He fell 5 km and basically walked it off. Even the Germans were duly impressed.
But really, it's silly to compare these. Neither relied on any personal qualities to achieve the outcome, it is basically just blind luck in both cases. Without Cliff's lack of spleen or Vesnas weirdly low blood pressure, both probably would have died. Or if they just landed oriented slightly differently.
A ‘standard’ human falls between 110-130 mph in a ‘flat’ belly to earth position (which actually requires non-trivial training to achieve reliably).
Someone tumbling in an uncontrolled fashion will have wildly varying and often higher speeds.
Someone ‘tracking’ can have highly reduced descent rates, even as low as 90mph (no wing suit required).
Someone falling with a drogue chute or partially deployed chute can fall slower, or faster, depending on what body position it ends up putting them in and how much drag it actually produces. If it wraps around their leg or arm for instance, it can put them in a feet down or head down position, which will have them falling a lot faster. Head or feet down can easily be 150+ mph without special gear.
Having done it, it’s quite noticeably faster, and you have to watch the altitude a lot more as your floor comes up much faster than your intuition expects.
Source: licensed skydiver (C for anyone who cares), with a decent number of relative formation work and free flying in my logbook.
I would use impressive for cases where the main subject has considerable influence in the outcome, as, for example, Ernest Shackleton had, or as people lost at sea for months with very limited resources had.
(In this case, the part where he survives while in the ocean may be impressive, but I have no idea how hard that was)
Water is basically concrete at terminal velocity. I'm not an expert, but I wouldn't be surprised if he survived because he fell into the water at the location of his plane, which was emitting bubbles that break the surface tension and make water safer to fall into
The actual reason water is so hard is simply that the water need to move out of your way when you fall into it, and if you are moving faster than it can do that then you simply hit the water as if it were a solid.
Both bubbles and waves make it easier for the water to move out of your way.
Edit: at slowing your fall I mean.
In sports skydiving, it’s generally considered fatal either way to not have a fully functioning parachute above your head long before you come back in contact with the ground.
A partially deployed parachute is also considered to be one of the most potentially lethal types of malfunctions, as it has a high risk of entangling the reserve parachute. Bailout parachutes often don’t have a backup.