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Comment by bmitc | Hacker News Reader

I sort of doubt that she was actually feeling calm. Adrenaline could potentially create such a feeling because of the mental concentration coming from it, but it's extremely hard to believe a novice parachuter, who seemed to make several mistakes, remained "calm" during an event in which her breaking her back was about the best outcome she could hope for.

> Even as Hatmaker spiralled towards the ground, she says the thought she might die never crossed her mind. At most, she thought she might break a leg – jeopardising her plans to climb to Mount Everest Base Camp three days later, a trip that had been a goal of hers for a couple of years.

This seems completely illogical and naive. I mean, really? I'd be worried about dying, breaking my leg, or breaking my back falling off my roof, much less from 13,000 feet.

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There are many clues that this article is employing some amount of dramatic storytelling. That said, stories of people feeling calm in extreme situations are pretty common, so your intuition and logic might be off here, especially if you lack experience skydiving.

Jumping out of a plane is very different than being on your roof. When I jumped, part of it was wanting to conquer my fears, heights being one of them. I discovered that fear of heights doesn’t occur to me when looking out an airplane door, you’re high enough that the fall is abstract and impact not immediately imminent. Jumping was easier than it is to clean my rain gutters, I still get weak knees on a ladder.

It seems like you’re thinking of worrying about death before an accident starts, and even before choosing to skydive, not during a mishap. I’ve never worried about dying during an evolving accident, and it makes complete sense to me, having had a few, that lots of people would say they weren’t thinking about dying while it was happening. You usually don’t have time to. There might be some panic without specific thoughts of death, or there might be thoughts about how to fix the situation, but I think it’s common to not think about death while something is going wrong, at least for survivors. I’m sure there are situations where the outcome becomes obvious and there’s nothing you can do, but I suffer from survivor bias and can’t ask them.

Why doubt what someone felt when they specifically said what they felt?

> I'd be worried about dying, breaking my leg, or breaking my back falling off my roof

I sort of doubt he was actually worried about dying as he was falling off his roof. I mean, really? It's extremely illogical and naive. Unbelievable that an adult would be so irrational. Plus unless his house is so tall the fall would take minutes he would simply not have enough time to properly worry about anything.

Naive? How would it be naive? Falling off a roof is one of the easy ways for someone to accidentally kill themselves. Anyone dealing with a roof should have "falling -> death" near the top of their mind.

It's illogical and naive to worry about death if you can't do anything about it at the time, no?

Anyway of course if you fall off the roof and say you worried about dying while falling then it's kinda nonsensical for me to doubt that.

And that's the point of my comment

"Everybody lies"

- House

So maybe House lied then:)

Underassessment of risk probably helps contribute to the desire to do things like skydive and climb Everest.

She didn't seek to climb Everest; she was going to the base camp. Going to base camp is not without hazard (people have died from altitude sickness, falls, or avalanches), but it's tiny compared to the hazards involved in summiting.

I suppose you can still brag "I climbed Everest" to people without any experience climbing Everest if you just go to base camp.

You’d be surprised how the human mind and body automatically reacts to extreme situations that we cannot fathom while sitting comfortably on our chairs. :-)

I think it's just the wrong implied use of calm. There's no way her body was in a calm state. It's just that adrenaline adjusts the bodies resources, which could create a feeling of mental calm. But describing this as a sense of calm is a world away from the calm some Buddhist up on a mountain experiences and other such uses of calm.

I guess my issue is just describing this as if it was just another day commuting to the office. The stakes were very high and her description and this article almost imply otherwise.

I'll keep my functioning spine and legs thank you ; )

> I sort of doubt that she was actually feeling calm. Adrenaline could potentially create such a feeling

That was the claim, wasn't it? ... feeling calm?

> This seems completely illogical and naive. I mean, really?

Statistically, it was a good assessment. Skydiving accidents are 40x more likely to by injuries, rather than deaths, and most of those are lower extremity injuries.

Some people are just built differently.

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