Unplanned Freefall? Some Survival Tips (2001)

This made me remember a Myth Busters episode where they were testing if Indiana Jones could survive a fall from a tall building into an awning (happens in one of the movies). They were pretty sure that it was impossible, but the crash dummy survived with a bruised rib :)

gonzo41• 5 years ago

The life raft was also possible, but it has to be a giant one.

raxxorrax2• 5 years ago

So did anyone test the nuke and the fridge?

daniel_iversen2• 5 years ago

Why on earth does such a simple text-only page not have “Reader View” on iOS safari!?

red_trumpet• 5 years ago

Probably because each paragraph is a table row :D

daniel_iversen2• 5 years ago

Oh the sweet 90s and early 2000s :-)

trampi• 5 years ago

Oh god, I hoped you were kidding. But you were not ...

yardie2• 5 years ago

Thirty feet is the cutoff for fatality in a fall. That is, most who fall from thirty feet or higher die.

And to think my friends and I used to jump off a 2nd story balcony for shits and giggles. Even after one of us broke an arm doing it. Just 2/3 of the way towards certain death!

aerique2• 5 years ago

Shouldn't the speed ramp up quite a bit in that last 1/3?

wyager• 5 years ago

Less than 1/3rd of the velocity will come from the last 1/3rd of the fall.

If you’re going X speed after 2 stories, you’d be going sqrt(3/2)X = 1.22X after the last 1/3rd, ignoring drag.

Energy increases linearly with fall height though, and energy is probably what mostly kills you. (Again ignoring drag.)

jacquesm2• 5 years ago

At a guess you were a lot lighter back then. The speed of impact would be the same but the total energy to dissipate a fraction of what it would be today. So better not to try that particular trick again.

yardie2• 5 years ago

Oh to have the resiliance and cartilage of a teenage boy! Pretty sure if I did that those stunts at my age I'd win a Darwin award.

Symmetry2• 5 years ago

"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."

LorenPechtel12• 5 years ago

Yup. As small kids we would jump from a tree that I wouldn't consider doing as an adult. I don't think terminal velocity is important at that scale but square-cube certainly is. You landed pretty hard but I never heard of anyone getting hurt.

gibspaulding• 5 years ago

Wouldn't a second story balcony be in line with the floor of the second story, not the roof, so ~10 or 12', not 20.

Someone2• 5 years ago

“Look around for a proportionate personal vehicle—some large, flat, aerodynamically suitable piece of wreckage. Mount it and ride, cowboy”

Given that you woke up after falling 20,000 feet, anything that in itself is “aerodynamically suitable” will be high above you by now (1) or, if it dropped of before you started falling, be miles behind you. Even that tightly packed parachute likely has lower terminal velocity, and will be out of reach by now.

I guess your best (not one with good odds, but still best) bet is an airplane door with an uninflated glide that you can tie yourself to, remove from the door, and then inflate.

(1) you can see that with rain showers: it’s the smaller droplets that hit the ground last

abcd_f2• 5 years ago

That’s your top nitpick across all points presented in this survival guide?

gus_massa• 5 years ago

I mostly agree, but a nice flat surface would rotate/rock/wave [1] like a sheet of paper. When it's horizontal it will go slowly, but when it's vertical it will go faster than a person. I'm not sure about the average.

Note: This is a nice experiment for ~12 year old students that are learning to measure things in the laboratory. Just get two sheets of paper and make a ball with one of them, and measure the time when they fall from a fixed height.

The time of the ball of paper will have a nice distribution. You can probably measure the time 5 times and have a good idea of the average and dispersion. Moreover, most of the dispersion in the time is due to the problems to start and stop the stopwatch, and perhaps some problems to release the ball.

The flat sheet will dance randomly while falling, and the time will be very inconsistent. I don't remember the details, but you should repeat the experiment like 20 times to get an idea of the distribution. The average changes, but the dispersion is a lot higher an impossible to avoid.

[1] I'm not sure which is the correct word in English.

whoopdedo• 5 years ago

I'm not sure which is the correct word in English.

"Flutter", perhaps?

sophacles• 5 years ago

I'm putting this paper experiment in my list of things to do with my nephew when he's a bit older. Neat idea, thanks!

About the correct word: I have no idea what the best word is, but the way you wrote it certainly brought images to my mind of various ways I've seen falling debris act. I honestly wonder if using the "best word" would have been less useful to my comprehension - but I'm in general a big fan of the word1/word2/.../wordN way of describing multi-faceted/ambiguous/complex statements.

I_complete_me• 5 years ago

I'm not sure which is the correct word in English.

would fall like an autumn leaf

LorenPechtel12• 5 years ago

Hadn't thought of that, it's certainly going to reduce your terminal velocity even if it goes vertical as it probably would.

dspillett2• 5 years ago

To paraphrase THHGTTG:

What to do if you find yourself falling from a great height: consider how lucky you are that life has been kind to you so far. If life hasn't been kind to you so far, which is not unlikely given your current circumstances, consider how lucky you are that it won't be bothering you much longer.

bryanrasmussen• 5 years ago

about halfway down remember to shout "so far so good!" in case anyone is listening.

tobr• 5 years ago

And about 90% of the way down, I would suggest “So long, and thanks for all the fish!”

h4waii• 5 years ago

La Haine? Subtle, I like it.

142• 5 years ago

Feel silly I had to look up what THHGTTG was. The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy

Fnoord• 5 years ago

You are Number Six.

sandworm101• 5 years ago

Aim for the whale, not the petunias. They are already having a worse day than you.

sleavey3• 5 years ago

I wonder why the advice if you're still on a row of seats is to ditch it. Whilst heavier, it may also be wider. I guess it's the ratio of mass to surface area (× drag coefficient) that matters, and if the thing you're attached to's mass-to-surface-area ratio is lower, you should keep holding onto it.

As long as holding onto it doesn't result in you orienting your body away from presenting the most area to the oncoming air. Don't hold onto a beach ball for example.

Someone2• 5 years ago

I don’t see any advice as to that. FTA:

“If thus connected, you have some questions to address. Is your new conveyance air-worthy? […] If you choose to go it alone”

Also, even if it is dropping faster, it may be worth it to stay in your seat if you can use it as a crumple zone

stavros3• 5 years ago

Whilst heavier, it may also be wider

Weight/mass doesn't matter, as all objects of the same shape above a certain density fall with the same speed. So literally just pick the widest object you can find, no matter how heavy it is, and ride it.

bluGill• 5 years ago

You want something that will act as a crumple zone and slow your final crash. So seats would be better than a wide sheet of iron of the same mass. At the last moment (and not before) stand on the seat and follow the roll the crash up your body advice.

Enginerrrd• 5 years ago

That's not how that works at all.

Terminal velocity occurs when the drag force balances the gravitational force. So F_d = F_g

F_d is proportional to the area of the object and the velocity squared.

F_g is proportional to the mass.

So, for constant area, at terminal velocity we have v^2 ~ m or v ~ m^(1/2) where "~" denotes a proportional relation.

Thus a heavier object falls at a higher terminal velocity than a lighter one.

Symmetry2• 5 years ago

Given a constant shape and density, terminal velocity goes up proportionally to the square root of the length of the object. Unless the object your grabbing is noticeably less dense than you are, which I'd guess wouldn't be true for the seat row, you're better off separated.

godshatter• 5 years ago

If by some chance the row of seats is not spinning wildly and is just falling in it's normal (pre-accident) orientation then you should see if you're butt is being pressed into the seat or if you are lifting up constrained only by your seatbelt. Butt into seat, stay. Constrained by seatbelt, unlatch.

LorenPechtel12• 5 years ago

Why unstrap? Having the seat underneath you gives you a bit of crumple and some protection from landing on something sticking up. In her case I suspect it had a lot to do with her survival--since she came down in rainforest I suspect the seat hit a lot of branches.

dTal• 5 years ago

Note that your terminal velocity is not an intrinsic property, but a consequence of air resistance on your body - air resistance you will not be feeling when enveloped by a row of airline seats. Even if the seat row has a higher terminal velocity than you would by yourself, its wake will take you with it.

Which isn't to say you won't feel your seatbelt tugging on you. You will likely be straining painfully against it. But that's because you'll be tumbling wildly, the entire assembly battered and buffeted by huge forces.

OminousWeapons• 5 years ago

Naively I would assume that one risk might be the seat itself causing you damage upon impact. At those speeds could there be a risk of the entire seat coming apart on impact and impaling you with metal shards?

rozab• 5 years ago

This article isn't meant to be serious, I don't think.

Juliane Koepcke, one of the only people to survive such a fall, did it strapped into a row of seats. And when she landed she was in good enough shape to survive 11 days in the Amazon rainforest (!!!) and make her own way to safety. So I'd say statistically, it's about the best thing you can do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juliane_Koepcke

sleavey3• 5 years ago

I wonder if someone will make a computer game akin to Bridge Designer, but for surviving falls. Levels could have various objects released along with your body, and various targets on the ground to aim for, and you can try to survive.

xkeysc0re• 5 years ago

Such a game does exist - check out the Pilotwings series for SNES and N64

simonebrunozzi• 5 years ago

As you go down 15,000 feet, you can also go sideways two-thirds of that distance—that's two miles! Choose your landing zone. You be the boss.

Pretty interesting. I wouldn't have imagined you could do this.

abcd_f2• 5 years ago

Probably depends on whether you are in boxers or in a speedo.

KineticLensman• 5 years ago

Tracking [0] is frequently used by skydivers after close freefall formation manoeuvring ('relative work') to increase their horizontal separation before deploying their canopies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracking_(skydiving)

huseyinkeles• 5 years ago

A very entertaining video about the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy5xLVx2NGY

m12k• 5 years ago

I feel like it's missing the whole question of what to do if you'll be hitting water instead of dirt, trees or snow. I've heard speculation that you could improve your odds of surviving by e.g. throwing down a pair of keys or similar to break the surface tension right before you hit the water, but I'd like to see that investigated further.

Also, no matter the landing zone, it seems like you should try to minimize your landing speed by maximizing drag until the last moment, then switch to a position from which to execute a five-point-landing (or going through the water surface with feet first) - I'd be interested in strategies for how to successfully execute that.

AnIdiotOnTheNet• 5 years ago

I've heard speculation that you could improve your odds of surviving by e.g. throwing down a pair of keys or similar to break the surface tension right before you hit the water, but I'd like to see that investigated further.

Mythbusters did it, it didn't help.

https://mythresults.com/episode5

fennecfoxen• 5 years ago

The harm from impacting water is mostly due to the bulk of water which is in your way, which is neither very compressible, nor can able to instantaneously displace itself so that it is out of your way.

It is not from the 0.07275 joules per square metre of surface tension.

dahart4• 5 years ago

There’s a pretty good chance your keys would just float up past you if you tried to throw them, and hit the water long after you. I think humans have a higher weight to surface area ratio.

But if you found a waterfall, you might try to land in the area that’s bubbling up. That could conceivably improve your chances when hitting water, which are very slim - hitting water in free fall is not that much better than hitting concrete.

Trying to execute a stand-up 2 or 3 seconds before impact might help you survive, I could buy that. I’d guess this is something that’s difficult to do without having tried it before, it usually takes a few tries to do without flopping back to flat.

LorenPechtel12• 5 years ago

Would changing your orientation even matter? Wouldn't you just reach the new terminal velocity by the time you entered? It's not like your a Starship that can flip at the last moment and has a big difference between sideways and vertical terminal velocity.

LorenPechtel12• 5 years ago

Water landings you want to go in feet first but not perfectly vertical. Walking away is possible if your angle of entry is perfect--but even then you might be knocked unconscious and even if you're not you might not make it back to the surface before you run out of air.

shadowgovt• 5 years ago

Good summary. It left out the benefits of always wearing a Mjolnir Mark VI power armor with an active microfusion core; the hydrostatic gel layer and surface-range energy shielding can protect the wearer from phenomenal kinetic impacts, while the armor-lock system guards the joints and other sensitive anatomic structure from contusion or rupture. Plus, the built-in transponder will minimize the time for emergency first-response / evac forces to locate the crash site and assist in resuscitation and vertical recalibration (always oddly necessary in those suits; I don't know why they don't just put some glue on that vertical toggle switch to keep it from flipping so often).

Don't leave home without it.

wiradikusuma• 5 years ago

In summary few things you can do to increase the odds of surviving.

I can't help but feeling panic and hopeless if I were in that situation because THERE'S NO UNDO BUTTON / CANT SAVE-AND-RELOAD, you have to do it right at first attempt! Can slide to forest? Whoops I just missed it.

jmvoodoo• 5 years ago

As someone with significant skydiving experience, good luck doing any of these things your first time out of a plane. Chances are you'll end up on your back, spinning out of control. If you are lucky you'll end up on your belly, spinning out of control.

If you want to learn how to do any of these things, go to your local wind tunnel and practice. Without that practice, you should just enjoy the minute or so of spectacular views before you go splat.

Also, even with that experience, you'll probably go splat. Best case your aorta will disconnect and you'll bleed out after a few seconds. This is common even when people are stopped by the harness (e.g. by hitting trees). Human body just wasn't designed to accelerate (decelerate) that quickly.

stronglikedan• 5 years ago

enjoy the minute or so of spectacular views before you go splat

This is what I've always said. The only time I'll skydive is if I already find myself falling out of a plane. Then I'll cross it off my bucket list as I go splat.

m3kw9• 5 years ago

Or pretend you are superman that is about to thrust himself into a planet. Like do the fist thing downwards.

cjonas2• 5 years ago

The author missed a very important strategy. Look for a transition.

If you manage to land on a nice slope, catching the transition will vastly reduced the peak force. The angle and composition of the slope will determine your outcome. Soft spring snow is probably best. Powder snow would have a much lower impact force, but most like you'll become deeply embedded and suffocate. Grass, shrubs or loose soil would be the next choice. If it's rocky or trees terrain you're probably toast

angrais• 5 years ago

What do you mean by transition? Like where the snow meets the mountain?

TrainedMonkey• 5 years ago

I think he means transition between vertical and sloped/horizontal surface. Targeting such a landing area would be pretty hard.

neomantra2• 5 years ago

My father was a survivor of China Airlines Flight 006, which in 1985 fell 30,000 feet over 2.5 minutes and corrected tens of seconds before impact with the Pacific. The incident was caused by human error, but also recovered by the skill of the same Captain; after it, the FAA made new guidelines about crew schedules and mandatory rest times.

Stephen passed away January 2021 from COVID (but had an amazing 85-year life) and I was just reading his diary from the incident. The gist:

There was still an hour left before an emergency landing at SFO. The cabin was festering with vomit and tears, but there was a profound sense of love and connectedness and compassion among every passenger. Every one felt touched by a Divine Grace.

However, after a only few hours at the terminal and people could finally leave, it was every person for themselves as they physically and verbally harassed each over to get to where they were going. So quickly back to being selfish humans...

My Mom said she would drive from Los Angeles to get him, but he said that if he didn't get on a plane right then, he would never be able to fly again. So he courageously flew SFO->LAX right away, one of many flights he would continue to take throughout his life.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Airlines_Flight_006

avh022• 5 years ago

holy crap - i've read about that flight so many times - it's one of the stories that keeps me relatively calm in turbulence* (along with the video of the famous 777 wing failure test) - they both give me solace in how much a plane is built to survive (yet, i read a lot about plane crashes, and also know what small things/mistakes/flaws lead to the opposite outcome)

* (obvi unfortunate that it happened and people had to experience that)

and sorry to hear about your father.

logshipper• 5 years ago

I am somewhat interested in reading about plane crashes and such. Are there any books/resources you can recommend to me?

firecall• 5 years ago

Agreed, and I like to always think of turbulence as a demonstration that the plane is working as intended!

e40• 5 years ago

fell 30,000 feet over 2.5 minutes and corrected tens of seconds before impact with the Pacific

What does "corrected tens of seconds before impact" mean here? Thanks.

bombcar• 5 years ago

If they hadn't leveled out and stopped descending, in a few more seconds they would have impacted the Pacific Ocean.

rob74• 5 years ago

Not to detract from another great "What If?" article, but I think the biggest gotcha is right at the beginning:

Let's say your jet blows apart at 35,000 feet. You exit the aircraft, and you begin to descend independently.

As far as I know, most airplanes don't do that nowadays. They tend to descend more or less in one piece (or several big pieces) to ground level and "blow apart" there. If they do blow apart at high altitude, it's probably due to an explosion which is apt to drastically reduce the chances of passengers being conscious (or alive) during the free-fall phase.

LorenPechtel12• 5 years ago

Terrorist bombs normally do not actually blow up planes. Rather, a successful bombing damages the skin enough that the wind shreds the plane. Thus it's quite possible to survive the bombing. Surviving the plane disintegrating around you, though...

diffuse_l• 5 years ago

Reminds me of this: https://youtu.be/oZIzreiseMk

I'm not sure if their analysis is accurate, but it's sure fun to watch :)

machawinka• 5 years ago

Seriously, this reminds me of a question I have always being afraid to ask due to morality reasons. Was there any chance for the 911 jumpers to survive in any way, no matter how minimal?

LorenPechtel12• 5 years ago

Hard surface landing--nope, nobody has ever survived free fall into something hard. No survival unless they could rig some sort of parachute.

dahart4• 5 years ago

Let's say your jet blows apart at 35,000 feet. You exit the aircraft, and you begin to descend independently. Now what? First of all, you're starting off a full mile higher than Everest, so after a few gulps of disappointing air you're going to black out.

Not mentioned is the fact that at 35k feet, the average temp is around -40 to -55 degrees Celsius. I don’t know if it would kill you, but you’d probably freeze some skin, and if you try to look you might freeze your eyeballs. It will be hard to move muscles after sixty seconds of 120mph freezing wind.

I’m curious if the passing out part is true. It certainly might be. My experience skydiving is that I would get light headed and seeing stars at 18k feet unpressurized, and the instant I jumped out of the plane, everything got better. Seemed like the force of the air in my face somehow packed all the oxygen I needed. 35k is very different from 18k, obviously.

* Oh yeah, and speaking from experience, I know it’s hard to see straight without wearing goggles when in free fall. I forgot to put them on once before jumping. Never forgot again after that.

interestica2• 5 years ago

I don’t know if it would kill you, but you’d probably freeze some skin, and if you try to look you might freeze your eyeballs. It will be hard to move muscles after sixty seconds of 120mph freezing wind.

https://youtu.be/6SI2V_DbCTw

If you haven't seen it, watch it from beginning.

dahart4• 5 years ago

Thanks, what a crazy story! I started it, and they mention this incident happened at 17k feet, so isn’t subject to the kind of freezing temps you’d see at cruising altitude, right? People skydive from 18k feet all the time. Haven’t finished yet because it’s long, but does it say something later about surviving cold at higher altitudes? (Edit I did hear now that it was -17C at the start before they dove lower… wild!!)

LorenPechtel12• 5 years ago

https://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/Time_of_Useful_Conscious...

You have 30-60 seconds at 35k. At 18k you'll feel it but you'll be down long before it's serious. (Although if it was unpressurized for the climb I wonder how much of the time you used up that way.)

Real world data--a guy punched at such altitudes and lost his oxygen in the process. Blacked out, came to on the way down. Amazing survival--he was supersonic at the time and punched without blowing the canopy.

jayess• 5 years ago

I'm reminded of the story of the girl who survived, somehow, a fall from a plane in the Amazon while strapped in to her seat. The theory is that the row seats spun like one of those seed pods and slowed her down when hitting some trees.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/18/science/koepcke-diller-pa...

I've often thought about this topic since the explosive decompression of Malaysia flight 17 over Ukraine. The anti-aircraft missile apparently caused an instant, explosive decompression of the plane. Assuming you weren't hit by one of the projectiles, you would have found yourself suddenly free-falling.

LorenPechtel12• 5 years ago

I don't even think it would matter if it spun. She went into trees. Lighter tree branches are about your ideal landing.

There is one case of a guy who apparently hit a pine tree perfectly, then a snow bank *and walked away*, with no injuries that were obviously from the landing. No aiming or anything, pure luck. (The injury situation is uncertain because he was injured when he jumped and hadn't had time to take stock of his injuries.)

kaliszad• 5 years ago

Quite morbid for a Do It Yourself guide ;-)

Fun fact, Vesna [0] from Serbia came down in Srbská (Serbian) Kamenice a small village in Czechoslowakia. What a coincidence. Btw. there was an article about this incident just this year [1] with some pictures.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87

[1] https://zpravy.aktualne.cz/pred-49-lety-roky-teroristicky-ut...

cecilpl2• 5 years ago

120 divided by 5 = 24. Not bad! 24 mph is only a bit faster than the speed at which experienced parachutists land. There will be some bruising and breakage but no loss of consciousness to delay your press conference. Just be sure to apportion the 120-mph blow in equal fifths. Concentrate!

Sadly this is not how it works. Kinetic energy is proportional to the square of velocity, and so if you can equally split the impact energy 5 ways, it's as though each impact is at 54mph. A bit harder to absorb.

LorenPechtel12• 5 years ago

And it's not something the untrained person is going to have any hope of pulling off. There is a grain of truth in the assertion--if the surface hit isn't too hard and the landing fall is executed perfectly survival is possible. Done correctly the energy is dissipated in breaking a whole bunch of bones but the truly vital areas aren't subjected to lethal force.

tomxor2• 5 years ago

The worlds smallest parachute is 3.25m square [0]

This is only possible because it's behaving like a wing and generating lift if you look at the shape closely... probably out of luck to find a piece of debris that is going to behave like an airfoil well enough, but this parachute user can land with zero injuries, if you only want to survive, perhaps some concessions can be made, and this made me wonder:

If you found such a flat and light enough piece of material with a useful surface area - how best to use it? even if it's not the right shape to generate significant lift, there are different ways to use it, and one of them causes the smallest terminal velocity - the obvious use is directly against the airflow like a flat parachute - but would it work better if you tried to convert your downward force into a horizontal one by deflecting the air into one direction? (like a really bad glider, or those wingman suits). My instinct says yes, but without lift I can't explain why, I suppose because I can see where the force is going (horizontal) rather than just "dissipating" through turbulence.

I suppose at the minimum, by directing the flow to one side you provide yourself with significantly more horizontal mobility for choice of landing site.

https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/88729-sma...

arwhatever• 5 years ago

"If you go parachuting, and your parachute doesn’t open, and you friends are all watching you fall, I think a funny gag would be to pretend you were swimming."

Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey

Unplanned Freefall? Some Survival Tips (2001)

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