Thread: When people fall to their death

Originally Posted by Rai Saix

I heard somewhere it is rarely the fall that kills you... That most people die out of fear.

How do you "die out of fear"? Use your brain. Of course the fall kills you.

I geuss I'm just an idiot. xD

Lemme work on my theory.

Originally Posted by drewmandan

Really? Try it: Jump off the roof of your house with your legs bent, then try it with your legs locked straight. See which scenario breaks your legs.

Exactly. The impact wouuld break your legs because they are absorbing the impact. If you bend, your whole body will absorb the impact.

Originally Posted by guitarboy

Exactly. The impact wouuld break your legs because they are absorbing the impact. If you bend, your whole body will absorb the impact.

I can see that.

I rather have broken legs than a broken body.

I guess people are scared to keep their legs straight locked because they think it will actually increase the speed they are falling at and thus make the impact much larger.

Originally Posted by Jhony

I can see that.

I rather have broken legs than a broken body.

I guess people are scared to keep their legs straight locked because they think it will actually increase the speed they are falling at and thus make the impact much larger.

You completely misunderstood. If you lock your legs, they break. If you bend them, nothing breaks.

That's why people do those ninja rolls when jumping from greater hights. To absorb energy and redirect it into forward motion, instead of directing it into your spine. Which breaks.

Yah, my friend tried that after seeing me do it(we were playing manhunt and I jumped off a 10 foot deck) He landed and bashed his knee into his face when he rolled. It was painful(
















AND FUNNY AS HELL)

Originally Posted by drewmandan

You completely misunderstood. If you lock your legs, they break. If you bend them, nothing breaks.

Oh I get ya. Like with Parkour when they jump, they bend their legs and roll it off.

Originally Posted by drewmandan

Really? Try it: Jump off the roof of your house with your legs bent, then try it with your legs locked straight. See which scenario breaks your legs.

I know. Simple math: pressure = force / time. Since you land with your knees bent your forced to reduce the pressure over a period of time, lessening the overall impact. That's pretty irrelevant though, since it's a matter of bone alignment rather than muscles. You can land with your knees bent and be tense at the same time.

I really don't feel like explaining basic physics, but the force can't "go through you". There's nothing above you for it to go to... if you think the energy can go through you and into the air or something then you're sadly mistaken.

I can see you don't understand much about kinetic energy, maybe you should do a little bit more research before making such a statement. I'm not saying relaxing is bad, it just won't make a difference from a 200ft fall.

And it's not wise either since (I assume) you haven't experienced falling from such a height. I highly doubt you would remain calm, but then I can't say that since I've never fallen from more than 20ft...

No shit. But we aren't talking about a 200 foot fall. I jumped from 15 feet in to sand/grass, I know how to land, I landed right, nothing happened.

Originally Posted by guitarboy

No shit. But we aren't talking about a 200 foot fall. I jumped from 15 feet in to sand/grass, I know how to land, I landed right, nothing happened.

We are talking about a 200ft fall. People don't flap their arms and scream from 15 ft. A "Woah!!" suffices

I kind of strayed from that. A 200 foot fall could possibly be survived. You will at least break your ankles though.

But it depends on what you fall in to. Water, your okay. Concrete....
Snow, depends how thick.

They say that most untrained people who fall from above 30 feet will die from the impact. There are ways you can position yourself to survive long falls though, for example letting different parts of your body hit the ground at different times to spread the impact over a longer period.

Of course there are also luck involved, and it probably helped this woman, who holds the Guinness World Record for surviving the longest free fall without a parachute at 33,333 feet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovic

If I was forced to do something like that though, I'd opt for one of these wingsuits:

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_...=vimeo.com&sho

Originally Posted by guitarboy

But it depends on what you fall in to. Water, your okay. Concrete....
Snow, depends how thick.

At high speed hitting water is the same as hitting concrete. Has to do with water's high surface tension.

O EM GEEH A MOD.
/me hides for inevitable ban.
Yah, after about 30 feet, it is very hard to do. I read marines were trained to survive 50 foot drops from helicopters if they are being shot at when going down ropes, but I think the was just 007 tomorrow never dies for ps1.
EDIT: THIS JUST IN Paul McCartney gave the lady who survived the fall the title at giuness book of world records.

the guy in "The Void" fell over a thousand feet into a crevice, and broke a legg, and then proceeded to finding a way out and then dragged himself for over ten miles to his group.

If I was falling to my death, I would actually try not to draw attention to myself by flailing around/screaming/whatever. It would be funnier to fall into a crowd.

Originally Posted by Rai Saix

I heard somewhere it is rarely the fall that kills you... That most people die out of fear.

How could anyone ever verify that though?

Edit: Okay sorry I totally missed page two of this thread. Heh carry on.

Originally Posted by guitarboy

But it depends on what you fall in to. Water, your okay. Concrete....
Snow, depends how thick.

actually an idea that falling in water is safer is common misconception. It will most probably kill you if your terminal velocity is big enough.

I would flap my arms to try and change my direction, and land on my feet. or if it was really high up, I would try to land on my head for an instant death

I prolly wouldn't flap. I have always wanted to ( in case I fell to my death from 10km someday ) do the Tomb Raider jump. Anyone who remembers such a legendary game would know

Maybe it's also some kind of instinctive attempt to keep balance. Yeah keeping balance in the air hundreds of feet above ground doesn't make sense, but think about how people flap their arms when they're about to fall off a balance beam or something like that.

Maybe our ancestors have had wings and we still have that instinct

Ok, first. Water is not as hard as concrete if you fall from however many 100's of feet. If you belly slap, yeah it would probably be. But if you dive, obviously there's less surface area being hit and you'd slide in. Probably still hurt though.

I don't actually know whether people flap their arms. I've never seen it. That infamous video from 9/11, the guy basically just falls like he's already dead from what I can see.

Fear can kill you. I don't know how much it takes in humans. But looks at if you put a fly or bug on it's back. It ties because it gets so scares and stressed. Jackrabbits will die if you restrain them I think. Fear/stress increases your heart rate. Too high a heart rate will obviously kill you. Common sense.

Being less scared will help you survive. Look at drunk people in car crashes. The drunk ones survive, the sober ones who would be scared as fuck and all tense, die.

Someone also said the force won't go through your body into the air. That's not what whoever said that meant. He meant, I assume, that if you are limp the force will go THROUGHOUT your body. As in the example of keeping your legs loose or stiff.

Stiff legs will absorb all the impact. Probably your spine too.
Loose legs, some of the impact will be absorbed into your feet, you bend a bit so less is absorbed into your legs all at one time, if you roll your back will absorb the next bit which will be less by now.

Also 1000ft vs 500ft = not much difference. Look up terminal velocity. I think it's 124mph (200kmh).