I was once in a plane crash in which the wing of our small plane hit the mast of a sailboat that was motoring in front of the runway and we didnt see it. We impacted the seawall and flipped over onto land and slid upside down a few hundred feet.
The author's description of both not feeling his injuries until he tried to move as well as his own recognition of not being dead were spot on. I would have described it exactly the same way myself. I ended up with a broken foot and leg, but overall no lasting damage which was extremely lucky. Looking back on that experience is always incredibly surreal.
It is amazing how little you feel immediately after an accident. Mine wasn't so death-defying, but I did shatter my shoulder in a bicycle accident, and called a friend to come get me and drive me and my bike home. I did not realize I was hurt until he got there, and could not stand up or move the left half of my body. Then we decided to go to the hospital instead of my home. But for about the first 10 minutes, I thought I just was just scraped up a bit...
Back in high school, my ear got cut nearly in half in a car accident. I didn't feel a thing until the paramedic jammed and taped a styrofoam restraint against my ear as a precaution for neck injuries. Apparently, the full range of pain free neck motion vs the gouts of blood gushing from my ear wasn't convincing enough.
I didn't break anything, but I'm amazed that I didn't when I had a bicycle accident several years back.
I was doing something real stupid - mid 30's, showing off to my wife, on a bike with Amerityres; I had just gotten those tires installed. They're great tires - solid tires, but feel like they are aired up. Well worth the price.
What I wasn't told was that you shouldn't do any kind of "jumps" with your bike...
So there I am showing off, and I decide to ramp off this one section of sidewalk (that actually made a good ramp). I landed, and that's when things went to hell.
Ya see, Amerityres don't deform like a regular tire does. Instead - they come off the rim. I went a$$-over-teakettle.
To this day I don't know all what or how I landed, but I do know my knee took the brunt for some reason. I came within inches of slamming my head into a concrete block retaining wall for the raised bed of the neighbor's lawn that was next to the sidewalk. The bike was totally mangled. My wife was horrified.
Now - I knew I had taken a good spill, but I thought "well, dust yerself off, laugh about it" - which I did. I told her I was fine, go home and grab my pickup so I can get home. As she biked off, I decided I would get up, and walk the bike home. I slung it up on my shoulder, and started to walk (note, this was a cheap walmart bike, and weighed a bit). Everything seemed ok. She eventually got to me, I put the bike in the back, then slumped in the passenger seat. We went home, then went inside.
We started to discuss what we were going to have for dinner (KFC, if I remember right), when I looked down at my knee...
...it was swollen to the size of softball! It didn't really feel that good, and I could barely walk on it.
We went to urgent care that night. They xray'd me and told me nothing was broken. Gave me a script for vicodin (yay), wrapped up my knee, and gave me a crutch. I hobbled around for a few weeks, and eventually all was better, with no problems in the leg since.
But in the immediate aftermath of the crash, I had no idea just how bad I was injured, nor the amount of pain I would feel. I was just walking along, carrying my bike on my shoulder, like no big deal.
I guess a lot of accidents are like that, if serious enough; probably some kind of survival holdover tactic to allow you to "get away" and to safety after an injury (or worse) a predator attack.
3 mins after, a ski medic was shuffling pieces of bone around in my shoulder and saying "i think its dislocated" all without any pain but feeling very badly winded. Adrenaline is impressive. Morphine is the best
Christ, what a mess of an accident. You'd think there would be a practical solution to this that didn't involve operators having to worry about each other behaving correctly. Like moving the airport or shipping lane somewhere else so they don't interfere. Or the tower handling this via automation like a laser bouncing across the waterline and triggering an alert if a boat is too close to the shore.
Have you developed a fear of flying over this? Curious about the long term aspects at play here. Who was found at fault here? I'm assuming the boat captain.
1. Regarding solutions: This airport does not have a tower, so its up to the pilots to use the radio to announce intentions etc. To me, the core problem is that this does not loop in the boats and so there is no way to communicate. I think having the boats or some third party announce when a crossing is occurring would help. I also think, in response to this accident they moved the runway a few hundred feet further from the channel.
2. Regarding blame the NTSB actually ruled it pilot error, but I think that is myopic and only because there wasn't really anything else they could say since their jurisdiction doesnt extend into the rules of boats. Technically it is pilot error, but there were other errors as well from each side that all combined.
3. In terms of fear of flying, im actually okay. I had to fly twice per week for work for many years following this. Sometimes i'd have some flashbacks or bad thoughts, but overall don't have an issue. I've also been back up in a small plane just to do it. That said, I view commercial airplanes as completely safe and have no real fear with them. With small planes theres just so much can go wrong. The planes are not the issue, they are safe themselves. However, because of many small airports not having a tower, the lack of safety comes from having to deal with many other factors at play. I want to fly again later in life, its amazing and I have a love of planes. At this point though I feel like it would be pushing my luck so don't really do it.
In what way do you (or drzaiusapelord, if you see this) think that the boat operator was in any way at fault? There doesn't seem to be any indication of that in the NTSB report[1], and the newspaper report states that the boat was in the channel.
I don't really place blame with any one thing, but a mix of a bunch of factors. For the boat, they were motoring much closer to the side with the runway, instead of the side further away. Its not technically wrong, but if they were exercising any caution at all would have been farther away and likely out of our glideslope. On our side, we should have checked more deliberately that nothing was in our path. On base, I saw nothing, but the time we were on final I guess the boat had moved and was then in the way of the runway and neither I nor the pilot in command saw it.
Mostly though, I think there just should have been much more regulation given the number of parties operating in the same space.
It seems that an exclusion zone could and should have been established in the vicinity of this approach, but to say that the boat operator was not "exercising any caution at all" is quite a stretch. Boats traveling in channels have a set of regulations to follow, which include keeping to the side when not crossing.
It's amazing how little governance there is in the sky for general avaiation - aka small planes flown by private pilot license holders. When I studied to get my PPL it was the one thing I learned that shocked me.
There are NOTAMs (Notice to Airmen) that tell us about new structures that have been erected that could be problematic. NOTAMs also tell us if parts of the sky are off limits, for example if an airshow is on.
Other than that, and I am generalising a lot, there is no air collision avoidance in the majority of private planes here in the UK. Your two best mechanisms of defence are your eyes, and keeping one ear on the radio to get a feel for where everybody else is. If they're not too busy air traffic control will warn you about other planes in your vicinity, but it is not mandatory. There are also TCAS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision_avoidance_sy...) systems you can bolt on to your plane, or might come with new planes, but they're not mandatory and I've yet to fly a plane that comes with one.
As for finding fault. That doesn't happen in air accident investigations. Air Accident Investigation Reports (https://www.gov.uk/aaib-reports) are specifically engineered to focus on the problem, and find a solution to prevent a repeat of it. They are not designed to apportion blame, but instead learn from the mistake and build mechanisms for ensuring that the same outcome is mitigated. That's not to say you won't be prosecuted but that's a separate process.
So at this airport, there is a shipping channel you fly over right before the airport (the airport is on an island). However, this sailboat was motoring closer to the airport side and didnt have any sails up making it harder to see. Also, we were in an Extra 300, which is a tail dragging aircraft so we couldnt see over the front cowling. We impacted the boat at 40 feet, so gives you a sense of how close it was to the start of the runway. I didnt notice anything until all of a sudden I saw a pole whiz past the right side of my field of view and heard a bang. Next, thing I know we are rotating upside down, I feel an impact, then watch as the ground slides by a foot above my head (the aircraft has a glass canopy). Was conscious the whole time. Ended up pinned between the aircraft and the ground hanging upside down in my harness. Just typing this makes me think, oh yeah that actually happened.
I have seen bad car accidents happen and been in minor ones.
I am curious about how you remember your perception of time. This is a simple description, but it is "fast not fast" when it is happening to you. "Yep this is happening. Oh, they are going 25. Yep they are going to hit me, that is going to be scary, possibly hurt, and cost a lot to repair. I hope this doesn't hurt my neck. I should put my feet flat. Crunch. Okay, that didn't hurt. The airbag didn't deploy. ..." In about 1 second.
Watching the accidents it is sort of surreal, just sort of flat. Bang. Spin. Stop. Airbags deflate. I immediately check surroundings, move out of danger, call 911, try to recall safety things, keep people in place if their injuries seem serious and their vehicle isn't on fire, but it all feels "real time" watching things. It just doesn't register the same in my brain.
Yeah id say this is pretty accurate. My memory of the event is non-continuous, meaning it is composed of very matter of fact thoughts and images not a continuous video. Overall, id say it is real time, though probably drawn out given the amount of thoughts I remember from what was probably 5-10 seconds of real time.
My direct memory is basically as follows:
1. Whoosh of pole, bang noise.
2. "Was that a sailboat"
3. See/feel the world rotate
4. "I think we are going to crash"
5. "I could die"
6. I don't actually remember the impact just flipping and all of a sudden seeing the ground above my head upside down
7. "I'm still alive...but its not over yet"
8. The glass shatters and we come to a stop
9. My friend asks if I am okay. I respond yes.
10. I quickly feel my face as i'm not sure how injured I am, there is some blood on my hands, but not a large amount.
11. I start to feel a burning sensation as some jet fuel and other chemicals are reacting with my skin
12. I start to panic as I realize the gravity of the situation and begin to call for help.
13. Just as I am beginning to really panic, I feel a hand reach in and the plane lifts up.
14. I undo my harness, as my leg moves for the first time, I realize a sharp pain in my foot.
15. I am pulled from the plane and dragged from under my arms with my legs facing the plane. I watch the plane get farther away as im dragged.
16. I am layed down and am instructed not to move until the paramedics come.
Could have easily happened at Albert Whitted across the bay in St Pete, also. Usually just hear about planes running off the runway and into the water.
Can anyone explain the quote below? I don't really understand how the minesweeper understood the signal.
---
The Coast Guard amphibian gained altitude and flew off. (I learned later that he headed for a squadron of minesweepers that was returning to the United States from a tour of the Western Pacific. He was unable to tune to their radio frequency for communications. But this ingenious pilot lowered a wire from his aircraft and dragged it across the bow of the minesweeper, the USS Embattle. The minesweeper captain understood the plea, and veered off at top speed in my direction.)
OK, you're a captain of a boat. A friendly plane is circling above your boat. What's up with him? Radio him. Nope, that didn't work. He dragged a rope across our deck and flew off in a straight line. Let's follow him and find out what the fuss is all about.
It's an unusual method. There is now a standard method for this, which is printed on the SOLAS (Safety Of Lifes At Sea) cards we sailors are required to carry, although the direction ones are not on all versions of the card I've seen. Here's one that has them (section "Air to Surface Direction Signals): http://www.marinelite.gr/images/detailed/1/221518a.jpg
I think it was mostly a matter of people asking "what is that Coast Guard amphibian rescue plane trying so hard to tell us?" and that question having a very short list of likely answers.
I interpreted it that the plane dragged the wire in the sea in front of the minesweeper in the heading of the pilot. This would have drawn a line in the sea, as it were.
That would be a totally unexpected behavior, which would give the minesweeper's captain the clue that it was a signal to change course to the given heading. The plane would have headed back to the pilot and circled, giving the minesweeper's captain assurance he had understood the signal.
I'm not a pilot, but I've often read in rescue histories that an airplane's circling and then flying-over in a given direction is meant to be taken as a vector, like "go that way".
In this case I'm guessing the wire was more like the second, confirming clue.
They were dragging it perpendicular across the front of the ship, so, the wire is like a hand waving "this way, follow the line", which was pointed towards the location of the guy.
It is not a standard or anything, so abnormal enough to get the drift.
The minesweeper probably had already been informed over the radio by the rest of 7th Fleet that a plane had gone down, so it didn't take a whole lot to put "aircraft which can't communicate is signaling" followed by the heading.
if your experience (memory of error-correcting inter-ship communication procedures) is perplexed/high entropy, something unexplainable/miraculous/it is like a flare
One important note is that this was NOT free fall as you'd expect. The pilot chute is still pretty large and provides a LOT of drag. Instead of 120mph, you'd be falling near ~90mph with just it behind you. That is 44% less kinetic energy!
He mentioned not preparing for the impact. How would one even prepare for an impact if one wanted to? Ground or water, I just can't think of a good way to land. Anyone have any insight?
I think about this sometimes. Ground, I have no answer, you seem like you will die. Perhaps landing legs first allows you to use those as a crumple zone.
Water, though, isn't the pencil dive the clear winner? Everything else would decelerate you so much faster that it would be bound to cause injuries. The only downside (relative to all other methods of impact) I can imagine is how far underwater you might end up.
I would be happy for someone to tell me otherwise, but this is my completely theoretical summation of a terminal velocity water-landing.
We were taught the sailor dive, which is good to about 90', according to training. You use it to abandon ship. Err... I was in the Marines.
Basically, cross your legs, point your toes, cup your testicles with one hand, and cover your nose with the other.
The force of hitting the water will crush your testicles and rip your nose off your face. So, you cover them. You cross your legs to keep them together. You point your toes so you don't shatter your feet, ankles, or legs.
When your feet hit the water, immediately bend at the waist. You're going fast enough that you're completely in the water. You fold at the waist to make your depth more shallow. You then flip and swim to the surface.
This works at greater heights but survivability goes down at about 90'. You can practice at lower heights, if you want to learn it. I'm sure there are videos and whatnot.
I believe I read that you want to clench your butthole as well (in addition to covering nose and mouth) to prevent the force of water rushing up your cavities from killing you. Certain pants fabrics help prevent this from happening as well.
Well, sort of. I don't recall that being specifically mentioned but we were taught to tighten all muscles. You actually want to be as tense as you can when you hit the water. You want to hit it as close to straight as you can.
When you do hit it, just relaxing will fold you up - by the way. You're going so fast that you won't relax before you're completely submerged and slowed. I forget the numbers but it means your dive is more shallow than if you'd stayed tensed. There's a ratio for it, but I've long since forgotten.
I suspect there's been a bit posted about this. My enlistment was a long time ago but I'm told they still teach it. There may be some modifications to it, or new data for survivability.
yeah, I've heard people say "at high speed, hitting the water is like hitting concrete", but that's clearly not true; otherwise you wouldn't go underwater at all.
Late reply, but that isn't true. If you a heavy object hits concrete it will go through the concrete, just like it would go through water. In the case of a human, it will potentially crush every bone in the process, but you will still go through it if the kinetic energy vs binding energy is in the right balance.
44% is a big difference. Given the damage his body sustained, I think he would have certainly died if the kinetic energy hadn't been reduced by that magnitude. Every other story I've heard of someone surviving a fall from these kinds of heights involved a parachute not opening but remaining attached.
At least 5 redundancies failed: the Ram Air turbine, primary and secondary ejection sequences, the parachute, and his survival pack went missing. And yet Mr. Judkins survived maybe because he had spleen removed. Amazing.
Actually the RAT worked (the emergency electrical generator).
My team is working on building one of these auxiliary generators right now, fun project.
Earlier this year I deployed a RAT by mistake (poor mechanical design) and I believe it died as we were flying too fast for it (poor electrical design)
Two other incredible stories of men who jumped without a parachute from burning/crashing planes from tens of thousands of feet up in the sky and survived.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Magee
Alan Magee survived a 22,000-foot (6,700 m) fall from his damaged B-17 Flying Fortress. He was a ball turret machine gunner. Hit glass ceiling of a railway station which supposedly broke the fall.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Alkemade
Nicholas Alkemade survived, without a parachute, a fall of 18,000 feet (5,500 m). He was serving as a rear gunner in a Royal Air Force Avro Lancaster. His fall was broken by pine trees and a soft snow cover on the ground.
About non-functioning parachutes.
I was reading "Flying Low" by B.K. Bryans who became a US Navy Jet pilot around mid 1960's. When he was going through his training in propeller driven training planes, a fellow student pilot bailed out of a trainer but fell to his death when the parachute didn't open. The trainer plane had no ejection seat so the student pilot had bailed out the old fashioned way, which required pulling a cord of the parachute manually after exiting the plane. His parachute tragically didn't open.
The base commander dropped 10 randomly selected parachutes from the base and NONE opened. A rigger from another airbase nearby was brought in and all the parachutes were all repacked.
The debate is whether in this case what made the difference (apart the "luck" of landing on a snowy ravine) was that the pilot was unconscious (like in the Magee case), i.e. with all his body completely "relaxed", and this somehow mitigated the impact (in comparison to someone who "prepares " for the hit).
Earlier this year on a white water rafting expedition I had the misfortune of falling out of the raft and into a series of category 5 rapids. It was absolute chaos. The force of large bodies of moving water is astounding. Any notion of "swimming to safety" is ludicrous. A more accurate description is "being washed to safety" because you have no control over the larger movements of your body. I've heard in avalanches survivors sometimes don't know which end is up and digging themselves deeper. This was me while underwater in the rapids. I couldn't see, didn't know which end was up, and couldn't breath. How he managed to survive is astonishing. Finding his knife, assessing the situation, and acting before being pulled under while injured almost defies my imagination. Riveting read.
Never went into rapids, but I went into a beach between caribean sea and atlantic ocean, known for having a bit more waves (nothing like a class V rapid, maybe 1m waves max.). I failed to catch one at the right time and got swallowed into the crashing tube, it was hard to describe how being embedded in a fluid with enough internal energy feels.
Between the chaotic directions and the actual strength I turned into a wooden puppet. I ended up eating the sand face first while my heel knocked my head from behind. Something I cannot do on my own, its just the wave that folded me backward. I'm lucky I didn't breath water I'd have finished that day in a hospital or worse.
I was on the barren craggy side of Aruba with my wife standing on this sheer “cliff” about 15 feet above the ocean watching these big waves roll in.
All of a sudden a wave about 20 feet appeared out of nowhere and almost swept us off the cliff.
I was recording a video of the waves. We looked back at the video later and you hear me go “oh shit”, pick up my wife, and run just to get pummeled by this thing from behind with water splashing over us. We got pretty far from the cliff and I’m not positive how much of it was running verse being pushed.
The end of the video is us soaked cracking up with broken flips flops and me saying “my phone got wet”. We absolutely don’t remember any of it. It was pure adrenaline the second we saw the wave.
I did something similar in Nice. Standing a little inshore, the top of the water hitting my torso was moving faster than the water around my legs. I ended up being flipped backwards, and dumped on the floor with my back bent right back. I was lucky the tide wasn't stronger, it was hard enough swimming back to shore with my back hurt as it was.
Right, it's crazy how water can bend your body that much. I guess every part in the wave carry enough force to keep bending you in every angle. I also had pain in my spine for a while. I'm everything but supple.
You're right, when something pushes you you can usually swerve or redirect the motion. When the water hits you, even the water moving around you pins you in place, and the water behind sucks you in the same direction - it's impossible to pivot without gravity!
I have a healthy fear of standing up in the ocean now...
Yep, and it's a very unnatural situation to be in, maybe people used to skyfall have better reflexes to stop spinning and getting a sense of orientation back.
I can speak more towards avalanches than I can with rapids. It might be tangential to this discussion, but I can't help but chime in on the subject when I get the chance. I've thankfully never been buried in a slide, but it's one of those topics that all non-suicidal backcountry skiers spend a lot of time studying. The community is extremely focused on education and outreach, because those are the only tools that will give people the knowledge and skills needed for informed decision-making when they're in the backcountry. You do everything in your power to avoid being in a position to trigger a slide in the first place. Even if it means foregoing your planned lines for more conservative terrain, going home when you see the terrain and snowpack, or not going out at all if the forecasted danger level is high.
Self-rescue is really, really rare unless you've been incredibly lucky enough to float towards the top of a shallow deposition zone in a small slide. Or you've been deposited on top. Even in a relatively shallow burial, 10-12" inches (or even less) means you're entombed in what might as well be concrete. If you're lucky, you'll be able to at least push away a cavity to breathe into while you wait for the rest of your group to dig you out before you asphyxiate. There's equipment that can help you improve your chances (airbag, AvaLung) beyond just the beacon, but they're not guarantees. If it's in your mouth and it isn't knocked out, an AvaLung might help you extend your air supply. An ABS airbag system will hopefully help you float closer to the top during the slide. It won't help you if you slam into a tree or other debris and break your back.
Whether it's in the snow, or in the water, mother nature is an uncaring mistress who demands respect. Even when you do everything right, she can still kill you. If there's one good thing about hearing these stories, terrifying and tragic as they often may be, it's that they can drive home that point. The outdoors are, more often than not, a continual exercise in risk management. We put up with it because there's nothing quite as breathtaking as seeing the sun peak over a snow-covered horizon from atop the mountain. Or as exhilarating as the ride down.
> The force of large bodies of moving water is astounding.
We underestimate it because we're used to water flowing around us at low speeds. But once you've got enough of it moving quickly, the viscosity and momentum really starts to matter.
The thing I think of to try to ground my intuition is to imagine someone throwing a gallon of water at me, still in its jug. Now imagine thousands of those hurtling my way. That's a big crashing wave.
if your unlucky enough to be fully buried in an avalanche, it's not possible to dig, period. After everything stops moving, the loose snow refreezes almost instantly, locking you in place. Still, you're correct... Survivors often state they had no idea which direction was up.
This depends on the type of avalanche. I know,because I was caught in one. The one I was in was relatively minor and made up of a large part newly fallen snow. I had stopped for a break and managed to get my skis back on, but the thing overtook me hundred meters later. I had managed to get to higher ground relative to the rest of the slope, which is probably what saved me. I broke one leg and both my arms and got a pretty bad concussion.
I managed to walk/ski (one ski was still on me, but badly broken ) to a nearby village and driven on a stretcher to the hospital.
I am lucky to be alive. It is amazing though how clear you can think in life threatening situations. the moment I noticed the avalanche I knew exactly what to do and where to go. When I was buried I remember rocking back and forth to get some wiggle/breathing room and when it stopped I waited until my mind cleared up, struggling hard to defeat the panic and pain, until assessing g the situation.
Wow! Firstly I would like to say this was one of those rare HN comments which blows you mind away.
Very nice to hear you survived such a bad accident.
>>I am lucky to be alive. It is amazing though how clear you can think in life threatening situations.
David Allen talks about these situations in this talk. In the moments of crises, the brain brings about all its focus to the highest priority task at focus. Its almost like crises commands the best kind of productivity.
Students have known that since the dawn of time. It's why they don't work until the night before the deadline, when the urgency is enough to allow them use 200% or their brain's capacities in order to obtain a passing grade.
The cherry on top: they can now spend the time until their next deadline thinking about the amazing grades they would get if they worked more than one night per month.
Cortisol does wonders, but only for the short term. It basically destroys part of your body to supercharge the rest.
Later on in life, plenty of companies try to make use of it, pushing people into long hours and short deadlines, and find that it doesn't work as well.
>>pushing people into long hours and short deadlines, and find that it doesn't work as well.
That is because you need some skin in the game. Nobody is losing sleep to work on a project whose success or failure has no disproportionate effect on the well being of the individual.
> In the moments of crises, the brain brings about all its focus to the highest priority task at focus.
I had the same during an almost traffic accident when a truck wasn't giving me the right of the way from a side road. Brain just switched to autopilot and managed to go inches away from both truck and barriers on the other side of the road. No damage done. It was kinda amazing, being an observer only.
What mountain range? I understand the Rockies have a lot of nasty deep slab avalanches (not soft and fluffy) and the Sierras have really heavy wet snow (also not soft and fluffy). Alaska was mentioned in avy classes as the chief place for fluffy sloughing?
This was in a small valley near insbruck, Austria in the early nineties. It got some media attention due to some controversy regarding irresponsible tourists. I had however done my research and picked a slope that was regarded as low risk, which was unsurprisingly not reported b the local media :)
Why is this being downvoted? First thing you should do after an avalanche is dig your face out a foot or two and spit [1]. If it lands back on your face, you're facing up, if not, you're upside down. Taught early in AIARE courses.
That's probably said just to keep you from panicking to give you something to attempt/think about while snow is crushing you. How can a mass of (often wet or frozen in blocks) snow tearing down trees and hurling rocks allow you to swim? Wishful thinking, survival is a question of luck. Maybe in very small avalanches. Many people get their skulls crushed, the forces there are immense... Best way is to avoid avalanche terrain completely. If you walk on a snowfield hearing strange noises a few feet under your legs, run for you life! Abort immediately even if it is your last chance for a climb/ride and would cost you a lot of money.
Avalanches act very much like liquids while they are still moving, swimming upstream is indeed the common advice and it has definitely worked. That is why one of the newest devices to survive one (if you are caught) is basically a life preserver:
https://www.scott-sports.com/global/en/page/avalanche-pack
These serve the dual purpose of protecting your head and decreasing your density so you float to the top of the snow pack.
Yes, obviously there are big enough avalanches with huge slabs that will kill you in the ride, especially if you end up going through trees, but most skier involved avalanches are on more open terrain (thus why they slide) and are loose snow while moving.
Avalanche bags work nicely in small slab to medium powder avalanches where you might end up upside down a few feet under the surface and suffocate without these bags. It won't help you with most killer avalanches such as large powder ones (220mph and acting as concrete when they stop, filling your cavities), heavy wet ones in spring taking grass, rocks and tree trunks, and most importantly large frozen slab avalanches that just don't care about any equipment you might have or movements you do (and those often give you acoustic signals before they are ready to go). I've read somewhere that without any special equipment, your avalanche survival rate is that of lightning strike. I guess we see videos only of those survivable ones so we often underestimate the danger.
> It won't help you with most killer avalanches such as large powder ones
This is tautological. Yes, few people survive killer avalanches, because that's what defines a killer avalanche.
Many avalanches encountered by backcountry skiers especially are not these giant killer ones, and can be survived either by skiing out of them or having the proper equipment and training. Your odds aren't great, but they aren't nothing either or people wouldn't bother carrying the gear. (beacon / shovel / probe / avy bag)
Anyways, this is sufficiently off topic, but your characterization of avalanches is movie-like-stuff. Huge avalanches happen but they aren't the typical case. Most are small / medium slides triggered by humans in the backcountry.
Terrains I usually ski at (black & double black diamonds + yellows) tend to have accidental massive avalanches (i.e. randomly stepping on some 5x5ft patch that causes avalanche to fall), so I need to be prepared for any eventuality and estimate safety of the area. I have seen people diving head first on a steep slope, causing avalanches to roll, and they telling me they couldn't move while in the flow and their lungs being super compressed, making them unable to breathe. Especially in spring you need to be super careful as even a smaller wet avalanche can easily kill you - those are usually slow and stop all the way down in the valley, sometimes taking houses with them, crushing you with weight and without any chance to escape.
There are a great many things which are inevitably fatal in the worst case, but for which there are effective measures that can improve your chances of survival otherwise.
Some avalanches can destroy bridges or change landscape. It's truly just the survivor bias we see on videos making us think the worst cases aren't very common.
When I did avalanche safety training, we were told your chance of surviving an avalanche with (shovel/probe/beacon) is about 50% overall. Roughly 25% of people are killed in the avalanche (before it stops). If you survive the initial avalanche, if you're buried your buddies have about 10 minutes to dig you out. After that, survival rates drop rapidly.
Assuming you have people around that can locate you/dig you out (beacon/shovel/etc. you mentioned), and you manage to have some breathing space (that could allow you to survive for a few hours in the best case). If not, then probably those stats with lightning strike might be comparable, i.e. you rarely survive. There are plenty of "lone wolf" tourists/off-slope skiers. I used to ignore these when I was a reckless teen, now I try to be super careful.
I've also gone swimming in continuous Class V. And yes, there is no control. But hopefully, you're wearing a wetsuit/drysuit, helmet and life preserver. So as long as you can get a breath occasionally, you may well survive. Dead trees jammed among the boulders (sweepers) are probably the major risk.
The dory I was on flipped going into Crystal rapids on the Colorado. Crystal is one of the most notorious rapids in Grand Canyon due to its huge hole and the rock garden just down stream where you end up if you don't make the rapid. Two people, including the boatman went into the hole, getting Maytagged for a bit before they were spit out. I skirted the edge but got by safely, no thanks to my puny attempts at swimming against that current. Looking down into that hole, though, scared the crap out of me. Fortunately, everybody made it to shore safely, the boat was recovered by an earlier one, and we went on our way with a great story to tell.
Controlled risks, bah humbug! If you think Everest is a controlled risk, do not go there, you are severely underestimating the risks and you would die.
Depends on how much money you spend. It's still not easy, but if you're in decent shape, spend the proper time acclimatizing, go during good weather, and pay for a boatload of sherpas to handle everything and guide you and only you, you'll probably survive. If you're in a group or only have one or two, the resources might not (probably won't) exist for them to do much if it happens where they're going to be severely taxed themselves... But 4 or 5 sherpas spending 100% of their time focused on keeping you (and themselves) alive can probably do it, and I'd call it a fairly controlled risk.
Now, whether or not you've really accomplished anything if you've had a team of people babysitting you to the top is another thing altogether.
As someone who has done three of four (not done Everest, but have done highest peak in continental US), I think I can fairly say you have a misconception of the risk with white water rafting. The risk of being thrown overboard is high, but the risk of death is much lower in my opinion than skydiving. Sure, a tandem jump is pretty safe, but progressing further is barely what I would call a “controlled” risk. With BASE jumping for example, it’s not really an “if” you’ll die, but rather a “when”. I’ve had many friends die (part of why I won’t do it myself) from doing BASE jumps.
I thought skydiving was just a series of safety procedures, whereas white water rafting is something challenging even to experts, especially at category 5.
> I thought skydiving was just a series of safety procedures
For basics, sure. Get into stacking, swooping, wing suit flying, CRW, XRW, BASE, etc and it gets extremely challenging to the point where dying is inevitable if you keep doing it.
I’ve been white water rafting maybe a dozen or more times in my life and have done CL5 / CL5+ rapids multiple times. I can assure you, no skydiving place I know of will let you get close to doing the activities I listed above with that little experience under your belt.
Edit:
As an example, when I worked at LinkedIn we as a team outing did Class IV+ rapids and most folks had zero prior experience. I think the “coaching” was like a 15min briefing before setting off, where as for sky diving you have to do an all day ground school class before jumping with two instructors holding onto you virtually the whole time. Even after being certified, you still typically have to go through the class again if you haven’t jumped recently.
Class 5: Whitewater, large waves, continuous rapids, large rocks and hazards, maybe a large drop, precise maneuvering. Often characterized by "must make" moves, i.e. failure to execute a specific maneuver at a specific point may result in serious injury or death. Class 5 is sometimes expanded to Class 5+ that describes the most extreme, runnable rapids (Skill Level: Expert)
Happened to me a few times, it's a hell of a ride once the water gets you... there's no swimming in rapids, you can maybe just try to position yourself to have legs in front and even that is hard... and pray there's no fallen branches stuck between rocks somewhere in there.
> How he managed to survive is astonishing. Finding his knife, assessing the situation, and acting before being pulled under while injured almost defies my imagination. Riveting read.
Did this happen to you or someone else? You switch from first to third person without explanation. "Riveting read" seems like a weird conclusion.
Why did "He was unable to tune to their radio frequency for communications. But this ingenious pilot lowered a wire from his aircraft and dragged it across the bow of the minesweeper, the USS Embattle. The minesweeper captain understood the plea, and veered off at top speed in my direction.)" work?
Did they just figure out something was wrong or is dragging a wire a common naval code?
Supposing it's not a common naval code, it's strange enough behavior that the captain would think it must mean something, and "follow me" is the best intuitive interpretation I can see, though by no means obvious.
I had a friend in high school who's father survived a skydiving accident "breaking every bone in his body." What made the biggest impression on me was that not only did he have to recover physically, but he had to deal with inability to work and medical bills leading to bankruptcy and a failed business. It may have been the first time in my life I thought about this kind of consequences.
I did a tandem jump from 10,000 ft when I was a teenager. We exited the plane while flying through clouds (which is illegal IIRC) and tumbled out of control for the entire free fall period before the chute opened.
The exit was my fault. To initiate a jump, the pilot would count down from three and then scream "GO". With the door open it was very difficult to hear. Clouds were forming and we had already aborted twice, with my partner pulling us back into the plane each time.
On the third attempt I misread the shouts and hand signals and exited the plane before "GO". I was taller and heavier than my tandem partner so he probably had no choice.
We tumbled into thick, gray clouds. Without a horizon this made me nauseous. My partner was screaming from the moment we left the plane. I'd catch a word or two but most of his instruction was lost to the wind. We were totally out of control.
We exited the cloud still tumbling, my partner still screaming. I remember the chute opening, but we were never properly in control.
The next few minutes were glorious, though still nauseous, and the landing was uneventful.
I didn't think much of the consequences back then... But no more skydiving for me :-)
... which means you had a shitty tandem instructor . Shortly after a tandem pair leaves the door the instructor chucks a drogue which slows your terminal velocity to that of a single person and basically suspends the whole setup. Once that happens getting out the belly to earth position is basically impossible. The whole pulling back and description of your experience gives me an impression you were at a really sketchy drop zone.
Reading these articles is very personal to me, because I crashed my parapente on takeoff on what would have been my second solo flight. I still want to take up training again, but I need a new coach who I trust to tell me when the wind's strong enough.
Hm, you must be able to tell it yourself, you're the pilot, not your coach. In parachuting that's even one of the questions for test -- who's the final authority during flight:
A. Your coach.
B. The most experienced pilot on site.
C. You (the pilot).
D. Parachuting club owner.
For paragliding there's USHPA ratings, feel free to study them: [1]. For example in 12-02.13 there's requirements for P1 (Novice Pilot) rating, and recommended operating limitations for them:
1. "Should fly only in steady winds of 12 MPH. or less."
I spent 2 months salary over the course of 6 months to train with an unlicensed coach who is not an official USHPA instructor. He was trying to sell me his old gear that hadn't passed safety inspections in over 5 years. Several people warned me against training with him.
Why did I continue? There's no other English-speaking coaches in the south of Taiwan. Also, his training was the only one I could afford. I really want to learn to fly.
"I need a new coach who I trust" is more related to the other issues than the relatively minor incident where I ended up in a tree. I accept my share of the responsibility for attempting that takeoff, and I'm grateful that it didn't result in serious injury. When it happened though, it was an appropriate time to call off the course and stop that con man from trying to sell me unsafe equipment.
And, back to the topic, it means I have a personal sense of how terrifying it can be when a parachute doesn't inflate.
While not nearly as dramatic, this story reminds me a serious accident I had in my early childhood. For a long time I thought that perhaps I did die and that I had continued life in a near identical parallel dimension while leaving friends and relatives mourning in the one I had been born in.
I wonder if this thought ever occurred to the pilot.
I guess we're wandering a bit from the topic, but I used to feel the same way about, of all things, that childhood pastime of spinning around with your arms out. I spent more time than I'm comfortable specifying believing that every revolution put me in a slightly different universe, and that in order to get back, I'd have to perform exactly as many counter-revolutions in the opposite direction.
While this may sound insanely OCD, I remember thinking that I didn't have to get the number of counter-revolutions exactly right -- within a half-dozen or so should be "good enough".
Haha, wonderful. It's a an appealing thought I must say. What if the the "right" maneuvers in space actually open inter-dimensional portals. Sounds like we could've made good friends.
Anathem is a great book that explores lots of interesting, fairly unique ideas, and does some moderately original world building. But I always tell people Stephenson (the author, personal favorite) isn't for everyone, and Anathem isn't even for all Stephenson fans, it can be a hard read for many.
Sadly these near miraculous cases are vastly outnumbered wingsuit accidents where the jumper was killed.
Your chances of surviving a wingsuit, or any kind of BASE jumping accident are considerably worse than your chances of surviving a single round of Russian roulette with five rounds in the cylinder, even if you're the only player.
It would, but your odds of not shooting yourself are 1 in 6, assuming a standard 6 chambered cylinder. Your odds of surviving would be very slightly higher (depending on where you choose to shoot yourself) because, of course, a gunshot wound might not be fatal.
Like I say, your chances of surviving a wingsuit accident (basically impacting the ground, a cliff, a tree, whatever) are considerably worse than this.
That is indeed an incredible amount of dumb luck: hit the mountain with his legs, and there wasn't anything to hit directly after he tumbled. A few milliseconds' timing difference, and either clear pass or dead on impact.
That's the first thing I thought when I read about his injuries - the human body is remarkably fragile in most instances, but when it comes to the crunch, something often allows it to take a truly staggering amount of injury without dying. Some people's survival abilities are astonishing.
Sadly a lot of it is down to chance - speed and angle he hit the water, for example - and would be very difficult to ever repeat.
And totally different tangent, GM will not warranty a C7 because of a minor crack on the chassis[1] so it's declared totaled and offered for 7.5 grand or so.
there is a few similar posts here, but I always thought that the only known person who ever survived a fatal passenger aircraft crash, dropping out at high altitude, was this person:
She was the only survivor of 92 passengers and crew in the 24 December 1971 crash of LANSA Flight 508 in the Peruvian rainforest. When the airliner broke up in mid-air, she survived after plummeting about 3 km (~10,000 feet) while still strapped to her seat, before crashing through the rain forest canopy and coming to rest on the forest floor.
Her injuries did allow her to walk for 10 days, until she was found. So you could say, it was mostly light injuries.
It is nowhere mentioned that she had a missing spleen btw.
That sounds extremely confident. I can google that it's a common area of internal bleeding but what is the exact likelihood in that particular instance?
A ruptured spleen causes internal bleeding. It's one of the more likely traumatic injuries to the abdomen. If you have had it removed, internal bleeding is less likely.
> If your spleen has ruptured, you may need a splenectomy immediately because of life-threatening internal bleeding. A rupture may be caused by a physical injury, such as being hit by a car, or by an enlargement of your spleen.
Not actually true; French pilots and ATC use feet too (whichever language you're speaking).
French influence on aviation has been strong since the beginning (hence all the French words - aileron, fuselage, décalage, etc), but the unit of height/altitude is one where the Americans set the standard.
(Source: I fly an American-designed, French-built aeroplane to/through France semi-regularly.)
It's true about French influence. Even the weather observation reports used worldwide, METARS, use abbreviations like "BR" for fog, because the French word for fog is "brouillard".
Interestingly enough, as a French and although I flew very little as a pilot, I can't seem to internally make sense of the metric system unit for altitude and as a passenger on those planes I always convert to feet.
> Aviation also measure speed in knots, and distances in nautical miles. But those don't have good reasons to be kept.
1 knot is equal to 1 nautical mile/hour, which is traditionally 1 minute of latitude. I assume they have been kept for tradition and also in the event of an emergency requiring manual navigation?
I believe that's a core part of the training for Navy SEALS.
They push you far past your "breaking point" to realize that it isn't where you thought it was, helping you learn to keep your head about you when in extreme situations.
True, and it's anecdotal, but I've seen quite a few good stories from various fighter pilots and I honestly can't think of something similar from other lines of work.
I mean, I've obviously seen good storytelling from journalists and writers, but they've often spent lifetimes honing their craft.
I wonder if it's the focus and awareness that gives pilots such a potential.
Besides the obvious selection/survivor bias of good stories. It's likely that if anyone of a population (like say the airforce) is going to have good story telling it's going to be the ones that are the best out of that population in applying themselves (like jet fighter pilots). E.g. I doubt it's that they are good story tellers, I would bet that it's that they are just good at anything they do through applying themselves.
The woman in this court case [1] managed to survive a double parachute failure (ALLEGEDLY caused by her husband) from 4,000ft, partly because she managed to land on a ploughed field which was relatively soft:
I know, the point was that he landed without parachute. If I had a choice to jump at 1500 feet or 25000 without a parachute, I would take the latter option.
I imagine most people falling from heights are not doing so with a net waiting for them, so that lateral movement to attempt to find a better spot to crash is probably beneficial.
>The main, 24-foot parachute was just flapping in the breeze and was tangled in its own shroud lines. It hadn’t opened! I could see the white folds neatly arranged, fluttering feebly in the air.
This is a interesting quote, googling it only shows this article, did the person writing the story make it up, or is this actually a saying that "some" say.
“Some days you are the dog and others you are the fire-plug.”
"Some days you are the dog, some days you are the tree / fire hydrant" is the canonical quote.
I would assume the fire plug is the name of one of the things that failed while he refueled. Doesn't quite go together in my head, but once you understand the original quote it makes sense. Some days you're on the giving end, some days you're on the receiving end.
At least where I’m from (Texas, where the story teller at least spent time), hydrants are called fire plugs. I’ve no idea why but that’s what I know them as.
As I read it, I thought this is such a well written piece (I thought the author was the pilot himself), and that the pilot must be insanely talented because not only was he a fighter pilot (which requires skill) but he was an adept writer as well.
Then I later realized that this was a chapter from a book. Whew! the tale has got my heart pumping. This is some amazing narration of an amazing incident
I think it's even more amazing when it's a commercial flight and everyone dies except one person. I can't imagine what sort of psychological toll that would have.
That’s pretty wild. For another good falling from the sky story check out this woman that fell two miles after a commercial airliner broke up in the air[1]
> The main, 24-foot parachute was just flapping in the breeze and was tangled in its own shroud lines. It hadn’t opened! I could see the white folds neatly arranged, fluttering feebly in the air. “This is very serious,” I thought.
Amazing story. He mentioned that that doctor was "high-lined" over from another ship. Am I right that that's a "zip-line"? (TIL also that High Line is a "park" in Manhattan.)
He fell in an ocean. I wonder, if you happen by some extraordinary feat of skill or luck to fall feet-down in a perfectly straight body formation, would the impact be too small to have any injury?
Due to surface tension, hitting water at speed is actually worse than hitting concrete. As a sibling comment stated, from his injuries, he almost certainly landed feet first. His shattered feet and hips absorbed enough of the impact that he was able to survive. The unopened chute would also have slowed him down somewhat [EDIT: and presumably served to orient him "properly" for landing].
Water is likely worse because if you get knocked out you’re gonna drown.
You want to maximize your surface area and protect your head. Let your body absorb as much of the impact as possible: Land almost horizontally, with your feet hitting first and your head hitting last. This way, you might only break every bone in your body instead of dying.
You can't reduce your surface area to zero. So survival free-falling into water is very unlikely, even if you land perfectly. Uninjured is definitely impossible.
It sounds like his pilot chute and un-deployed main chute slowed him down just enough, and he landed well enough, that his body was able to take it. Lack of spleen helps too.
From cliff jumping 13 meters and nearing ripping my hip out of it's socket by having my feet ever so _slighty_ apart, I can't imagine the amount of injury from 15,000 feet.
Fun fact, there is no difference between 2000 feet (about 600 meters) and 15,000 feet, because of terminal velocity.
It also means that in a free fall spreading your body out horizontally to increase the drag forces, then re positioning just before landing would be the optimal choice. Not that you think of that in a free fall, but the physics are there.
I wonder if there's some way you can actually do the opposite: First, gain all the speed you can (speed is energy). Then before you hit the ground, do a kind of "flare", where you make your body into a wing, and decrease your downward energy. Do this right to the point of stall (as close as you can get) to reduce kinetic energy when you hit.
I know it'd be basically impossible for a human to actually do this perfectly. But I wonder, in theory, how much one could reduce the impact energy. Maybe you could hit at 50mph instead of 120mph.
That there was a mechanical failure, + 2 failures on the ejection, and a parachute failure - is not a fluke. This is an extreme dereliction of duty by design and/or maintenance teams.
There would be blame to go around as a result of this, and surely some op changes.
> That there was a mechanical failure, + 2 failures on the ejection, and a parachute failure - is not a fluke. This is an extreme dereliction of duty by design and/or maintenance teams.
Re: Ejector seat, it could also have been pilot error, if he had forgotten to take the safety pins out of the ejector system during his pre flight check. They are there specifically to prevent the ejection rocket from firing while maintenance crew are working on the aircraft on ground, and should be removed (by either pilot or crew chief) before flight. I know that in Naval aircraft, the pilot has to replace these pins as one of the last things he does before leaving the aircraft after landing.
This is why civil aviation is so safe, and why it remains dangerous. There is essentially no single root cause path to death in civilian aviation, you need multiple systems to fail (yes, including the pilot, because you have a copilot, medical tests, training, and related secondary systems all designed to prevent the pilot from failing or provide a secondary system if they do). Every aviation accident today is almost by definition a multi-system failure. It would be nice if multiplying two low probability events resulted in a zero probability for the combined event but unfortunately probabilities don't zero out that way.
> Every aviation accident today is almost by definition a multi-system failure.
As in James Reason's famous "Swiss Cheese" model of accidents:
> In the Swiss Cheese model, an organisation's defenses against failure are modeled as a series of barriers, represented as slices of cheese. The holes in the slices represent weaknesses in individual parts of the system and are continually varying in size and position across the slices. The system produces failures when a hole in each slice momentarily aligns, permitting (in Reason's words) "a trajectory of accident opportunity"
The author's description of both not feeling his injuries until he tried to move as well as his own recognition of not being dead were spot on. I would have described it exactly the same way myself. I ended up with a broken foot and leg, but overall no lasting damage which was extremely lucky. Looking back on that experience is always incredibly surreal.