A couple years ago, there was a news story going around about a parachuter whose chute didn't open. He was wearing a helmet cam, so you got to see what he saw, and hear him freaking out the whole way down.
Well, his chute opened, but it got tangled up and set him in a spiral without really slowing down. Took about two minutes from when he pulled until he hit, and he was clearly very much aware of the entire scenario as it was happening. He even put his hand up to frantically wave goodbye to the camera about twenty seconds before touchdown.
If you couldn't guess by the fact that the video aired anywhere, the guy actually survived. The chute was just enough to slow him down, plus the bushes he landed in, that when he whumped at 90mph he just broke some bones without permanent injury. He described it as being extremely harrowing, and taking a lot longer than the real length of the tape suggests.
That reminds me of something I always wanted to research. If you're falling without a chute--or with minimal chute, where DO you want to land? Bushes? Doesn't seem like enough with no chute. Trees? Probability of horrible impalement very high, but perhaps the best bet for surviving if you get really lucky. Water? Or is it true that water's just like concrete at that speed? If you hit water, do you want to take a diving stance head- and arms-first, or try to do it legs-first, or do you want to try and let your legs be kind of loose and sacrifice them to protect you?
Fun, if very morbid, fact: In urban areas, veterinarians have noticed that pets that fall 2-3 stories often survive, pets that fall 4-8 stories usually die, but pets that fall 10+ stories have a greater chance of survival. This is because the pets in that middle range tense up, but at very high ranges, they relax again. If you're a cat, relaxing your limbs is the way to go (but you probably still want to land on your feet).
Oh yeah. The original reason I was going to post. 42 stories...let's say 12 feet per story. 504 feet. Gravity is 32 feet per second per second, and the distance you fall in t seconds is (32/2)(t^2). He would have fallen for 5.6 seconds given that height assumption, and assuming he didn't bounce off any walls (ouch). Hit the ground at 180 feet per second. The bottoms of elevator shafts, whether they have an elevator at the bottom or not, aren't flat either. Ouch...But that is NOT enough time to get out more than a small handful of panicked words.
Oh yeah, terminal velocity. Wikipedia claims in free-fall position, that's 55 meters per second or...math...hey, wait. 180 feet. He hit terminal velocity at the same time he hit the ground.
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Topic: Falling 42 stories to your death (Read 5515 times)