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[Vucar Fikodastesh]

At this point... Id kinda would love a list of people who survived Terminal Velocity situations.

http://www.greenharbor.com/fffolder/ffresearch.html

This is the best I could find. There are a lot of amazing stories on that page.

[Sowelu]

Ooh, and it has an excellent point:  You don't accelerate linearly to terminal velocity speed and then stop accelerating.  Your acceleration slows as you get closer.  So you wouldn't be all that close to terminal velocity after just six seconds or so!

[Starver]

Ooh, and it has an excellent point:  You don't accelerate linearly to terminal velocity speed and then stop accelerating.  Your acceleration slows as you get closer.  So you wouldn't be all that close to terminal velocity after just six seconds or so!

Indeed, it's a limit towards which (with variants such as attitude of body aside) you will asymptotically approach so that in an infinite fall you will reach that.  (Ignoring practical stuff like infinitely increasing air density, singularity formation and finding an entire infinite universe filled with air in the first place!)

But if you take a more streamlined position and then switch to one with a far larger cross section[1] you could zoom past the 'average' V_lim and then approach it from the other direction, decelerating rapidly (but still in trouble, availability of parachutes aside).


Which also has implications towards the "how to survive a fall" question.  You probably want to maintain the most resistive position for almost all the way down (so that your V_max is never very high, relatively) before adopting the 'best' landing position.  e.g. feet to hit water first (probably to horribly break, but acting as a combined penetrator and crumple zone to get your torso and head past the problematic impact bit, then hope you have positioned your arms so they still work and can keep you afloat in the absence of any useful leg motions, if that's what happens in that situation), an attitude that has a higher V_lim so you need to time it to be as late as possible.  Note that I'm almost certainly wrong about the 'best' position.



I've heard of a case^{[citation needed]}where a tandem-jumping that went wrong had the instructor orientate him and his 'passenger' to fall back first so that he hit the ground first and cushioned their fall, so that she (IIRC) might survive.  And did.  He did not, of course.  Trickier to keep the speed down, of course, since a tandem jumping pair appears to have a higher V_lim (for obvious reasons of mass and cross section), one reason perhaps why they often seem to go out with drogue chutes.  Maybe so they don't outpace the accompanying camera jumpers/other companions who are there to record the event.

ICBW.


[1] Supermanish and/or arms tucked well in to the torso, maybe, to start with, then spread eagle.  Noting that I'm only going on common sense and what I've seen of skydivers, not practical experience.

[Emperor_Jonathan]

I've heard of a case^{[citation needed]}where a tandem-jumping that went wrong had the instructor orientate him and his 'passenger' to fall back first so that he hit the ground first and cushioned their fall, so that she (IIRC) might survive.  And did.  He did not, of course.  Trickier to keep the speed down, of course, since a tandem jumping pair appears to have a higher V_lim (for obvious reasons of mass and cross section), one reason perhaps why they often seem to go out with drogue chutes.  Maybe so they don't outpace the accompanying camera jumpers/other companions who are there to record the event.

May, or may not be the same case but:
http://www.greenharbor.com/fffolder/unlucky.html (from above link)

Gareth Griffith

Umatilla, Florida: In a tandem jump (i.e., a student and instructor jumping simultaneously) in June of 1997, Griffith pulled his ripcord at 5,500 feet, but the main chute partially failed, which triggered the reserve chute to be opened. The reserve chute tangled with part of the main chute, and despite cutting away the main chute, the reserve was never fully cleared. Griffith, the student, landed on top of Michael Costello, the instructor. Griffith survived, but Costello did not.

[Nilocy]

I think the worst way to die would be suffication. Your helpless to do anything about such a trivial thing, the lack of oxygen.

Drowning, according to people who have and survived, is quite a pleasant thing after you get over the fact your going to die.

[Puck]

Depends, as far as I know suffocation from CO2 is badish, because the body has inbuilt alarm functions. Carbonmonoxide on teh other hand the body doesnt recognize and supposedly you die quite comfy.

Being strangled is a form of suffocating and not very painful/uncomfortable.

Because all those ways to die get you -usually- unconscious before you finally shut down.

[Agdune]

Aye, that feeling you get when you need to breath isn't brought about by lack of oxygen, it's the reaction to Co2. Running out of oxygen is fine and dandy, your brain will be one of the first things to turn sluggish and non-responsive (Since its operation is so oxygen-intensive), but if the oxygen's running low because you're re-breathing the same air it becomes incredibly agonising due to Co2, I've heard.

Now for some even more shaky unfounded pseudo-logic, I doubt the elevator-guy would've been fully aware of what was about to happen at the end of the fall. If it was unexpected (He might've seen it coming however) then it could have been half-over before he'd even recognised what had happened. If he was like most people, his higher mental faculties would then shut down for a couple of seconds from the shock - by which time it'd be over. If he saw it coming then yeah, he'd have felt the passage of time alot less.

[Sowelu]

Drowning, according to people who have and survived, is quite a pleasant thing after you get over the fact your going to die.

Is it "like going home"?

("The Prestige" was a pretty good, if very weird, movie.)

[Aqizzar]

Drowning, according to people who have and survived, is quite a pleasant thing after you get over the fact your going to die.

Probably because your brain goes into delirium from lack of oxygen.

[Tormy]

Today, the local news reported an elevator repairman fell 42 stories to his death in Toronto's CN tower (which is 43 stories tall).

Condolences to their loss, but it got me thinking. It must have been a horrible way to die. Falling 42 stories is what... a minute or more of constant falling? No safety rope, knowing you're going to die. One minute of falling, knowing that your body is going to be splattered all across the bottom. It's different from suicide, because at least in that one, you're looking to die. Here, you've got Joe Normal working on an elevator, then falling for one minute knowing he's going to die.

Yeah... it must really have been a horrible experience.

Ouch.... I am wondering that what was he thinking about, while he was falling. I suppose he was "trying to" think about his family or something.

"Holy shit! I'm going to die, wonder what my last thoughts will be *insert worthwhile last thoughts here* ah yeah, crap this sucks."

Would be more along the lines of what I would have thought of.

Yeah...either way he was in shock while falling..more than likely. [Brain shutdown]

You could try bungee jumping and pretend that somehow the rope snaps, than you can tell us what you think.

Bleh, that wouldn't be the same...

[Cthulhu]

The worst way to die is to be eaten by a shoal of giant Humboldt squids.

[Angellus]

Death is almost never funny.

Correct. It's hilarious.

Why do i have the feeling after your post(s) that you visit gurochan a lot?

[Okenido]

Actually I AM a regular visitor of /g/.

[Agdune]

This is the second B12G thread I've read in the last 2 days that has referenced Guro and Gurochan. Something weird's going on.

[Okenido]

Not really.

The other reference occurred in a thread about banning of content in H-Games.