
Woman survives fall from plane after parachute fails - myth_drannon
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/skydiving-accident-quebec-survive-1.5247744
======
RealityVoid
Interestingly, this is NOT the first time tings like this happened. There are
a few people that survived freefall from absurd heights [1]

My favorite website that documents all these things is the Free Fall Research
Page [2] that to my dismay now seems to be on the bottom of the second google
search results page.

Most people have this image about falls that you fall from heights you die,
but some people are lucky and it really depends on how and where you fall. I
was with some friends once and was mentioning about all these people that
survived free fall and I was surprised to get some really incredulous looks of
the type "Sure they did buddy, do you believe everything you read?" even tough
these cases are well documented. I think it just goes to show that if
something is deemed impossible in popular culture it might as well not happen
at all, ever.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fall_survivors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fall_survivors)

[2]
[http://www.greenharbor.com/fffolder/ffresearch.html](http://www.greenharbor.com/fffolder/ffresearch.html)

~~~
hos234
I know this lunatic who is into base jumping. And according to him, if the
body isn't in the right position within a few seconds of jumping you are dead.
Dumbest sport on the planet.

~~~
Yajirobe
> lunatic

> Dumbest

Stay classy.

~~~
Theodores
"Able-ist" language is the crime that has gone on here.

Only learned of the ableist word recently and my spell checker has problems
with it.

~~~
crgwbr
Calling someone who regularly risks their own life for no benefit other than
thrill a lunatic is hardly “ableist”. It’s accurate.

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anthonybsd
The article is somewhat scarce on details but it sounds like both of her pilot
chutes opened while failing to deploy main/reserve chutes. Pilot chutes alone
will push your terminal velocity way down. If she fell in wooded area those
chutes were likely to catch on branches which again would have been hugely
helpful in slowing her down. I find that [1] Vesna Vulović case is a lot more
curious in terms of miraculous survival.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87)

~~~
tim333
Having a read of the wikipedia it says she was discovered screaming amongst
the wreckage so maybe was attached to some part of that that descended slower
than human free fall speed?

~~~
anthonybsd
This one goes into a bit more detail regarding how she managed to survive the
fall:

[https://allthatsinteresting.com/vesna-
vulovic](https://allthatsinteresting.com/vesna-vulovic)

"While many other passengers were sucked out of the plane after the explosion,
Vulović became pinned by the cart. The small section she was in fell to the
ground on a heavily wooded, snow-covered hillside.

Vulović’s doctors concurred with the air investigators and added their own
conclusions. They claimed that the very thing that almost kept Vulović from
being a flight attendant is what ultimately saved her life. Her physicians
believe her low blood pressure kept her heart from bursting on impact with the
mountainside. "

------
yomly
Shower thought: after some inflection point, does your likelihood of survival
actually increase with altitude? With the additional height you gain
additional time to plan and travel to fall more optimally, while your
acceleration should fall to nearly zero.

Of course, there may well be a secondary ceiling (pun) where air pressure and
O2 create new complications...

~~~
daveoflynn
> after some inflection point, does your likelihood of survival actually
> increase with altitude?

For humans, no. After ~10sec you’re falling at terminal velocity, which is
generally 2-300km/h, and your odds of survival are extraordinarily close to
zero.

This lady had a double malfunction, where there were issues with both main and
reserve parachutes, but per a police report (1), she was descending at 60km/h,
so she must have had at least some parachute material out and slowing her
fall.

She’s very lucky, despite what’s likely to be a shitty next couple of years of
rehab, but this isn’t a “fell from an airplane without a parachute and
survived” miracle.

(1) [https://www.lenouvelliste.ca/actualites/une-parachutiste-
gra...](https://www.lenouvelliste.ca/actualites/une-parachutiste-gravement-
blessee-apres-une-chute-144ab252158928367b84d336c0ebe5c2)

~~~
yomly
Right so 300kmph = 83.3 m/s which means every 83.3 metres (call it 100) buys
you an additional second of thinking time and back of the envelope calculation
(2km/minute) [0] suggests you can move up to 33 metres per second horizontally
(feel like this is optimistic - I openly welcome corrections here...)

In any case a fun thought experiment

[0][https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-average-horizontal-
distanc...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-average-horizontal-distance-
that-skydivers-travel-from-the-planes-door-to-their-landing-site/answer/Dave-
Sparazynski)

~~~
daveoflynn
There’s a joke in skydiving: “What happens if your backup parachute fails? You
aim for the car of the person who packed it”

------
dsfyu404ed
There's many recorded instances of stuff like this happening (mostly during
WW2 since that was the last time we had large numbers of people falling out of
planes). If you hit things that let you decelerate over enough distance to not
go splat then you can survive. IIRC one guy landed in water at terminal
velocity and only broke his ankles because he landed feet first instead of
belly flopping. Obviously there is some luck involved.

~~~
riffraff
I remember reading about someone jumping from a big height and purposefully
going in feet first to break his legs and not his back, but I've always
wondered how deep you would actually go if you hit the water hard enough to
break your ankles.

I mean, it's already a slightly terrifying experience to jump from a tall
trampoline and go a few meters deep, if you're not used to it.

~~~
noir_lord
Not that deep, water is massively higher density than air (imagine the Column
of air above you when you stand outside that goes up for miles and miles, you
only need to go 10m under water to equal that weight, i.e. 10m ~ 1atm).

There is footage of people firing guns into water and you can see the bullets
deceleration.

~~~
throwaway8941
>There is footage of people firing guns into water and you can see the bullets
deceleration.

Mythbusters did an episode on this one. Bullets shot out of high-powered
rifles simply shatter on contact with the water, turning into a bunch of
shrapnel.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvSTuLIjRm8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvSTuLIjRm8)

~~~
JustSomeNobody
This is also why you should not try and land in water at terminal velocity.

~~~
joncrane
So let's say I'm falling at terminal velocity and I'm falling to a point
roughly at the shore of a deep body of water. I have just enough control to
deviate so I'm landing completely on (hard, dry) land, or completely in water
that is over 20 feet deep.

You're saying I _shouldn 't_ try to land in the water?

(Let's assume there is no beach of sand. This is at a dam or something)

~~~
JustSomeNobody
If those are your options, then you should go head first into the dam. You're
not going to survive, so you want to die quickly, not suffering in pain for a
few minutes.

------
somelollygag
Whenever I read a story like this, I immediately think of this video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy5xLVx2NGY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy5xLVx2NGY)

------
kzzzznot
Immediately thought of this, similar case but turned out to be pretty
sinister!

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-
england-44241364](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-44241364)

~~~
joelx
This is scary. I wonder how many people each year are murdered by their
spouses who make it look like an accident?

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edgarvaldes
Somehow related: Speed skydiving

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_skydiving](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_skydiving)

------
cruhstaller
Related study:

Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft:
randomized controlled trial
[https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094](https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094)

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
I feel like there might be a methodological problem there.

