Terminal velocity got you down? Hypoxia making you blue? Does that three minutes it takes to plunge six miles back to Earth feel like an eternity? Then you’ll be glad you read Dan Koeppel’s article at Popular Mechanics called “How to Fall 35,000 Feet — And Survive.”
Amazingly enough, people have survived such drops from aircraft, and the article looks at just how this could be. Combing some basic physics and details about individual cases of survivors, Koeppel crafts a fascinating article with a tongue-in-cheek feel to it — if only because most of us don’t ever plan to be in the situation of choosing how we’ll crash back into the ground:
Glass hurts, but it gives. So does grass. Haystacks and bushes have cushioned surprised-to-be-alive free-fallers. Trees aren’t bad, though they tend to skewer. Snow? Absolutely. Swamps? With their mucky, plant-covered surface, even more awesome. Hamilton documents one case of a sky diver who, upon total parachute failure, was saved by bouncing off high-tension wires. Contrary to popular belief, water is an awful choice. Like concrete, liquid doesn’t compress. Hitting the ocean is essentially the same as colliding with a sidewalk, Hamilton explains, except that pavement (perhaps unfortunately) won’t “open up and swallow your shattered body.”
Still, just to be on the safe side, maybe you should read the article?
