{"id":1461,"date":"2010-01-29T19:24:23","date_gmt":"2010-01-30T02:24:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bspcn.com\/?p=1461"},"modified":"2010-01-29T19:25:42","modified_gmt":"2010-01-30T02:25:42","slug":"how-to-fall-35000-feet-and-survive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/2010\/01\/29\/how-to-fall-35000-feet-and-survive\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Fall 35,000 Feet…..And Survive"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written by Dan Koeppel<\/a> Illustrations by Nanospore<\/p>\n

You’re six miles up, alone and falling without a parachute. Though the odds are long, a small number of people have found themselves in similar situations\u2014and lived to tell the tale. Here’s PM’s 120-mph, 35,000-ft, 3-minutes-to-impact survival guide.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

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6:59:00 AM<\/h3>\n

35,000 Feet<\/h3>\n

You have a late night<\/strong> and an early flight. Not long after takeoff, you drift to sleep. Suddenly, you\u2019re wide awake. There\u2019s cold air rushing everywhere, and sound. Intense, horrible sound. Where am I?<\/em>, you think. Where\u2019s the plane?<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>
\nYou\u2019re 6 miles up. You\u2019re alone. You\u2019re falling.
\nThings are bad. But now\u2019s the time to focus on the good news.<\/p>\n

(Yes, it goes beyond surviving the destruction of your aircraft.) Although gravity is against you, another force is working in your favor: time. Believe it or not, you\u2019re better off up here than if you\u2019d slipped from the balcony of your high-rise hotel room after one too many drinks last night.
\nOr at least you will be. Oxygen is scarce at these heights. By now, hypoxia is starting to set in. You\u2019ll be unconscious soon, and you\u2019ll cannonball at least a mile before waking up again. When that happens, remember what you are about to read. The ground, after all, is your next destination.
\nGranted, the odds of surviving a 6-mile plummet are extra\u00adordinarily slim, but at this point you\u2019ve got nothing to lose by understanding your situation. There are two ways to fall out of a plane. The first is to free-fall, or drop from the sky with absolutely no protection or means of slowing your descent. The second is to become a wreckage rider, a term coined by Massachusetts-based amateur historian Jim Hamilton, who developed the Free Fall Research Page\u2014an online database of nearly every imaginable human plummet. That classification means you have the advantage of being attached to a chunk of the plane. In 1972, Serbian flight attendant Vesna Vulovic was traveling in a DC-9 over Czechoslovakia when it blew up. She fell 33,000 feet, wedged between her seat, a catering trolley, a section of aircraft and the body of another crew member, landing on\u2014then sliding down\u2014a snowy incline before coming to a stop, severely injured but alive.
\nSurviving a plunge surrounded by a semiprotective cocoon of debris is more common than surviving a pure free-fall, according to Hamilton\u2019s statistics; 31 such confirmed or \u201cplausible\u201d incidents have occurred since the 1940s. Free-fallers constitute a much more exclusive club, with just 13 confirmed or plausible incidents, including perennial Ripley\u2019s Believe It or Not superstar Alan Magee\u2014blown from his B-17 on a 1943 mission over France. The New Jersey airman, more recently the subject of a MythBusters<\/em> episode, fell 20,000 feet and crashed into a train station; he was subsequently captured by German troops, who were astonished at his survival.
\nWhether you\u2019re attached to crumpled fuselage or just plain falling, the concept you\u2019ll be most interested in is terminal velocity<\/em>. As gravity pulls you toward earth, you go faster. But like any moving object, you create drag\u2014more as your speed increases. When downward force equals upward resistance, acceleration stops. You max out.
\nDepending on your size and weight, and factors such as air density, your speed at that moment will be about 120 mph\u2014and you\u2019ll get there after a surprisingly brief bit of falling: just 1500 feet, about the same height as Chicago\u2019s Sears (now Willis) Tower. Equal speed means you hit the ground with equal force. The difference is the clock. Body meets Windy City sidewalk in 12 seconds. From an airplane\u2019s cruising altitude, you\u2019ll have almost enough time to read this entire article.<\/p>\n

7:00:20 AM<\/h3>\n

22,000 Feet<\/h3>\n

By now, you\u2019ve descended<\/strong> into breathable air. You sputter into consciousness. At this altitude, you\u2019ve got roughly 2 minutes until impact. Your plan is simple. You will enter a Zen state and decide to live. You will understand, as Hamilton notes, \u201cthat it isn\u2019t the fall that kills you\u2014it\u2019s the landing.\u201d
\nKeeping your wits about you, you take aim.
\nBut at what? Magee\u2019s landing on the stone floor of that French train station was softened by the skylight he crashed through a moment earlier. Glass hurts, but it gives. So does grass. Haystacks and bushes have cushioned surprised-to-be-alive free-fallers. Trees aren\u2019t 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\u2019t compress. Hitting the ocean is essentially the same as colliding with a sidewalk, Hamilton explains, except that pavement (perhaps unfortunately) won\u2019t \u201copen up and swallow your shattered body.\u201d
\nWith a target in mind, the next consideration is body position. To slow your descent, emulate a sky diver. Spread your arms and legs, present your chest to the ground, and arch your back and head upward. This adds friction and helps you maneuver. But don\u2019t relax. This is not your landing pose.<\/p>\n

The question of how to achieve ground contact remains, regrettably, given your predicament, a subject of debate. A 1942 study in the journal War Medicine<\/em> noted \u201cdistribution and compensation of pressure play large parts in the defeat of injury.\u201d Recommendation: wide-body impact. But a 1963 report by the Federal Aviation Agency argued that shifting into the classic sky diver\u2019s landing stance\u2014feet together, heels up, flexed knees and hips\u2014best increases survivability. The same study noted that training in wrestling and acrobatics would help people survive falls. Martial arts were deemed especially useful for hard-surface impacts: \u201cA \u2018black belt\u2019 expert can reportedly crack solid wood with a single blow,\u201d the authors wrote, speculating that such skills might be transferable.
\nThe ultimate learn-by-doing experience might be a lesson from Japanese parachutist Yasuhiro Kubo, who holds the world record in the activity\u2019s banzai category. The sky diver tosses his chute from the plane and then jumps out after it, waiting as long as possible to retrieve it, put it on and pull the ripcord. In 2000, Kubo\u2014starting from 9842 feet\u2014fell for 50 seconds before recovering his gear. A safer way to practice your technique would be at one of the wind-tunnel simulators found at about a dozen U.S. theme parks and malls. But neither will help with the toughest part: sticking the landing. For that you might consider\u2014though it\u2019s not exactly advisable\u2014a leap off the world\u2019s highest bridge, France\u2019s Millau Viaduct; its platform towers 891 feet over mostly spongy farmland.
\nWater landings\u2014if you must\u2014require quick decision-making. Studies of bridge-jump survivors indicate that a feet-first, knife-like entry (aka \u201cthe pencil\u201d) best optimizes your odds of resurfacing. The famed cliff divers of Acapulco, however, tend to assume a head-down position, with the fingers of each hand locked together, arms outstretched, protecting the head. Whichever you choose, first assume the free-fall position for as long as you can. Then, if a feet-first entry is inevitable, the most important piece of advice, for reasons both unmentionable and easily understood, is to clench your butt<\/em>.
\nNo matter the surface, definitely don\u2019t land on your head. In a 1977 \u201cStudy of Impact Tolerance Through Free-Fall Investigations,\u201d researchers at the Highway Safety Research Institute found that the major cause of death in falls\u2014they examined drops from buildings, bridges and the occasional elevator shaft (oops!)\u2014was cranial contact. If you have to arrive top-down, sacrifice your good looks and land on your face, rather than the back or top of your head. You might also consider flying with a pair of goggles in your pocket, Hamilton says, since you\u2019re likely to get watery eyes\u2014impairing accuracy\u2014on the way down. v<\/p>\n

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7:02:19 AM<\/h3>\n

1000 Feet<\/h3>\n

Given your starting altitude<\/strong>, you\u2019ll be just about ready to hit the ground as you reach this section of instruction (based on the average adult reading speed of 250 words per minute). The basics have been covered, so feel free to concentrate on the task at hand. But if you\u2019re so inclined, here\u2019s some supplemental information\u2014though be warned that none of it will help you much at this point.
\nStatistically speaking, it\u2019s best to be a flight crew member, a child, or traveling in a military aircraft. Over the past four decades, there have been at least a dozen commercial airline crashes with just one survivor. Of those documented, four of the survivors were crew, like the flight attendant Vulovic, and seven were passengers under the age of 18. That includes Mohammed el-Fateh Osman, a 2-year-old wreckage rider who lived through the crash of a Boeing jet in Sudan in 2003, and, more recently, 14-year-old Bahia Bakari, the sole survivor of last June\u2019s Yemenia Airways plunge off the Comoros Islands.
\nCrew survival may be related to better restraint systems, but there\u2019s no consensus on why children seem to pull through falls more often. The Federal Aviation Agency study notes that kids, especially those under the age of 4, have more flexible skeletons, more relaxed muscle tonus, and a higher proportion of subcutaneous fat, which helps protect internal organs. Smaller people\u2014whose heads are lower than the seat backs in front of them\u2014are better shielded from debris in a plane that\u2019s coming apart. Lower body weight reduces terminal velocity, plus reduced surface area decreases the chance of impalement upon landing.<\/p>\n

7:02:25 am<\/h3>\n

0 Feet<\/h3>\n

The ground. Like a Shaolin master<\/strong>, you are at peace and prepared. Impact<\/em>. You\u2019re alive. What next? If you\u2019re lucky, you might find that your injuries are minor, stand up and smoke a celebratory cigarette, as British tail gunner Nicholas Alkemade did in 1944 after landing in snowy bushes following an 18,000-foot plummet. (If you\u2019re a smoker, you\u2019re super extra lucky<\/em>, since you\u2019ve technically gotten to indulge during the course of an airliner trip.) More likely, you\u2019ll have tough work ahead.
\nFollow the example of Juliane Koepcke. On Christmas Eve 1971, the Lockheed Electra she was traveling in exploded over the Amazon. The next morning, the 17-year-old German awoke on the jungle floor, strapped into her seat, surrounded by fallen holiday gifts. Injured and alone, she pushed the death of her mother, who\u2019d been seated next to her on the plane, out of her mind. Instead, she remembered advice from her father, a biologist: To find civilization when lost in the jungle, follow water. Koepcke waded from tiny streams to larger ones. She passed crocodiles and poked the mud in front of her with a stick to scare away stingrays. She had lost one shoe in the fall and was wearing a ripped miniskirt. Her only food was a bag of candy, and she had nothing but dark, dirty water to drink. She ignored her broken collarbone and her wounds, infested with maggots.
\nOn the tenth day, she rested on the bank of the Shebonya River. When she stood up again, she saw a canoe tethered to the shoreline. It took her hours to climb the embankment to a hut, where, the next day, a group of lumberjacks found her. The incident was seen as a miracle in Peru, and free-fall statistics seem to support those arguing for divine intervention: According to the Geneva-based Aircraft Crashes Record Office, 118,934 people have died in 15,463 plane crashes between 1940 and 2008. Even when you add failed-chute sky divers, Hamilton\u2019s tally of confirmed or plausible lived-to-tell-about-it incidents is only 157, with 42 occurring at heights over 10,000 feet.
\nBut Koepcke never saw survival as a matter of fate. She can still recall the first moments of her fall from the plane, as she spun through the air in her seat. That wasn\u2019t under her control, but what happened when she regained consciousness was. \u201cI had been able to make the correct decision\u2014to leave the scene of the crash,\u201d she says now. And because of experience at her parents\u2019 biological research station, she says, \u201cI did not feel fear. I knew how to move in the forest and the river, in which I had to swim with dangerous animals like caimans and piranhas.\u201d
\nOr, by now, you\u2019re wide awake, and the aircraft\u2019s wheels have touched safely down on the tarmac. You understand the odds of any kind of accident on a commercial flight are slimmer than slim and that you will likely never have to use this information. But as a courtesy to the next passenger, consider leaving your copy of this guide in the seat-back pocket.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Dan Koeppel Illustrations by Nanospore You’re six miles up, alone and falling without a parachute. Though the odds are long, a small number of people have found themselves in similar situations\u2014and lived to tell the tale. Here’s PM’s 120-mph, 35,000-ft, 3-minutes-to-impact survival guide. 6:59:00 AM 35,000 Feet You have a late night and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1461"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1461"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1463,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1461\/revisions\/1463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}