Go | New | Find | Notify | Tools | Reply | |
Member |
Especially that last one. _______________________________ Do the interns get Glocks? | |||
|
Member |
 how to upload photos from------------------------------------------------ "It's hard to imagine a more stupid or dangerous way of making decisions, than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong." Thomas Sowell | |||
|
| Freethinker |
I don’t know for certain if anyone has ever survived a long fall without a parachute, but in the interest of healthy (nondiseased) thinking and logic it should be pointed out that, “it’s impossible to disprove a negative,” is one of the most facile and thoughtless notions that has entered the mass consciousness. “Disprove” means to demonstrate that a statement is false, and how might we do that with various negatives? “There are no M2 machine guns in my safe” is a negative and what would it take to disprove it? Opening the door and finding such a gun there. “No one has ever survived a long fall without a parachute,” is similar, and could it be disproved? Of course. All it would take would be for a well-witnessed event with a few videos of someone’s doing that. Proving—as opposed to disproving—a negative is often harder depending on what the claim is, but I could prove my claim that there are no M2 machine guns in my safe the same way: by opening it and looking inside. Countless other negatives are proved and disproved in ordinary life every day. Sometimes claims can be muddied by arguments over what is meant by “surviving,” “having sex,” or whether the rental I’m driving and found to contain 50 pounds of cocaine is “my” car, but none of that changes the obvious fact that, “You can’t disprove or prove a negative,” is just silly. ► 6.4/93.6 “I regret that I am to now die in the belief, that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776, to acquire self-government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be, that I live not to weep over it.” — Thomas Jefferson | |||
|
| Member |
Debunked might work better for you. I've given several examples, including the one listed in the guiness book of world records, and of course, the subject jumper in this thread. Not negatives, just debunked. The International Civil Aircraft Organization recognizes a parachuting body in each country; in the United States it's the United States Parachute Association, which publishes Parachutist magazine as its official rag. I'm not going to go back through every issue for the past five decades, but USPA has published, debunking the freefall-to-earth -without-a-parachute myths. Someone questioned the "experts" in this thread; several have posted their USPA license numbers, some haven't. Any (all) of us have experienced parachute malfunctions in freefall and under canopy, cutaways, reserve deployments, have had injuries (some life threatening, some not), and have known people killed, and in many cases will have seen severe injuries or deaths jumping. It's rare, but it happens. It's a relatively small community, and when it happens, it occurs when jumpers are gathered, so it's fairly inevitable that at some point you're party to it. I am among that group. It's axiomatic that most jumpers killed today aren't killed when parachutes don't open, but when they do. Canopy malfunctions still account for a percentage, but jumper actions, including normal landings, account for more injuries than anything. Many experienced jumpers are landing very small, very fast canopies and landing a good canopy accounts for a number of the injuries. I point that out because that's landing under a good parachute. Landing under no parachute...not survivable. It ain't a landing. Bones shatter. Eyes leave their sockets. Skin splits down arms and legs. Insides wind up on the outside. The skull fractures and pops. Backs snap. Necks break. Hearts gear and major blood vessels rupture (A friend, a pilot and jumper named Janet, died under canopy when her aorta ruptured from the parachute opening, many years ago). Point is, it isn't surviveable. Not a few feet of snow, not the illusion of tree branches (which cut and tear and penetrate, but don't slow...life isn't Avatar the movie). Want to see what jumpers who go into trees do to prepare? Look at what a smoke jumper wears...and that's a descent into a tree under a good canopy. In freefall. Forget about it. The premise of this thread is an article making false claims. The lady had canopies out. a malfunction into which she deployed a reserve. I rode a ball of garbage (damaged parachute mess) into a cliff on a very windy day in the desert, splitting my helmet, destroying the parachute rig, splitting my elbow and arm, twisting one leg and my neck around, and so forth. I remember parts of it, but mostly awakening in an emergency room, and then in intensive care. I was fortunate. A medevac helicopter was called and enroute an update requested. It was reported by all witnesses that I had died, and the helicopter diverted elsewhere with another request. Other jumpers who ended up on the mountain with me didn't have direct commo, else I'd have had the helicopter ride, but I had to come down with the others and take a ground ride. No canopies? Not surviveable. Nor would you want to. | |||
|
| Member |
sn3 - I've gone back through this thread and do not see where you have debunked the claims of any of the 7 people in the link I posted. You've posted that their claims are false and their experiences didn't happen, but you haven't given anything to refute their claims. I'm not talking about impacting the ground at terminal velocity without any mitigating circumstances, I'm talking about you dismissing the claims of these seven survivors out of hand. If none of these people experienced what they say they did, where is the evidence disputing their claims? You haven't posted any solid, documented refutation for your claims debunking anything. If that information is out there, I'm certainly willing to read and consider it, but right now it's just you saying these people are lying without any proof that they are. Is there an archive of the publication you listed where one can find the debunking of all these events? As to the "expert" status - how does just having a USPA license make one an expert in the field? Is there lengthy and rigorous training like being a doctor, paramedic, and the like, or is it a certain number of jumps that qualifies them as an expert? My qualifier for "expert" status is if you can be considered one in a court of law - and even then "expert" status is questionable in some instances. | |||
|
| Member |
sns3guppy, you've done an excellent job expressing the reality of skydiving in this thread. From those of us who do or did, thanks. But, it seems like it's time to stop feeding the trolls  Blue Skies! | |||
|
| Member |
Typical USPA D-license holders have several thousand jumps. Some of us have been involved in parachuting for four decades (or more). I don't consider myself an expert by any stretch, though I've certainly worked with some. Over the years I've worked alongside a number of pioneers, including the man who held the longest freefall on record, for decades. I've worked at and flown at the world's largest drop zone, with many of the pioneers, with civil and military jumpers and military and civil doctors who jump, and have had these discussions. I've been involved in experimental parachute operations and have even worked closely with the only man to put parachutes on several planets (more to come: I've tested some of those parachutes recently). I am not an expert, but I do work with those who are, and and I've been involved in parachuting most of life, since a teen, static-lining, jumping rounds, paracommnaders, ram air canopies, deploying cargo, test load, emergency systems, space systems, etc. Would I be considered an "expert" in court? Yes, though I have never testified in court about parachute operations. That doesn't make an expert to me; if that's all it takes, I'd be an "expert" in a number of disciplines based on professional qualification and experience...but that's not really much of a qualification. Yes, you can wade through the Parachutist archives yourself to find it. Like I've already stated, I'm not going to take the time to do it. It's been debunked time and time again. I gave a few examples here. I'm not going to do every one as I dont' give that much of a damn. This thread is about a woman who fell to earth and survived when her parachutes didn't open. Only, it's not true. That's already been shown. If you missed it, read again, and read slowly, because it's there. No one will have the "expertise" you want, but you've read it on the internet and are apparently therefore an expert. I'll leave it to you. It's in your camp. There is no proof that the events you suggest exist, as they've been given. If they do, prove it. You can't. You can't prove it because there's no proof of what didn't exist, which is why you can't prove a negative.
True enough. At least there weren't any wuffo pitches. I'm out. Blue skies. | |||
|
Member |
Your timeframe reminded me of an old 1st Sgt I had. Top was recounting how, in his younger days, he had a main fail on a training jump. He had to go to reserve. Somebody asked about getting panicked, and he spoke of being entirely focused on cutting away the main and the reserve deployment, and being oblivious to the ground approaching. He said his reserve caught and then he immediately hit the ground. He was slightly injured, but got to his feet in an empty concrete grain silo ditch about ten feet below ground. He said ever day since then has been a gift. I’m sure his focus on the task saved him that day. Demand not that events should happen as you wish; but wish them to happen as they do happen, and you will go on well. -Epictetus | |||
|
| Peace through superior firepower  |
Yeah, in our click-bait world, there's nothing like a title that gets you to click on it because you think you can glimpse immortality. Click-bait sensationalism, and nothing more. To survive impacting the ground at terminal velocity, you'd have to be landing on one of those air bags used by stunt men, and you'd have to have the biggest one they make, undeneath which should be about 20 feet of foam rubber. What I'd like to see, though, is someone hitting a gigantic trampoline at that speed. Assuming it doesn't tear and assuming that the diver doesn't bottom out, it would be fun to see how high they could bounce. I guess we'd want try it out using a dummy. Any volunteers?  | |||
|
| Member |
sn3 - Time and again you keep saying you've said given examples on incidents that have been debunked. I'm not asking you about any of those events, it's the seven people in the link I'm asking for evidence that their stories aren't true. I don't know how to make it any clearer. You've stated that none of the claims of the seven people are true, yet you say that Vesna survived because she was strapped to her seat. Okay, she still fell 33,000 feet and survived, right? Is her claim true or false? You stated earlier it was false and had been debunked - how? where? by whom? I don't understand where the disconnect is and why you don't appear to understand that if an event didn't happen the way it has been documented (Guiness Book of Records for one, Smithsonian magazine for another) then where is the documentation to refute the claim(s)? Your claim that the events I'm asking about didn't occur may certainly be substantiated somewhere, but you're going to just say they didn't happen and I'm the one who has to do the investigation to verify what you say is true? That's like asking the attorney for the defense to prove his client is guilty and do all the prosecution's work. Makes no sense at all. | |||
|
| Member |
I'm a troll because I'm not going to take your or sn3's word that the experiences of the seven people listed in the link I provided earlier absolutely, positively didn't happen even though there is documentation that they did? And I'm a troll for asking for what proof, evidence, investigation, etc., there may be that these specific events did not happen, yet none has been provided? Okay, you've definitely got a different definition of troll than I do dude. Peace out man. | |||
|
| Member |
No, I didn't. You have a reading comprehension problem. I won't have a conversation with a man who can't tell the truth. As said before, I'm out. | |||
|
| Member |
This is the quote I was referring to. I took this to mean that you were acknowledging the event did take place. I'm not trying to put words in your mouth or be dishonest in the discussion. I certainly acknowledge that my remembering of what I read in your post about Vesna being strapped to her seat was incorrect, (I got her and Juliane Koepcke confused together) but it is true that Vesna survived a fall from 33,000 feet, right? | |||
|
| Member |
At no point did I misunderstand or dispute the original post. This is the statement I've been disputing -
| |||
|
Lost |
| |||
|
| Member |
I spent ten years as a paratrooper and have seen many pieces of equipment "burn in". I recall an M60 machine gun that was cut loose in error. The buffer (butt stock component) was jammed through the length of the receiver and split the barrel's chamber as it impacted. The force that was needed to do that is hard to imagine. I don't think a person would have much of a chance,... but who knows? V. | |||
|
| Freethinker |
You are no doubt correct, but in comparing apples to apples, I am reasonably certain that the terminal velocity of an M60 is higher than that of a person, partially-deployed parachute or no. ► 6.4/93.6 “I regret that I am to now die in the belief, that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776, to acquire self-government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be, that I live not to weep over it.” — Thomas Jefferson | |||
|
| Member |
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news...r-AAIg0fX?li=AAgfYrC The flight attendant who fell 10km in a plane bombing and survived Nick Pearson 2 days ago When a briefcase bomb exploded on a Yugoslavian plane in 1972, 23 passengers and four crewmembers were sucked out of the wreckage. The chances of any surviving were surely zero. But, locals from a nearby village rushed to the wreckage and found 22-year-old flight attendant Vesna Vulovic still strapped into her seat and very much alive. She fell from a distance of ten kilometres up – no-one has ever fallen from that high without a parachute and survived. But it was a combination of unlikely factors that make her survival so extraordinary. The flight As a young woman in communist Yugoslavia, Ms Vulovic was driven to travel by her obsession with The Beatles. She moved to London as a university student, then became a stewardess for Yugoslavia airline JAT in 1971. The following January she was part of the secondary crew of Flight 367 from Stockholm to Belgrade, with stopovers in Copenhagen and Zagreb. She was not supposed to be on the flight, but had put her hand up because she had never been to Denmark before. She joined the flight in Copenhagen, in enough time to watch the first bunch of passengers disembark. "One man seemed terribly annoyed. It was not only me that noticed him either. Other crew members saw him, as did the station manager in Copenhagen," she told Aviation Security. "I think it was the man who put the bomb in the baggage. I think he had checked in a bag in Stockholm, got off in Copenhagen and never re-boarded the flight." She recalled boarding the flight, but she doesn't remember anything else of that day. The explosion The black boxes aboard Flight 367 showed that at 4.01pm on January 26, the plane dropped out of the sky. An explosion in the baggage department split the plane into several pieces, sucking the passengers and other flight crew out of the plane. But Ms Vulovic was pinned in the fuselage by a food cart, keeping her in place as it fell to the ground. Her section of the aircraft landed at an angle on a snowy mountainside in then-Czechoslovakia. The trees and the snow, as well as the angle of the mountain, made for a softer landing. When local villager Bruno Honke arrived at the scene, he found Ms Vulovic screaming, barefoot and covered in blood, with a colleague's body on top of her. A former World War II medic, Mr Honke was able to keep her alive under help arrived. Ms Vulovic suffered two broken legs, three broken vertebrae, a fractured pelvis and a fractured skull. But she was alive. And a medical condition that should have stopped her from becoming a flight attendant probably saved her life. The recovery The impact with the ground should have been enough to kill Ms Vulovic. The sudden blow would have caused an ordinary person's heart to burst, killing them instantly. But doctors told Ms Vulovic that her very low blood pressure caused her to pass out quickly. As a result, her heart did not burst. Low-blood pressure typically keeps people from becoming flight attendants, but she said she had drunk so much coffee the day of her medical exam that her heart rate was faster than usual. She recovered in a hospital in Prague before being moved to one in Belgrade, where she was kept under 24-hour police guard. Because she had survived the crash, authorities feared she would be made an assassination target by the Croatian separatist terrorists responsible for the bombing. Later life She had no memory of the crash, so Ms Vulovic was perfectly happy to resume her duties as a flight attendant. But because she had become a national hero in Yugoslavia, the airline did not want her flying for fear her presence would make other travellers anxious. Instead she was given a desk job. The granddaughter of the man who rescued Ms Vulovic was named Vesna in her honour when she was born six weeks after the crash. She was given an award from the Guinness World Records, presented to her by her hero Paul McCartney. And when Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic was ousted in 2000, she used her celebrity to campaign for the centre-left Democratic Party and for her nation's entry into the European Union. Ms Vulovic retired on a pension in Belgrade, where she died of heart problems in 2016. But despite her incredible survival, she never considered herself lucky. "Everybody thinks I am lucky, but they a mistaken. If I were lucky I would never had this accident," she said. "To die is pure destiny - in a plane or in a car or in the street. The funny thing is that, if you have to die the easiest way to do so is in a plane. So that's it, it was not my day for dying." Ms Vulovic's survival story is reminiscent of Juliane Koepcke, a 17-year-old who lived through a 3km plunge to the ground in a plane explosion just a month earlier, Christmas Eve, 1971. Read that incredible story at: https://www.9news.com.au/world...88-9d18-a52194566cb0 | |||
|
| Freethinker |
Finally! One of the most obvious truths ever uttered about one of the most moronic platitudes ever uttered. That’s exactly what I think whenever someone who has survived a horrendous event like an accident, natural disaster, or assault is said to have been lucky in one way or another because he was only crippled or maimed or forced to undergo months of treatments and rehabilitation: If that person had been “lucky,” he would have been home in bed or on another continent when it happened. ► 6.4/93.6 “I regret that I am to now die in the belief, that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776, to acquire self-government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be, that I live not to weep over it.” — Thomas Jefferson | |||
|
Member |
Here's video of a man who survived falling with a "failed" parachute, meaning it didn't open fully, as you can see in the video, but it obviously did slow his fall and he landed in a combination of vegetation and very soft dirt. | |||
|
| Powered by Social Strata | Page 1 2 3 4 |
 | Please Wait. Your request is being processed... |
|
© SIGforum 2024