Darwin loves...
...gravity:
It's not the wing-walking per se that's earned him his Darwin Award, since he was wearing a parachute. It's the fact that he was flying too low to open his parachute when he fell. That's a rookie mistake.
Trained by whom? Himself? His momma? Donald Duck? Because anyone who knows anything about exiting aircraft at any altitude above ground level (and I know quite a lot from my previous career) knows that 800 ft AGL is the minimum height for a jump with a static line and 1,200 ft AGL for self-deployed. In the case of the static line, you have 3 1/2 seconds after leaving the aircraft for the static to pull. You start counting when you step out. One-one thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thousand... If you don't feel a tug when you say "four," you rip your reserve. If you react within two seconds of failed static deployment, at 800 feet the reserve canopy will have just enough time to fully deploy before you hit the ground. You need four hundred more feet for the self-deployed main canopy as they take longer to deploy than a static one, because there's nothing ripping the canopy out except the airstream.
Either he was flying too low (which was at least partially the pilot's fault) or he hit his head when he came off the wing and was too stunned to deploy in time. Either way, more altitude would have greatly increased his chances of survival. Many people labor under the idiotic impression that falling from two hundred feet is less lethal than falling from ten thousand feet. No, it isn't. The difference is the time you have to act -- even if it's just steering toward something marginally less lethal to land on. People have been known to survive falls into dense forests, though it's rare and down to pure luck you don't hit any limbs large enough to break your back or smash your skull. Water won't work. Surface tension will break every bone in your body when you hit. Maybe a deep bog. Maybe. But you'd likely auger in so far you'd probably suffocate/drown if you survived the impact. Nope, it's a forest or splat. As you approach the top of the trees, curl up into a ball and pray to whatever deities you fancy might listen to you.
I have nothing against doing dangerous shit; I do it all the time, though somewhat less at 53 than I did at 23. I've been an andrenaline junky since I enlisted in the Marine Corps at 17. But the key to doing dangerous shit successfully -- being defined as "not dead afterwards" -- is to understand the nature of the danger and prepare accordingly. You minimize risk by using your head first, whether you're riding a motorcycle, hunting dangerous predators or wing-walking. A little knowledge and/or a session with a professional stuntman would have avoided this fatality. As it is, he's dining with Uncle Chuck now.
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Jon James McMurray, 33, was being filmed wing-walking when he fell and died on Saturday.
It's not the wing-walking per se that's earned him his Darwin Award, since he was wearing a parachute. It's the fact that he was flying too low to open his parachute when he fell. That's a rookie mistake.
On Monday, McMurray's management team released a statement on his death. It said he'd been training for the stunt for months.
Trained by whom? Himself? His momma? Donald Duck? Because anyone who knows anything about exiting aircraft at any altitude above ground level (and I know quite a lot from my previous career) knows that 800 ft AGL is the minimum height for a jump with a static line and 1,200 ft AGL for self-deployed. In the case of the static line, you have 3 1/2 seconds after leaving the aircraft for the static to pull. You start counting when you step out. One-one thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thousand... If you don't feel a tug when you say "four," you rip your reserve. If you react within two seconds of failed static deployment, at 800 feet the reserve canopy will have just enough time to fully deploy before you hit the ground. You need four hundred more feet for the self-deployed main canopy as they take longer to deploy than a static one, because there's nothing ripping the canopy out except the airstream.
Either he was flying too low (which was at least partially the pilot's fault) or he hit his head when he came off the wing and was too stunned to deploy in time. Either way, more altitude would have greatly increased his chances of survival. Many people labor under the idiotic impression that falling from two hundred feet is less lethal than falling from ten thousand feet. No, it isn't. The difference is the time you have to act -- even if it's just steering toward something marginally less lethal to land on. People have been known to survive falls into dense forests, though it's rare and down to pure luck you don't hit any limbs large enough to break your back or smash your skull. Water won't work. Surface tension will break every bone in your body when you hit. Maybe a deep bog. Maybe. But you'd likely auger in so far you'd probably suffocate/drown if you survived the impact. Nope, it's a forest or splat. As you approach the top of the trees, curl up into a ball and pray to whatever deities you fancy might listen to you.
I have nothing against doing dangerous shit; I do it all the time, though somewhat less at 53 than I did at 23. I've been an andrenaline junky since I enlisted in the Marine Corps at 17. But the key to doing dangerous shit successfully -- being defined as "not dead afterwards" -- is to understand the nature of the danger and prepare accordingly. You minimize risk by using your head first, whether you're riding a motorcycle, hunting dangerous predators or wing-walking. A little knowledge and/or a session with a professional stuntman would have avoided this fatality. As it is, he's dining with Uncle Chuck now.
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posted by Jar(egg)head at 13:58
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