Someone used to tell me that 90 feet was the most feared height from the human psyche perspective, because it was the height at which the mind most perceives its precarious situation.
i.e., jumping from 90 feet is scarier than jumping from 2,000 feet.
Does anyone think this is true, or does it really depend from person to person?
I know its true for me personally. Being up in an aircraft or a really tall building is way less scary than being near the edge of a low cliff or tens of meters up in a tree or even at the top of a really tall ladder. I jumped off the Stratosphere in Las Vegas about a year ago from 855 ft without giving it a second thought. Jumping off of an 80 feet tall building would definitely give me pause however. I believe the reason is that heights become abstract concepts in your mind after a certain point so it doesn’t trigger the panic response in many people because it doesn’t seem real or an imminent threat to your safety. OTOH, heights from 50 up into the low hundreds are an extreme version of something your brain instantly recognizes as life-threatening. The ground is right there but if you fall, you are probably going to die so that causes most people to have an instinctive fear of it that takes a lot of training and practice to overcome.
I don’t know how much this varies from person to person but I believe it is fairly universal judging by the reaction of typical airline passengers versus tourists looking out over cliffs, from small observation towers and from high zip lines. The former rarely show any reaction to the extreme height while plenty of people get really uncomfortable in situations like the latter.
True for me personally as well. Not at all afraid of being up on a tall skyscraper, or in an airplane… but put me on a cliff ledge that’s about 30 meters or so and I’ll have sweaty palms and really start getting that freaky feeling in my stomach. In fact, just typing it and imagining it as I type it is making my hands sweat. Still, I really don’t consider myself to have a fear of heights… just that specific height range around 90 ft.
Seriously? You would not be afraid if you were standing at the edge of an open ledge on a tall skyscraper?
Being inside a tall building, or a plane, looking out of a window, are quite different from being on an open edge, regardless of height.
I have only very mild acrophobia, involving ladders and things. But I had a friend in Venezuela who lived in an apartment building in which all apartments are accessed from an outdoor walkway on the side of the building with a railing. I think he was on maybe the 7th or 8th floor. I was terrified to walk from the elevator to his apartment – one of the scariest places I’ve ever been. I could deal with visiting there, without revealing my fear, but there is no way could I ever possibly live there, with the daily experience of having to walk out there. I’d never be able to sleep.
Yes, very seriously. Like I said, I jumped off the Stratosphere in Las Vegas from 855 feet at night. It was no more scary than jumping into a ball-pit at a children’s theme restaurant because it was completely abstract. You just jump into the abyss meeting some pretty lights below. The whole thing is over in a few seconds with no fear involved.
This isn’t my video but it is the same thing. You just walk out on a platform and jump off the top of a skyscraper as part of a simulated suicide jump except you don’t die at the end (jumping is free, living through it is what you pay for). I wasn’t scared at all although the people I sponsored had to stand on the platform for a while before they finally did it).
Contrast that with my ex-wife insisting that I climb up a 30' foot ladder to fix a gutter problem on my old house recently. That was very terrifying and quite dangerous.Interesting subject. I am a private pilot and have no fear at 5000 ft or whatever in the Cessna, but a few years ago in my pick up truck I drove close to the edge of a cliff overlooking the Mississippi River maybe 75 ft and my heart lurched as never before.
A buddy of mine was an iron worker. He would reach a height, seemingly random, where he was afraid. On one job it might be 28 floors, on another 15. He would quit, then go to the union to sign up for another job.
He also told me that the majority of his coworkers got pretty dunk or high at lunch. He, however, couldn’t even have a sip of beer while working.
Well its hard to work with anecdotes… I think it varies from person to person so it was never true that there is one “most scary” height… vertigo affects people differently.
Alcohol (and THC … ) can act to calm your nerves. Of course one may then be (rationally) more scared knowing the drug has ALSO affected his reflexes and his decision making ability ? 
I think it might have to do with an evolved instinct, i.e. “genetic memory”. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, like today, there were many people who had regular exposure to 50-100 foot drops in their vicinity. Unlike today, many of those people weren’t terribly afraid of them, and many of those people fell to an untimely death and failed to reproduce. Those who lived to have a lot of children were the ones whose inborn, genetically inspired personality discouraged them from messing around cliffs.
The reason we don’t have an evolved instinct against 2000 foot drops is because humans didn’t commonly encounter them until 100-200 years ago as people started building flying machines.
I find hanging in the parachute risers at 2000ft doesn’t bring vertigo - perhaps because there are no vertical reference points, it’s all laid out like a map. Also you have too much else to be busy with.
My hunch is that our binocular vision depth perception only works within a limited range of heights. I think above a certain height, our vision center can no longer distinguish the height because the images seen by both eyes are the same (at the resolution our eyes can perceive)
Things at “infinite” height aren’t scary, because otherwise everyone would be afraid of the sky, among other things.
I’ve been sky diving and bungee jumping. The bungee jumping was from a height of maybe 50ish feet, just one of those little amusement park deals. It was way, way scarier than jumping out of a plane.
Yes seriously. The security of the aparatus has nothing to do with it. For example, I’m equally terrified (and also it’s a hell of a lot of fun), to do those Drop rides where all they are is just a straight drop down from a height of a couple hundred feet or whatever. I know logically I am safe (which is why I get in them in the first place), and even if they weren’t going to DROP, just getting up that high, my hands start to sweat and my heart starts to race. At that height (several dozen feet to a few hundred), it’s just terrifying, whether I’m strapped into something safe or not.
I have no such fear when I’m up high in a safe building, an airplane, etc, but it has nothing to do with me not being near an open ledge.
This is definitely my experience. When I was a kid, my family visited the Empire State Building in NYC. I was terrified of that open-air observation deck, and would not even go near the rail. However, I was perfectly fine in the enclosed observation deck at the very top.
I don’t mind being up in a plane, but I expect my experience would be quite different if it was one of those old-fashioned open biplanes.
The perception of fear of heights has always fascinated me. For example, if you had to walk from top of one tall building to another on a 6-foot wide bridge, no handrails, how would you feel? But when was the last time you fell off the edge of a 6-foot wide sidewalk, or bounced off a wall while walking in a 6-foot wide corridor, with no factors present to cause you to deviate?
What about driving your car on a one-lane bridge a mile long, no guard rails, just a drop off on the sides? But, how many thousands of miles have you now driven, without accidentally swerving out of your lane (for no apparent reason) even once?
There is no way on this Earth that I would go bungee jumping. Just watching people do it made me feel clammy.
But the idea of skydiving doesn’t really bother me, and I’ve happily been paragliding several times. Strangely, passing upwards through the 90ft mark doesn’t seem to be a problem!
Its really fun putting in the railings in homes a few stories up, nothing out there but a drill, and the railings your installing…nothing on three sides but wind gusts and down…as your hammer drilling screw holes at the extreme edges trying not to think about it too much. 
When I was in electrician school in the Navy, we had a practice pole field consisting of a bunch of 35’ wooden poles to climb on. Way off to one side, there were two 90’ poles. Guys who could scramble up the shorter poles like squirrels would freeze on the 90 footers, and I couldn’t even attempt it.
I’m kind of nervous every time I take the plane but once it has reached cruise altitude, I quite enjoy looking at the ground. However, looking at the wing or the engines makes me feel uncomfortable again.