“Prone” means belly down…
Also: In another thread a reply was from a poster who took part in the body recovery of the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia’s aerodynamic breakup. He was guarded in his comments relative to this thread, but what he implied was almost unimaginable.
Columbia was indeed hauling ass when it broke up, but the breakup took place at an altitude of around 200,000 feet, where the air was extremely thin. Although Mach heating resulted in extremely high temperatures for any object (or body) exposed to the slip stream, the g-load due to ram air pressure on a body wasn’t all that high; it would have been equivalent to falling through sea-level air at about 205 MPH. That’s faster than a freefalling skydiver, but not as fast as some pilots have ejected from fighter jets.
This is from Donald Burgett’s memoir of the 101st Airborne, CURRAHEE! Great book, beats the hell out of Band of Brothers.
As my dad always said, it’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the sudden stop at the end.
One of my college roommates was flying a rented Cessna when the wing broke off. I don’t like to think about his trip down.
In that video, immediately after the first bang, I think I heard one of the firemen say, “Jumper!” I’d rather not be able to recognize some sounds.
I once saw the body of a jumper on the ground, cement in an alley, about a 5 to 10story building… He was just dead, face down, and looked like he was asleep. Apparently , “hit like a sack of feed” (acknowledgements to Larry Verne.)
I was with a colleague from work in downtown Kansas City. We had just left the office and were heading to our car to go to Topeka for a meeting. As we were walking down the sidewalk, about 8 to 10 feet directly in front of us a large dark blur suddenly smacked the pavement. I’m not sure when I realized it was a body, a person, because it happened really fast - but still kind of didn’t because I remember what happened next very clearly, like video.
The body bounced up from the sidewalk several feet, like the guy did some kind of freaky ninja roll and jump maneuver that let him leap back off the ground vertically and tackle the girl I was with. Maria suddenly found herself laying flat on her back on the sidewalk with the hulk of this dead guy draped over her. I would have been down there with her but did this impromptu dodge-ball kind of thing where I pivoted and just barely slid out of the way with my hands up as he grazed by the front of me, which as slick as it sounds I can’t take credit for because it was all very surreal and out-of-body. Maybe I flashed back to footwork drills from high school tennis, counter-intuitive but effective.
Anyway, I was standing looking down at the scene for some moments, I don’t know how long. However long it was, it was exactly long enough for Maria to come to Jesus (or back from Jesus), and screaming like someone was murdering her, painfully. I quickly clamored over the guy, leaning down with a foot on either side of them both, I was suddenly afraid to move him, like I’d hurt him. That was ridiculous. I could see his skull was open at the top in an unsurvivable way. Plus, while he was face down, his face had torn away and was flapped over to the right of his head. It didn’t look like a face anymore - like I couldn’t even begin to guess how old he was, - but it was clearly his face. For whatever reason, though, I ran my hand up by his neck and was trying to feel for a pulse, that’s when Maria really freaked out.
The most blood curdling screaming I’d ever heard, ever, evolved into something unimaginably huger. There aren’t words. She was like a mad caged animal who had just come unhinged and started having this tantrum/fit/seizure thing under him screaming, “Get it off me! Get it off me!” She was so frantic and urgent that I think I really believed she might die if I didn’t get him off her right then. So, I rolled him off her.
I would have helped her up, but she was up. Then, she was on all fours. Then, she was on all fours vomiting. So much of his blood had pooled in those moments that it was all over my shoes. There was a white stripe of no blood on the pavement below where he had been, where Maria had been. I’d never seen so much blood. Looking at the white stripe and the white spot where I must have planted my foot before the blood got there, which was now slowly filling in with my foot gone, I realized Maria was wearing all the blood that made that shadow.
She and I only talked about it together once, with our boss the day after it happened. We talked to the police, too, but not together. Anyway, I honestly don’t think she’s ever forgiven me for not getting him off her sooner, when I stupidly checked his pulse.
Anyway, the point is, THEY BOUNCE! Nowhere have I seen or heard, not before or since, anyone mention how a falling human body bounces off the ground. Maybe it doesn’t happen always, I don’t know. But based on my experience of one, a body bounces quite a bit.
Great dialog. Have you considered becoming a scriptwriter?
I’d been in the WTC many times, and there was no roof on the lobbies. The lobbies were entirely within the structures, which rose straight from the ground with nothing protruding. I imagine the firefighters were instinctively looking in the direction the jumpers were coming from.
Yes.
I once was returning to my apartment building, and was asked by firemen if I could try to identify the body of someone who had jumped/fallen from about 7-8 stories onto the concrete sidewalk or the lawn next to it. He was laying on his back, covered by a blanket, which they pulled back to expose his face. His face & head looked intact, but I couldn’t tell them more than that he lived above 6th floor – I’d seen him stay in the elevator when I got out at 6.
But I realized afterward that his chest area under the blankets was only about 3-4 inches high – presumably compressed by the impact.
I have seen the dead body of someone who fell to their death from a height of maybe 75 feet. The body was limp, intact, just lying like someone lying down unconscious - but in a pool of blood.
From a height of several hundred or thousand feet, though, I don’t know, but I’d suppose that all bodies that impact at terminal velocity experience the same physics. (That is, *if *terminal velocity is attained - falling from 75 feet is not sufficient to get an object to that speed.)
I fell off a ladder at full extension, about 14’, a few years back. Landed on my back and bounced. Maybe just an inch, but it was a noticeable bounce. After I started breathing again and passed a quick paralyzation self-test I thought it was a cool experience, but I haven’t been on a ladder since.
Let’s set the record straight regarding the sounds of jumpers in the 9/11 documentary. The sounds heard in the 9/11 documentary are jumpers crashing into the glass canopy of the VIP entrance directly outside the WTC1 lobby. This glass canopy was on the West Street side of the building. Many jumpers didn’t hit the canopy and landed directly on the road too, but the ones you here in the 9/11 documentary are clearly the ones crashing onto/through the glass canopy. That’s why the firefighters are looking up and out because it’s happening about 10 feet above them ( outside the lobby )
There is also video (not in 9/11 documentary) taken from the east side of WTC1 of jumpers hitting the pavement in the plaza and some crashing through the canvas roof of an outdoor stage.
There are pics readily available of “9/11 jumpers”.
Think water balloon.
