If you were to fall out of a plane and land on concrete, WITH NO parachute, what could you expect to feel, before you died?
Scared on the way down, and rather wind-blown. And cold, even on a hot day at the surface.
I doubt you’d feel anything on impact for more than a short fraction of a second during which everything hurt A LOT. Your brain would be pretty thoroughly physically disrupted on impact & cease functioning almost instantly.
Let’s get the old joke out of the way:
What’s the last thing that goes thru a bug’s mind when it hits your windshield?
Its ass.
Anyway…
One thing to keep in mind is that your consciousness is actually running a bit behind “real time”. The typical value given is 2 seconds or so. Some estimates are lower, a few higher. Of course, this is your consciousness, it makes things up to keep you happy so it also tells you you are living in real time.
So, not enough time elapses between the splat and your brain suffering too much damage to register it for your consciousness to notice anything.
(Note that your consciousness doesn’t make decisions. It merely reflects decisions made earlier elsewhere in your brain. It’s more of a story teller than an actor.)
I am wondering; If when you bang a knee on a table corner, it is initially numb. Then it switches to a stabbing pain; would it be something similar? Though, without getting to the stabbing pain part.
I think there’s a good chance that in less time than the nerve signals would take to reach your brain you’d become incapable of perceiving pain.
Over the course of a career in the Emergency Department, I’ve seen many individuals who had blunt injuries resulting in immediate unconsciousness. None (I only have information from those who survived) have ever reported any pain between the moment of contact and unconsciousness.
And as an aside, it’s remarkable how often pain is not a predominate symptom in those with very serious and extensive blunt (and other injuries). This is a longer and perhaps unrelated topic, but I’ve seen as much moaning and hollering with a busted pinky toe as I have with, say, a really beat up motorcycle rider. Aside from individual variation in responses to pain, there’s a point at which you overwhelm the capacity to respond to it, not to mention endorphins et al.
The situation you describe would result in death before the nerve signals and processing of them have time to create any sensation at all.
Need answer fast?
As well the adrenalin coursing through you would have effectively rendered your brain, consciousness, and normal functioning nervous system null and void.
I’ve mentioned before in some post how a doctor told me that a friend of mine who jumped from a tall window said that he “probably” died of a heart attack before he landed. A comforting thought. Perhaps.
Up thread: “Consciousness runs two seconds behind.” Huh?
I’ve heard it is half a second behind reality.
From here. As well as many other places.
ETA : Also a similar delay in perception of events is well-documented.
How do tight rope walkers keep their balance? ½ second is too late?
There is a guy who can draw a six shooter & fire in 3/5 of a second.
Set camera with my hand & shooter in frame & both in focus.
He draws, I move my finger, he shoots.
Play back shows my finger started moving before the bullet comes out of the gun. How can I do that?
Is it a reaction or a perception that starts my finger to move?
action →light travels to eye→signal to brain→brain computes→signal to finger→muscle move finger… Has to take some time, but a full half second? IIRC, I have seen people react to things in way less than ½ second. ( can’t recall individual one off the top but… )
Where is my disconnect? 
How am i able to drop something and catch it before it has dropped no more than a few inches from my hand? Another action is if I drop something sharp I don’t try to catch it, but move away from the path of the falling object, including my feet.
I am certain that I don’t consciously do these things - they seem to happen, and then I am aware that I have done the action.
Apparently I am smarter than my brain.
This is actually a well known aspect of the way our brains work. Your eyes perceive something, and your brain extrapolates that object’s position in space and puts your hands there to catch or avoid (whatever the case may be) the object, compensating for things like the time it takes for nerve signals and proprioception automatically.
Also, reflexes do some of the work for us automatically, then our brains make up a story about how we consciously did it.
Do you mean to write 0.2 seconds?
A lot of the OP depends on how high the plane was when the person and the plane go their separate ways.
While I’ve heard the bit about passing out, having a heart attack, etc. from falling from a tall building, there’s no reason for that to happen. I’ve read about numerous skydivers who have survived failed chutes, and all were conscious all the way down (although many don’t recall the actual impact).
Skydivers typically jump at somewhere around 10,000 feet though. If you go a lot higher than that, you’ll pass out from the cold and lack of oxygen. There were about half a dozen guys who basically got shot out of their bombers in WWII at roughly 20,000 feet. They tended to pass out on the way down and usually hit the ground unconscious. Skydivers sometimes jump from 20,000 feet or higher, but take bottled oxygen with them for such jumps. The current world record holder for an unplanned free-fall is Vesna Vulovic. In the early 70s, she was a flight attendant on a plane that got blown up by a terrorist bomb. She fell 33,000 feet, riding down in her seat and a piece of the plane’s tail that the seat was still attached to. She doesn’t remember the fall or the impact, and probably lost consciousness fairly quickly.
As for the actual impact, it will be over with before your brain has time to process it. Reflexive actions take about 20 ms for your nervous system to respond to them. Conscious understanding requires about 500 ms from what I’ve read, which is roughly in the same ballpark as the 0.2 second figure already mentioned. The impact from a free-fall event is going to be over with within a few ms, so it’s probably too fast for even your reflexes to react to it, let alone for you to be consciously aware of pain or much else from the actual impact.
Part of it is that you are the one dropping it, so your brain can predict where it will be. If you’re not the one dropping it, it gets harder.
An easy way to win bar bets is to hold a dollar bill (or some other higher denomination if you’re a high roller) vertically, holding it by the top of the bill. Have the person hold their finger and thumb spread out fully at the same height as the head on the bill. Tell them that they can have the bill if they can catch it after you release it, but all they can do is grab it with their finger and thumb, they can’t move their hand vertically (in other words, no reaching down to grab it as it falls). They may often try to anticipate the release and may grab the bill before you let go of it, but unless they get lucky with their anticipation, they’ll almost never catch it after you release it. Your brain and nervous system don’t respond fast enough.
The fastest I’ve found is 50 milliseconds, for basic sensations - although yeah, you aren’t feeling anything when your brain is immediately splatted across the asphalt.
“*Pockett (2002, 2005) suggests that while as much as 500 msec may be required if complicated judgements are being made concerning the data, in other cases stimuli can produce basic sensations in as little as 50–80 msec. This is broadly in line with Efron (1967), who estimates that a minimum of 60–70 msec of neural processing time is required for simple auditory and visual stimului reaching the brain to result in experience. *”
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-temporal/empirical-findings.html#2
This is anecdotal, but I was hit by a car when I was 15. I remember waking up in the hospital. I don’t remember the car hitting me at all and I don’t remember any pain before losing consciousness.
I wasn’t hurt badly. Just a lot of gashes and bruises and I made a quick recovery.
Your brain does stuff before you are conscious of it. Your consciousness is just reporting what is happening, it is not responsible for your reactions.
When I was 20 years of age and in the Army, we used to practice grabbing a pistol and turning it away before the other guy pulled the trigger. I found it was very easy to do, even though they were expecting it.
I assume the plane in question is a propeller plane, as I’ve always heard you could be killed instantly falling or jumping out of a jet aircraft a la DB Cooper. And I don’t mean being sucked into the turbines. What is it exactly that kills you in that sort of scenario?