I’m curious because I searched up how to survive a long distance fall, and it always say to land side/feet first, never head. But in that situation, is it THAT easy to control how you land if you have had no experience before? Is it hard to control your body while falling?
onto concrete*
Realistically, can someone with no experience in falling survive a 10 meter drop (32 feet) onto conc
Certainly.
As long as you don’t land on your head or your pelvis, falling 32 feet would severely injure you,but it wouldn’t likely kill you. Your legs would telescope (assuming a feet first landing) resulting multiple fractures requiring extensive surgery to allow you to you walk again. And your spine would almost certainly suffer damage.
In the military we were told that falls above 50 feet on almost type of surface would probably be fatal. Obviously there are exceptions to this;however they are often just that: exceptions.
A friend of mine works at an oil refinery. One day he accidentally stepped back into an open manifold on a large vessel and fell 30 feet onto steel. This guy is skinny as a rail, so he only broke his back and both feet.
He spent several months in a wheelchair. Before the one year anniversary of the fall, he had recovered enough to run a full marathon.
If you are just falling randomly, 3 stories (about 30 feet) is roughly at the point where you have a 50/50 chance of death.
There’s always a chance that you’ll survive. There were a few guys who jumped out or were knocked out of their bombers at 20,000 feet or so and managed to survive. They tended to lose consciousness on the way down so it’s not like they were doing anything special for their landing either. Nicholas Alkemade landed on evergreens, bushes, and a bit of snow, but still deserves some kind of special credit because the only injuries he received were basically some minor cuts and bruises and a slightly sprained knee. Alan Magee is probably more relevant to the OP since he basically landed on the roof of the St. Nazaire train station (it’s not clear if he hit the skylight or if he hit the roof first and bounced and then went through the skylight).
If you have any choice in the matter, you want to do what’s called a Parachute Landing Fall (PLF). You basically roll and distribute the force along your body. I remember reading a story about a skydiver whose chute failed. He had been trained to do a PLF in the military. A PLF has 5 contact points and he said he broke all 5 so he figures he did it right.
The wikipedia page for PLF shows you how you can practice it without actually falling from a great height.
“Realistically, can someone with no experience in falling survive a 10 meter drop (32 feet) onto conc”
Needed answer fast?
Watching Burn Notice reruns?
There’s also the stewardess who fell from an airplane , hit the side of a mountain and slid down the glacier. She survived, but had severe injuries. Again, she was the exception , not the rule.
Anecdotally, I saw a guy on top of a 18 foot boom crane shock himself and drop to a concrete floor (he didn’t perform lock out/tag out procedures) He broke his back and his pelvis and he was touch and go for a few months, but he lived. I also found a guy who fell from a second story landing into a sub-basement stairwell and landed on some concrete steps. Thanks to the miracle of alcohol consumption, he only broke his left arm and sustained some bruises.
It all depends upon how you land and whether something breaks your fall.Thirty feet on to your back and you are Christopher Reeve for the remainder of your life. Thirty into some snow covering the concrete, you just break a bone or get the wind knocked out you.
If you are talking about Vesna Vulovic, she was strapped into her seat when the plane exploded at 33,000 feet (due to a terrorist bomb). She didn’t free fall down to the ground. She remained in her seat and rode a piece of plane wreckage down, something like three seats and a hunk of fuselage, IIRC. Also, (again IIRC), she didn’t slide down the mountain. She just landed in deep snow. It’s still impressive, though, and she does hold the official record for surviving the highest fall without a parachute. She was the only one on the plane that survived.
I do know of one guy who basically hit the side of a mountain and slid down. Ivan Chisov was a Russian navigator in WWII and bailed out when his bomber was badly damaged (at roughly 23,000 feet). He was fairly certain that if he popped his chute that some angry German would just consider him an easy target and would fill him full of machine gun lead, so what he planned to do was drop down below the level of the battle and then pop his chute. What he instead did was pass out on the way down, and never opened his chute at all. He hit the side of a steep, snowy ravine and slid/rolled down to the bottom. He spent 3 months in the hospital but was able to fly again.
Given that the fall time is 1.4s, your fall will be basically uncontrolled - you have no time to stabilise and cancel rotation, and don’t have that set of reflexes that a cat uses to land in a safe position from much lower heights. All you can do in the time available is go for curves - curved back and hips, rolled shoulders, arms curved up over your head with a bit of space, slightly bent legs.
That way, when you hit, you may roll somewhat and your center of mass drops and decelerates a bit before it really stops.Your arms can cushion your head and you have a better chance of survival. Don’t straighten anything - you will do more damage that way. Don’t flop - I know that drunks often survive impacts and this is attributed to floppiness, and it can may help. But you generally want your muscles to resist a position change and absorb some of the falling energy when you land. With correct techniques, people can handle impressive drops. but they are absorbing that energy using specific muscles.
Falling further distances requires different techniques - you may have time to correct your position and stabilise in a feet first/falling forward orientation.
Chicago Jones can do it because he knows about the levels of gravitivity and polarity and shit.