Had I said it was me, how could I be sure someone would prompt me for the punchline? Sometimes you gotta stretch the truth a little for full comedic effect.
I was stuck on a call so my first reply was brief. I put it to friends this way: when you skydive (I have done both static line and tandem), you are jumping into a picture postcard. It is surreal so your brain just kinda goes with it. When you are bungee jumping, however, and you can *read the license plate numbers on the cars below *and have shouting conversations with people on the ground? It’s like every bad high-dive nightmare you had as a kid, now up at 150’ - it taps into a far more primal fear, IMHO…
I bungeed Verzasca Dam in Switzerland a couple years ago, the highest (722 ft) fixed bungee in the world–reasonably close, anyway.
I found it a little nervewracking (for a geezer like me, anyway) to be so close to the ground. You aren’t jumping off into the void. The ground is Right There. It was like jumping off a 50-story skyscraper. And it feels like you get pretty close to the ground before you start rebounding.
I have not skydived, although I may get around to it one of these days. My kids think bungee is a little more anxiety-provoking, but neither seemed to bother them very much. I did notice the anxiety dissipated on stepping off, so maybe after that first stomach knot, both are surprisingly relaxing. Endorphins, I’d guess.
I’m a little scared of heights. I’ve static jumped a few times and loved it.
On the other hand, whilst I haven’t bungee jumped I have done a gorge swing at Vic Falls. Note that that isn’t a bungee cord he’s connected to - it’s a bog standard rope. Most terrifying moment of my life.
I’ve always been terrified of heights. I don’t even like looking over railings in malls or hotels with multi-story drops.
Nevertheless, I did three static-line parachute jumps years ago with no real problem. This actually involved climbing out of the plane and hanging from the wing strut before letting go. :eek: As others have mentioned, though, the height didn’t seem “real.” No different than looking out a plane window.
I found rappelling to be terrifying though, and did not like it all during the two times I did in during ROTC training.
I’m pretty sure bungee jumping would be even worse. I can just imagine something coming loose, or the elastic breaking, or the operator miscalibrating the amount of stretch… :rolleyes:
With any potentially dangerous activity, part of the fear factor is trust in the operator; part is the primal urge to not undertake the activity.
Skydiving, swings and bungees are all extremely safe in the hands of safe operators. Bungees and swing cords don’t break and parachutes open. If the operator is potentially unsafe, that does add an additional fear factor. I find the local shopping center carnival rides as terrifying as the giant amusement park coaster rides (I actually love them both) because I’ve taken care of the drug-hazed carnies who assemble and operate the local carnival rides.
I am assuming the OP is wondering if the primal fear is different…if we are going to factor in operator-dependent safety, then it’s a different equation, and much more specific to the operator and not the venue, at least for me.
I’d do the sky dive. My flight instructor also did this on the side. I asked him how many jumps he had. He said about 500. He told me about also having the reserve chute. I asked him if he ever had to use it in those 500 jumps. He said, “yes, twice.” That still just seems alarmingly high to me when your life is on the line. I can’t imagine what would be going through my head when I got ready to pull the rip cord to the second chute, after what just happened to my first one. I asked him about that too, and he said he never gave it any thought until he was on the ground. As far as the tandem chute jump thing, I wouldn’t do that. Too close for my comfort.
The bungee jumping people don’t seem all that professional to me. It also seems more of a rip off, and not all that much fun, anyway.
I can think of a lot more plausible catastrophic failure modes for bungee jumping than I can for skydiving. Just a single very small tear in a bungee cord (you know, like the ones you find in household rubber bands) would mean the difference between bungee jumping and free-fall, whereas a tear of the same size in a parachute would just mean that it’s slightly less efficient. And even if a chute does fail completely, you still have a spare, and the odds are incredibly stacked against having two catastrophic failures.
I believe most of the bungee cords consist of many , in case of one failing, that’s supposed to give a safety margin. I’ve seen many other things go wrong with bungee jumping beside the cord failing. Some can’t even calculate the proper length, and allow for the certain weights of heavier individuals. Some have hit the ground, then come back up without the cord breaking. Others have had the cord break, and missed the safety net altogether.
Also for clarification, I’m referring to the people behind the bungee jumping business as the ones not being all that professional. I’ve seen way too many mishaps.
My instinct is that I would rather skydive. I don’t think I would enjoy the rapid change in direction involved with bungee jumping. And as much as I like to pretend I don’t, I have a pretty big fear of heights. Airplanes have never bothered me though. It seems to only present itself when standing on some sort of open edge of some structure. I climbed a lighthouse once and when I stepped out onto the deck, I nearly fainted. The floor was grate, so I could see the ground through it and I had a very drastic physical response to it.
I’ve been skydiving, once (a static line jump). You’re so high up that the distance isn’t real. The only thing I was really afraid of (since I’m tall) was jamming my rig into the underside of the wing, triggering the emergency chute, and then either plummeting to *my *death or wrecking the plane and falling safely while watching everyone else plummet to *their *deaths.
I don’t think I’d ever go bungee jumping. Just thinkin’ about it gives me the heebie-jeebies.
Being at the bottom under the bungee jumper.
It’s not so much the difference between the falls, it’s the difference between the equipment and operators that scares me.
I’ve been bungee jumping (45m) and enjoyed it immensely, but did it the kiddie way with the cord attached to my back (it was the only type of harness they had). I figured it’s gotta be pretty safe because if the cord is going to break, it will do so somewhere near the end of its stretch, so I’d be pretty close to the surface of the water and have alot of kinetic energy absorbed by the cord. It definitely wouldn’t be like a total freefall.
I also want to go skydiving, but I think it will be more frightening. I saw a guy on a tv show hang by his knees off of a helicoptor rail, and then just spread out his arms and legs to start falling perfectly head down–that looked like fun.
Ugh. I hate the idea of both, but skydiving seems worse, if only by a matter of degree. Where’s that barfing smiley?
I’d rather skydive. Hanging upside down by my ankle while rapidly approaching the ground with no backup system doesn’t sound too fun.
Before I did my first static line jump, I had to go through about six hours of ground training.
The most important thing that was repeatedly drilled into our heads was that you have NO time to think about what to do if your main chute failed to deploy. At an altitude of 3,000 ft (typical for a static line jump), with NO parachute deployed, you will hit the ground in approximately 20 seconds (depending on the skydiver’s angle of attack). It normally takes about 5 seconds for your main chute to open and for the skydiver to verify that the chute is open. If the main canopy fails to deploy, then, you’re down to 15 seconds before you hit the ground. However, the next complicating issue is that the reserve chute must be deployed when you are at least 600 feet above the ground, or it won’t have enough time to fully inflate before you hit the ground. So all, in all, a static line skydiver has about 5 seconds to figure out that there is a problem with the main canopy and to pull the reserve.
Much of the training, therefore, consisted of the following drill, conducted standing up on the ground, and acting out the actions:
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RELEASE! (i.e. let go of the wing strut)
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ARCH! (your back)
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Count ONE THOUSAND, TWO THOUSAND, THREE THOUSAND, FOUR THOUSAND, CHECK CANOPY!!!
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If no chute or bad (i.e. tangled, ripped, streaming) chute: REACH, PULL, count ONE THOUSAND, TWO THOUSAND, THREE THOUSAND, FOUR THOUSAND, CHECK CANOPY!!!
We must have done that drill a hundred times in a row. I can still remember it, over twenty years later.
FWIW, there was another safety feature, used even back in the 1980s: a safety device that would automatically deploy the reserve chute if the skydiver was going over a certain speed at a certain (low) altitude. This was a backup device that was not to be relied upon, but was a last-ditch chance to save a skydiver who was unconscious or otherwise unable to pull their reserve cord.
Hmmm. I’m not much to say never, but I’m pretty sure I will never sky dive. That’s the stuff nightmares are made of. I’ve never been adverse to bungee jumping. Haven’t done it, but haven’t really been in the right place at the right time, either. I think I would (wait for it) jump at the chance. But seriously, for me, it’s not about dying, it’s about how long you know you’re going to die. I can handle death, but not the stress that comes before it.
Yes they would scare me!!!
If you asked me this question before I’d ever gone sky diving, I’d still say bungee jumping…
Sky diving isn’t so bad, to be honest. I get more thrills on a coaster.