WEBVTT - From the Vault: How to Survive a Great Fall 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:07.560 Hey, you Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My 0:00:07.600 --> 0:00:10.560 name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. 0:00:10.600 --> 0:00:13.720 Time for a Vault episode. This episode originally aired on 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:17.239 August nineteen, and it was called How to Survive a 0:00:17.280 --> 0:00:20.440 Great Fall, where we became suddenly obsessed with the question 0:00:20.520 --> 0:00:23.440 of what happens if you fall from like airplane altitude? 0:00:23.800 --> 0:00:26.479 That's right. Uh this one, this one is a really 0:00:26.480 --> 0:00:28.800 fun one gets into, you know, the physics and also 0:00:28.880 --> 0:00:33.160 some just amazing stories of human survival. Totally. Let's skydive 0:00:33.280 --> 0:00:38.479 right in. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a 0:00:38.520 --> 0:00:48.440 production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you, 0:00:48.479 --> 0:00:50.199 welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is 0:00:50.280 --> 0:00:53.440 Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And Robert, I know 0:00:53.520 --> 0:00:56.200 you've got a love for older aircraft, so I wanted 0:00:56.280 --> 0:00:59.639 to start off talking today about an aircraft. I think 0:00:59.640 --> 0:01:02.040 I know you've mentioned it before. I think you've got 0:01:02.040 --> 0:01:03.320 a spot in your heart for it. It's the B 0:01:03.520 --> 0:01:06.880 seventeen Flying Fortress. Oh of course. Yeah. So this was 0:01:06.959 --> 0:01:11.760 a gigantic four engine heavy bomber developed by Boeing that 0:01:11.880 --> 0:01:14.240 was used by the United States in World War Two, 0:01:14.240 --> 0:01:18.959 primarily for long range, high altitude bombing raids against Germany 0:01:19.000 --> 0:01:22.040 and Nazi occupied targets in Europe, and to a lesser 0:01:22.080 --> 0:01:24.560 extent it was used some in the Pacific theater. Oh. 0:01:24.640 --> 0:01:26.200 And I guess, just to clarify what I said a 0:01:26.240 --> 0:01:28.200 minute ago, I mean when I say you've got a 0:01:28.240 --> 0:01:29.880 spot in your heart for this, I don't mean like 0:01:29.959 --> 0:01:32.920 you love war and bombing. And I mean that like 0:01:33.000 --> 0:01:35.200 I know that you have a kind of love for 0:01:35.240 --> 0:01:38.560 the aesthetics of airplane design. Yeah. I mean my my 0:01:38.640 --> 0:01:41.120 dad was a War War two buff and he and 0:01:41.400 --> 0:01:43.920 more importantly he was he was really into creating, to 0:01:44.160 --> 0:01:47.280 working on scale model kits, yeah, and mostly War War 0:01:47.360 --> 0:01:51.560 two scale models. And so the B seventeen uh was 0:01:51.560 --> 0:01:54.200 certainly a plane that was one of his favorites. And 0:01:54.240 --> 0:01:55.720 you know, he was always telling me about it, and 0:01:55.760 --> 0:01:58.680 he had like a prized model of it, like probably 0:01:58.760 --> 0:02:02.440 like you know, his the masterpiece of his his scale 0:02:02.480 --> 0:02:06.240 modeling time. Uh and uh And say, I grew up 0:02:06.280 --> 0:02:08.480 amid these depictions of the B seventeen. I mean, it's 0:02:08.520 --> 0:02:12.040 it's a very iconic plane. Um. And it's the third 0:02:12.080 --> 0:02:14.639 most produced bomber of all time. It was an icon 0:02:14.720 --> 0:02:18.120 of US air superiority and uh, and it's a highly 0:02:18.160 --> 0:02:20.760 successful design and they were used for various post war 0:02:20.840 --> 0:02:23.160 purposes as well. And there's actually there's somewhere in the 0:02:23.200 --> 0:02:26.600 neighborhood of like I want to say, ten B seventeens 0:02:26.600 --> 0:02:29.280 that are actually still airworthy. Oh yeah, I think I 0:02:29.320 --> 0:02:31.560 was reading that there are like some that are actually 0:02:31.639 --> 0:02:34.280 still in flight somewhere. Well, they're kept, you know, in 0:02:34.400 --> 0:02:37.000 in an air worthy condition. And it's harder to keep 0:02:37.000 --> 0:02:39.800 an older plane like this in air worthy condition. But 0:02:39.800 --> 0:02:43.120 but with a plane that where the design is solid 0:02:43.480 --> 0:02:46.400 and it has this iconic status in uh, you know, 0:02:46.440 --> 0:02:50.160 in American aviation history, you're going to to to to 0:02:50.360 --> 0:02:52.240 keep those going as long as you can. And even 0:02:52.280 --> 0:02:54.280 the ones that aren't air worthy, there are a number 0:02:54.360 --> 0:02:59.639 of just fantastically restored um B seventeens in museums a 0:02:59.720 --> 0:03:03.080 v A museums around the world. Yeah. Uh. And it's 0:03:03.080 --> 0:03:05.600 so it was a strategically important aircraft, right, I mean, 0:03:05.760 --> 0:03:08.720 so it was this heavily armored aircraft that was played 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:11.800 a huge role in in Allied victory in Europe, and 0:03:11.880 --> 0:03:14.040 it was it was sort of famous for like taking 0:03:14.080 --> 0:03:17.280 a beating in the course of its mission before returning 0:03:17.320 --> 0:03:21.680 to base intact and landing with lots of visible combat damage. Right, 0:03:21.720 --> 0:03:23.680 And I guess this is tied up in the idea 0:03:23.680 --> 0:03:26.560 of that that it's called the flying fortress. Yeah, And 0:03:26.560 --> 0:03:30.040 then again we don't want to romanticize the this weapon 0:03:30.080 --> 0:03:32.400 of war too much. It was used to kill a 0:03:32.520 --> 0:03:34.720 lot of people, of course, and a lot of people 0:03:34.880 --> 0:03:38.560 died flying them. But just from a purely designed standpoint, 0:03:38.640 --> 0:03:41.480 it is fascinating because there they were. They really was 0:03:41.520 --> 0:03:45.800 this flying fortress. It's this idea that you you have this, 0:03:45.800 --> 0:03:49.280 this vessel, this uh, this this airplane you're sitting up 0:03:49.280 --> 0:03:52.680 into the sky, sitting it into into into enemy territory 0:03:53.200 --> 0:03:55.840 to rain bombs down on them, and then you want 0:03:55.840 --> 0:03:58.000 to have it protected. So of course, the main thing 0:03:58.040 --> 0:04:00.600 you can do is have if you have fighter planes 0:04:00.680 --> 0:04:05.040 to accompany it, faster, subtle uh death machines that can 0:04:05.040 --> 0:04:07.440 fly about and pick off things that are trying to 0:04:07.480 --> 0:04:11.200 interfere with the bombing fleet. But on top of that, 0:04:11.440 --> 0:04:15.240 you need to have some guns on that flying fortress 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:19.480 on your bomber to protect it. But since the bomber 0:04:19.480 --> 0:04:22.560 itself is not going to be like super maneuverable, especially 0:04:22.600 --> 0:04:25.159 compared to fighters that are coming up to intercept it. 0:04:25.920 --> 0:04:27.280 What you need to do is you need to have 0:04:27.320 --> 0:04:30.320 all your directions covered. You have some machine guns poking 0:04:30.320 --> 0:04:32.520 out the front, you have tailgunner in the back, you 0:04:32.520 --> 0:04:35.680 have a turret on the top, uh, side gunners, etcetera. 0:04:36.160 --> 0:04:38.520 But one of the defense features of the B seventeen 0:04:38.839 --> 0:04:42.720 what you're getting to is now famous, or maybe more 0:04:42.760 --> 0:04:46.880 importantly infamous. It's the ball turret that the lower turret, 0:04:47.360 --> 0:04:51.400 that is this pair of manned machine guns inside a 0:04:51.440 --> 0:04:56.240 plexiglass dome or ball on the bottom of the aircraft. Yeah, 0:04:56.400 --> 0:04:59.520 it's I'm sure it looked science fiction e at the time, 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:01.839 and it still looks science fiction and when you see 0:05:01.880 --> 0:05:05.080 it now if you're if you're not expecting it. Uh So, 0:05:05.120 --> 0:05:08.039 this is the Sperry ball turret. And it was only 0:05:08.040 --> 0:05:11.200 introduced in the in the B seventeen E series, but 0:05:11.320 --> 0:05:14.320 it was included on in all subsequent series of the 0:05:14.320 --> 0:05:17.080 B seventeen bomber. It was also deployed in the B 0:05:17.160 --> 0:05:19.720 twenty four Liberator, which is another heavy bomber, and then 0:05:19.720 --> 0:05:21.960 a couple of a couple of other planes. But yeah, 0:05:21.960 --> 0:05:25.320 it was super small, so small that you typically had 0:05:25.360 --> 0:05:30.640 to pinpoint a particularly small adult airmen to go into 0:05:30.680 --> 0:05:33.040 the ball, and then on top of it, was in 0:05:33.080 --> 0:05:37.200 a comfy uh not comfy, the exact opposite of comfy, cozy, 0:05:37.400 --> 0:05:41.440 snug tight yeah. In fact, he is essentially in a 0:05:41.480 --> 0:05:44.839 fetal position the whole time. Only instead of of having 0:05:44.880 --> 0:05:47.440 all of the warmth and safety that you know comes 0:05:47.440 --> 0:05:50.280 with the idea of returning to the womb, you are not. 0:05:50.520 --> 0:05:52.320 You are not in the womb in the ball turret. 0:05:52.560 --> 0:05:55.360 You're not even in the middle of the plane. You're 0:05:55.400 --> 0:05:58.640 you're beneath the plane. You're sort of halfway hanging out 0:05:58.800 --> 0:06:04.480 underneath the that this this bomber exposed to any interceptor 0:06:04.480 --> 0:06:07.520 aircraft that are flying up underneath, and hopefully you're gonna 0:06:07.640 --> 0:06:09.800 be able to do something about it with your machine guns. 0:06:10.000 --> 0:06:13.200 And something goes wrong, well, the bad news is there's 0:06:13.279 --> 0:06:15.599 there's not actually room in the ball for you to 0:06:15.680 --> 0:06:19.120 wear your parachute. Uh. In some cases they would leave 0:06:19.120 --> 0:06:22.520 the parachute uh just above them in the main fuselage, 0:06:22.960 --> 0:06:24.800 or if there was room, you might bring it in 0:06:24.880 --> 0:06:27.960 strapped your chest. That's gonna come back in just a minute. 0:06:27.960 --> 0:06:30.480 So I've thought about the ball to it a lot, 0:06:30.600 --> 0:06:33.839 Not because I I know nearly as much about about 0:06:33.920 --> 0:06:37.599 older aircraft as you, Robert, but because specifically because of 0:06:37.640 --> 0:06:39.960 a poem that I read for the first time many 0:06:40.040 --> 0:06:42.760 years ago. That it's just a five line poem by 0:06:42.760 --> 0:06:45.200 the American poet Randall Jarrell called the Death of the 0:06:45.240 --> 0:06:48.240 Ball Turret Gunner. It was written in n about his 0:06:48.360 --> 0:06:52.520 World War Two experience, and it captures this, uh, this 0:06:52.600 --> 0:06:56.800 sort of cramped terror. Here. It goes from my mother's sleep. 0:06:56.880 --> 0:06:59.479 I fell into the state and I hunched in its 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:03.080 belly to all my wet fur froze six miles from earth, 0:07:03.240 --> 0:07:06.320 loosed from its dream of life. I woke to black 0:07:06.360 --> 0:07:10.000 flak and the Nightmare fighters. When I died, they washed 0:07:10.040 --> 0:07:12.600 me out of the turret with a hose. Oh man, 0:07:12.880 --> 0:07:15.600 that is rough. I don't think i've heard that before. Um, 0:07:17.080 --> 0:07:18.920 I should throw in like a couple of things. So, 0:07:18.920 --> 0:07:21.960 first of all, the turret does like rotate and move around. 0:07:21.960 --> 0:07:25.000 It's like a little carnival ride underneath the plane. So 0:07:25.040 --> 0:07:27.320 you can aim right, Yeah, you need more degrees of 0:07:27.320 --> 0:07:29.960 freedom to chase the moving targets that are coming at 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:32.400 you from below. Right, And and on top of that, 0:07:32.640 --> 0:07:36.320 I cannot begin to imagine how terrifying it really was. 0:07:36.440 --> 0:07:39.160 Like I get a little anxious when I fly in general, 0:07:39.720 --> 0:07:43.600 and to imagine myself like slung below this uh this 0:07:43.800 --> 0:07:48.320 you know, rattling warplane crammed into a clear ball, the 0:07:48.400 --> 0:07:51.160 bottom just exposed. And then if you have like you know, 0:07:51.200 --> 0:07:53.560 all these uh you know, all the chaos of war, 0:07:53.640 --> 0:07:58.040 the explosions happening all around you. Um. I recently watched 0:07:58.240 --> 0:08:02.480 Hulse adaptation of Catch twin two, which is different aircraft, 0:08:02.880 --> 0:08:06.080 um and no ball to it, but it does a 0:08:06.080 --> 0:08:09.400 great job of just showing, uh, you know, immersing you 0:08:09.560 --> 0:08:12.640 in this idea of just how terrifying a bomber run was. 0:08:13.000 --> 0:08:15.240 Even in Catch twenty two, they're not even dealing with 0:08:15.280 --> 0:08:19.160 interceptor craft. They're just dealing with anti aircraft fire, and 0:08:19.240 --> 0:08:21.640 it's they just do a wonderful job of just making 0:08:21.640 --> 0:08:24.960 you feel the sheer terror of the characters flying into 0:08:25.040 --> 0:08:28.920 battle without you know, a bunch of heroic nonsense, you know, 0:08:29.120 --> 0:08:31.080 label ladled on top of it. Because ultimately that's what 0:08:31.160 --> 0:08:35.720 Catched twenty two is about, dispelling the hero myth with 0:08:35.760 --> 0:08:39.480 a healthy dose of absurdity. Yeah, well, I want to 0:08:39.520 --> 0:08:42.640 talk about one of those terrifying experiences and use that 0:08:42.679 --> 0:08:46.520 to connect to the subject of the rest of today's episode. So, uh, 0:08:46.840 --> 0:08:49.720 let's look at the story of one particular bald her 0:08:49.760 --> 0:08:52.720 at gunner during World War Two. He was an American 0:08:52.840 --> 0:08:58.120 staff sergeant named Alan either Magey or McGee mg e E. 0:08:58.160 --> 0:09:00.120 I'm gonna call him McGee for the rest of the 0:09:00.240 --> 0:09:04.040 episode here. So, in January of nineteen forty three, staff 0:09:04.080 --> 0:09:07.280 Sergeant McGee was manning the turret of a B seventeen 0:09:07.400 --> 0:09:11.319 that had been nicknamed snap crackle pop. Uh. Don't know 0:09:11.480 --> 0:09:13.720 what that comes from, but I have to imagine it's 0:09:13.720 --> 0:09:17.080 from probably bullets hitting the plane. I don't know, but 0:09:17.160 --> 0:09:19.440 that's my guess. So the plane was on a bombing 0:09:19.520 --> 0:09:23.560 run over an area of Nazi occupied France when it 0:09:23.679 --> 0:09:26.960 suddenly took heavy fire from German fighters and it began 0:09:27.080 --> 0:09:29.560 to break apart in the air at about twenty thousand 0:09:29.640 --> 0:09:33.640 feet or about six thousand seven meters up and in 0:09:33.720 --> 0:09:37.480 the chaos as the airplane was coming apart in the atmosphere, 0:09:38.160 --> 0:09:41.600 McGee managed to escape his ball turret and jump out 0:09:41.640 --> 0:09:45.720 of the falling and separating plane parts. But he didn't 0:09:45.760 --> 0:09:48.120 have a parachute. He had not been wearing one probably 0:09:48.120 --> 0:09:50.280 because he couldn't fit in the ball with it on, 0:09:50.920 --> 0:09:55.600 so he's outside the plane falling at twenty feet. So 0:09:55.679 --> 0:09:58.880 you would think, obviously this is just certain death, right, Yeah, 0:09:58.920 --> 0:10:01.400 there just would be no you survive, You're just you're 0:10:01.440 --> 0:10:04.040 just dead in the air, basically, Yeah, falling without a 0:10:04.040 --> 0:10:06.880 parachute for twenty feet, which is about six point one 0:10:06.960 --> 0:10:10.240 kilometers in altitude, there's no way to survive that. But 0:10:10.400 --> 0:10:15.640 strangely McGhee didn't die. He lost consciousness during the fall, 0:10:15.720 --> 0:10:17.840 probably due to a lack of oxygen, right because up 0:10:17.840 --> 0:10:21.480 at that atmosphere, the up that altitude, the atmosphere is thinner. 0:10:21.920 --> 0:10:24.800 You can't get enough oxygen, so you pass out. But 0:10:24.840 --> 0:10:27.240 then he woke up. He woke up hours later on 0:10:27.280 --> 0:10:30.520 the ground to find himself a prisoner of war being 0:10:30.520 --> 0:10:33.600 treated by German medics, and he had a few broken 0:10:33.600 --> 0:10:36.200 bones and he had cuts all over his body, but 0:10:36.280 --> 0:10:40.760 he was alive. Apparently the way McGhee survived had to 0:10:40.800 --> 0:10:44.160 do with how he landed. Instead of hitting the ground, 0:10:44.360 --> 0:10:48.640 McGhee had just by luck, crashed through a glass ceiling 0:10:48.960 --> 0:10:52.720 in a train station at St. Nazaire, and the impact 0:10:52.760 --> 0:10:55.880 of crashing through the glass must have slowed his fall 0:10:56.040 --> 0:10:58.480 enough that he was not killed when he hit the 0:10:58.480 --> 0:11:02.280 floor below. And so as unbelievable as this story is, 0:11:02.600 --> 0:11:05.319 McGee is not the only one. There are actually lots 0:11:05.360 --> 0:11:10.400 of interesting, fascinating, long false survival stories in which people fall, 0:11:11.000 --> 0:11:14.480 you know, what would normally be absolutely lethal distances without 0:11:14.520 --> 0:11:18.280 a parachute, but somehow managed to survive in one way 0:11:18.360 --> 0:11:20.880 or another. And that's what we wanted to talk about today, 0:11:21.200 --> 0:11:23.199 and and it should we should drive home like we're 0:11:23.440 --> 0:11:27.719 dealing We're dealing with distances here that are almost this 0:11:27.800 --> 0:11:31.600 seems almost absolutely lethal and you certainly do not have 0:11:31.679 --> 0:11:35.080 to fall far at all to suffer a fatal injury. 0:11:35.120 --> 0:11:37.439 Oh no, you can easily die from a ten or 0:11:37.480 --> 0:11:41.520 twenty foot fall. But that they're falling from ten thousand, 0:11:41.520 --> 0:11:44.800 twenty thousand feet, it just seems astounding. It seems unreal 0:11:44.960 --> 0:11:48.440 Like to survive such a fall, you would just have 0:11:48.559 --> 0:11:51.480 to become just instantly hyper religious, right, you just have 0:11:51.520 --> 0:11:56.040 to assume angels appeared and uh and took your unconscious 0:11:56.080 --> 0:11:57.920 body down to the earth. Well, a lot of people 0:11:58.000 --> 0:12:00.520 do kind of go to those miraculous X nations, but 0:12:00.559 --> 0:12:04.160 it turns out that there are some pretty consistent, not 0:12:04.240 --> 0:12:09.000 totally consistent, but there are some common physical characteristics of 0:12:09.040 --> 0:12:13.080 the types of falls that people survive from. It has 0:12:13.160 --> 0:12:16.200 to do with how you fall, how you land, where 0:12:16.280 --> 0:12:19.160 you land, and so that's what we wanted to explore 0:12:19.240 --> 0:12:21.400 for the rest of the day. Now, one thing that's 0:12:21.440 --> 0:12:23.840 funny is that, like, it seems like falling out of 0:12:23.840 --> 0:12:27.320 an airplane must be so much worse than just say, 0:12:27.360 --> 0:12:30.040 falling off of a really tall building or something, but 0:12:30.120 --> 0:12:32.800 in fact that's not the case. If if you are 0:12:32.840 --> 0:12:36.240 falling long enough to achieve what's called terminal velocity. Will 0:12:36.280 --> 0:12:39.080 explain more about that in a bit. It's a speed 0:12:39.160 --> 0:12:41.400 that's not a not a constant, but it's going to 0:12:41.559 --> 0:12:44.440 vary depending on who you are, what you're what you weigh, 0:12:44.480 --> 0:12:46.839 what you're shaped like, what you're wearing, you know how, 0:12:47.160 --> 0:12:49.400 all that kind of stuff. As long as you fall 0:12:49.440 --> 0:12:51.720 far enough to achieve that, and that might just be 0:12:51.760 --> 0:12:55.559 you know, a few hundred meters, then you then you're 0:12:55.600 --> 0:12:58.080 basically falling as fast as you're gonna fall, And actually 0:12:58.080 --> 0:13:00.800 falling from an airplane isn't any worse and in some 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:05.000 crazy ways could actually be better. Uh So, but anyway, well, 0:13:05.000 --> 0:13:06.679 we'll come back to all that, I wanted to talk 0:13:06.679 --> 0:13:09.760 about a few other known cases from history. So one 0:13:09.840 --> 0:13:13.000 case of somebody who fell out of an airplane and 0:13:13.080 --> 0:13:16.640 survived is Christine Mackenzie. She didn't actually fall out of 0:13:16.640 --> 0:13:20.320 an airplane. She jumped. She's an experienced South African skydiver 0:13:20.840 --> 0:13:24.160 who had already jumped more than a hundred times when 0:13:24.320 --> 0:13:28.640 both her main parachute and her backup parachute failed on 0:13:28.679 --> 0:13:32.200 the same freefall in August two thousand four, So she 0:13:32.240 --> 0:13:36.280 fell about eleven thousand feet and survived by instead of 0:13:36.360 --> 0:13:40.880 hitting the ground directly, she first hit some suspended power 0:13:40.920 --> 0:13:44.800 lines before impact, and sort of like the glass ceiling 0:13:44.880 --> 0:13:47.800 in McGee's fall, the tension of the power lines is 0:13:47.840 --> 0:13:50.080 thought to have absorbed a lot of the energy of 0:13:50.080 --> 0:13:53.000 her fall and slowed her down in the process, so 0:13:53.040 --> 0:13:55.040 that when she finally hit the ground, she ended up 0:13:55.080 --> 0:13:58.240 with only a broken pelvis. Her fall lasted about forty 0:13:58.280 --> 0:14:03.200 five seconds. So let's let's entertain belief in guardian angels 0:14:03.200 --> 0:14:05.959 again for a second. Can you imagine the sort of 0:14:06.040 --> 0:14:09.400 scenario where you're falling and then the angel appears and says, look, 0:14:09.640 --> 0:14:12.520 I know this looks bad, but don't worry you're headed 0:14:12.520 --> 0:14:18.760 towards some high tension wires. Everything's gonna be fine. I 0:14:18.840 --> 0:14:20.600 just assume I would be. I would assume I would 0:14:20.640 --> 0:14:23.360 be torn in half. You know, Uh well, I mean, 0:14:23.400 --> 0:14:25.200 I'm sure, I'm sure. It depends on like how you 0:14:25.280 --> 0:14:29.400 hit them. And another name, This one comes up a lot. 0:14:29.480 --> 0:14:33.200 It's a very famous case. This is Vesna Volkovich. Some 0:14:33.360 --> 0:14:36.120 of the details of the Volovich case have been disputed. 0:14:36.160 --> 0:14:38.280 I'm not going to get into those whole disputes. I'm 0:14:38.280 --> 0:14:41.320 just going to talk about the version that's most often reported. So. 0:14:41.400 --> 0:14:45.280 Vesna Volovich was a Serbian flight attendant on a DC 0:14:45.360 --> 0:14:47.720 nine that was in the air over the Czech Republic 0:14:47.800 --> 0:14:52.200 in nineteen two when the cabin exploded, probably due to 0:14:52.440 --> 0:14:56.240 a bomb from a terrorism attack. She fell more than 0:14:56.440 --> 0:15:00.320 ten thousand one or more than thirty three thousand feet 0:15:00.560 --> 0:15:04.720 without a parachute, and she suffered severe injuries and broken 0:15:04.720 --> 0:15:08.280 bones and was in a coma for weeks. But she survived, 0:15:08.920 --> 0:15:11.560 and the question is how well. Her survival is usually 0:15:11.560 --> 0:15:14.440 attributed to the fact that while most of the rest 0:15:14.480 --> 0:15:16.880 of the passengers were blown out of the cabin when 0:15:16.880 --> 0:15:21.240 the fuselage broke apart, Volkovich was pinned inside by a 0:15:21.280 --> 0:15:24.120 food card and possibly by another member of the crew 0:15:24.240 --> 0:15:27.760 or a passenger, and so she stuck inside the fuselage. 0:15:27.800 --> 0:15:30.520 And then the broken part of the fuselage in which 0:15:31.040 --> 0:15:33.920 she was stuck just happened to land on a snowy 0:15:34.080 --> 0:15:37.280 tree covered hillside, and it's believed that the trees and 0:15:37.280 --> 0:15:40.760 the snow cushioned the impact. After she woke up, she 0:15:40.840 --> 0:15:43.000 had no memory of the crash, and she lived until 0:15:43.400 --> 0:15:46.400 six She's often cited as the record holder for the 0:15:46.440 --> 0:15:49.880 survivor of the longest fall without a parachute. Wow. That 0:15:49.880 --> 0:15:52.360 that is incredible. And and also I just want to 0:15:52.360 --> 0:15:55.560 apologize to any other nervous flyers out there who are 0:15:55.600 --> 0:15:57.960 listening to this. Hopefully you're not listening to this at 0:15:57.960 --> 0:16:01.720 the airport. Oh maybe we should have warned you now, 0:16:02.720 --> 0:16:05.440 you know, if you if you weren't aware by now, 0:16:05.600 --> 0:16:07.520 if you didn't pause the episode by now, then I 0:16:07.560 --> 0:16:10.200 guess maybe you you do need this episode to make 0:16:10.240 --> 0:16:12.280 it through your flight. Well, I'm sure you've heard it 0:16:12.320 --> 0:16:14.400 a million times before and it probably doesn't help with 0:16:14.440 --> 0:16:17.000 your fear, but it is a fact that flying is 0:16:17.040 --> 0:16:20.760 extremely safe. Commercial flying these days is extremely safe. Yes, 0:16:20.960 --> 0:16:23.240 if you know, if you are on a commercial jet 0:16:23.280 --> 0:16:26.560 with like an accredited pilot and all that. Like your 0:16:26.640 --> 0:16:29.520 your chances of having something bad happen are extremely low. 0:16:29.880 --> 0:16:32.200 So stick that in the logical side of your brain. 0:16:32.720 --> 0:16:35.760 It's probably already arguing with the logical side that is 0:16:35.800 --> 0:16:38.840 the whole reason you have the nerves. Anyway, let's go 0:16:38.920 --> 0:16:41.560 with one more example here. This is a survival story 0:16:41.640 --> 0:16:46.480 of Julien Kepki now Julienne Diller. She's a German woman 0:16:46.560 --> 0:16:49.800 or is a German woman who as a teenager survived 0:16:49.800 --> 0:16:53.160 a plane crash in the Amazon in ninety one from 0:16:53.200 --> 0:16:56.560 an altitude of over three kilometers after a plane was 0:16:56.600 --> 0:16:59.880 struck by lightning. She was the lone survivor of the crab. 0:17:00.240 --> 0:17:03.720 And then she not only survived the crash from from 0:17:03.720 --> 0:17:07.240 over three kilometers of altitude. After that she had to 0:17:07.320 --> 0:17:10.920 navigate her way through the rainforest to find help with 0:17:11.000 --> 0:17:14.480 no supplies except basically a bag of candy, oh my goodness. 0:17:14.520 --> 0:17:18.000 And after searching for ten days she found help from 0:17:18.040 --> 0:17:20.640 a group of loggers and was taken back to civilization 0:17:20.680 --> 0:17:24.120 for medical treatment. And she's still alive today. So at 0:17:24.119 --> 0:17:26.960 this point you're probably wondering, well, well, how casting the 0:17:27.000 --> 0:17:30.080 angels aside, what are the what are the logical, real 0:17:30.600 --> 0:17:34.600 life scientific answers? Uh, you know behind these survival stories 0:17:34.600 --> 0:17:36.560 where we're gonna take a break and when we come 0:17:36.560 --> 0:17:41.920 back we will discuss just that. All right, we're back. 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:43.600 So Robert, you want to look at the physics of 0:17:43.640 --> 0:17:46.520 falling from a great height. Let's do it. Okay, So 0:17:46.560 --> 0:17:48.560 falling from a great height can kill you in a 0:17:48.680 --> 0:17:52.439 number of ways. I mean, just not to get too graphic, 0:17:52.520 --> 0:17:54.480 but one problem would be like what if you fall 0:17:54.520 --> 0:17:56.480 on a spike or something. You know, they're all these 0:17:56.720 --> 0:17:59.639 sort of like specific cases of what can happen to 0:17:59.640 --> 0:18:02.120 you when hit the ground. But that's the key, right right, 0:18:02.160 --> 0:18:05.000 the fall itself. I mean, that's that's easy enough to do. 0:18:05.560 --> 0:18:08.360 Um And surviving the fall is one thing. It's surviving 0:18:08.400 --> 0:18:11.440 the impact that is the problem, right, I mean, no 0:18:11.480 --> 0:18:15.200 matter where you land, the main problem that that you're 0:18:15.240 --> 0:18:18.199 going to encounter is going to be the difference between 0:18:18.280 --> 0:18:21.159 how fast you were falling and how suddenly you stop. 0:18:21.920 --> 0:18:25.320 Uh So, what happens when you fall from an incredible altitude? Well, 0:18:25.600 --> 0:18:28.359 we know there is gravity, right, There's an attraction between 0:18:28.359 --> 0:18:30.960 the Earth and your body due to gravity, and gravity 0:18:31.000 --> 0:18:34.439 accelerates you relentlessly towards the center of the Earth, not 0:18:34.560 --> 0:18:36.639 just when you're falling, but even right now, no matter 0:18:36.680 --> 0:18:40.679 where you are, gravity is relentlessly accelerating you towards the 0:18:40.680 --> 0:18:43.560 center of the Earth, and you will continue to accelerate 0:18:43.600 --> 0:18:46.800 towards the center of the Earth until something like the ground, 0:18:46.960 --> 0:18:50.760 or water or the air provides a compensating resistance to 0:18:50.840 --> 0:18:53.399 stop you from from going faster towards the center of 0:18:53.400 --> 0:18:55.639 the Earth. So that's probably the ground that's doing that 0:18:55.680 --> 0:18:58.320 to you right now. Yeah. I recently was thinking a 0:18:58.359 --> 0:18:59.800 bit about this when I was jumping off of a 0:19:00.520 --> 0:19:03.080 high dive. Um, and I had been a long time 0:19:03.119 --> 0:19:05.560 since I jumped off a high dive, but I was 0:19:05.640 --> 0:19:08.560 just really struck by just the feeling of of of 0:19:08.600 --> 0:19:12.399 being wanted by gravity. Like you you really you really 0:19:12.440 --> 0:19:15.000 feel it, uh, you know, more so than off of 0:19:15.040 --> 0:19:18.560 just a normal board. You feel yourself accelerating. You feel yourself, 0:19:19.000 --> 0:19:22.600 you know, pulled down with dramatic speed toward the surface 0:19:22.640 --> 0:19:24.240 of the water. Well, yeah, it's kind of weird to 0:19:24.280 --> 0:19:26.240 think about, but the force of gravity and the force 0:19:26.280 --> 0:19:31.000 of acceleration feel exactly the same to us. They are indistinguishable. 0:19:31.040 --> 0:19:33.080 They act the same way on our bodies. This is 0:19:33.119 --> 0:19:37.959 why you can use acceleration to provide artificial gravity and space. 0:19:38.080 --> 0:19:42.119 Right just by like continuously accelerating a capsule or providing 0:19:42.160 --> 0:19:46.200 angular momentum acceleration and a circular pattern, you can pretty 0:19:46.280 --> 0:19:49.760 much perfectly simulate what gravity is like. So if you're 0:19:49.840 --> 0:19:52.120 on or near the Earth surface, you are sort of 0:19:52.160 --> 0:19:56.560 permanently on an invisible train that wants to begin accelerating 0:19:56.600 --> 0:19:59.760 straight down at nine point eight meters per second per second, 0:20:00.119 --> 0:20:02.560 and we'll just keep going nine point eight meters per 0:20:02.600 --> 0:20:06.400 second faster every second, and it's always going to start 0:20:06.440 --> 0:20:09.720 chugging unless there's something pushing you back, pushing you to 0:20:09.800 --> 0:20:12.679 hold you in place. Now, there's one physics fact we 0:20:12.720 --> 0:20:14.720 all i think learned in school, which can be kind 0:20:14.760 --> 0:20:16.680 of confusing here, So we need to make a sort 0:20:16.680 --> 0:20:21.000 of obvious but important distinction. The acceleration due to gravity 0:20:21.040 --> 0:20:24.719 is the same for all falling objects near Earth's surface. 0:20:24.800 --> 0:20:27.760 That's nine point eight meters per second per second, no 0:20:27.800 --> 0:20:31.240 matter what you are, what kind of object you're talking about. 0:20:31.520 --> 0:20:34.400 But that does not mean that all objects fall at 0:20:34.400 --> 0:20:37.040 the same rate. This is obvious because of the effects 0:20:37.080 --> 0:20:40.880 of drag caused by air resistance acting on the falling object. 0:20:41.240 --> 0:20:43.600 So this is pretty obvious. When you drop a feather 0:20:43.760 --> 0:20:46.560 and a hammer side by side, obviously the hammer hits 0:20:46.600 --> 0:20:49.760 the ground first, unless say you're on the Moon where 0:20:49.800 --> 0:20:53.200 there is no atmosphere. And this is actually a demonstration 0:20:53.240 --> 0:20:55.440 that was put on during a moonwalk by the American 0:20:55.440 --> 0:20:59.359 astronaut David Scott in they were out on the Have 0:20:59.400 --> 0:21:01.679 you seen the video of this, Robert, I have, yes, Uh, 0:21:02.119 --> 0:21:05.000 it's it's impressive. There also have been some recent videos 0:21:05.040 --> 0:21:08.480 that that have been put together using a vacuum chamber, 0:21:09.040 --> 0:21:12.000 but they're also just as Uh. It is fascinating to 0:21:12.040 --> 0:21:15.680 watch because it seems it defies expectations because our expectations 0:21:15.680 --> 0:21:18.760 are based on a world of atmosphere exactly right. Yeah, 0:21:18.800 --> 0:21:21.399 and the and the vacuum chamber and on earth works 0:21:21.480 --> 0:21:24.680 just as good because it's nothing about the gravitational properties 0:21:24.680 --> 0:21:27.120 of the Moon that make the feather fall just as 0:21:27.119 --> 0:21:29.159 fast as the hammer. It's the fact, like you say, 0:21:29.320 --> 0:21:32.200 that there is no atmosphere to push up against it, uh, 0:21:32.320 --> 0:21:34.960