WEBVTT - How to Survive a Great Fall 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:04.920 Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I 0:00:05.000 --> 0:00:14.880 Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you welcome to Stuff 0:00:14.920 --> 0:00:17.120 to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and 0:00:17.160 --> 0:00:19.720 I'm Joe McCormick and Robert. I know you've got a 0:00:19.800 --> 0:00:22.720 love for older aircraft, so I wanted to start off 0:00:22.720 --> 0:00:26.360 talking today about an aircraft. I think I know you've 0:00:26.400 --> 0:00:28.200 mentioned it before. I think you've got a spot in 0:00:28.240 --> 0:00:30.720 your heart for it. It's the best seventeen flying Fortress. 0:00:30.840 --> 0:00:34.680 Oh of course. Yeah. So this was a gigantic four 0:00:34.720 --> 0:00:38.320 engine heavy bomber developed by Boeing that was used by 0:00:38.320 --> 0:00:41.760 the United States in World War Two, primarily for long range, 0:00:42.200 --> 0:00:46.199 high altitude bombing raids against Germany and Nazi occupied targets 0:00:46.240 --> 0:00:48.599 in Europe, and to a lesser extent it was used 0:00:48.640 --> 0:00:50.920 some in the Pacific theater. Oh and I guess just 0:00:50.960 --> 0:00:52.800 to clarify what I said a minute ago, I mean 0:00:53.120 --> 0:00:54.720 when I say you've got a spot in your heart 0:00:54.760 --> 0:00:56.760 for this, I don't mean like you love war and 0:00:56.840 --> 0:00:59.240 bombing and killing. I mean that like I know that 0:00:59.320 --> 0:01:01.760 you have a kind of love for the aesthetics of 0:01:01.800 --> 0:01:04.760 airplane design. Yeah, yeah, I mean, my my dad was 0:01:04.840 --> 0:01:07.920 World War Two buff and he and more importantly he 0:01:08.000 --> 0:01:10.759 was he was really into creating, to working on scale 0:01:10.800 --> 0:01:14.560 model kits and mostly World War Two scale models. And 0:01:14.640 --> 0:01:18.560 so the B seventeen uh was certainly a plane that 0:01:18.680 --> 0:01:20.400 was one of his favorites. And you know, he was 0:01:20.400 --> 0:01:22.600 always telling me about it, and he had like a 0:01:22.720 --> 0:01:25.640 prized model of it, like probably like you know, his 0:01:26.160 --> 0:01:30.360 the masterpiece of his his scale modeling time. Uh and 0:01:30.480 --> 0:01:33.160 uh and so yeah, I grew up amid these depictions 0:01:33.160 --> 0:01:34.759 of the B seventeen. I mean, it's it's a very 0:01:34.920 --> 0:01:38.759 iconic plane. Um. And it's the third most produced bomber 0:01:38.800 --> 0:01:41.160 of all time. It was an icon of US air 0:01:41.160 --> 0:01:44.960 superiority and uh. And it's a highly successful design and 0:01:45.000 --> 0:01:47.559 they were used for various post war purposes as well. 0:01:47.840 --> 0:01:49.680 And there's actually there's somewhere in the neighborhood of like 0:01:49.720 --> 0:01:53.120 I want to say, ten B seventeens that are actually 0:01:53.160 --> 0:01:55.640 still airworthy. Oh yeah, I think I was reading that 0:01:55.680 --> 0:01:58.560 there are like some that are actually still in flight somewhere. 0:01:59.160 --> 0:02:01.600 Well they're kept, you know, in an air worthy condition. 0:02:01.760 --> 0:02:03.800 And it's harder to keep an older plane like this 0:02:03.920 --> 0:02:07.880 in airworthy condition. But but with a plane that where 0:02:07.880 --> 0:02:11.160 the design is solid and it has this iconic status 0:02:11.200 --> 0:02:14.440 in uh, you know, in American aviation history. You're going 0:02:14.480 --> 0:02:17.240 to to to to keep those going as long as 0:02:17.280 --> 0:02:19.239 you can, and even the ones that aren't air worthy, 0:02:19.360 --> 0:02:23.359 there are a number of just fantastically restored um B 0:02:23.560 --> 0:02:28.040 seven teams in museums aviation museums around the world. Yeah. Uh. 0:02:28.040 --> 0:02:31.200 And it's so it was a strategically important aircraft, right, 0:02:31.240 --> 0:02:33.360 I mean, so it was this heavily armored aircraft that 0:02:33.480 --> 0:02:37.000 was played a huge role in in Allied victory in Europe, 0:02:37.360 --> 0:02:39.360 and it was it was sort of famous for like 0:02:39.480 --> 0:02:42.519 taking a beating in the course of its mission before 0:02:42.600 --> 0:02:45.680 returning to base intact and landing with lots of visible 0:02:45.760 --> 0:02:48.920 combat damage. Right. And I guess this is tied up 0:02:48.919 --> 0:02:52.160 in the idea of that that it's called the flying fortress. Yeah. 0:02:52.200 --> 0:02:55.480 And then again we don't want to romanticize the this 0:02:55.520 --> 0:02:58.040 weapon of war too much. It was used to kill 0:02:58.080 --> 0:03:00.560 a lot of people, of course, and lot of people 0:03:00.680 --> 0:03:04.400 died flying them, but just from a purely designed standpoint, 0:03:04.440 --> 0:03:07.240 it is fascinating because there they were. They really was 0:03:07.320 --> 0:03:10.640 this flying fortress. It's this idea that you you have 0:03:10.800 --> 0:03:14.960 this this vessel, this uh, this this airplane you're sitting 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:17.919 up into the sky, sending it into into into enemy 0:03:18.000 --> 0:03:21.440 territory to rain bombs down on them, and then you 0:03:21.440 --> 0:03:23.600 want to have it protected. So, of course, the main 0:03:23.639 --> 0:03:25.680 thing you can do is have if you have fighter 0:03:25.960 --> 0:03:30.640 planes to accompany it, faster subtle uh death machines that 0:03:30.680 --> 0:03:33.160 can fly about and pick off things that are trying 0:03:33.160 --> 0:03:37.000 to interfere with the bombing fleet. But on top of that, 0:03:37.240 --> 0:03:41.040 you need to have some guns on that flying fortress 0:03:41.120 --> 0:03:45.280 on your bomber to protect it. But since the bomber 0:03:45.280 --> 0:03:48.360 itself is not going to be like super maneuverable, especially 0:03:48.400 --> 0:03:50.960 compared to fighters that are coming up to intercept it, 0:03:51.720 --> 0:03:53.040 what you need to do is you need to have 0:03:53.080 --> 0:03:56.080 all your directions covered. You have some machine guns poking 0:03:56.120 --> 0:03:58.280 out the front, you have tailgunner in the back, you 0:03:58.320 --> 0:04:02.080 have a turret on the top side, gunners, etcetera. But 0:04:02.240 --> 0:04:04.680 one of the defense features of the B seventeen, what 0:04:04.960 --> 0:04:10.040 you're getting to is now famous, or maybe more importantly infamous. 0:04:10.120 --> 0:04:13.800 It's the ball turret, the lower turret, that is this 0:04:14.040 --> 0:04:18.839 pair of manned machine guns inside a plexiglass dome or 0:04:19.000 --> 0:04:23.160 ball on the bottom of the aircraft. Yeah, it's I'm 0:04:23.160 --> 0:04:25.880 sure it looked science fiction in at the time, and 0:04:25.920 --> 0:04:27.960 it still looks science fiction and when you see it now, 0:04:27.960 --> 0:04:31.040 if you if you're not expecting it. Uh So, this 0:04:31.120 --> 0:04:34.359 is the Sperry ball turret. And it was only introduced 0:04:34.360 --> 0:04:37.200 in the in the B seventeen E series, but it 0:04:37.240 --> 0:04:40.200 was included on in all subsequent series of the B 0:04:40.279 --> 0:04:43.239 seventeen bomber. It was also deployed in the B twenty 0:04:43.279 --> 0:04:45.599 four Liberator, which is another heavy bomber, and then a 0:04:45.600 --> 0:04:47.839 couple of a couple of other planes. But yeah, it 0:04:47.920 --> 0:04:51.200 was super small, so small that you typically had to 0:04:51.839 --> 0:04:56.880 pinpoint a particularly small adult airmen to go into the ball. 0:04:57.600 --> 0:05:00.839 And then on top it was in a comfy not comfy, 0:05:01.200 --> 0:05:05.799 the exact opposite of comfy, cozy, snug tight. Yeah. In fact, 0:05:06.160 --> 0:05:08.839 he is essentially in a fetal position the whole time, 0:05:09.200 --> 0:05:12.360 only instead of of having all the warmth and safety 0:05:12.440 --> 0:05:14.719 that you know comes with the idea of returning to 0:05:14.760 --> 0:05:16.919 the womb, you are not you are not in the 0:05:16.960 --> 0:05:19.160 womb in the ball turret. You're not even in the 0:05:19.160 --> 0:05:22.599 middle of the plane. You're you're beneath the plane. You're 0:05:22.720 --> 0:05:28.200 sort of halfway hanging out underneath this this bomber exposed 0:05:28.760 --> 0:05:32.479 to any interceptor aircraft that are flying up underneath, and 0:05:32.520 --> 0:05:34.560 hopefully you're gonna be able to do something about it 0:05:34.600 --> 0:05:37.280 with your machine guns. And if something goes wrong, well, 0:05:37.360 --> 0:05:40.400 the bad news is there's there's not actually room in 0:05:40.440 --> 0:05:43.400 the ball for you to wear your parachute. Uh. In 0:05:43.800 --> 0:05:46.920 some cases they would leave the parachute uh just above 0:05:46.960 --> 0:05:49.839 them in the main fuselage, or if there was room, 0:05:49.880 --> 0:05:52.360 you might bring it in strapped to your chest. That's 0:05:52.360 --> 0:05:54.880 gonna come back in just a minute. So I've thought 0:05:54.920 --> 0:05:57.160 about the ball tour it a lot, not because I 0:05:57.360 --> 0:06:01.360 I know nearly as much about about older aircraft as you, Robert, 0:06:01.400 --> 0:06:04.880 but because specifically because of a poem that I read 0:06:04.920 --> 0:06:07.000 for the first time many years ago. That it's just 0:06:07.040 --> 0:06:10.040 a five line poem by the American poet Randall Jarrell 0:06:10.200 --> 0:06:12.160 called the Death of the Ball Turret Gunner. It was 0:06:12.160 --> 0:06:15.960 written in nineteen about is World War two experience, and 0:06:16.040 --> 0:06:20.039 it captures this, uh, the sort of cramped terror. Here. 0:06:20.560 --> 0:06:23.560 It goes from my mother's sleep, I fell into the 0:06:23.600 --> 0:06:26.320 state and I hunched in its belly till my wet 0:06:26.400 --> 0:06:30.239 fur froze six miles from Earth, loosed from its dream 0:06:30.279 --> 0:06:33.960 of life. I woke to black Flak and the Nightmare Fighters. 0:06:34.320 --> 0:06:36.680 When I died, they washed me out of the turret 0:06:36.720 --> 0:06:39.600 with a hose man. That is rough. I don't think 0:06:39.640 --> 0:06:43.680 I've heard that before. UM, I should throw in like 0:06:44.000 --> 0:06:45.560 a couple of things. So first of all, the turret 0:06:45.760 --> 0:06:48.320 does like rotate and move around. It's like a little 0:06:48.320 --> 0:06:52.039 carnival ride right underneath the plane, so you can aim right. Yeah, 0:06:52.080 --> 0:06:54.640 you need more degrees of freedom to chase the moving 0:06:54.640 --> 0:06:57.159 targets that are coming at you from below right, And 0:06:57.160 --> 0:07:00.000 and on top of that, I cannot begin to imagine 0:07:00.080 --> 0:07:03.279 how terrifying it really was. Like I get a little 0:07:03.279 --> 0:07:07.279 anxious when I fly in general, and to imagine myself 0:07:07.320 --> 0:07:11.120 like slung below this uh this you know, rattling warplane 0:07:11.760 --> 0:07:15.840 trammed into a clear ball, the bottom just exposed. And 0:07:15.840 --> 0:07:17.960 then if you have like you know, all these uh 0:07:18.000 --> 0:07:20.600 you know, all the chaos of war, the explosions happening 0:07:20.640 --> 0:07:25.280 all around you. UM. I recently watched Hulu's adaptation of 0:07:25.360 --> 0:07:29.760 Catch twenty two, which is different aircraft, um and no 0:07:29.920 --> 0:07:32.440 ball to it, but it does a great job of 0:07:32.520 --> 0:07:36.120 just showing, uh, you know, immersing you in this idea 0:07:36.120 --> 0:07:39.240 of just how terrifying a bomber run was even in 0:07:39.600 --> 0:07:41.920 Catch twenty two, they're not even dealing with interceptor craft. 0:07:41.920 --> 0:07:45.480 They're just dealing with anti aircraft fire, and it's they 0:07:45.520 --> 0:07:47.920 just do a wonderful job of just making you feel 0:07:47.960 --> 0:07:51.400 the sheer terror of the characters flying into battle without 0:07:51.440 --> 0:07:54.720 any you know, a bunch of heroic nonsense, you know, 0:07:54.920 --> 0:07:56.880 label ladled on top of it, because ultimately that's what 0:07:56.960 --> 0:08:00.840 Catched twenty two is about, dispel ling the hero myth 0:08:01.400 --> 0:08:05.200 with a healthy dose of absurdity. Yeah. Well, I want 0:08:05.200 --> 0:08:08.240 to talk about one of those terrifying experiences and use 0:08:08.320 --> 0:08:10.560 that to connect to the subject of the rest of 0:08:10.560 --> 0:08:13.720 today's episode. So, h let's look at the story of 0:08:13.760 --> 0:08:17.760 one particular bald turret gunner during World War Two. He 0:08:17.800 --> 0:08:21.920 was an American staff sergeant named Alan either Magey or 0:08:22.440 --> 0:08:25.200 McGhee m ag e e. I'm gonna call him McGhee 0:08:25.320 --> 0:08:28.400 for the rest of the episode here. So, in January 0:08:28.440 --> 0:08:31.720 of nineteen forty three, Staff Sergeant McGhee was manning the 0:08:31.760 --> 0:08:34.800 turret of a B seventeen that had been nicknamed snap 0:08:34.840 --> 0:08:38.320 crackle pop. Uh. Don't know what that comes from, but 0:08:38.400 --> 0:08:41.680 I have to imagine it's from probably bullets hitting the plane. 0:08:42.240 --> 0:08:44.480 I don't know, but that's my guess. So the plane 0:08:44.520 --> 0:08:47.160 was on a bombing run over an area of Nazi 0:08:47.240 --> 0:08:51.520 occupied France when it suddenly took heavy fire from German 0:08:51.600 --> 0:08:54.240 fighters and it began to break apart in the air 0:08:54.280 --> 0:08:57.360 at about twenty thousand feet or about six thousand, seven 0:08:57.400 --> 0:09:00.720 hundred meters up and in the chaos us as the 0:09:00.760 --> 0:09:04.920 airplane was coming apart in the atmosphere, McGee managed to 0:09:05.080 --> 0:09:07.640 escape his ball, tore it and jump out of the 0:09:07.679 --> 0:09:11.599 falling and uh separating plane parts. But he didn't have 0:09:11.640 --> 0:09:14.199 a parachute. He had not been wearing one, probably because 0:09:14.200 --> 0:09:16.840 he couldn't fit into the ball with it on. So 0:09:16.880 --> 0:09:21.520 he's outside the plane falling at twenty feet So you 0:09:21.559 --> 0:09:24.680 would think, obviously this is just certain death, right, Yeah, 0:09:24.720 --> 0:09:26.760 there just would be no way you'd survive. You're just 0:09:27.000 --> 0:09:29.720 you're just dead in the air basically, Yeah, falling without 0:09:29.760 --> 0:09:32.440 a parachute for twenty feet, which is about six point 0:09:32.480 --> 0:09:35.880 one kilometers in altitude, there's no way to survive that. 0:09:35.960 --> 0:09:41.439 But strangely McGee didn't die. He lost consciousness during the fall, 0:09:41.480 --> 0:09:43.640 probably due to a lack of oxygen. Right because up 0:09:43.640 --> 0:09:47.280 at that atmosphere. The up that altitude, the atmosphere is thinner, 0:09:47.720 --> 0:09:50.600 you can't get enough oxygen, so you pass out. But 0:09:50.640 --> 0:09:53.040 then he woke up. He woke up hours later on 0:09:53.080 --> 0:09:56.280 the ground to find himself a prisoner of war being 0:09:56.320 --> 0:09:59.800 treated by German medics. And he had a few broken bones, 0:09:59.840 --> 0:10:02.160 and he had cuts all over his body, but he 0:10:02.240 --> 0:10:06.679 was alive. Apparently, the way McGhee survived had to do 0:10:06.800 --> 0:10:10.640 with how he landed. Instead of hitting the ground, McGhee 0:10:10.679 --> 0:10:14.840 had just by luck, crashed through a glass ceiling in 0:10:14.880 --> 0:10:18.640 a train station at St. Nazaire, and the impact of 0:10:18.720 --> 0:10:22.080 crashing through the glass must have slowed his fall enough 0:10:22.400 --> 0:10:25.040 that he was not killed when he hit the floor below. 0:10:25.640 --> 0:10:29.000 And so as unbelievable as this story is, McGhee is 0:10:29.040 --> 0:10:31.959 not the only one. There are actually lots of interesting, 0:10:32.160 --> 0:10:37.000 fascinating long fall survival stories in which people fall, you know, 0:10:37.040 --> 0:10:41.000 what would normally be absolutely lethal distances without a parachute, 0:10:41.240 --> 0:10:44.600 but somehow managed to survive in one way or another. 0:10:44.920 --> 0:10:47.360 And that's what we wanted to talk about today, and 0:10:47.360 --> 0:10:49.360 and it should we should drive home like we're doing. 0:10:49.440 --> 0:10:53.880 We're dealing with distances here that are almost this seemed 0:10:53.880 --> 0:10:57.560 almost absolutely lethal and you certainly do not have to 0:10:57.679 --> 0:11:01.160 fall far at all to suffer a fatal injury. Oh no, 0:11:01.360 --> 0:11:04.120 you can easily die from a ten or twenty footfall. 0:11:04.400 --> 0:11:08.600 But they're falling from ten thousand, twenty thousand feet. It 0:11:08.679 --> 0:11:12.240 just seems astounding, It seems unreal, Like to survive such 0:11:12.240 --> 0:11:15.599 a fall, you would just have to become just instantly 0:11:15.760 --> 0:11:19.719 hyper religious, right, you just have to assume angels appeared 0:11:20.120 --> 0:11:23.040 and uh and took your unconscious body down to the earth. Well, 0:11:23.080 --> 0:11:24.800 a lot of people do kind of go to those 0:11:24.840 --> 0:11:27.480 miraculous explanations, but it turns out that there are some 0:11:27.960 --> 0:11:32.520 pretty consistent, not totally consistent, but there are some common 0:11:32.679 --> 0:11:38.439 physical characteristics of the types of falls that people survive from. 0:11:38.480 --> 0:11:41.440 It has to do with how you fall, how you land, 0:11:41.679 --> 0:11:44.440 where you land, and so that's what we wanted to 0:11:44.480 --> 0:11:46.959 explore for the rest of the day. Now. One thing 0:11:47.000 --> 0:11:49.520 that's funny is that, like, it seems like falling out 0:11:49.559 --> 0:11:53.120 of an airplane must be so much worse than just say, 0:11:53.160 --> 0:11:55.840 falling off of a really tall building or something, but 0:11:55.880 --> 0:11:58.600 in fact that's not the case. If if you are 0:11:58.640 --> 0:12:01.840 falling long enough to achieve eve what's called terminal velocity, 0:12:01.880 --> 0:12:04.520 will explain more about that in a bit. It's a 0:12:04.559 --> 0:12:07.120 speed that's not a not a constant, but it's going 0:12:07.160 --> 0:12:09.640 to vary depending on who you are, what you're what 0:12:09.760 --> 0:12:12.320 you weigh, what you're shaped like, what you're wearing, you 0:12:12.320 --> 0:12:14.760 know how, all that kind of stuff. As long as 0:12:14.800 --> 0:12:17.040 you fall far enough to achieve that, and that might 0:12:17.120 --> 0:12:20.800 just be you know, a few hundred meters, then you 0:12:21.000 --> 0:12:23.360 then you're basically falling as fast as you're gonna fall, 0:12:23.400 --> 0:12:26.280 And actually falling from an airplane isn't any worse and 0:12:26.320 --> 0:12:29.800 in some crazy ways could actually be better. Uh So, 0:12:29.960 --> 0:12:31.920 But anyway, well we'll come back to all that. I 0:12:31.960 --> 0:12:34.600 wanted to talk about a few other known cases from history. 0:12:34.960 --> 0:12:38.040 So one case of somebody who fell out of an 0:12:38.040 --> 0:12:42.160 airplane and survived is Christine Mackenzie. She didn't actually fall 0:12:42.200 --> 0:12:44.960 out of an airplane. She jumped. She's an experienced South 0:12:45.000 --> 0:12:49.360 African skydiver who had already jumped more than a hundred times. 0:12:49.720 --> 0:12:54.320 When both her main parachute and her backup parachute failed 0:12:54.360 --> 0:12:57.880 on the same freefall in August two thousand four, so 0:12:57.920 --> 0:13:01.960 she fell about eleven thousand feet and survived by instead 0:13:01.960 --> 0:13:06.120 of hitting the ground directly, she first hits some suspended 0:13:06.240 --> 0:13:10.199 power lines before impact, and sort of like the glass 0:13:10.240 --> 0:13:13.120 ceiling and McGee's fall, the tension of the power lines 0:13:13.520 --> 0:13:15.760 is thought to have absorbed a lot of the energy 0:13:15.760 --> 0:13:18.360 of her fall and slowed her down in the process, 0:13:18.640 --> 0:13:20.640 so that when she finally hit the ground, she ended 0:13:20.720 --> 0:13:23.760 up with only a broken pelvis. Her fall lasted about 0:13:23.760 --> 0:13:28.600 forty five seconds. So let's let's entertain belief in guardian 0:13:28.640 --> 0:13:31.679 angels again for a second. Can you imagine the sort 0:13:31.679 --> 0:13:34.560 of scenario where you're falling and then the angel appears 0:13:34.559 --> 0:13:37.080 and says, look, I know this looks bad, but don't worry. 0:13:37.760 --> 0:13:42.480 You're headed towards some high tension wires. Everything's gonna be fine. 0:13:44.480 --> 0:13:46.160 I just assumed I would be. I would assume I 0:13:46.200 --> 0:13:49.120 would be torn in half. You know, well, I mean 0:13:49.160 --> 0:13:51.240 I'm sure, I'm sure. It depends on how you hit 0:13:51.280 --> 0:13:54.559 them and all that. Another name, this one comes up 0:13:54.840 --> 0:13:58.040 a lot. It's a very famous case. This is Vesna Volkovich. 0:13:58.920 --> 0:14:01.920 Some of the details of the Volovich case have been disputed. 0:14:01.960 --> 0:14:04.040 I'm not going to get into those whole disputes. I'm 0:14:04.080 --> 0:14:07.000 just going to talk about the version that's most often reported. 0:14:07.040 --> 0:14:10.600 So Vesna Volovich was a Serbian flight attendant on a 0:14:10.679 --> 0:14:13.000 DC nine that was in the air over the Czech 0:14:13.040 --> 0:14:17.600 Republic in nineteen seventy two when the cabin exploded, probably 0:14:17.679 --> 0:14:21.520 due to a bomb from a terrorism attack. She fell 0:14:21.600 --> 0:14:24.960 more than ten thousand one ms or more than thirty 0:14:25.000 --> 0:14:29.360 three thousand feet without a parachute, and she suffered severe 0:14:29.440 --> 0:14:32.480 injuries and broken bones and was in a coma for weeks. 0:14:32.480 --> 0:14:36.360 But she survived, and the question is how well Her 0:14:36.360 --> 0:14:39.840 survival is usually attributed to the fact that while most 0:14:39.880 --> 0:14:42.000 of the rest of the passengers were blown out of 0:14:42.000 --> 0:14:45.920 the cabin when the fuselage broke apart, Volkovich was pinned 0:14:46.040 --> 0:14:49.400 inside by a food card and possibly by another member 0:14:49.400 --> 0:14:52.240 of the crew or a passenger, and so she stuck 0:14:52.280 --> 0:14:54.960 inside the fuselage. And then the broken part of the 0:14:54.960 --> 0:14:58.920 fuselage in which she was stuck just happened to land 0:14:58.920 --> 0:15:02.560 on a snowy recovered hillside, and it's believed that the 0:15:02.600 --> 0:15:06.480 trees and the snow cushioned the impact. After she woke up, 0:15:06.480 --> 0:15:08.480 she had no memory of the crash, and she lived 0:15:08.560 --> 0:15:12.040 until sixteen. She's often cited as the record holder for 0:15:12.120 --> 0:15:15.240 the survivor of the longest fall without a parachute. Wow, 0:15:15.360 --> 0:15:18.120 that that is incredible. And also I just want to 0:15:18.160 --> 0:15:21.360 apologize to any other nervous flyers out there who are 0:15:21.400 --> 0:15:23.440 listening to this. Hopefully you are not listening to this 0:15:23.600 --> 0:15:27.520 at the airport. Oh maybe we should have warned you now, 0:15:28.520 --> 0:15:31.240 you know, if you if you weren't aware by now, 0:15:31.400 --> 0:15:33.320 if you didn't pause the episode by now, then I 0:15:33.360 --> 0:15:36.000 guess maybe you you do need this episode to make 0:15:36.000 --> 0:15:38.080 it through your flight. Well, I'm sure you've heard it 0:15:38.080 --> 0:15:40.200 a million times before and it probably doesn't help with 0:15:40.240 --> 0:15:42.760 your fear, but it is a fact that flying is 0:15:42.840 --> 0:15:46.560 extremely safe. Commercial flying these days is extremely safe. Yes, 0:15:46.760 --> 0:15:49.040 if you know, if you are on a commercial jet 0:15:49.080 --> 0:15:52.400 with like an accredited pilot and all that like your 0:15:52.400 --> 0:15:55.280 your chances of having something bad happen are extremely low. 0:15:55.680 --> 0:15:58.000 So stick that in the logical side of your brain. 0:15:58.520 --> 0:16:01.560 It's probably already arguing with the logical side. That is 0:16:01.600 --> 0:16:04.640 the whole reason you have the nerves. Anyway, let's go 0:16:04.680 --> 0:16:07.360 with one more example here. This is a survival story 0:16:07.440 --> 0:16:12.280 of Julienne Kepki now Julianne Diller. She's a German woman, 0:16:12.360 --> 0:16:15.560 or is a German woman who as a teenager survived 0:16:15.600 --> 0:16:18.960 a plane crash in the Amazon in ninety one from 0:16:18.960 --> 0:16:22.360 an altitude of over three kilometers after a plane was 0:16:22.360 --> 0:16:25.880 struck by lightning. She was the lone survivor of the crash. 0:16:25.960 --> 0:16:29.520 And then she not only survived the crash from from 0:16:29.520 --> 0:16:33.000 over three kilometers of altitude. After that, she had to 0:16:33.120 --> 0:16:36.720 navigate her way through the rainforest to find help with 0:16:36.760 --> 0:16:40.280 no supplies except basically a bag of candy. Oh my goodness. 0:16:40.320 --> 0:16:43.840 And after searching for ten days, she found help from 0:16:43.840 --> 0:16:46.440 a group of loggers and was taken back to civilization 0:16:46.480 --> 0:16:49.880 for medical treatment. And she's still alive today. So at 0:16:49.880 --> 0:16:53.600 this point you're probably wondering, well, how casting the angels aside? 0:16:53.600 --> 0:16:59.040 What are the what are the logical, real life scientific answers? Uh, 0:16:59.080 --> 0:17:01.120 you know behind the survive stories where we're gonna take 0:17:01.120 --> 0:17:03.520 a break and when we come back we will discuss 0:17:03.640 --> 0:17:08.480 just that. Alright, we're back. So Robert, you want to 0:17:08.480 --> 0:17:10.560 look at the physics of falling from a great height. 0:17:11.080 --> 0:17:13.400 Let's do it. Okay, So falling from a great height 0:17:13.480 --> 0:17:16.120 can kill you in a number of ways. I mean, 0:17:16.680 --> 0:17:19.520 just not to get too graphic, but one problem would 0:17:19.520 --> 0:17:21.440 be like what if you fall on a spike or something, 0:17:21.640 --> 0:17:24.480 you know, they're all these sort of like specific cases 0:17:24.520 --> 0:17:26.359 of what can happen to you when you hit the ground. 0:17:26.359 --> 0:17:29.440 But that's the key, right, right, the fall itself. I mean, 0:17:29.480 --> 0:17:32.520 that's that's easy enough to do. Um And surviving the 0:17:32.600 --> 0:17:35.879 fall is one thing. It's surviving the impact that is 0:17:35.920 --> 0:17:38.679 the problem, right. I mean, no matter where you land, 0:17:39.119 --> 0:17:42.320 the main problem that that you're going to encounter is 0:17:42.359 --> 0:17:44.960 going to be the difference between how fast you were 0:17:45.000 --> 0:17:48.919 falling and how suddenly you stop. Uh So, what happens 0:17:48.920 --> 0:17:51.639 when you fall from an incredible altitude, Well, we know 0:17:51.720 --> 0:17:54.520 there is gravity, right, There's an attraction between the earth 0:17:54.560 --> 0:17:57.840 and your body due to gravity, and gravity accelerates you 0:17:57.960 --> 0:18:00.640 relentlessly towards the center of the Earth. Not just when 0:18:00.680 --> 0:18:03.080 you're falling, but even right now, no matter where you are, 0:18:03.400 --> 0:18:07.240 gravity is relentlessly accelerating you towards the center of the Earth. 0:18:07.600 --> 0:18:10.119 And you will continue to accelerate towards the center of 0:18:10.119 --> 0:18:13.520 the Earth until something like the ground, or water or 0:18:13.520 --> 0:18:17.400 the air provides a compensating resistance to stop you from 0:18:17.520 --> 0:18:19.679 from going faster towards the center of the Earth. So 0:18:19.760 --> 0:18:23.000 that's probably the ground that's doing that to you right now. Yeah, 0:18:23.000 --> 0:18:24.879 I recently was thinking a bit about this when I 0:18:24.880 --> 0:18:28.159 was jumping off of a high dive. Um, and I 0:18:28.200 --> 0:18:29.639 had been a long time since I jumped off a 0:18:29.720 --> 0:18:32.639 high dive, but I was just really struck by just 0:18:32.720 --> 0:18:36.480 the feeling of of of being wanted by gravity that 0:18:36.640 --> 0:18:39.639 like you, you really you really feel it, um, you know, 0:18:39.680 --> 0:18:41.960 more so than off of just a normal board. You 0:18:42.000 --> 0:18:45.960 feel yourself accelerating, You feel yourself, you know, pulled down 0:18:46.160 --> 0:18:49.360 with dramatic speed toward the surface of the water. Well, yeah, 0:18:49.400 --> 0:18:51.080 it's kind of weird to think about, but the force 0:18:51.080 --> 0:18:54.040 of gravity and the force of acceleration feel exactly the 0:18:54.119 --> 0:18:57.600 same to us. They are indistinguishable. They act the same 0:18:57.600 --> 0:18:59.879 way on our bodies. This is why you can you 0:19:00.119 --> 0:19:04.960 acceleration to provide artificial gravity and space. Right just by 0:19:05.080 --> 0:19:10.120 like continuously accelerating a capsule or providing angular momentum acceleration 0:19:10.160 --> 0:19:13.400 in a circular pattern, you can pretty much perfectly simulate 0:19:13.440 --> 0:19:16.320 what gravity is like. So if you're on or near 0:19:16.359 --> 0:19:19.120 the Earth's surface, you are sort of permanently on an 0:19:19.119 --> 0:19:23.239 invisible train that wants to begin accelerating straight down at 0:19:23.320 --> 0:19:26.240 nine point eight meters per second per second, and we'll 0:19:26.280 --> 0:19:29.080 just keep going nine point eight meters per second, faster 0:19:29.280 --> 0:19:33.120 every second, and it's always going to start chugging unless 0:19:33.160 --> 0:19:35.919 there's something pushing you back, pushing you to hold you 0:19:35.960 --> 0:19:39.120 in place. Now, there's one physics fact we all i think, 0:19:39.200 --> 0:19:41.320 learned in school, which can be kind of confusing here. 0:19:41.359 --> 0:19:43.159 So we need to make a sort of obvious but 0:19:43.280 --> 0:19:47.600 important distinction. The acceleration due to gravity is the same 0:19:47.760 --> 0:19:51.320 for all falling objects near Earth's surface. That's nine point 0:19:51.320 --> 0:19:54.640 eight meters per second per second, no matter what you are, 0:19:54.840 --> 0:19:57.880 what kind of object you're talking about. But that does 0:19:57.960 --> 0:20:00.840 not mean that all objects fall at the same rate. 0:20:01.000 --> 0:20:04.000 This is obvious because of the effects of drag caused 0:20:04.000 --> 0:20:07.399 by air resistance acting on the falling object. So this 0:20:07.440 --> 0:20:09.720 is pretty obvious. When you drop a feather and a 0:20:09.800 --> 0:20:13.119 hammer side by side, obviously the hammer hits the ground first, 0:20:13.520 --> 0:20:16.679 unless say, you're on the Moon, where there is no atmosphere. 0:20:16.720 --> 0:20:19.600 And this is actually a demonstration that was put on 0:20:19.720 --> 0:20:22.600 during a moonwalk by the American astronaut David Scott in 0:20:22.680 --> 0:20:25.560 nine they were out on the Have you seen the 0:20:25.600 --> 0:20:29.080 video of this, Robert, I have, yes, Uh, it's it's impressive. 0:20:29.119 --> 0:20:31.840 There also have been some recent videos that that have 0:20:31.880 --> 0:20:35.400 been put together using a vacuum chamber, but they're also 0:20:35.520 --> 0:20:38.840 just as Uh. It's fascinating to watch because it seems 0:20:39.080 --> 0:20:42.439 it defies expectations because our expectations are based on a 0:20:42.560 --> 0:20:45.280 world of atmosphere exactly right. Yeah, and the and the 0:20:45.359 --> 0:20:48.080 vacuum chamber and on Earth works just as good because 0:20:48.320 --> 0:20:51.080 it's nothing about the gravitational properties of the Moon that 0:20:51.200 --> 0:20:53.720 make the feather fall just as fast as the hammer. 0:20:53.760 --> 0:20:55.679 It's the fact, like you say that there is no 0:20:55.760 --> 0:20:58.960 atmosphere to push up against it. Uh, no air to 0:20:59.000 --> 0:21:01.880 slow down the feather. By the way I I looked 0:21:01.920 --> 0:21:04.960 it up, it was a falcon feather. I wonder, without 0:21:04.960 --> 0:21:07.120 knowing the answer, if if there was like a committee 0:21:07.119 --> 0:21:09.320 that decided that, where they're like, what kind of feather 0:21:09.320 --> 0:21:12.159 are we sending on the mission, and someone's like, oh, 0:21:12.160 --> 0:21:13.680 it should be the turkey, and it should be it 0:21:13.720 --> 0:21:17.680 should be an American eagle. Uh, just like in basically 0:21:17.680 --> 0:21:19.760 have the same conversation. They had a song about it 0:21:19.880 --> 0:21:24.679 the dove. Uh. So anyway, if you're near Earth's surface 0:21:24.720 --> 0:21:27.720 and you're falling, gravity is going to keep accelerating you 0:21:27.800 --> 0:21:30.600