Before Sunday, 541 deaths around the world since 1981 had been logged by the BASE Fatality List, maintained by an online community for the sport. This year, 15 such deaths have been reported globally, according to the list.
Long ago I came across some clip where it was claimed that there’s about 20 or so people who were integral to the development of the modern wingsuit and BASE jumping, and every single one of them died in a BASE jumping mishap.
That’s true of a lot of safety critical fields. Regulations/rules are written in blood
Whole lot of people had to die for us to learn about decompression sickness in diving
Some individual lessons in aviation cost us hundreds of lives
Early mariners died in droves for us to learn how difficukt the ocean is to cross
BASE just seems more shocking because of the recency. It developed very late, long after nearly every other safety critical field was mature
Cave diving is largely the same way
I get the concept, but it also seems that there’s degree of necessity to most of those other practices. Diving supported exploration, aviation and sailing did the same and travel. I think that part of the shock is that there isn’t an obvious necessity to base jumping or cave diving, and that the appeal is the danger for the participants.
The appeal isn’t the danger though. If it is you shouldn’t be doing it.
Safety rules are written in blood.
Safety? In BASE jumping? No such thing.
There are a lot of safety rules. I get you’re trying to make a flippant joke, but that attitude has cost people their lives
They hear an activity is dangerous and don’t understand how important the safety procedures are at mitigating that risk
I can guarantee you there are mistakes that were made to cause this deaths, and lessons that can be learned from it
It’s one of the very few sports that gets more dangerous the more experienced you get.
Photographer Carl Boenish helped coin BASE as a description of the sport’s adrenaline-inspiring launch points (buildings, antennas, spans, earth) in 1978, when he videotaped early jumps from Yosemite National Park’s El Capitan rock formation.
TIL.
A friend of mine was engaged to a wingsuit base jumper. This guy wasn’t a noob. He had been doing it for years. One day he missed a turn or something happened and he went face first into a side of a mountain.
I’m not sure if this friend ever recovered from that experience. She has a tattoo of his finger point on her to remind her of him.
She told me that base jumping is one of the most dangerous sports.
She told me that base jumping is one of the most dangerous sports
you… needed someone tell you that?
I dont know much about extreme sports. Figured rock climbing without a rope is more dangerous.
That’s more controlled. You have time to stop and assess.
You can’t pause while falling.
I mean it’s no jai alai
This is why you can kickly reach the top 10 rank in this activity
“You, too, can be one of the top ten BASE jumpers!”
Someone leans in, whispering in their ear.
“Uh… you, too, can be one of the ten BASE jumpers!”
Even if there are more than ten at certain times, they’ll all die so quickly that if you stick with it (and don’t die) you’re basically guaranteed to end up in the top ten at some point. It’s like a revolving door. Everyone gets a turn!
What in the hell is that from?
The new episodes of Red Dwarf is my guess. I wouldn’t bother. They don’t have the charm of the older stuff.
“On today’s jump, something went wrong and he did not have enough lift with his wingsuit,” Peck said. “He impacted the ground at a high rate of speed resulting in his death.”
When I flew RC gliders, we flew off cliffs because the wind hits the cliff and shoots straight up, letting the glider just float around in the updraft. It’s called “ridge lift”.
Maybe the wind died at just the wrong moment?
I realize wing suits don’t fly the way gliders fly. But, I suspect they need ridge lift when they first jump off to get started.
Just a guess.
Wingsuit jumpers just die from time to time. There’s no way to do it safely. Every jump is a lottery.
Stop spreading harmful misinformation
It is an inherently dangerous activity, but there are ways to mitigate the risks
I have seen people who died because of people like you.
Here’s what happens:
-
Young and dumb person decides they want to try an extreme sport
-
Uninformed layperson says, “it’s basically a lottery”
-
They see experienced people in the sport with thousands of successful tries
-
Conclude the chances of death are 1 in 1000. Young and dumb decides that’s good enough for them, then they try it without proper equipment or training. They end up dying a preventable death
I’m not too familiar woth BASE jumping, but I am a cave diver. We have this issue a lot. For decades, the vast majority of cave diving deaths were from open water divers going into caves without the proper training or equipment
Many of them did not realize they needed specialized training and equipment. Without it their risks went up multiple orders of magnitude
Thankfully youtube slop videos about cave diving have cut down on that tremendously. Guess there is some benefit to misinformation on that one, although downside is people think I’m insane for cave diving now, because the youtube videos said it was soooo dangerous (it is the most dangerous thing I do, considering how much driving I have to do to get to dive sites. The drive is more dangerous than the dive)
Of course super experienced jumper is more likely to survive than some random dude with no experience but with wingsuits risk of death is high even if you do everything right. Unlike in other extreme sports, many times there’s no clear reason why accident happened.
-
i wonder how a wingsuit fails? Did the little flappy bits rip?
Wingsuits are inflated by the air rushing into them. If there’s an air leak, that could certainly compromise its integrity and render it basically useless.
“Redrum,” she wrote.
just want to remind you that people in wingsuits also wear parachutes. There are multiple levels of failure here.
I support people who like dangerous sports. Except for gun ownership. That’s shit is so stupid dangerous and reckless you don’t have to participate to be killed.
Play stupid games…win stupid prizes.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
