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What Happens If You Get Sucked Out of a Plane?
astroengine writes "We've all wondered about it. When flying at 30,000ft, you look around the cramped economy class cabin thinking 'I wonder if I'd survive being sucked out of this plane if a hole, say, just opened above my head?' That's probably around the time that you should fasten your seat belt. According to medical experts interviewed by Discovery News in the wake of the Southwest Airlines gaping hole incident, the rapid depressurization, low oxygen levels and freezing cold would render you unconscious very quickly. Assuming you don't get chopped in half as you exit through the hole and hit the tail, you'd be long dead before you hit the ground. Nice."
I thought this was obvious, even from a non scientific point of view?
I will keep this in mind the next time I get sucked out of a plane :-D
So... if a a hole forms in the plane you're in and you get sucked out through it then you'd probably be dead pretty quickly (unless picked up by a passing spaceship, and the odds against that are astronomical). Is that the entire point of this 'story'? Is there anything there anyone didn't know?
A flight attendant was killed when she was blown out of Aloha Airlines flight 243 back in 1988.
The plane landed with a huge section of fuselage missing, but the other passengers survived. Not a trip I'd like to be on, and makes the Southwest incident look minor in comparison.
....you spend six confusing years on an island with a bunch of strangers and a polar bear.
Hopefully you adapt quickly and learn to hate flashbacks and flashforwards.
Why couldn't it be "What happens if you get sucked on a plane?"
dull-eyed footstool-temporary octopus
Otherwise known as "Stuff that's COOL but not exactly useful. BUT HEY RATINGS!"
Wouldn't you actually be blown out rather than "sucked" out as it is stated in the post?
n/t
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_5390
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
That's why I tell me girlfriend. She's a catholic so turns me down.
I'm pretty sure it doesn't count as joining the Mile High Club.
Summation 2
No No No, you're not sucked out of a plane. Sheesh, is Discovery trying to blatantly go for the lurid headline when their own links on the page to the Mythbusters test show nothing happens?
All those hollywood movies are peddling falsehood, and it looks like Discovery is doing the same for profit and pageviews. Sheesh.
...and if we assume you don't hit the tail or wings, and have enough clothes not to become unconscious before getting to the ground, you should probably aim for a steep slope (preferably with soft snow!) or tree with quite weak branches, such as a spruce. Anything that makes the deceleration phase last longer works (not water though!). If you manage to hit a steep slope in a good way you actually have a decent chance of surviving.
30,000 feet is about as high as Everest. People have walked up Everest and survived... ...in fact I'm not sure I believe their conclusions. You'd be down to almost 'normal' conditions in about a minute.
People have survived half an hour at altitudes higher than that, eg. Ewa Wisnierska.
No sig today...
In the unlikely event of a sudden change in cabin pressure--ROOF FLIES OFF! --an oxygen mask will drop down in front of you. Place the mask over your face and breathe normally.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Magee
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Chisov
a bit different (and controversal) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulović
Sneak teach kids Algebra using a game
Ah the joys of being sucked out while 30,000ft.
I just love waiting for that rapid depressurization, it is such an euphoric feeling, it also means your on your way to the mile high club.
Oh Wait... they were not talking about oral sex... that sucks.
I think you get featured as a hero in a Dan Brown novel.
YOU DIE!
Okay, couple of things going on here. First: The myth busters episode "proofing" you can't be sucked out of aircraft. This was the movie myth that a small hole wouldn't not cause everything inside to be sucked out. HOWEVER, we are not talking about that here, we are talking about a major hole. In the hawaii incident, there was a gigantic hole, the flight attendant was not sucked out movie style but (probably) swept up by the massive wind force that occurs partly simply because aircraft move so fucking fast. Nobody knows how she met her dead. It might be comforting to think she died instantly and without pain... if that helps you sleep at night.
Another incident involved a pilot being SUCKED out through the window in front of him (showing just how wrong the DISCOVERY mythbuster program is in its logic and research). He was SUCKED out and exposed to the cold and lack of oxygen for a long time AND survived.
Another incident involves an aircraft breaking up in mid air, all died but the family got record damages because experts had shown that they most likely survived the break up and were alive and aware the entire way down. Families were from one of the south american countries, maybe chili if you want to google it (to lazy myself).
The simple fact is that Myth Busters is a great example of bad science where they ignore recorded evidence and then twist the experiment until it doesn't resemble to claim at all. The clearest example was the "myth" of Jaws being able to hit a boat. So they tested the myth of a super sized shark hitting a boat, by using a smaller shark because Jaws was an unrealistic size... well? That is the myth, the myth is NOT real shark doing something real shark don't do.
Same with the being sucked out. There is more then one way, and pressure difference isn't the only one. Air rushing past a hole tends to create a sucking force itself (see how your engine sucks fuel up into the air) and a massive hole would create all kind of secondary forces. According to mythbusters, large buildings don't cause winds to rise to such level that they blow people of their feet because the pressure difference ain't big enough. Well, shucks.
So basically, discovery claims things contradicted by their own programs. Guess that answers who takes discovery serious, ABSOLUTELY NOBODY.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The folks at Free Fall Research have a more optimistic view
According to several of the police officers and volunteer helpers at the Lockerbie incident (Pan Am flight 103) whom I have personally spoken to, a substantial number of the passengers were not dead when initially found, although none survived. The cockpit came down in a field 150 metres from the house of a friend of mine. In the opinion of those witnesses what killed the passengers was injuries sustained in their impact with the ground, not the fall itself.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Well, I suppose it depends on what the SNAKES were doing at the time.
?
First amendment rights: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievance
The pressure inside the cabin of a boeing 737 is typically 7-8 psi difference from the outside air pressure, which allows the cabin altitude to be 8000' while the outside is 37000 feet.
With the air pressure inside the airplane being greater than the air pressure outside the airplane, you get blown out, not sucked out.
Assuming that you found yourself sucked out of the cabin intact, perhaps low oxygen would not have to be a problem. It certainly would be if you were stationary at that altitude, but in this case you're falling. The question is, if you were falling face down in a free-fall position (belly to Earth), would the force of the air entering your mouth at terminal velocity (at least 195 km/h) increase the pressure of the air in your lungs enough to compensate for the altitude?
Remember, it's not the fraction of oxygen that decreases with increasing altitude -- that stays the same at 20%. It's the partial pressure of oxygen (PPO2) that decreases linearly with the ambient pressure. IIRC, we humans require a PPO2 of 0.12 bar to remain conscious, which is what you have at something like 12,000 feet (see this conversion table). At 30,000 ft the ambient pressure is only about 0.3 bar, so the speed of your descent would have to at least double the pressure in your lungs to compensate, which seems possible to me.
If you were Halo Jumping out, you could survive. I doubt you would wear that gear casually on an airplane, but if you are really worried, it couldn't hurt. You could do 2 minutes of free fall from 30,000 feet and then parachute down with no injuries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_jump
>Families were from one of the south american countries, maybe chili if you want to google it (to lazy myself).
I think this was the Andes soccer team crash that took place in the early 1970s.
I heard the ate Chili con carne to stay "alive"
Part of TFA focuses on the decompression. Thorough science (and the MythBusters episode) have shown that this is not an extreme danger. With a large enough hole, wind and other forces present far greater risk of dislodging passengers.
As for the health risks, I wonder if they even looked at the research and equipment behind HALO jumps. Obviously, folks aboard a passenger aircraft aren't going to be prepared and aren't going to have 'chutes, but some of the health concerns and physical dangers have been closely examined to ensure the safety of high-altitude insertions.
Also, "my guess" and "or something" aren't the kinds of things I would expect someone that had really considered the matter to be saying.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87 In 1972 a serbian flight attendant survived a fall from 10,160 meters after the plain exploded mid air. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAT_Flight_367 She holds the world record, according to the Guinness Book of Records, for surviving the highest fall without a parachute.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87 [wikipedia.org] In 1972 a serbian flight attendant survived a fall from 10,160 meters after the plain exploded mid air. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAT_Flight_367 [wikipedia.org] She holds the world record, according to the Guinness Book of Records, for surviving the highest fall without a parachute.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/safety/4344036
If you watched the movies you'd know it's always the megalomaniac villain that gets sucked out of the airplane, not the hero.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
but but but but it was on MythBusters so it MUST be right!!
This is all hogwash! Since you are traveling at the same velocity as the plane, you will not get "sucked out", or face deadly inertia. You may feel a slight breeze, and an urge to crawl outside of the hole and plane-surf.
Dont believe those stupid movie special effects where there's a hole and someone gets sucked out a tiny pinhole. You may feel a slight breeze due to the wind hitting you face but all in all its kind of like skydiving. Here is the math below
(velocity) * wind + inertia / (hole) - (your mass)2
You've the problem of your mouth and throat instantly icing over at -50c to deal with then. Better to conserve heat and hold your breath until you are a bit lower.
> He was SUCKED out and exposed to the cold and lack of
> oxygen for a long time AND survived.
um, no. they held on to his legs for the rest of the flight, but it turned out he died a horrible death long before they landed. -40 degree wind blasting at 500 knots for most of an hour will do that to you. wee bit of a wind chill factor on that ride, never mind the fluid dynamics of trying to breath in those conditions.
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
Explosive decompression accidents are rare, but when they do happen, they are very very nasty.
I refer you to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byford_Dolphin
It sucks!
... the air pressure inside inside the plane blows you out of the plane.
We're talking about like half of one atmosphere, here. I don't think you're going to get the bends.
That's absolutely correct, the pressure difference is equivalent to coming up from a five meters deep dive. I've done that many times but I never stayed that deep more than a minute or so.
Here's a question for the divers here: do you need special decompression routines if you dive at five meters for long periods?
Nothing new here. These effects have been studied since the Comet, several of which exploded at altitude due to metal fatigue. Passengers suddenly found themselves in the open air, where they died rapidly due to the extremely hostile conditions up there. Arms and legs flap wildly, causing numerous fractures. Breathing is impossible in the rush of air. Unconsciousness ensues rapidly. The flight attendant who was sucked out of the flight in Hawaii was standing almost directly under the hole that popped open. The hole was large enough for her head to get through but her body blocked it. The 'fluid hammer' effect added enormously to the force on that area of the fuselage, causing a huge section to be ripped away. The attendant's head exploded as well, as is evidenced by large amounts of blood on the outside of the pieces of fuselage recovered.
I understand that English is a living language, but I object to changes arising merely from repeated errors.
Back in the early 1900's the papers would quote doctor's who would say that people who fell out of a plane at 5k likely died of a heart attack before hitting the ground. I'm sure it made people feel all warm and fuzzy but it was complete bullshit.
People jump from planes at 24k ft, 30k isn't that much higher. What would most likely happen is you'd pass out due to lack of oxygen then wake back up when you got to a lower altitude. This happened to a friend of mine on a 24k jump because she donated blood the day before. She passed out, woke up, never realized she passed out until the person jumping with her kept point at this altimeter and the ground.
Actually, the GP is correct. The pilot was partially sucked out and survived, though it looks like he was unconscious for most of the ordeal.
Anyone who takes Mythbusters seriously needs to have a book about the scientific method thrown at their head. Mythbusters is about creating an entertaining show, not serious scientific analysis, just like Ghosthunters and shows about Big Foot. Their analysis of most problems is laughable and at best the most they can prove is a proof by demonstration.
Think of the petunias
How to Fall 35,000 Feet—And Survive
... just SOARED (pun not intended but accepted anyway).
It seems that just because they used a few wrong bolts, that nonetheless looked very similar to the correct ones, that the windshield blew out! I didn't realize an aircraft was built to such safety critical tolerances and that such a simple mistake could lead to a very near fatal accident. To the engineer's credit, this problem seems to be have anticipated, the manual specifically states procedures to prevent this kind of problem.
Makes me realize that maintenance manuals are not just there for show.
Vesna Vulovic
Could you link to an incident report where that happened? Crew holding on to a person's legs and the person dying during the incident? Because there is a real incident, which has already been referred to in this discussion thread, where this happened to the captain of a passenger airplane, but the man did survive.
Once again, here's the link to that real incident: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_5390
You'd have to be falling pretty close to the speed of sound to get any appreciable compression effect. Air up to Mach 0.3 is usually treated as incompressible. From 0.3 to 0.7 it becomes more significant, but not nearly enough to do something like double in pressure. The only way to really get a "ram air" style pressure increase is with a supersonic flow.
If my estimations are correct, I highly doubt that at 30,000 feet terminal velocity would be above Mach 0.4. At that speed, pressure increase would almost certainly be in the single digit percentages at most. I'd be surprised if the effect was greater than about 3%.
Nothing wrong with the science going on Mythbusters, but certainly selective memory distorts people's memories of what they actually tested.
So, what happens when you get sucked out a plane? Simple answer is you die. Complex answer is you die after being rendered unconscious by the lack of oxygen or trauma from hitting a part of the plane then hit the ground, OR you are conscious and screaming until you hit the ground. Bottom line, gravity wins!
You get blown out.
I used to design software for aircraft pressurization systems, so have come across a lot of information about decompression effects et al.
I was told that wind forces during a fall tend to remove clothing - so that bodies are invariably found in various stages of undress - some completely naked. The victims are unconscious, so take no action to prevent it.
I always thought that was bizarre (which is probably why it has stuck in my memory). Can you confirm or deny this?
A pilot was sucked out the cockpit when the windshield blew out. Only his legs remained inside. How about studying real examples for data instead of speculating what might happen.
http://www.businessinsider.com/jet-pilot-sucked-out-2011-4
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/04/what-to-do-when-your-pilot-gets-sucked-out-the-plane-window/236860/
The truth shall set you free!
Learn English before you post. You may have valid arguments, but your prose is crap and hard to parse.
What happened to the pilot and what the Mythbusters did are two completely different things. By the way, don't you remember when one of the front windows of the plane they were using blew out and sucked everything from the cockpit, including seat cushions, out the window? But that wasn't their test, their test was if a bullet hole would cause catastrophic failure, which it didn't.
Do you know how silly that is? I guess they should next test if humans can fly since Super Man can do it.... but somehow they need to find a real superhuman first. What could would it be for a fantasy shark do fantasy damage? Their test was if a great white could actually do that type of damage. In order to test something worthwhile, they tried to make the scenario as realistic as they could.
I'm not going to say Mythbusters does everything right all the time. But your are trying to compare apples to oranges with your examples.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Just got home from the airport and I confess I am one of those peeps who is afraid of flying, so you can imagine the joy when I get placed next to the emergency exit and am asked if I am willing to be in charge of opening the emergency exit IFF their is no danger (fire, water etc?). BLEH to flying!
The front window of a plane is very large, and I don't really think getting "blown out" (partially) of a broken front window really constitutes getting sucked out either since the cause is the force of air coming at you (due to your air speed) and not the force of air rushing out (due to pressure change).
There were a few people who left their planes at high altitude (10,000 feet or higher) in World War II and survived without a chute. If I remember correctly, they all landed in deep forests with thick underbrush and deep snow, each of which slowed them, and they also had major injuries, and so needed prompt medical attention. And, it was very rare.
So, your odds are probably something like 1:1000 to 1:10,000 or so over land; not good, but also not zero.
Also, to fall from 30,000 to 10,000 feet (10 km to 3 km) would take about 40-60 seconds (drag is low up there). You are not going to either asphyxiate or freeze to death in that short a time.
You really wondered about this? Maybe you also wonder what would happen if you put a loaded gun to your head and pulled the trigger.
What Happens If You Get Sucked Out of a Plane?
You die, unless you are Vesna Vulovi
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
I watched that episode also and like you stated they where basically trying to prove a bullet wouldn't cause an explosive decompression/window blow out. - which is what you stated in your first paragraph. But then you on to rant about them not been realistic about people been sucked out of a plane, but that isn't what they where trying to prove/bust.
There is an absolute zero to pressure that you can't go below. Atmospheric pressure (that you and I live in) is around 14 PSI absolute. Additionally, fast relative fluid motion doesn't "create a sucking force", it drops pressure creating a pressure gradient. This pressure drop is still limited to the same zero absolute pressure. Thus, the maximum pressure difference you could ever experience in a plane (or even in a spacecraft) is the absolute pressure the cabin is held at, which would typically be ~14 PSI.
It's unfortunate that the mod type showing on this comment is 'Flamebait' rather than 'Insightful'. Mythbusters does a very good job of demonstrating that a 'myth' can be proven or disproved within a very specific set of circumstances on the one trial that they choose to represent their 'proof', but it only resembles science on an incredibly superficial level.
The best example I've seen in the last while (although I rarely watch the show) was trying to prove that an object launched backward off a moving vehicle, at the speed of the vehicle, will fall straight down. They designed a launcher that could propel a bowling ball at a consistent speed, then drove the vehicle at that speed and started their trials. They showed four failed trials before they finally achieved one where the ball fell straight down. Their conclusion was that they proved that an object will fall straight down when launched at the speed of the vehicle--despite four of the five trials they showed (and who knows how many others that were cut) disproving their intended result. They didn't even mention the concept of wake turbulence affecting the ball's path.
On the other hand, I wonder how much corporate-funded science resembles Mythbusters (in this respect) more than it resembles legitimate science.
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
You gotta love these "real life gore (c)" speculative sensationalistic "news".
Life != Holywood
things happen differently in life, people die some other ways, not holywood spectaculars, most of the time discretly, and THEY NEVER COME BACK; so grow up
Don't think that's a concern. You are falling at 32 feet per second, per second. You would be out of the death zone in under a minute. I have been in 32 below zero in a tee shirt, shorts and slippers (hawaiian usage) to go start my truck. That took about a minute. I have also jumped from a plane at 17,000 feet even with a relativity low opening of 5,000 feet your feel falling for a pretty short amount of time. A few years ago I was training with some PJ's and when they jump squares that ambiant air temp up-off for jumps is -40 (in gear for combat rescue ops). -40; no thank you! but the question at hand... most likely you die when you hit the grond, but you might not. point being. I don't think you spend enough time above 20,000 feet.
They come in the dark, only in the darkest.
Moving quickly relative to still air would result in there being a pressure DROP near you, not a rise. Falling fast would actually cause your body to experience a lower pressure than the static pressure of the still air around you, quite the opposite of what you are surmising here.
Wow did you cut from casting calls or something?? Just a little bitter there.
It's a show, and an entertaining one at that. Nothing more. Calm down and step away from the keyboard.
If you fall from 30,000 feet, ignoring air resistance, you'd hit the ground in 43 seconds. I'm guessing air resistance would make that closer to 75 seconds. Not what I'd call "long dead before you hit the ground" as the summary suggests.
Unfortunately I don't have a reference for this, but I believe it's true, and I thought it was interesting: Although they have been deployed on occasion, passenger cabin oxygen masks have never in the history of commercial flight been a factor in human survival.
Can you link to this incident? Because if you can't, I'll have to consider it an urban legend; after all, the logical thing to do in that case is to drop the altitude to a kilometer or so, and drop airspeed while you're at it.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I always thought that seen with Stewey in "Freaked" was pretty accurate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zcDH5PZ9gQ
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Thought it was a "Mile High Club" thingy. dang it.
She remained in the plane, pinned down by a catering trolley - effectively a seat belt.
Also, she was found with a colleague's body on top of her (effectively an air-bag cushion).
Also, the part of the plane she was in crashed into trees on its way down - cushioning the fall.
Also, she was found by a trained medic.
Also, according to her statements she apparently always had rather low blood pressure - which prevented her from bleeding out until she was found.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I jump out of planes, voluntarily, at 20,000 feet and I like it. Assuming that I survived the initial exit through a jagged metal hole in a passenger jet with a breath of air at 30,000 feet, I'd be fully conscious all the way down. I would survive the cold for the little more than 70 seconds that it'd take to fall from 30,000 feet to 20,000 feet and if I went head down, I'd cover that distance in about 30 seconds. For jumping for fun without oxygen (well, breathing oxygen until the jump, but jumping out without any auxiliary oxygen) the record is 41,000 feet. At least the experts are using secure computers that aren't connected to any outside networks.
MythBusters is, first and foremost, a comedy show. Yes, sometimes they do get the science correct, other times the experiement parameters are outside of the expected behavior to be tested.
Maybe they should have actually consulted military aviation physiologists who actually know about this subject. Sure it's cold and sure there isn't much oxygen but you wouldn't be there very long, (as others have pointed out) and you certainly wouldn't die in seconds. You carry enough oxygen in your bloodstream to keep you alive long enough to free-fall to lower altitude. I personally know several guys who have ejected from military aircraft around 30K feet and they lived. Sure they had supplemental oxygen and free-fell until ~18K, but one of them prematurely initiated seat-man separation at about 25K, took his mask off and was also fine (albeit a bit chilly). I personally have been exposed to explosive decompression ~25K with no ill effects.
In all likelihood, if you survived the egress through a jagged hole and subsequent wind blast/flail injury, you would probably be alive when you hit the ground.
Once heard a story of two guys flying a King Air at about 30,000 feet and a windshield failed. As per training they donned their oxygen masks but quickly realized someone had neglected to refill the bottle. They passed out. Minutes later the co-pilot wakes up to see the plane is in a nearly vertical dive and quickly pulls up as hard as he can. Given that he was barely conscious to begin with, the excessive G-load caused him to black out once again. Soon after, the pilot wakes up and lands the plane at the nearest airport. They pull up to the FBO and, without looking back at the aircraft, request a car and drive to the nearest bar. The NTSB recorded that nearly half the horizontal stabilizer was torn off and the wings had nearly 10 degrees more upwards bend than they should. Anyway, the rapid decompression really didn't have any affect on the guys, and I would guess a King Air at cruise power can fall as quickly (if not faster) than a human, and obviously they were not dead. There was an incident a while ago about a Lear Jet that had a window blow out and for some reason the pilots weren't able to get their masks on in time...the auto-pilot kept the plane at about 35,000 feet like it was told and those guys never stood a chance...it just kept flying out into the Pacific until it ran out of fuel. So if you're falling, you're quickly going to get back in to a zone where you can breathe and be perfectly conscious. Even if it's quite cold you're not going to die from decompression. It's only deadly if you Stay up there.
They were blown out.
There was a famous plane accident where the pilot got nearly sucked out of the window after his wind shield "crashed".
He survived the whole indient (his body outside and only his legs inside, he was helt partly by belts and partly by two flight stewards).
Because his body blocked the engine or flap controls (don' remember which), they could not adjust altitude. The pilot was "outside" of the plane for like 5 mins or longer, his body temperature was below 30Â centigrade (considering he basically was naked as the wind ripped him off his clothes).
angel'o'sphere
P.S. Bottom line: common sense should make clear you don't die necessarily in 5 mins if you only lack oxygen ... as long as you still can breath
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
If I recall correctly from seeing a programme on this she was sitting in a seat beside the toilet and it took the brunt of the fall being smashed to bits and she was protected by this.
I've greatly increased my girth and weight to reduce the chance of such happening.
Table-ized A.I.
On the outside? Do you mean the ones on the inside?
Some years ago there was a design cock-up on the DC-10 cargo door where the low-paid, rushed, cargo loader could slam the handle real hard and have the closed-indicator bend and show Closed, even if the door pins weren't locked.
Airliner blew out the cargo door at altitude and the passenger floor collapsed, taking out all the controls to the tail. Everyone got a long, unrecoverable dive into the ground. Very nasty.*
According to wiki, airliners with outward-opening doors have since gotten internal blowout panels to equalize the pressure between voids in the event of door failure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Airlines_Flight_981
Airliners with inside-opening doors may not have these -- skin and window failure was not part of this regulation.
*[Some passengers got sucked out including their seats. When I was training to be a mechanic we were show graphic aftermath footage of this disaster to emphasize responsibility. Honestly, I wasn't nervous about flying before getting my ticket -- now I know how very much has to be done exactly right, and I try not to think of it when I fly.]
That's only true if you turned your head sideways. if you are facing down, your face will be at the stagnation pressure which is marginally above ambient due to your velocity as you fall. Either way, it wouldn't be a large enough pressure differential to do much of anything. You'd still be able to breathe, it may just take a bit more effort.
Knowledge Brings Fear
been there done that. we have had a few cases of rapid decompression even to the point one aircraft lost its upper half and only 1 fatalty from that. so the chances of you getting sucked out even in a rapid decomprssion is almost 0. infact myth busters tryed to remake it and failed they wound up blowing up half the aircraft to get even close. also politas are trained to dive to a safe altude in such cases so the cold and lack of air does not kill everyone. decmountry of such a event. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZZHCm59gy4
It's unfortunate that the mod type showing on this comment is 'Flamebait' rather than 'Insightful'. Mythbusters does a very good job of demonstrating that a 'myth' can be proven or disproved within a very specific set of circumstances on the one trial that they choose to represent their 'proof', but it only resembles science on an incredibly superficial level.
"Ideas are tested by experiment". That is the core of science. Everything else is bookkeeping.
- Zombie Feynman
They designed a launcher that could propel a bowling ball at a consistent speed, then drove the vehicle at that speed and started their trials. They showed four failed trials before they finally achieved one where the ball fell straight down. Their conclusion was that they proved that an object will fall straight down when launched at the speed of the vehicle--despite four of the five trials they showed (and who knows how many others that were cut) disproving their intended result. They didn't even mention the concept of wake turbulence affecting the ball's path.
And scientists never have failed trials, right? In science, the results are always consistent, and 100% accurate!
Please. There's nothing wrong with dismissing failed trials, as long as you can provide a valid justification for doing so. In their particular case, given the setup they were working with, it would be ludicrous to expect perfect results right from the start. This is like looking at the problems with the LHC and saying "well, it didn't work right the first time, so let's just toss the whole thing out and start over". It's silly.
As for wake turbulence ... while it certainly would be a factor to consider if you cared about minute variations in the trajectory of the ball, it was quite obvious that the experiment wasn't designed to test for that kind of detail. They weren't doing ground breaking research or testing aerodynamic forces - they were answering a simple question which anyone who has a passing familiarity with Newtonian physics would have immediately known the answer to. You need to consider the scope of the experiment before you start formulating objections, or you end up sounding like a complete pedant. It's as if they were testing the claim that a feather and a bowling ball will fall at the same rate in a vacuum, and you jumped on them for not showing the picosecond difference in fall times caused by the gravitational force exerted by the bowling ball on the earth.
I saw that episode too. They were checking out explosive decompression and people being sucked out small holes. There was a case of a 747 flying over the Pacific some years back. It lost a door at altitude an the people sitting next to the opening got pulled out. I think there were at least 6. Last I read, they were figuring at least 2 went through the engine. They may have been pulled out more from venturi affect than de-compression.
I think GP is saying Mythbusters can be misleading, and the use of the conclusions from Mythbusters' experiments isn't always appropriate.
Sure, they tested it with a Great White, but by mentioning Jaws, they imply that it has something to do with the movie. Unfortunately, their test doesn't prove or disprove the movie's plausibility, as the shark they used wasn't the size of the one supposed in Jaws. So it's a bit disingenuous to mention the movie if the situation of the movie wasn't actually tested.
The bullet hole experiment is cited as a decompression myth, but it is inappropriate. The bullet hole experiment has nothing to do with decompression, but to do with a bullet hole on a plane, i.e. a bullet hole doesn't turn into a gaping hole. But it's often (wrongly) interpreted as debunking the decompression myth.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
The simple fact is that Myth Busters is a great example of bad science where they ignore recorded evidence and then twist the experiment until it doesn't resemble to claim at all.
Pirate episode. Mythbusters says massive oak splinters are nothing to worry about. Naval officers and men from a time when men were iron and ships were wood say otherwise.
I know who I'm trusting, and it isn't two special effects bozos with a tiny field gun.
what if you AND A BROKEN CRATE FULL OF SNAKES get sucked out of a plane?
This is ridiculous. I recall this philosophy exercise from long ago where there are three guys in a desert and they're not getting along well. One night one guy poisons the canteen of the principal SOB, but later the other sneaks up and drills a hole in it. Next day, the principal SOB dies of thirst. We have the body. What killed him?
It's like doing forensics on the world domino record when there are many strands of falling dominoes all racing toward the same outcome. I was once told by a volunteer paramedic and amateur diver that something like 30% of people resuscitated from drowning after taking lake or sea water into the lungs later die of pulmonary complications. He also told me that when you're the lifeguard on duty at a (tower) diving accident, two tablespoons of blood on the surface of the swimming pool looks a lot like two litres. He's a bit of a student of the contours of peril (and apparent peril) as well as a movie buff.
He would agree with me that if you need a coroner to determine what kills Aguirre in "Aguirre, the Wrath of God", you're doing it wrong.
Here's an informative statistic: 25% of the people shipped to Siberia died of blood poisoning. But that contradicts the official story that 100% of the fatalities in Siberia were from refusing to work hard enough. I'm sure an autopsy would clear this right up.
Thats what they said would happen if your parachute doesn't open. You would pass out from shock...think you would see the ground coming up slowly at first than very fast than...
Well I have respect for “scientists” which do not know the difference between blown ans sucked and therefore I did not consider TFA worthy of my attention.
The cold would probably kill you. But the "researchers" seem to have neglected the fact that you'll be moving at around 500mph, slowing to around 120mph terminal velocity. So you wouldn't lack for air pressure and oxygen, I think, if only you could stay conscious enough to use your hands to regulate the pressure hitting your mouth and nose. Unfortunately, you'd need to do that for around 3 minutes in order to die by hitting the ground, and your lungs would probably freeze well before that.
Still, I think if I was on a plane spiraling down out of control, and had the opportunity, I'd rather bail out than wait to hit the ground. When a plane hits the ground, it appears to turn into a meat grinder of flying shredded metal. At least if I bailed out, they'd be more likely to find my body mostly in one place.
I apologize for not reading all the comments before making my own. But all I've read so far totally miss the main issue with surviving being sucked out of a jet aircraft. The 500 mile per hour wind blast would blow the flesh right off your bones, and render you to a pink mist within a fraction of a second. The temperature and air pressure are hardly relevant to whether one can survive such an event. Fighter pilots who eject from jet aircraft at speeds above even 200 mph would not survive in most cases.
Synchronizing stop lights across the US = one less nuclear power plant
i think the next article should be "what happens when you get thrown from a car moving at highway speeds."
sheesh people, get your priorities straight: getting sucked out of a plane is a freak accident. people getting ejected from cars happens every day.
Lockerbie. Aircraft broke up in mid air but the passengers and crew were alive on the way down, and some even survived on the ground for a while. In particular the cockpit section was said to have moaning coming from it in the immediate aftermath.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
But that clearly wouldn't be of use to person of your... qualities.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
If your airplane cabin developed a hole and depressurized, wouldn't you be blown out, rather than sucked out?
You die. DUH!
Another incident involved a pilot being SUCKED out through the window in front of him
If you're going to call for rigorous scientific accuracy, you might want to think about your use of the word sucked there.
It's official. Most of you are morons.