Skydiving Accident Leaves Security Guru Cedric 'Sid' Blancher Dead At 37

An anonymous reader points out The Register's report that Wi-Fi security expert Cédric 'Sid' Blancher has died as the result of a skydiving accident. "Among other things, the 37-year-old Blancher was a sought-after speaker on WiFi security, and in 2005 published a Python-based WiFi traffic injection tool called Wifitap. In 2006, while working for the EADS Corporate Research centre, he also put together a paper on how to exploit Skype to act as a botnet." Some of Blancher's skydiving videos are posted to Vimeo; clearly, it's something he was passionate about.

Comments

Security 101

[Anonymous Coward]

Secure your common sense. Don't skydive.

Re: Security 101

[Anonymous Coward]

How many people die while skydiving compared to driving?

Re: Security 101

[WWJohnBrowningDo]

Skydiving is 7 micromorts per jump. That's equivalent to travlling 1600 miles by car.

Source

Re: Security 101

[rubycodez]

the correct question would be how many people die while skydiving compared to those who jump out of their vehicle at 120 MPH?

Re: Security 101

[greenbird]

Skydiving is 7 micromorts per jump. That's equivalent to travlling 1600 miles by car.

That's really a distortion of how dangerous skydiving is. The vast majority of skydiving deaths aren't really accidents but rather someone doing something stupid under a perfectly good canopy. If you don't do hook turns on a 3:1 loaded canopy you're much less likely to get killed.

Hmmm...thinking about I guess you can say the same thing about driving also. With the caveat that a collision driving is much more likely to gather in someone not doing something stupid than in skydiving.

Re: Security 101

[Anonymous Coward]

They typically don't die while skydiving. It's right after they stop skydiving.

Re: Security 101

[Creepy]

While that may be a useful measurement for scientists, it isn't a very useful measurement for humans - a better one is about 1 in 142000 jumps (2010 numbers).

This is probably why one of my life insurance specifically prohibits skydiving and hang gliding (my work one has no prohibitions, but pays less money). It also prohibits SCUBA diving over (under?) 150ft, but I only recreational dive (less than 110ft).

Re: Security 101

[Jeremi]

That's really a distortion of how dangerous skydiving is. The vast majority of skydiving deaths aren't really accidents but rather someone doing something stupid under a perfectly good canopy.

I don't see the distortion -- deaths caused by stupidity are just a real as any other kind of death. In that case, the risk is that you'll make a bad decision, rather than a risk of equipment failure, but it's still a risk.

Re: Security 101

[Anonymous Coward]

So accidents are only things that can't be forseen with enough knowledge?

So basically, there are absolutely no accidents. Hindenburg, Titanic, etc... all not accidents. Pretty much everything you do is some level of stupid.

Re: Security 101

[viperidaenz]

If you don't do something stupid, like drive while tired or intoxicated, your chances of a car crash a lowered too.
What's your point?

Re: Security 101

[viperidaenz]

Perhaps they should call it "Ground Splatting" instead.

Re:Security 101

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been a skydiving instructor for 17 years. No accidents involving me or anyone under me.

Life without a little danger isn't a life at all.

Re: Security 101

[DexterIsADog]

Your insurance probably doesn't *forbid* you to skydive, do deep SCUBA dives, or ride sports motorcycles, it just says if you die while doing one of those things they won't pay, right?

Like my father said, while I was in college - if I go skydiving, I'm risking his investment, and he'd cut me off from the portion I was borrowing from him. He was an engineer, designing systems for the nuclear missile throwing subs, with a deeply ingrained habit of weighing cost/benefit.

Re: Security 101

[viperidaenz]

7 micromorts = 7/1000000 change of mortality = 1 in 142,857.

Same number, different unit.

Re: Security 101

[Anonymous Coward]

So what, are you saying you're risking deciding to steer into a telephone pole on the morning commute, just because you're driving? Because I don't see you making a logical connection.

He pointed out, correctly, that the overwhelming majority of skydiving deaths come from things that are either illegal (base jumping) or ill-advised (hook turns, wing suits, swooping).

People like you, yes, you--are driving the distortion.

Re: Security 101

[Anonymous Coward]

How will you justify that comment when it's no longer true.

Re: Security 101

[Lehk228]

indeed, most car accidents are caused by one or more stupid actions

Re: Security 101

[AK Marc]

Given you do the action as safely as possible, what is your chance of dying? That's the inherent risk. The chance that you'll be driving as safely as possible for the time and conditions, and a tire from a crash on the other side of the road strikes you without any ability to react. Not the chance that you'll "accidentally" accelerate into a wall, with a suicide note at home and a recent life insurance policy taken out (that won't pay anyway).

I want to know how much risk the activity has, and how much risk I have when when doing it as a novice or emotional being. They are separate issues, and yes, they do matter.

Re: Security 101

[AK Marc]

Correct. 99% (or more) crashes are preventable. The Hindenburg isn't necessarily "preventable". The cause was never definitively proven, and even if hydrogen made the crash worse, it may not have been related to the cause.

Titanic was a negligent act, not an "accident". "Accident" implies unforseeable. A good watch, quick reactions, and the Titanic wouldn't have sunk.

Re: Security 101

[ihtoit]

skydiving isn't dangerous at all, especially compared with some other pastimes such as fishing - people die as a result of falling in ponds, lakes and rivers or getting washed out to sea every day, belting themselves in the head with lead weights on a bad cast (or someone else's bad cast), or from exposure. There is practically NO safety equipment used in fishing. Skydiving? You got five point chute restraints, quadruple-checking open chutes, packing your own pack, cinching your own belts, cinching your buddy's belts, him cinching your belts, checking and rechecking. At any point, damaged gear is extremely likely to be spotted. In ten years I can think of maybe five incidents where equipment failure has resulted in the death of a skydiver, and still less than a dozen where someone doing something amazingly stupid like releasing the canopy early (as you'd have a QR buckle in a HALO water landing setup) has met similar results. Fishing? Doesn't even need for equipment to fail.

Re: Security 101

[Anonymous Coward]

If I die on my next jump, it was worth it.

Re: Security 101

[ihtoit]

Hindenberg: avoidable. Hydrogen filled envelope?? Even back then they knew the stuff was explosively flammable (yet they still had a smoking room in the gondola), my thinking is that the grounding cable wasn't properly secured. Spark. Bang. Oh, the humanity!
Titanic: avoidable. Though nobody can say for certain, I don't think the lookout was paying full attention to his duty.

Next?

Re: Security 101

[c0lo]

Skydiving is 7 micromorts per jump. That's equivalent to travlling 1600 miles by car.

Source

Or:
* (at an age of 37) twice as risky as getting out of bed in any given morning;
* 7 times less risky than giving birth in Sweden or 24 times less risky than giving birth in USA

(umm... looking at the numbers above and speaking for myself, I'd choose skydiving over giving birth at any time... of course, being a male does bear a trace of influence on the decision...)

Re: Security 101

[Anonymous Coward]

Titanic: Over-confident owner and captain forgoing safety while attempting to break speed record for personal aggrandizement.

Re: Security 101

[Anonymous Coward]

My underpants would have disagreed after my first jump... blue sky, sid...

Re: Security 101

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think it's a distortion. People may think they won't do stupid things but enough do to produce the resulting statistics.

However skydiving might be a better way of improving the gene pool than driving is[1], but if group skydiving is common enough then I doubt it is better for that than driving - since colliding skydivers often die.

[1] Which itself is better than flying in a passenger plane where your survival has little to do with your genetic fitness.

Re: Security 101

[virtualXTC]

References? I find it hard to believe as I hear about skydiving accidents far more than fishing but far more people fish than skydive. How many micromorts is fishing? Also a pond vs the ocean is going to make a huge difference.

Re: Security 101

[skegg]

Also: driving is usually necessary, skydiving rarely is.

Re: Security 101

[greenbird]

the risk is that you'll make a bad decision

There is a huge difference between making a bad decision and something like doing hook turns with a high loaded canopy. To put it in terms you might be able to better relate to it's like the difference between driving a normal car reasonable close to the speed limit and riding 100 mph doing wheelies splitting lanes on a rice rocket. Surely you'll agree actions like that greatly increase your chance of death.

The thing with skydiving is a much higher percentage of the people are the ones riding 100 mph doing wheelies splitting lanes. This greatly distorts the statistical calculations of the risk of death for the guy that's just out there doing speed stars and landing like a sane person.

Re: Security 101

[ihtoit]

"Fatal fishing accidents" on Google returns 18 million hits. Start there.

Re: Security 101

[ihtoit]

"fatal fishing accidents" on google returns 18,000,000 hits. Good place for you to start...

Re: Security 101

[ihtoit]

yeah, that might have had a lot to do with the aftermath...

"Oh noes, duh eisberg maked hole! We iz zinkin!"

Re: Security 101

[Anonymous Coward]

" from things that are either illegal (base jumping)"

WHOA! - B.A.S.E. jumping is NOT illegal - not everywhere, at least. As a matter of fact, in Twin Falls, Idaho, they let you jump off one of their bridges (Perrine bridge, over the Snake river) pretty much any time you want to. It's a big draw to their city.

Re: Security 101

[Anonymous Coward]

Well unfortunately there are absolutely no metrics for that, just as there are absolutely no metrics for anything involving "people behaving as safely as possible" even if that weren't a completely subjective judgement in the first place. Honestly, if you get in a car when there's snow on the roads you're already taking more of an inherent risk than if the roads are clean and dry, how do we factor that into our calculation?

Re: Security 101

[Maxo-Texas]

I read that the rate of serious skydiving accidents (often fatal but not always) was 1:5000 jumps for experienced skydivers. Some of them are probably less careful than others.

But that's still pretty high. About the same as the broken leg/blow acl for skiers (about 1:6000).

Less people sky dive. Basically every skiing day- multiple people come down on stretchers with ruined knees and legs. You can mitigate that- but a friend had her knee blown when a reckless hot shot blindsided her.

Of course--- I'd consider just about the safest thing you could do to be exiting a toll booth stop and someone died here last friday. The dump truck to their left took a 90 degree right turn, smashed them into the barricade and their gas tank exploded. That set off the dump truck fuel which burned for hours. They are speculating the dump truck driver had a heart attack as he exited the toll booth.

So if your number is up...

Re: Security 101

[Anonymous Coward]

Statistics are statistics. You don't buy a rice rocket to drive 65mph in the slow lane. But even trying to pretend skydiving is as safe as driving for those who "try" not to take any chances is ludicrous...

And I didn't see details, but many injuries/deaths on low turns (the article didn't say "hook turn", did it?) *are* accidental after the jumper makes a miscalculation trying to avoid an obstacle, another jumper, or just adjust too late for their "perfect landing"...

Re: Security 101

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see the distortion -- deaths caused by stupidity are just a real as any other kind of death. In that case, the risk is that you'll make a bad decision, rather than a risk of equipment failure, but it's still a risk.

The difference is that you can decide to not be reckless like this guy was. Equipment failure, freak accidents, etc are all out of your control. But not doing stupid shit and taking big risks is completely in your control.

Re: Security 101

[Opportunist]

I think the point is that it applies to both, skydiving and driving a car: If you're acting responsibly and sensibly, the chance of fucking up is minimal and limited to accidents beyond your control.

Re:Security 101

[Opportunist]

That's like a doctor saying that none of his patients can complain about his treatment.

Dead men don't talk.

Re: Security 101

[gl4ss]

it's sensible to jump from an airplane?

the point was that accidents and fucking up are counted into the morts, traffic suicides probably as well. but you're not deciding to fuck up. if you have an accident that has you fucking up your driving due to factor xyz and ending with you on the telephone pole.. it's not that likely that you decided to do it.

anyhow - driving where? everytime I ride as passenger here in Thailand I feel like skyjumping levels of risk :D and the local stats back that up. were I the one in control of the bike I would feel like skyjumping with a parachute that I put into the bag(I have no fucking idea how to bag a chute).

videoing skyjumping might have an increased risk profile though? doing it as a showoff I mean.

Re: Security 101

[Yoda222]

Or: * (at an age of 37) twice as risky as getting out of bed in any given morning;

That's why I wake up in the afternoon.

Re: Security 101

[WWJohnBrowningDo]

He pointed out, correctly, that the overwhelming majority of traffic accient deaths come from things that are either illegal (impaired driving, speeding) or ill-advised (distracted driving).

FTFY.

The Pareto principle applies to both driving and skydiving (and pretty much everything else).

Re: Security 101

[findoutmoretoday]

The Titanic a speed record? There were three of them, Olympic, Titanic, Gigantic-Britanic because they could not make it in one week. As opposed to the Mauretania, Lusitania

Re: Security 101

[kimhanse]

How will you justify that comment when it's no longer true.

He won't have to when he is dead.

Re: Security 101

[GameboyRMH]

People doing dumb things always skew the average downwards, the less idiotproof the activity the greater the skew. The stats on riding a motorcycle suffer heavily from this effect.

Re: Security 101

[Anonymous Coward]

2. Was Titanic trying to set an Atlantic crossing speed record and is this why she was going so fast when she hit the iceberg.

Hundreds of ships prior to Titanic have hit icebergs and sank that were not trying to set crossing speed records. This statement seems to be popular in the thinking of "Let's blame White Star Line Chairman Bruce Ismay because he survived the Titanic disaster." A line of thought that exists as much today as it did in 1912. The only difference is media influence on the public in 1912, versus present day's influence stemming from one Academy Award winning fictitious movie. Inadequate research and making conclusions from a single source is the exact reason why so many people think Jack and Rose were real passengers aboard Titanic and wonder why their names don't appear on the passenger lists..

The Blue Ribband holder of 1912 (the Mauritania) was quite safe from Titanic or any other White Star Line vessel from taking it away. In 1912, the White Star Line had no interest in setting crossing records. Promptness was indeed important, but more emphasis was placed on comfort, opulence and luxury. The transport of mail, cargo and immigrant traffic was bringing in steady business, but White Star wanted popularity and repeat business, which they did manage to achieve quite successfully.

Another Titanic related website author states that he believes that Captain Smith had in fact been influenced by Bruce Ismay to "speed up" not necessarily in order for Titanic set a crossing record, but to beat the Olympic's crossing record. (Titanic's sister ship) He states that it would have made sense to want to impress the public and show that White Star was producing new technologically advanced ships that could even out perform the best of their current fleet.

This could be quite true, but the question here is did Ismay truly "order" Captain Smith to do this, and would an experienced shipmaster like Edward Smith deliberately put his ship in harm's way by speeding through an ice field know to contain icebergs. The officers on the bridge were quite aware of the fact that they would coming up on ice. The topic was even discussed between Sixth Officer Moody and Second Officer Lightoller around 8:30 pm, three hours before the impact. Captain Smith was no stranger to icebergs. In 1902, he swung the Majestic almost completely around sideways to avoid hitting a berg.

In his book, "The Night Lives On," Walter Lord writes: "Captain Smith was aware of the ice ahead, he didn't slow down because he was sure that on this brilliantly clear night any iceberg could be spotted in time to avoid it. In reaching that decision, Smith did not feel that he was doing anything rash. He was following the practice of all captains on the Atlantic run."

At the US Inquiry following the disaster, two of Captain Smith's peers, (British liner captains from other shipping company's) testified that the speed Smith used in the ice field was the practice of the day considering the weather conditions at the time the speed was determined. The unwritten motto among captains was "Put the danger behind you as quickly as possible." That did not mean of course that they would run flank speed though an area know to contain hazards, it simply meant adjust your speed accordingly through your own prudence and common sense.

Titanic's surviving officers testified (and wrote in later memoirs) that they were not aware of any orders or influence to run Titanic at unsafe speeds at any time. The order to light additional boilers on Sunday morning (April 14) was standard for any new ship on it's maiden voyage during the "breaking in" period of new engines. If Ismay and Smith had collaborated to "beat Olympic's crossing time," slowing down to a safer speed on Sunday night through the ice field would not have hurt that possibility. They still had three additional days of good weather to "crank it up" and accomplish the mission if that were truly their intent.

Walter Lord blamed the Titanic disaster on "miscalculation."

Re: Security 101

[tibit]

That's not investment unless he'd expect you to support him financially after you graduate.

Re: Security 101

[mspohr]

I think I read somewhere (citation needed) that some sports such as hang gliding and sky diving have a "negative learning curve" where people take more risks and they become more dangerous over time.
That could be what happened here.

Re: Security 101

[mspohr]

But... how many of these were fatal to the fish vs fatal to the fisherman?

Re:Security 101

[Anonymous Coward]

Life without a little danger isn't a life at all.

I strongly disagree.

Re: Security 101

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess Cedric won't be entertaining us anymore.

What's that? Oh, wrong Cedric?

Bummer.

Re: Security 101

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't believe that a "low turn" maneuver is equivalent to "skydiving" in general.

Re: Security 101

[DexterIsADog]

Really? You think investments have to pay off financially or with remuneration in material goods?

My wife and I invested in several kids in our city who were doing well in school, but unlikely to make it to college, by mentoring them, helping them get accepted to good schools (including taking them on multi-city tours of campuses), and funding accounts for last-dollar expenses.

Our investment paid off handsomely; those kids are very productive members of society, and my wife and I are better people.

Maybe you should rethink your investment strategy. :-)

Re: Security 101

[airdweller]

"He was an engineer, designing systems for the nuclear missile throwing subs, with a deeply ingrained habit of weighing cost/benefit."
Trebuchets on subs? Are you sure it's ok to talk about state secrets?

Re: Security 101

[tibit]

So, obviously if one of them dies in a random accident, you've lost your investment, right? That's why one can't use a word investment here. It simply doesn't work, unless you're literally putting a dollar value on human life, happiness and whatnot. Not every cool thing you do is an investment, nor can it be thought of as being one, even if it costs you real money.

Going back to your dad: to support his position, one'd need to support a zero-sum stance where one says "either I support your low-risk lifestyle in college, or I get to pay some other kid, or maybe even myself". I think that's going full-retard.

Re:Security 101

[operagost]

Chance of dying in a car accident, per 10,000 miles: 1 in 6,000.

Chance of dying in a jump: 1 in 1,000,000.

Source: http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/skydiving8.htm

Re: Security 101

[Beardo the Bearded]

It's the "I know what I'm doing" area. Once you get to about 100 jumps, 100 dives, then you think you're getting the hang of it and you know what the risks are and that you can mitigate them.

If you live through that 100-200 Dead Man's Area, then you'll realize that you have no idea what's going on and reign it in effectively.

Re: Security 101

[Anonymous Coward]

Skydiving is 7 micromorts per jump. That's equivalent to travlling 1600 miles by car.

The difference is that most car driving is functional, it serves the purpose of getting people and goods from A to B. If you chose not to drive that car, you'd have to find an alternative method of transportation (that possibly could end up having more micromorts than skydiving if everyone decided to choose that alternative). Skydiving on the other hand is largely recreational, you could be posting on slashdot instead.

Re: Security 101

[greenbird]

It's the "I know what I'm doing" area. Once you get to about 100 jumps, 100 dives, then you think you're getting the hang of it and you know what the risks are and that you can mitigate them.

That combined with skydiving tends to attract a rather risk craving type of crowd. I watched a guy do a hook turn on a tiny canopy and came out where he had to pull his legs up and his ass was less than a foot above the ground as he skimmed by at what had to be a good 40 mph.

He grounded himself for 2 weeks. He had over 1000 jumps.

Re: Security 101

[greenbird]

Statistics are statistics.

They sure are. The more churches there are per square mile the more murders there are per square mile.

They just don't always say what people represent them to say.

Re: Security 101

[Hognoxious]

It is if he was expecting not to have to spend his twilight years looking after a drooling raspberry.

Re: Security 101

[DexterIsADog]

You're way off the reservation. Your accident scenario is just ridiculous. Claiming a zero-sum stance with my father is just beyond weird.

I put forward resources; money, time, thought. I benefited from what I learned, and the world is a slightly better place. If you can't conceive that's an investment, I think you've missed the point of being human. But hey, if that floats your boat, enjoy.

Re: Security 101

[DexterIsADog]

I'm pretty sure the missiles are ejected from the sub before the engine fires, so that term is appropriate, in addition to the common usage of "throwing" to refer to launching missiles.

Or were you just plain trolling?

Re: Security 101

[EngnrFrmrlyKnownAsAC]

I'm not sure micromorts scale linearly like you've done here. But if so, you should be fair about it: 7 micromorts is equivalent to drinking 3.5L of wine.

Re: Security 101

[peawormsworth]

Skydiving is 7 micromorts per jump. That's equivalent to travlling 1600 miles by car.

Source

For perspective, the average US driver travels 16,500 miles per year. So if you jump from a plane 10 times a year, you are just as likely to die in your car then by falling from the sky. And if you only jump a couple of times in your life, then the risk is far less then the average traveller in a vehicle.

So anyone who claims the reason they do not skydive because of the danger, needs to admit to themselves that it is actually because they are scared.

Re: Security 101

[virtualXTC]

Well, extrapolating on your logic: "fatal car accidents" returns 65,200,000 hits, and since sky diving is more dangerous (7 micromorts per jump) than driving a car (1 micromort per 230 miles driven), and "fatal skydiving accidents"only returns 108,000 hits one might conclude the less hits returned the more dangerous the activity, and thus, fishing is safer than skydiving.

Re: Security 101

[ihtoit]

ok. HOW do you come to that conclusion??

Re: Security 101

[Anonymous Coward]

Swoopers should remember there can be worse consequences than death in these accidents. Eg brain damage or paralysed so badly you can't even breath!! Is it really worth the risk of that?

Guru at 37?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think so. I won't contest his experience, but "guru" status doesn't happen that quickly. We are too ageist in this society.

Re:Guru at 37?

[SternisheFan]

http://blip.tv/pauldotcom/cedric-blancher-on-wifi-security-6158722

Re:Guru at 37?

[Joining Yet Again]

Mod parent to heaven.

Young people do things quickly. Older people tend to do things well.

Re:Guru at 37?

[Hentes]

And the notion that young people can't have routine isn't ageism?

Re:Guru at 37?

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus Christ do all tech-geeks have to look like that?

Re:Guru at 37?

[theshowmecanuck]

No Bull

Re:Guru at 37?

[Opportunist]

10 years ago I'd have said "Nah, but we get away with it".

Today it's more like "yeah, it's pretty much what is expected from us"

Re:Guru at 37?

[pr0fessor]

So all tech-geeks are supposed to look like Gandalf the Grey or Albus Dumbledore... I refuse... all that facial hair would itch. I'll continue to look like Julian Sands in Warlock. {minus the receding hairline}

That's a shame

[msobkow]

That's a shame. To go so young.

But I never have understood the sanity behind jumping out of a perfectly good plane. :(

A friend of mine was into sky diving years ago. Everyone warned him he was taking crazy risks and he'd die some time.

But in the end, he died flat on his back under a car that slipped from the jacks. Life can be so ironic...

Re:That's a shame

[Joining Yet Again]

Perhaps if you survive things which are perceived as very dangerous, your risk awareness is skewed?

Re:That's a shame

[FlyHelicopters]

I've been skydiving exactly once...

It was on my bucket list, wanted to try it to see what all the fuss was about.

I've had many amazing experiences in life. Getting married, the birth of my children, flying solo for the first time (in a helicopter with the doors off, quite an experience!).

About the only thing that compares... the birth of my first child... that is first on the list, skydiving would be second... above everything else...

There is simply nothing I can say to anyone who hasn't done it... stepping out of an airplane at 13,500 feet above the ground, parachute on your back, nothing but you, the sky, and God.

Well, ok, the pair of instructors with you, one per side. I did the accelerated free fall option, so I had my own chute, they fall with you to 5,000 ft, then you open and spend about 4 minutes by yourself under canopy (they fall another 1,000 ft to make sure your chute opens cleanly, then they open their own.)

I understand it, it is amazing, and I never need to do it again. :)

Re:That's a shame

[Joining Yet Again]

I expect it depends a lot on your physiology/psychology. I don't really get any kick at all out of extreme physical experiences, or anything material - and I've had lots of opportunity.

Solving a complex mathematical problem is an immense thrill for me, however. Or figuring out a clever algorithm.

Why yes, I am a nerd and a geek.

World's good with all different sorts, though :).

Re:That's a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

A friend of mine was into sky diving years ago. Everyone warned him he was taking crazy risks and he'd die some time.

But in the end, he died flat on his back under a car that slipped from the jacks. Life can be so ironic...

Steve Irving (aka the crocodile hunter) always said "if I ever die during recording something then people will just laugh and say "the crocs finally got him"". In the end he died during recording due to a freak accident involving a stingray. Supposedly they just bumped into each other by accident and the tail went strait though his chest. Life is neither fair or predictable.

Re:That's a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

Former long time skydiver, former engineer and now a physician. Skydiving appears to be relatively dangerous and has a great range of risk profiles from about as safe as the average car ride to very dangerous (I looked the stats up before taking up the sport). From Blancher's videos, he appeared to have a relatively safer approach to the sport. The overwhelming risk is an collision with another jumper or against an object on the ground after a successful parachute deployment. Double parachute malfunctions are much 10^-6.

Regarding perfectly good airplanes, I have never jumped out of one of those. They were usually pretty beat up...

Blue skies, black death.

Re:That's a shame

[cold fjord]

I've had lots of opportunity.

The question is, did you act on the opportunity? Did you really climb, jump, shoot the rapids, or whatever the opportunity was for? Many people have opportunities, not all take them. Besides ...

Nothing says a nerd and a geek
can't also be an adrenaline freak.

There are pleasures to be had from both intellectual achievement and testing one's physical courage.

“There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at with no result.” -- Winston Churchill

Re: That's a shame

[alen]

I went to airborne school in the us army
Jumping out of an airplane is safer than driving

Re:That's a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

Had a jack break on me once, that was a close one and scary! Always use jack stands

Re:That's a shame

[Deadstick]

Everyone warned him he was taking crazy risks and he'd die some time.

Wonder what percentage of them were smokers...

Re:That's a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with the asshole above - if you're no living life to the extreme you're a waste of space ... no fear!

Re:That's a shame

[gavron]

I fly helicopters. With the doors off when it's hot. The first solo was... terrifying :)
Now it's the greatest thrill in my life.

Great post comparing the things that matter,

E

Re:That's a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a depressed virgin, aren't you?

Re: That's a shame

[rubycodez]

no, not if you count the number of deaths per 1000 trips.

Re: That's a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

People don't understand that most fatalities from skydiving involve stunts of some sort: hook turns, base jumping, wingsuits. The translation from the French article isn't all that great, but it looks like he was attempting a hook turn and didn't judge the distance well.

People who just jump out of a plane, open their chute, and drift to the ground rarely perish.

Re:That's a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

But I never have understood the sanity behind jumping out of a perfectly good plane.

The way a great uncle explained it, although the airplane he and his buddies were riding in was completely airworthy and operating perfectly, they suddenly had an overwhelming fear of just being up in the air and desperately wanted to be on the ground as quickly as possible. He and his buddies made a bunch of jumps but only experienced this intense fear of being in an airplane on this one occasion, Normandy 1944.

Re:That's a shame

[Adult film producer]

This is a troll? I don't know the circumstances of his death but hardly worth that rating if it's true.

Re:That's a shame

[Mitchell314]

You're off to meet your maker?

Re:That's a shame

[wisnoskij]

Probably not that ironic, he probably took stupid risks in the rest of his life as well, including how he set up those jacks.

Re:That's a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

Jump or DIE!

Re: That's a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

I went to airborne school in the us army. Jumping out of an airplane is safer than driving

no, not if you count the number of deaths per 1000 trips.

The mortality rate in skydiving is 1 in 150,000 jumps. The mortality rate in driving is 1 in 100,000,000 miles traveled.

The average driver does about 12,000 miles per year. So over a 50 year driving career that is (12,000 * 50) / 100,000,000 = 0.006 probability of accidental death?

Lets assume a person goes skydiving once a month and makes 2 jumps per outing. So over a 50 year skydiving career that is (2 * 12 * 50) / 150,000 = 1,200 / 150,000 = 0.008 probability of accidental death?

So probabilities of 0.006 for driving and 0.008 for skydiving, and that is comparing an average amount of driving with a ridiculously high number of jumps (1,200) assumed. I think I'll go with the professionally trained former paratrooper regarding safety as opposed to the random internet commentator.

Re:That's a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

"he died flat on his back under a car that slipped from the jacks."

Isn't getting under a jacked car considered stupid if not crazy? I was taught to only go under a car on ramps or a lift, not even those little tripod thingies are acceptable (why do they even make those?).

Re:That's a shame

[thewolfkin]

I could maybe do a helicopter doors off if I was strapped in... heavily.

Re:That's a shame

[Flere Imsaho]

As Thom York said, "... gravity always wins".

Re:That's a shame

[tftp]

if you're no living life to the extreme you're a waste of space

As matter of fact, most geniuses, scientists, professors are pretty rational, and they don't do anything stupid. Most of those who do are lightweights in the department of value to humankind. It's news (like this article) when these groups overlap.

I, personally, despise thrill - I have no use for risk. I have better things to do.

Re:That's a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you can't put a car on ramps if you need to have the wheels off.

Because it's difficult to get a car up on ramps if it's not running.

Lifts cost a lot of money. If you can afford a lift, you can afford to have someone else just do the work for you in the first place.

Is getting under a car on jackstands ideal? No. Is it often the best you can do? Yes.

Re:That's a shame

[tftp]

This is a troll? I don't know the circumstances of his death

As far as I recall, this is exactly what killed him.

Re:That's a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

Most die of good'ol heart congestion anyway. Nothing more tragic than a slow wasting self-inflicted disease... but we don't see it that way.

Re:That's a shame

[TrekkieGod]

Probably not that ironic, he probably took stupid risks in the rest of his life as well, including how he set up those jacks.

Hello. Newly licensed n00b skydiver here.

Non-skydivers tend to overestimate the risks associated with skydiving. It's certainly an activity that deserves respect. You can't ignore procedures, and you must pay attention to what you're doing. The same thing can be said for lots of things people do every day, such as driving a car. Get distracted by something that places your attention somewhere other than the road, and you can get you and others killed.

Last year there were an estimated 3.1 million jumps in the US. Total number of fatalities was 19. I'm finding it kind of hard to get statistics on the number of deaths due to slipping jacks, but I wouldn't at all be surprised to find that the risk is comparable, if not higher. Or you can drive for ~1500 miles (not all at once), and you've just matched the death risk for one skydive.

Re:That's a shame

[theshowmecanuck]

There are two types of helicopters. Those that have crashed and those that are going to. I have flown in a bunch of helicopters, often with the doors open. I like it. :)

Re:That's a shame

[braindrainbahrain]

There is simply nothing I can say to anyone who hasn't done it...

I've made several hundred jumps myself. When asked to explain it, I refer to Charles Lindbergh who put it into words better than I ever could:

"...when I decided that I too must pass through the experience of a parachute jump, life rose to a higher level, to a sort of exhilarated calmness. The thought of crawling out onto the struts and wires hundreds of feet above the earth, and then giving up even that tenuous hold of safety and of substance, left me a feeling of anticipation mixed with dread, of confidence restrained by caution, of courage salted through with fear. How tightly should one hold onto life? How loosely give it rein? What gain was there for such a risk? I would have to pay in money for hurling my body into space. There would be no crowd to watch and applaud my landing. Nor was there any scientific objective to be gained. No, there was deeper reason for wanting to jump, a desire I could not explain.

It was that quality that led me into aviation in the first place — it was a love of the air and sky and flying, the lure of adventure, the appreciation of beauty. It lay beyond the descriptive words of man — where immortality is touched through danger, where life meets death on equal plane; where man is more than man, and existence both supreme and valueless at the same instant."
Charles A. Lindbergh, 'The Spirit of St Louis,' 1953

Re: That's a shame

[snowsnoot]

Its Irwin not Irving you twadwaffle.. and yes he suffered one of the only ever recorded deaths caused by a sting ray ever. If it was going to happen to anyone it was gonna be him. A national hero and a pretty decent surfer too, zoo keeper uniform and all.

Re:That's a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe , maybe not 20 years sky diving and riding a motorcycle as my only form of of transport including several spills minor injuries.
Sneezing fit due to a pollen allergy 2 fractured and one crushed vertebrae.

life can be odd.

Re:That's a shame

[wisnoskij]

I ever said that skydiving was over dangerous, but I still disagree with your statistics.

All of those dives were either done by seasoned professionals, or in the company of them, and I would bet that most were done simply by the professionals themselves.

Most drivers are horrible at driving, and most crashes involve really bad drivers.

I would argue that Skydiving is likely orders of magnitude more dangerous than the statistics show, as the statistics are biased based on who actually goes skydiving.

Re:That's a shame

[viperidaenz]

Steve Irwin, not Steve Irving.

Re: That's a shame

[tftp]

Its Irwin not Irving you twadwaffle

Perhaps you wanted to reply to the AC who made this mistake. I do not correct other people's typos on Slashdot. Everyone understands who he was talking about.

Re:That's a shame

[OhANameWhatName]

There is simply nothing I can say to anyone who hasn't done it... stepping out of an airplane at 13,500 feet above the ground, parachute on your back, nothing but you, the sky, and God

If God was there, you could have tried it without the parachute.

Re:That's a shame

[tragedy]

I've seen jack stands slip sideways under cars leaving the car to fall. Go one further and use something solid with a base wide enough that it's effectively impossible for it to tip over. Use a log, or some cinderblocks, or take off one of the car's wheels, even if you don't need to, or use an old wheel you have lying around and throw it under so that the car won't crush you even if it falls.

Re: That's a shame

[Pulzar]

That calculation is completely flawed. You can't compare the lifetime chance of death for something that is done occasionally vs something that is done multiple times a day, and say that they are equally safe.

In 100,000,000 miles traveled, at least a few million trips were made, vs. 150,000 jumps. Clearly, getting into a car and driving to a destination is an order of magnitude safer than jumping out of a plane.

Re:That's a shame

[tragedy]

You can jack up a car and then put the ramp under the car, then lower it until it rests on the ramp, or any other solid object that can support the weight of the car and is far more reliable than jacks or jackstands.

Re: That's a shame

[Pulzar]

People don't understand that most fatalities from skydiving involve stunts of some sort: hook turns, base jumping, wingsuits.

Not necessarily.

Re:That's a shame

[uncqual]

But I never have understood the sanity behind jumping out of a perfectly good plane. :(

Given the condition of some of the jump planes I've jumped out of, jumping often seemed like a better option than landing with the plane - it probably wasn't statistically though. I've landed in small planes so few times (usually when the clouds were closing in and the pilot decided to abort the jump run before the hole in the clouds was gone as they were flying VFR) I always found it unnerving and felt much more comfortable landing under my canopy.

Re: That's a shame

[viperidaenz]

For an equal probability you'd need to make 7.5 jumps per year, any more and Sky diving is higher risk

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort

Also, if the probability of death is purely random, you've got a 99.35% chance of dying if you jump 1200 times.

Re:That's a shame

[ihtoit]

see, if he'd had the car on axle stands he'd've been fine.

Whose incredibly stupid idea was it to work under a car supported by a jack??

Re:That's a shame

[DexterIsADog]

Yes, indeed. You show better common sense that may (or may not) prolong your existence on this earth. Your mundane, boring-ass existence. :-)

Okay, I admit I'm biased, as a private pilot, skydiving, white water kayaking, motorcycle riding idiot, who makes a living using my brain. But in 52 years, not so much as a broken bone.

Choosing to engage carefully in risky sports is not "stupid". Do you think Sir Richard Branson is a "lightweight in the department of value to humankind" because of his risky hobbies in the air and on the ocean? You might get a chance to tell him so if you book a ride with Virgin Galactic into space.

Do you ever drive more than 10 mph over the limit? Tsk, tsk, you risk-taker!

Re:That's a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

I once had to work under my car but I couldn't afford ramps and certainly not a lift. So I gathered a dozen of those big phone directories, taped them, jacked my car and put them under the car to support it. If I didn't live in a big city with huge phone directories, I would have bought a few 2x4 and a sheet of plywood for a few bucks and build something to safely support the car.

Basically, there is no excuse for working under a jacked car. Doing it is a clear case of Darwin award.

Re:That's a shame

[tftp]

Your mundane, boring-ass existence. :-)

You are making a mistake here, equating risk-taking with excitement and happiness. There are many people in this world who are much happier with a book in hand; who do not need to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. To each his own.

Do you think Sir Richard Branson is a "lightweight in the department of value to humankind" because of his risky hobbies in the air and on the ocean?

Nothing that Sir Richard Branson did so far affected my life, or life of millions of other people. If one day he builds a space elevator, I will be the first to say that he is one smart guy. But what should I laud him for today?

You might get a chance to tell him so if you book a ride with Virgin Galactic into space.

Only if that ride would be functional, and not just for entertainment of bored millionaires. Otherwise I would have to deify everyone who provides expensive entertainment to rich people (like safari, for example.) Call me when his actions really advance humanity.

Do you ever drive more than 10 mph over the limit?

No, I do not. What for? I drive with the speed of traffic, and in most cases it is just below 10 mph over the limit. I'm perfectly OK with letting other people to fly by in the left lane, only to be stopped by police a few miles down the road for a small contribution to municipal coffers.

Re: That's a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

You are ignoring the reality that people drive far more often than they skydive. Less than 2,000 miles of driving is as dangerous as a single jump. You logic is flawed by attempting to compare 1 driving event to 1 skydiving event. A comparison based on miles driven rather than drives really puts the safety of skydiving in context.

Re:That's a shame

[FlyHelicopters]

Most of the time you're wearing a 4 point safety harness, but there actually are helicopters that you can fly with the doors off, with nothing but an automotive style seat belt.

Not my first choice. :)

I've never done full acrobatics in a helicopter (yes, some can), but I've had one 90 degrees over on its side, that's an experience. (AS350, it has a rigid rotor system so it can do it)

Re:That's a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

You can jack up a car and then put the ramp under the car, then lower it until it rests on the ramp, or any other solid object that can support the weight of the car and is far more reliable than jacks or jackstands.

Do not use cinderblocks! Every year I read about another weekend mechanic crushed by his vehicle when the cinderblocks suddenly gave way.

Re:That's a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

Successfully rewiring the auditory system of a deaf and blind person so they can hear for the first time in 40 years is right up there with marriage and the risk of my clhild. Taking an expensive, glorified risk that doesn't help anyone else is just selfish.

Re:That's a shame

[FlyHelicopters]

Funny...

No, I would never tempt my maker that way. He gave us the invention of the parachute so that we'd use it.

It rather reminds me of the guy who was in a house that was about to be flooded out, a rescue team came by and said, "quick, get in the Jeep, we'll save you". The man replied, "no, it's ok, God will take care of me".

Then the flood waters rose, a boat came along, "quick, get in, we'll save you!". "No" the man replied, "God is with me".

Then the house was almost covered by water, a helicopter came by, "quick, climb on, we'll save you!". "No, it's ok, God will save me", he replied.

Then the water rose and he drowned.

When he got to heaven and faced God, he said, "Lord, I've always been faithful, always held you in my heart, why didn't you save me?"

The Lord replied, "I sent you a Jeep, a boat, and a helicopter, what more did you want?"

God did protect me, he gave me a well designed parachute and good instructors to keep me safe.

Re:That's a shame

[FlyHelicopters]

A helicopter is just a collection of 10,000 parts traveling loosely in formation! :)

Re:That's a shame

[FlyHelicopters]

Nice quotes... :)

Another favorite of mine is Richard Bach, Illusions remains one of my favorite books of all time.

"When you have come to the edge of all the light you have
And step into the darkness of the unknown
Believe that one of the two will happen to you
Either you'll find something solid to stand on
Or you'll be taught how to fly!"
Richard Bach

"Bad things are not the worst things that an happen to us.
NOTHING is the worst thing that can happen to us."
Richard Bach

"Here is a test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: If you"re alive it isn't."
Richard Bach

"Listen,' he said. 'It's important. We are all. Free. To do. Whatever. We want. To do."
Richard Bach

Re:That's a shame

[DexterIsADog]

I replied because you called those activities "stupid", implied they were irrational, said you "despise" them (rather a strong emotion), and they are (in your mind) an indicator of people who provide little value to society. That's *hardly* the philosophy you claimed in your reply, "to each his own".

And if it takes a space elevator for you to grudgingly admit Branson is a smart guy, you haven't been paying attention. If you think space tourism isn't going to advance space endeavors, you're just kidding yourself.

And not driving more than 10 mph over the limit? Hmph, I'm sure.

Re:That's a shame

[TrekkieGod]

I ever said that skydiving was over dangerous, but I still disagree with your statistics.

Well, the implication I took from the way you worded it was, "this guy chooses to do this inherently dangerous activity, so we can assume he brought the same attitude of disregard to danger to every aspect of his life." I meant to point out that skydiving isn't as risky as most people assume, and therefore some very cautious people participate in the activity. I count myself in that group, I am in no way an adrenaline junkie. If that's not what you meant by it, I apologize for the misunderstanding.

All of those dives were either done by seasoned professionals, or in the company of them, and I would bet that most were done simply by the professionals themselves.

Well, I would agree most jumps were performed by seasoned divers, but it's very far from all, even when you exclude the tandem dives which I assume is what you mean when you say "in the company of [seasoned professionals]". You've got to start somewhere. I described myself as a n00b licensed diver for a reason. I have 50 jumps under my belt, and I'm very far from a pro. My landings need a lot of work, both in terms of accuracy and ability to land softly. I've never been in an emergency situation, so I don't have the experience that would allow me to handle one as quickly and smoothly as the seasoned guys. When I encounter my first malfunction, I'll have to rely on the training that I've received on the ground, and hope I execute emergency procedures promptly and correctly. I'm having difficulties maintaining the same fall rate as other people in my diving group, and tend to sink in relation to them the moment I start performing maneuvers (which can increase risk of a collision if they lose track of my location, or I lose track of theirs). There are lots of little things I'm not particularly proficient at, and therefore I stay away from diving with large groups and really doing anything I believe is currently outside my skill level.

In fact, there's really no other way to learn how to skydive other than skydiving. Tandems are fun, but if you want to get licensed you go through ground training, then you get on a plane, and you jump with your own parachute. There are different training methods, but they all involve you landing your own parachute. Under static line, you get out of the plane by yourself, attached to a line that will automatically deploy your main. Then you land the chute by yourself with radio instructions. Under AFF, you get freefall time together with other instructors who are holding on to you, but not attached to you in any way. Once you open up, you're on your own, landing with radio assistance. There's also a chance you'll find yourself separated from your instructors and will have to deploy without them, and you're trained for that possibility. You'll also be trained for the possibility the radio doesn't work.

Even with all of that inexperience, student deaths make for a very small proportion of those ~20 deaths a year. Most deaths are actually from people with thousands of jumps, because they're jumping highly loaded, high-performance parachutes, performing higher risk maneuvers such as swoop landings. If we're going back to the driving analogy, it's like saying that your race car drivers are under more risk driving at a race than the average driver is driving to work. The race car driver is much more experienced, and more highly proficient at driving, but he's also doing more dangerous things and taking additional risks.

Most drivers are horrible at driving, and most crashes involve really bad drivers.

I'm not sure why you would assume there isn't a similar spectrum of people skydiving. There are some people who skip on gear checks before they go out to dive, others that rush through putting their gear on and get inside the plane before they're finished strapping up. There are tons of people who downsize t

Re: That's a shame

[FlyHelicopters]

Except, the probability of death isn't random, either in a car or in skydiving.

It isn't zero, but you can moderate your risks in several ways, both in cars and jumping out of airplanes.

And sometimes... stuff happens, to everyone, at some point... sometimes it is doing what you love, sometimes it is something stupid...

Steve Fossett is a good example, there is someone who circled the Earth and a balloon, did a ton of other amazing things. What killed him? A simple easy airplane flight doing nothing special at all.

Sometimes it is just your time to go, and sometimes God (or whomever you believe in) sticks his hand out and says, "not so fast, you're not done here yet").

People survive when they shouldn't and die from things that shouldn't kill them.

Welcome to life!

Re:That's a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

Dig a trench. Push the car over the trench.

Re: That's a shame

[FlyHelicopters]

My skydiving instructor's name was Eddie, he was a very experienced guy (he sure looked it), he said that he had over 8,000 jumps in his logbook going back over several decades.

In all that time, he has had to use his reserve chute 4 times, however all 4 uses were in the first 4,000 jumps, he hadn't had to use it in almost 20 years.

His comment was that due to modern chute designs and modern safety practices, if you're just "jumping out of the plane, opening the chute, and landing", the odds of dying are very low. If you do stunts, formations, or fly a sport chute, your risk goes way up.

He showed us a video of a reserve being used, we also carried an AAD (automatic activation device) and frankly, they have saved a lot of lives in skydiving.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_activation_device

In short, depending on the model of course, but for a student, if you're falling more than 29 feet per second when you pass through 750 feet above the ground, it fires a wedge cutter that cuts the closing loop to the reserve chute, which is spring loaded so it will deploy even if you're upside down, tumbling, or whatever...

It takes no more than 250 feet beyond that to fully open a student chute and 250 feet beyond that to fully arrest your sink rate to just a few feet per second, so even if you're completely passed out, you'll live.

Over 1,000 people have had their lives saved via an AAD, and most jump zones require them for all jumpers.

Re:That's a shame

[JamieIanMacgregor]

It's true, pierced his heart, apparently they were recording at the time, his last movement was to pull the barb from his chest...then he was gone.

Re:That's a shame

[JamieIanMacgregor]

Cinderblocks are a BAD thing to use, they can easily crush under the weight of a vehicle causing a sudden drop. steel wheels, wooden blocks yes.

Re:That's a shame

[Falconhell]

Helicopters are a triumph of engineering over common sense. :)

Re:That's a shame

[dpidcoe]

I don't really get any kick at all out of extreme physical experiences, or anything material - and I've had lots of opportunity.

Solving a complex mathematical problem is an immense thrill for me, however. Or figuring out a clever algorithm.

I feel exactly the same way when it comes to that sort of stuff. That still didn't stop me from going skydiving with a group of friends when we were given an opportunity.

I definitely don't regret doing it, not so much for the thrill during the jump (I blacked out for a few seconds and had a bit of trouble walking after we landed due to the aftereffects of a terror fueled adrenalin crash), but for the ability to look back on it and say "wow, I did something that most people are completely terrified to do".

Re:That's a shame

[JamieIanMacgregor]

I was in the same situation... but without phone books... laid down a couple of old tires and tipped the car on it's side. problem solved

Re:That's a shame

[tftp]

That's *hardly* the philosophy you claimed in your reply, "to each his own".

There is not necessarily a contradiction here. Don't you know of an activity that you personally do not approve and do not perform, but - out of tolerance for views of others - allow others to participate in? I may think that it is stupid to climb mountains, or drive in circles for hours for no good reason, and it fits the dictionary entry as "pointless; worthless" - as long as you do not assign any worth to the endeavor. Of course, assigning worth is a personal issue - but so is my opinion, and yours, and everyone else's.

they are (in your mind) an indicator of people who provide little value to society

One can always skim through biographies of a few major scientists (Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Freeman Dyson, Lev Landau, Niels Bohr) and notice that they are not known for thrill-seeking behavior - outside of theoretical physics, at least :-) You can also go through the list of drivers in NASCAR, Indy and F-1 in hope to find anyone who was nominated for a Nobel Prize - or even who can tell right away what Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem is about. Despite the fact that every one of them owns a cell phone.

If you think space tourism isn't going to advance space endeavors, you're just kidding yourself.

You can always strap a donkey to a cart instead of a horse to save money; but it won't be an advancement of transportation. The transportation was advanced not in evolutionary, but in revolutionary steps. Those steps did not directly follow one from another. But those spaceplanes are just rehashes of a concept that is already well understood and that is already at its theoretical limit. The most damning fact is that it is very expensive - and it's not going to be much less expensive in the future. Sure, you can sacrifice orbit height (to just touch the space,) and you can make it a suborbital hop, and you can save some energy on air launch... but those are just inconsequential improvements that have no bearing on the problem how to launch 10,000 tons of parts to Mars, or how to automatically assemble them into ten robotic TBMs and five plants that manufacture fuel (or something) for return of the expedition.

Re:That's a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

I have the same context.

Skydiving is one of the most BORING things I have ever done. Not interesting AT ALL.

Surfing, on the other hand, is actually fun and interesting. I could be interested in skydiving if I got into one of those squirrel suits perhaps, but other than that, its just boring.

Re:That's a shame

[zawarski]

That's unfortunate, not ironic. Except maybe in an Alanis Morissette sort of way...

Re:That's a shame

[FlyHelicopters]

Airplanes soar gracefully through the air...

Helicopters beat the air into submission...

Re:That's a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

I would argue that the statistics are inflated due to deaths from people doing stupid things, as in the examples I've mentioned above, and that skydiving is actually safer than the stats imply.

Nice wall of text. None of it relevant.
The problem is that there's not really an easy or direct way to compare the two activities. The act of driving is vastly different than jumping out of an airplane. The biggest difference is that when skydiving, doing one thing wrong one time is likely to result in serious injury or death, while you can do many, many things horribly, horribly wrong multiple times while driving and not actually get in a wreck. And if you do, there are a lot of safety systems which can reduce or prevent injury, whereas with skydiving you're pretty much toast.
Until a valid comparison is defined and agreed upon, argument is moot.

Re:That's a shame

[I'm New Around Here]

He was taking crazy risks by being under a car that wasn't properly secured. Jacks fail, use jack stands under the axle. I can't do much more than change a tire and I know that rule.

Re:That's a shame

[Princeofcups]

That's a shame. To go so young.

But I never have understood the sanity behind jumping out of a perfectly good plane. :(

If it weren't dangerous, they wouldn't do it, contrary what they may tell you. Ask their wives about the great sex after a dive, and you'll understand.

Re: That's a shame

[Princeofcups]

People don't understand that most fatalities from skydiving involve stunts of some sort: hook turns, base jumping, wingsuits. The translation from the French article isn't all that great, but it looks like he was attempting a hook turn and didn't judge the distance well.

People who just jump out of a plane, open their chute, and drift to the ground rarely perish.

That's not enough for some people. They need that next greater rush. It's just like rock climbers that start by climbing in teams, then free climbing (no ropes), and then solo free climbing (no partners). Needless to say, at some point many of them just never come home after their last climb.

Re:That's a shame

[Kell Bengal]

Perhaps, the GP (like many of us) realised that the adrenaline rush was not enjoyable and had no emotional payoff. Why the hell would anyone sane take an unnecessary risk that they don't enjoy? You may look down on us for being 'boring', but we likewise consider boring. It holds no interest to us. But that doesn't mean we judge you for it. Doing something risky you enjoy? Fine. Doing something risky you don't enjoy? Irrational.

Re:That's a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm almost absolutely positive that you've done nothing to improve anyone's life either, by the stakes you're claiming. Reading books and solving equations has yet to make you have a positive effect on my life, thus by your own standards you are worthless. At least he's having fun instead of being a snarky internet asshole who thinks that they can tear other people down because their own value is beyond reproach.

Re:That's a shame

[AK Marc]

Last I followed the statistics, there were more people killed in plane crashes intending to jump out of the plane, than who died after having jumped out.

Re:That's a shame

[kanweg]

"God did protect me, he gave me a well designed parachute and good instructors to keep me safe."

God did design the parachute? It is in the bible? Wow, I must have missed that part.

How about your boss saying to you at the end of the month: Well, that was one job well done! What is god's bank account number? I'll transfer his salary right away.

Bert
The maker you don't want to tempt outfitted you on the assembly line with the GULO gene. The gene is broken (a chunk is missing), as a result of which you can't synthesize vitamin C. It is like a car company taking the trouble of installing a broken airco into every car it produces. Makes sense.
Oh, by the way. In primates the same chunk is missing. It is not that we share a common ancestor and your source of reference is completely off the mark. Oh no, the devil planted that gene to confuse us.

Re:That's a shame

[tftp]

I'm almost absolutely positive that you've done nothing to improve anyone's life either

It's not important who I am. I make no claims of being too smart. We are talking statistics here. The number of geniuses who have enriched humanity and at the same time engaged in risky sports is *already* very, very low, compared to the number of similar geniuses who refrained from, say, street racing, or bungee jumping. It's matter of public records, and I offered a few examples already. There are several causes of this effect.

One of the simplest causes: reading books can make you smarter; but climbing mountains can make you only stronger. This would be a benefit only to a neanderthal society. Take Archimedes' Death Ray, for example (let's assume the legend is true. Technically, it does work.) Imagine two armies today: one is a high-tech US Army, and another belongs to Genghiz Khan, and is 10x larger, and each warrior is 10x stronger physically. Which army will win, on average?

Re:That's a shame

[yahwotqa]

I half-expected this condescending post to end with "Do you even benchpress?".

Re:That's a shame

[FlyHelicopters]

God did design the parachute?

I'm sure you're fun at parties too, aren't you?

We were endowed by our creator with the ability to design a parachute. I'd be rather foolish to jump out of a plane without one.

Of course, we have the plane for the same reason.

It reminds me of another one...

A group of super-smart scientists go to God one day and say, "God, thanks for all the help and guidance you gave us along the way, but we've got it now, you can go."

"Oh really?" Replies God? "You don't need me anymore?"

"Nope, we have it figured out now, we can create anything, produce all the food we need, control the weather, heal the sick, stop war, we're all good now, we don't need you anymore." Replied the super-smart scientists.

"Oh really, so you could turn water into wine, sand into bread?" Asks God.

"Oh yes, watch..." Replied the super-smart scientist as he picks up a handful of sand.

God interrupted him, "Ok, but get your own sand..."

Re: That's a shame

[Builder]

His surname wasn't Pawlowski was it ?

Re: That's a shame

[FlyHelicopters]

No, why?

I'm in Texas, so no, if you're talking about the Ed Pawlowski that comes up in a Google search, not at all.

Eddie looked like a 70's leftover, long hair and everything. He also looked like he had spent too much time falling out of airplanes, but he was a nice and friendly guy who came across as serious about the business of teaching.

I sure don't think he was doing it for the money! :)

Re:That's a shame

[tragedy]

I certainly wouldn't use the cinderblocks as the only method of support, but I wouldn't object to having some in addition to jacks+jackstands plus anything else that will stop the car from crushing you if anything else fails. I would imagine that the primary reason for cinderblocks to fail is that people put them under a part of the car where the pressure comes to a point. If you're using anything brittle, put some wood between it and the car, and use something else as well. If I don't have anything I feel I can 100% rely on, I always throw one of the car's wheels under the car.

Re:That's a shame

[tragedy]

I certainly wouldn't rely on just cinderblocks, but I would certainly throw some under there as extra protection if I happened to have some lying around. If I don't have anything else completely reliable to use, I always put a wheel under the car.

Re: That's a shame

[dargaud]

You don't know what you are talking about and you are also confusing your vocabulary. 'Free climbing' is climbing with hands and feet and a rope for protection. It is what most climbers do, as opposed to 'aid climbing' which is pulling on gear. 'Solo climbing' is simply being alone (no climbing partner) and can be done with or without rope. There are some big wall solo aid climbers and the risk is very low. 'Free soloers' are the guys in the commercials... or just about any other climber when you are on easy enough terrain.
Few climbers actually like free soloing (I do); and also very few people die from free soloing. Accidents when rock climbing are usually due to falling rocks, errors during maneuvers (usually on rappels), bad anchors, tripping on trails on the way down... and car accidents when you drive back tired from a long day of climbing.

Re:That's a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

It's true, pierced his heart, apparently they were recording at the time, his last movement was to pull the barb from his chest...then he was gone.

An understandable move to make in a panic situation. I'd read that if the barb was left in place in his chest he could have survived, with prompt medical attention.

Back on topic, here's a link to the official parachutist's site...

http://www.uspa.org/Default.aspx

Re:That's a shame

[Alioth]

If you've ever seen a typical skydive jumpship, you'll understand that these are far from "perfectly good planes".

They make the skydive jumpships scary enough that the skydivers would rather jump than land with the aircraft, but not quite scary enough that the pilot wants to do the same.

Re:That's a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

Khannnnn!!! Because the US army will be to busy killing each other in friendly fire after invading the wrong country , wasting a million rounds hitting nothing and whining when the hot food is late and the machine dosn't show up to dig fox holes.

Mean while old Genghiz men will be out raping, pillaging and killing fat merkins who are too distracted looking for another bacon burger and what the Kardashians are doing this week to run.

Remember Khan can!

Re:That's a shame

[camperdave]

The only reason helicopters fly is that they are so ugly the ground repels them.

Re: That's a shame

[Pulzar]

You are ignoring the reality that people drive far more often than they skydive.

I was not ignoring it, I was addressing it head on. I believe that if it takes 100+ times of doing one thing vs. once of another thing to bring them into comparable death probabilities, then the thing you can do 100+ times is clearly safer.

Re:That's a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

“There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at with no result.” -- Winston Churchill

"I tell you, Vincent, it's a fucking miracle! We should be fucking dead!"

Re:That's a shame

[drinkypoo]

As matter of fact, most geniuses, scientists, professors are pretty rational, and they don't do anything stupid.

That depends very much on your perspective. To many people, spending your life behind a desk and not getting out and experiencing life, even the dangerous parts, is the stupid failure.

I, personally, despise thrill - I have no use for risk. I have better things to do.

I'm happy to let you mitigate your own level of risk, but the truth is that not only does your livelihood depend on risk (in our modern mercantilism, capitalism is reduced to a zero-sum or even negative-sum game, so someone must fail in order for someone to succeed) but life is risk. You could die tomorrow of a blood clot or what have you, sitting behind your desk.

Re:That's a shame

[TrekkieGod]

Nice wall of text.

Is that supposed to be a disparaging remark? It just comes across as, "I have poor attention span."

None of it relevant.

At least one paragraph was relevant to the very next point you're trying to make:

The biggest difference is that when skydiving, doing one thing wrong one time is likely to result in serious injury or death, while you can do many, many things horribly, horribly wrong multiple times while driving and not actually get in a wreck.

As I tried to explain in my "wall of text", I do many, many things wrong multiple times while skydiving every time I dive. Students are even worse. Like I said, there's only way to learn skydiving, and that's to dive. And nobody is going to be perfect without lots and lots of practice. Mistakes happen, and they happen often.

And if you do, there are a lot of safety systems which can reduce or prevent injury, whereas with skydiving you're pretty much toast.

The most common skydiving injury is a sprained ankle. There's lots of technology and lots of safety features built in to our rigs to help reduce and prevent injury as well. Things like the three-ring system to help you get rid of a malfunctioning canopy, the RSL to help automatically deploy your reserve if you can't locate the handle after you do a cutaway, the AAD to deploy your reserve if you're still in freefall at a low enough altitude, in case you're unconscious or otherwise can't get to your handles...

There are also things likes helmets, which lots of people joke aren't helpful to skydivers, but the truth it, it's actually been helpful to me. Most injuries are going to happen under a good canopy, lots of them due to mistakes while landing. I've personally had a landing in which, after my feet hit the ground, I didn't exactly do a good PLF, and ended up with my head on the ground. I could have gotten hurt had I not been wearing it. Also made a really bad mistake exiting a Cessna 172 once, and saw the wheel come within an inch of my face. I didn't hit my head or helmet, but if I had, helmet would have been nice.

The point is, people like me make tons of mistakes all the time, and they don't all end in us becoming "pretty much toast."

Until a valid comparison is defined and agreed upon, argument is moot.

Chances of dying per dive vs. chances of dying per mile driven is a perfectly good comparison. You just don't want facts to get in the way of your perception of the sport. You don't know anything about it, but you want to claim the first mistake you make once is going to get you killed. Buddy, if that were the case I'd be seeing so many deaths at the dropzone every weekend, it's not even funny. Instead I see people with scraped knees, sprained ankles, or completely fine and getting chewed out by the DZ personnel for doing something stupid that placed them and/or others in danger. You know, kind of like I hear people telling me all the stories of how the other moron driver cut them off on the way to work today and they barely avoided an accident.

Re:That's a shame

[TrekkieGod]

Last I followed the statistics, there were more people killed in plane crashes intending to jump out of the plane, than who died after having jumped out.

Hah. I don't know if that's true, but wouldn't surprise me that much. Every time I put my seat belt on the way up I make the realization that if something were to happen to the plane in the first 1,000 ft, not only would I not be able to jump out, but I wouldn't exactly be secured in place for that emergency landing. I'd be getting thrown around in a ~1 ft radius.

I'll gladly include those deaths among skydiving risks. Skydivers are badly strapped in, the entire time they're on the plane is essentially the take-off, which is the most dangerous part of air travel, and there are things like the previous accident in which two planes with skydivers collided. You wouldn't be likely to see planes in close formation most times you fly, but if you're skydiving you might, if you're involved in big formations where not everybody fits in a single plane. So the type of flying increases the risk. Even including all of that, deaths are proportionally pretty rare.

Re:That's a shame

[tibit]

I have 10 ton jackstands, and for the life of me I wouldn't know how they could be unreliable. When the car is up on four of those jackstands, there's no reasonable way to tip the jackstands by merely interacting with the car. I've had two people try to push the car in various directions as hard as they could - nothing happened. It wouldn't budge, heck it seemed as if it was comparably glued to the ground. When the car is supported by the suspension, there's a lot of "give" and you can get it moving a bit. On the jackstands it's quite different.

Sure, if you have crappy jackstands then it may not be quite safe.

Re:That's a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to open the curtains and let some light in before you find the flesh of your back grown into your chair. Why is someone else going out and doing what they want to in life offend you so much, and is physical activity from others simply painful for you to witness or hear rumor of? Fucking neckbeard.

Re:That's a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, God gave us the earth according to the bible, why is he taking it away from man in your example?

Re:That's a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously never experienced good sex...oh, wait. This is Slashdot

Re:That's a shame

[DexterIsADog]

Your points are valid, I agree with them. However, the GP says the people who *do* enjoy risky behaviors are stupid, irrational, and don't contribute much to society. That's very different.

Re:That's a shame

[DexterIsADog]

Since weight training is not a risky behavior, that would have been off-topic, and you are apparently ascribing attributes to me that are not warranted.

I guess you *don't* think it's condescending of the GGP to call people who enjoy those activities stupid, irrational, and not contributors to society, which is why I responded in the first place. That's okay, just own it - there's very little risk in doing so.

Re:That's a shame

[DexterIsADog]

You certainly do contradict yourself. You say "live and let live", yet you publicly call those people stupid, irrational, and that they contribute little to society. I really can't explain your own words to you any more clearly, so if you still don't get it, write one more justification, and we'll be done with this topic. You seem awfully invested in it; who are you trying to convince?

Me, I genuinely feel a little sorry for you. You've shut yourself off from half of the human experience because you're too timid.

Re:That's a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

He was stabbed in the chest by a defensive boxed-in stingray's poisonous tail barb while filming something titled "world's deadliest"... not exactly a freak accident.

Re:That's a shame

[tftp]

You certainly do contradict yourself. You say "live and let live", yet you publicly call those people stupid, irrational, and that they contribute little to society.

I see where the confusion is. It appears that you define "let live" as "be silent about perceived flaws in actions of others." I define it as "do not interfere with individuals, but feel free to express your opinion about the behavior in general."

Me, I genuinely feel a little sorry for you. You've shut yourself off from half of the human experience because you're too timid.

I know that I haven't done many things that others did... but I don't want to do those things, and I am quite happy about it. I believe you haven't done some things that I did - and you would be also happy about that, if given the list. There is no need to experience "everything," otherwise you'd want to see the inside of a prison too, because it's also a part of human experience.

Re:That's a shame

[houghi]

I jumped also once. I did not do the freefall. I jumped with a static line. One jump. No instructor that jumped with me. (one in the plane, one on the ground)
Best experience in my life.

Floating around alone is not something you can explain.

During training, obviously we also talked about why people die. The reason is that they jump too often and it becomes routine. They told of one experienced jumper who jumped out of the plane without his parachute. Simply forgot to put it on in the plane.

We also asked if there were any people who signed up, but did not jump. They told us that never happened, because those who pay are already committed. If not, they will find an excuse not to do it.

Re:That's a shame

[El Puerco Loco]

Fool! There's no such thing as a perfectly good airplane.

Re:That's a shame

[operagost]

I love that scurvy is the basis for your unbelief in God, when it really doesn't back up any more than your unbelief in creationism, at best.

Re:That's a shame

[operagost]

I leave the jack in place under the car, along with the jackstands, if possible.

Re: That's a shame

[viperidaenz]

Flying by yourself in a single engine plane you've only spent 40 hours flying in, over 4000m mountains is not "A simple easy airplane flight doing nothing special at all"

Re: That's a shame

[FlyHelicopters]

Actually, yes it is... I have thousands of hours of flight time. 40 hours in the type he was flying, with his experience, is enough.

Re:That's a shame

[Hognoxious]

Do you think Sir Richard Branson is a "lightweight in the department of value to humankind" because of his risky hobbies in the air and on the ocean?

That's ridiculous.

He's a lightweight in the department of value to humankind for plenty of other reasons.

Re:That's a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

God did design the parachute?

I'm sure you're fun at parties too, aren't you?

We were endowed by our creator with the ability to design a parachute.

Humans have intelligence. That is not exactly a strong proof of God. If you want to believe that we have intelligence because God gave it to us, that's cool. It really makes no difference to me where the source of our intelligence comes from. We have created parachutes. When you throw a bunch of references to God in your speech, it kills a lot of conversation. Just look at this thread, it's moved from discussion of skydiving to God semantics. Unless you are really just looking for a forum to tell more stupid God jokes.

Re:That's a shame

[Hognoxious]

Don't worry men, they couldn't hit an elephant at this dist [THUD]

Re:That's a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you actually believe what you're saying? Those cultists really did a number on you.

Re:That's a shame

[cavebison]

Life is neither fair or predictable.

Aussie here. If you're going to spend your life annoying dangerous animals, it's pretty predictable how you'll go out. If you spend your life sky-diving, same. They are big risks. Not saying Irwin annoyed the ray, but any normal person wouldn't be in waters around rays anyway. Not particularly surprising.

Re:That's a shame

[tragedy]

The problem is usually the surface under the jackstands. Ashphalt, especially on a typical driveway, is not high quality stuff. In the right conditions, especially a nice hot summer's day, the corner of one of the jackstands can cut its way right into the driveway if it's sitting directly on it. I've also seen people use them on gravel driveways and plain old dirt. There's also what happens if the front of the car is jacked up and the rear wheels aren't blocked because someone assumed that their parking brakes work. Then there's the fact that the presumed hard point that is resting on the jackstand may actually be all rust and the stand may punch right through. It also may be able to slip off. I simply go by the maxim better safe than sorry (or dead) and make sure that I have something that the car's weight can't possibly crush under the car if I'm going to be under there.

Sure, if you have crappy jackstands then it may not be quite safe.

The vast majority of people who do have jackstands have crappy jackstands. Even the good professional ones with wider bases still have bases that are narrower than the maximum extension of the stand. If someone asks me to stick my head under their car then I insist on something better than just jack stands.

Re: That's a shame

[rubycodez]

use real math *per trip* instead of your nonsense calculations.

I think I'll go with professionally trained engineering physicist who minored in math rather than internet commentator

Re:That's a shame

[ebvwfbw]

But I never have understood the sanity behind jumping out of a perfectly good plane. :(

You only live once. Don't let yourself get old and wish you had done stuff. It's safe as long as you listen to what they tell you and you keep it safe. You do stuff beyond what they consider safe or get reckless, you'll get hurt or killed sooner or later. Same thing with a motorcycle, scuba diving, nascar driving, airplane flying.

Re:That's a shame

[EngnrFrmrlyKnownAsAC]

There's no such thing as a perfectly good airplane.

Re:That's a shame

[mynamestolen]

My understanding at the time was that the annoyed sting ray had the ability to sense where the heart was and aimed accordingly. I'd be happy to be proved wrong.

Re:That's a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

>I understand it

Thinking that you understand it after one jump is ludicrous. You have some idea, and a much better one than people who never jumped, or even than those who did tandem instead of solo, but no, you do not "understand it".

Granted one could argue that you never "fully understand" anything, but this is one case where you need at least a hundred jumps or so before being able to claim with a straight face that you understand *anything* really. And then again, many hundreds before you actually do understand quite a bit. With several thousands, "i understand it" becomes believable, but in truth, it's still a little presumptuous.

Re: That's a shame

[Builder]

Just curious... Ed Pawlowski from NorCal trains civilian and military jumpers too.

RIP

[Anonymous Coward]

RIP

Re:RIP

[Anonymous Coward]

CORD!

If at first you don't succeed...

[Shoten]

...skydiving is not for you.

Re:If at first you don't succeed...

[Opportunist]

Never has my favorite saying be more fitting: Experience is a bitch. You get it AFTER you needed it.

Where did they bury the survivors?

[sandbagger]

Just wondering.

Re:Where did they bury the survivors?

[Mitchell314]

Not near the smart asses.

Re:Dumb ass

[Joining Yet Again]

*Saviour.

If you're going to write derivatives of traditional fictional works, at least use traditional spellings.

Re:Dumb ass

[drater]

*blink*

well...

[Anonymous Coward]

chute! this is a tragedy!

BSBD

[Anonymous Coward]

BSBD. Fly Free my friend

Re: look out below !

[Anonymous Coward]

At least he died doing what he loved!

Quite an awkward headline

[haruchai]

although I've seen this style used many times.

Why the anthropomorphism for a type of accident?

"Hi, my name is Skydiving Accident, but you can call me Skyak because it's like paddling upstream without a canoe, or a paddle, or even water and you're jumping from the top of the falls.
  So, who wants to be left dead or disabled today??"

Re:Quite an awkward headline

[Anonymous Coward]

How is the title "anthropomorphism," i.e. applying human characteristics to skydiving accidents? All the title does is use "skydiving accident" as the subject of a sentence --- are only human beings capable of being sentence subjects? Is ability to "do" anything, without implication of will or intent, itself a solely human trait? Can a train not leave a station, or a wound not leave a scar, without usurping some vital spark of human agency?

Re:Quite an awkward headline

[haruchai]

By replying, would I be applying human characteristics to an AC?

Re:Quite an awkward headline

[Anonymous Coward]

On the internet, nobody knows you are a dog --- they are expecting something far less dignified.

Re:Quite an awkward headline

[haruchai]

Like an AC??

Re:Quite an awkward headline

[Anonymous Coward]

At best; other options include the lower forms who waste time replying to ACs (and still haven't answered the original question, about why they aren't a pretentious idiot who flings around long words without apparently caring what they mean).

Re:Quite an awkward headline

[haruchai]

Or like the the pond scum hiding behind the mask of an AC and are too stupid to understand what I meant?

Re:Quite an awkward headline

[Anonymous Coward]

Your incoherent grammar (as demonstrated above) certainly doesn't help poor pond scum like me grasp your lofty meaning.

Re:Quite an awkward headline

[haruchai]

Do keep trying. No telling what a million years of evolution will do for you.

Re:Quite an awkward headline

[Anonymous Coward]

It's how the scum who run the media try to deny reality, by saying "The shooting, which left 10 dead", etc.
It's just a sick way of trying to deny that SOMEBODY SHOT some people. They do this ALL the time.
'John Smith, who died in the stabbing', etc.etc.

Accident?

[Trogre]

Call me paranoid, but these people who appear "inconvenient" to the establishment seem to keep running into accidents, don't they?

Re:Accident?

[Deadstick]

Call me paranoid

OK.

Re:Accident?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, hi paranoid! He did a hook turn all by himself into the ground. He looks like he was a pretty good flyer, but hook turns kill - they are VERY unforgiving

Re:Accident?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.skydivekansas.com/upjumpers/hookturns.shtml

Re:Accident?

[cpghost]

On first thought, yes that's paranoid. On second thought... not so much anymore. The only question is: how could the NSA have done it? With remote SIGINT? Or do they muddle with HUMINT nowadays?

Re:Accident?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=6ef_1173838399

Re:Accident?

[Charliemopps]

Maybe they just sent a special agent in?

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1v2INlx_JGI/UDHf4L11h_I/AAAAAAAAJwo/4jmjixbkO_A/s1600/SECRET+SQUIRREL+PARACHUTE+COLOR.jpg

Re:Accident?

[Anonymous Coward]

ya, but this guy wasn't a democrat senator or governor with eyes at a possible presidential bid.

Re:Accident?

[DexterIsADog]

This is an illusion, and (I'm not an expert) I think you're displaying a combination of confirmation bias, and observation selection bias, where you use these events to (1) confirm your suspicion that nefarious forces are targeting individuals you believe they find threatening, and (2)notice these events (rather than the countless other accidental death reports, for example), and you believe this happens more frequently to those individuals you believe are being targeted.

But I'm not saying they're *not* coming for you next.

Re:Accident?

[OhANameWhatName]

these people who appear "inconvenient" to the establishment seem to keep running into accidents, don't they?

I was just thinking .. if I was a security researcher, I'd give up skydiving.

Re:Accident?

[uncqual]

I would have think they probably used a SIGKILL rather than SIGINT for this task.

Re:Accident?

[phantomfive]

You're just a paranoid bundle of confirmation bias.

Low turns

[Anonymous Coward]

Low turn incidents are usually either a botched high performance landing or a panic move to avoid an obstacle. Sounds like this is the first case.

security researchers need to stop doing risky shit

[Anonymous Coward]

if you're a "security researcher" you really shouldn't do anything that could result in your death because when you research the wrong thing it will!

Re:look out below !

[IANAAC]

splat !

Your comment pretty mirrors the (currently) 19 comments on the reg site.

I suppose a lot of people deal with tragedy through humor, but I sure wouldn't want to be a surviving family member and read some of the comments posted so far.

At least you did it anoncowardly.

Re:look out below !

[bitt3n]

I suppose a lot of people deal with tragedy through humor, but I sure wouldn't want to be a surviving family member and read some of the comments posted so far.

Seriously, it amazes me how people can fail to understand the gravity of this kind of situation.

Re:look out below !

[msauve]

The opposite of gravity is comedy. That's why there's so much black humor.

Nope. Don't care.

[Anonymous Coward]

You jumped out of a perfectly good plane. You get no sympathy at all dude.

Re:look out below !

[Chris Mattern]

The opposite of gravity is comedy. That's why there's so much black humor.

But if the opposite of gravity is comedy, then surely black holes must be the least funny things in the universe.

Re:look out below !

[wisnoskij]

Someone dying by definition cannot be a tragedy to the rest of the word. Tragedy implies not just life as usual.

Though some philosophers maintain that life is a tragedy, so I guess they would disagree.
Personally, I love Seneca's sentiment: “What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.”

Besides that is a pretty epic way to die.

Re:look out below !

[Anonymous Coward]

Goodby Security Guru, like a roman candle in the wind
never knowing when gravity kicked in
the NSA would have like to know you better but fate stepped in

Re:Nope. Don't care.

[Deadstick]

You jumped out of a perfectly good plane.

Translation: Hey, I'm just smarter than he was. It's not because I don't have any balls. Honest.

I guess it does hurt when you fall from heaven.

[Cammi]

I guess it does hurt when you fall from heaven.

Re:look out below !

[Anonymous Coward]

At the end, gravity is what killed him...

It's a reproduction strategy

[Okian Warrior]

But I never have understood the sanity behind jumping out of a perfectly good plane. :(

Women bear the economic price of childbirth. As a consequence, they tend to be conservative and choosy in picking mates and men have to compete for access. In order to succeed, men have evolved to take risks - we see this when comparing the bell curves of women versus men: women tend to have lower standard deviations than men. More women are of average height for women, men tend to have more varied heights. More men are born than women because over the course of their maturity, more men will die from taking risks.

Woman tend to choose men who are successful at taking risks, because those men show capability over other men.

Men tend to get elated by risky activities. It's an emotional cue for a reproduction strategy.

(I'm sorry - were you asking a rhetorical question?)

Re:Nope. Don't care.

[Anonymous Coward]

Translation: Hey, I'm just smarter than he was. It's not because I don't have any balls. Honest.

But certainly better common sense.

Hook turn maneuver

[ciurana]

From the report, it sounds like Cédric performed a maneuver called "hook turn" -- it's a high speed turn in your final approach, 100' or less from the ground, considered deadly and stupid by USPA, the French Federation of Parachutism, and pretty much anyone who's been jumping for a while.

The rate of descent increased as a parachute (square, ram air canopy) banks. The sharper the turn, the faster the descent. The hook turn swings the jumper fast, like a pendulum, and an experienced jumper will guesstimate ending the swing at about the same time as his or her feet would touch the ground. The margin of error for a hook turn, by an experienced jumper riding a small canopy (the more experience the smaller the canopy), is between 5' and 10'.

Start the turn too soon, and you'll end up 3' to 10' above the ground, with a stalled parachute, falling straight down. On a good day, a few bruises or a parachute landing fall, a dirty jump suit, and teasing from your pals. On a bad day, a twisted or broken ankle, yet survivable.

Start the turn too late, and you'll slam the ground with enough force to kill you. And remember: too late is a difference of only about 5'.

Even if the turn starts fine, and the jumper is the king of experienced up jumpers, other factors may come into play. A little thermal near the ground may force the canopy up or sideways near the ground. Or a cold air pocket (e.g. flying over a small puddle, or a dark patch on the ground) may drop the canopy a few feet faster.

Most if not all drop zones since at least 1994 ban people caught doing hook turns because of the danger they present to the jumpers doing them and others around them. Every once in a while some hot shot with a few thousand jumps thinks he's above physics and chance, and does a bandit turn if nobody is watching.

Maybe Cédric ran out of air on final and thought that hooking the turn would help him land into the wind. Maybe he was just hot dogging. Regardless, if he was an up jumper and he did a hook turn, he should've known better and performed a different maneuver. Sad to loose him, but not feeling sorry about the accident itself. Stuff like this is what gives a bad reputation to skydiving in the eyes of people with little or no knowledge of the sport.

Cheers!

Re:Hook turn maneuver

[OhANameWhatName]

Even if the turn starts fine, and the jumper is the king of experienced up jumpers, other factors may come into play

What would a gust of air from the blades of a silent black helicopter do?

Re:Hook turn maneuver

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude was hot-dogging, and paid for it. Typical.

Re:Hook turn maneuver

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe people who ‘are something’ should be responsible and be more careful and refrain from dangerous pastimes.

Re:Hook turn maneuver

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, that was a great post, and then you had ruin it by saying "Sad to loose him."

FFS how many times do we have to tell you people that the word "too" has two o's? :P

Re:Hook turn maneuver

[k6mfw]

thanks for discussing hook turns, hazards involved, and accidents like this are avoidable (don't do hook turns). I've read many incident reports in Parachutist magazine and on rec.skydiving of highly experienced jumpers misjudging hookturn approaches.

Re:Hook turn maneuver

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a hell of a lot that is just plain wrong in this comment.

> it's a high speed turn in your final approach, 100' or less from the ground

Completely outdated, the type of hook turn initiated at 100' at made with a toggle, pretty much no-one ever does this anymore. For many years now, it's been very well established that the only "safe" way to do hook turns is using risers. You initiate those MUCH higher, and you have MUCH more time to correct and fine tune your flare. I knew Credic VERY well and he would definitely never have initiated a hook turn with a toggle at 100 feet. We discussed *many* times the dangers of doing so, and we was a VERY smart person. From witnesses (I was not there), he did initiate a turn maneuver way too low, and we'll never know why, but he certainly did not initiate the type of maneuver you describe willingly, he knew way too much for that.

> a parachute (square, ram air canopy)

The vast majority of ram-air canopies nowadays are elliptical or semi-elliptical, not squares (which is a misnomer for rectangular anyway). Some people (like me) use rectangular canopies, but usually because they have a particular reason to do so (ie, they want very stable openings for wingsuiting, or very stable flight for canopy formation).

> The margin of error for a hook turn, by an experienced jumper riding a small canopy (the more experience the smaller the canopy), is between 5' and 10'.

This is ridiculous. Riser-initiated high performance landings give the jumper hundreds of feet to correct the trajectory. Of course the last part of the swing is a few feet over the ground, but that is true of *any* landing. Granted events accelerate as you approach the ground with this kind of landings, but it's not like you have to make a bet that your guess is right, and die if you were wrong, you have the opportunity to correct every step of the way. Gaining experience with HP landings has everything to do with gradually adding more and more speed, which gradually removes reaction time. Paradoxically, the more experienced you are, the higher those turns are initiated, which gives you more time to correct. On the other hand, you initiate those higher because you turn more (eg: 180 to 270 to 360 to 720 degrees, which take increasingly more time), which require more experience to judge. Long story short: it's a complex process, and summarizing it as "people guesstimate" is a complete misrepresentation.

> Start the turn too soon, and you'll end up 3' to 10' above the ground, with a stalled parachute, falling straight down.

This has nothing to do with the height at which you initiate the turn, but with the shape of the trajectory that you're flying. You are supposed to be in control of where your parachute goes, not the other way around. If you end up 3 feet above where you wanted, that's due to a sustained misjudgment during your recovery arc, not because you started your turn 303' above the ground instead of 300'. Regardless of the height at which you initiate your hook turn, you have a very large margin of maneuver, one that is *order of magnitude* larger than the 3' you are talking about.

And then even if you did consistently misjudge your recovery arc and end up 3' too high, actually stalling is your own damn fault, not your canopy's (baring additional parameters such as turbulences, but that's not what you're talking about). You can, and *should* pilot your canopy in such a way that you will not stall. This is stuff you learn during AFF, and it still applies thousands of jumps later.

> Start the turn too late, and you'll slam the ground with enough force to kill you.

It should be obvious by now that this should really read "Start the turn WAY TOO LATE". Being a little late, or even a lot late is more than survivable, it's survived every day by experienced jumpers who realize they should stop their hook turn, and who have the opportunity to do so for several hundred feet before it ever becomes an issue.

>And remember: too late i

friends.

[capaslash]

"I wonder if it will be friends with me?" - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Re:friends.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Dude, I have to take a dump." Guy in the 7-11

Re:friends.

[Anonymous Coward]

“Another thing that got forgotten was the fact that against all probability a sperm whale had suddenly been called into existence several miles above the surface of an alien planet.

And since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this poor innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity as a whale before it then had to come to terms with not being a whale any more.

This is a complete record of its thoughts from the moment it began its life till the moment it ended it.

Ah ! What’s happening? it thought.

Er, excuse me, who am I?

Hello?

Why am I here? What’s my purpose in life?

What do I mean by who am I?

Calm down, get a grip now oh! this is an interesting sensation, what is it? It’s a sort of yawning, tingling sensation in my my well I suppose I’d better start finding names for things if I want to make any headway in what for the sake of what I shall call an argument I shall call the world, so let’s call it my stomach.

Good. Ooooh, it’s getting quite strong. And hey, what’s about this whistling roaring sound going past what I’m suddenly going to call my head? Perhaps I can call that wind! Is that a good name? It’ll do perhaps I can find a better name for it later when I’ve found out what it’s for. It must be something very important because there certainly seems to be a hell of a lot of it. Hey! What’s this thing? This let’s call it a tail – yeah, tail. Hey! I can can really thrash it about pretty good can’t I? Wow! Wow! That feels great! Doesn’t seem to achieve very much but I’ll probably find out what it’s for later on. Now – have I built up any coherent picture of things yet?

No.

Never mind, hey, this is really exciting, so much to find out about, so much to look forward to, I’m quite dizzy with anticipation

Or is it the wind?

There really is a lot of that now isn’t it?

And wow! Hey! What’s this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like ow ound round ground! That’s it! That’s a good name – ground!

I wonder if it will be friends with me?

And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence.

Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now.”

Re:look out below !

[Rob the Bold]

Personally, I love Seneca's sentiment: “What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.”

Besides that is a pretty epic way to die.

I'm more of a Mel Brooks guy:

"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die."

Or maybe Hemmingway:

" . . . all stories, if continued far enough, end in death . . ."

Skydiving Stories

[GumphMaster]

A recent skydiving accident story with a more cheerful outcome: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2487761/Wisconsin-skydivers-survived-mid-air-collision-said-extreme-sport.html

Hook turn

[manu0601]

Hook turn is an expert's error. Beginners are too scared to attempt touching anything at landing time :-)

Re:Nope. Don't care.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's possible i may decide to jump out of a plane someday.

But at the same i expect no sympathy if i smack into the ground after doing something monumentally stupid.

Re:look out below !

[ihtoit]

no... the impact is what killed him. We are all subject to the effects of gravity 24/7. Difference is how far off the ground you are when you start your freefall.

Obviously and effect of Global Warming(tm)

[Anonymous Coward]

Damm those republicans. If only there were less C02 in the atmosphere he would have hallen slower and survived the fall. Ohh wait, CO2 is more dense than air. Time to reevaluate the density of C02. Need to write propasals to get grant money from the NSF. Propasal gets rejected for being stupid. Damm those republicans who dont believe in science. Post on /.

relevant xkcd:

[yanom]

http://xkcd.com/369/

Rich People problem's day

[Frankie70]

Rich People problems day on Slashdot
- Skydiving Accident Leaves Security Guru Cedric 'Sid' Blancher Dead At 37
- Rigging Up Baby - the rise of extreme baby monitoring

Re:Rich People problem's day

[Anonymous Coward]

Rich People problems day on Slashdot - Skydiving Accident Leaves Security Guru Cedric 'Sid' Blancher Dead At 37 - Rigging Up Baby - the rise of extreme baby monitoring

This is a tech website. If your definition of rich is being able to afford skydiving and baby monitoring gadgets, everyone on slashdot is rich.

Re:look out below !

[Anonymous Coward]

Through Aristotle's definition of "tragedy," which largely shapes its meaning in Western discourse, "tragedy" is not a matter of usual or unusual misfortune, but rather whether said misfortune is portrayed to evoke pity and fear leading to relief (catharsis) in the hearer. Your response seems to indicate the success of Cedric's death as "tragedy": from the story of a splattered body, you reach a (cathartic) conclusion of freedom from perpetual cringing at the prospect of death. Quite the classical application of tragedy, indeed.

Re:look out below !

[c0lo]

I suppose a lot of people deal with tragedy through humor, but I sure wouldn't want to be a surviving family member and read some of the comments posted so far.

Seriously, it amazes me how people can fall in underestimating the gravity of this kind of situation.

FTFY

Re:look out below !

[Seraphim_72]

" When one man dies it is a tragedy, when thousands die it's statistics." - Joseph Stalin

When tragedy follows controversy...

[Anonymous Coward]

..assume conspiracy until proven otherwise beyond a reasonable doubt. Human nature is such that the benefit of the doubt leads to even more tragedy.

Another fine opinion from The Fucking Psychopath®.

Low Turn Most Likely

[Greyfox]

Low turns kill most of us. Looks like he was fairly new, don't expect he'd have been into swooping yet. Though if he was, that would kind of explain it.

We all know the risks. The accident rate really isn't that high, around 1 jump in 100K results in a fatality. I feel safer jumping out of a plane than I do driving down to the city to train in the wind tunnel. The rewards are worth it. Everyone dies, not everyone really lives.

Re:Low Turn Most Likely

[cripkd]

The original french article sais he had a class C permit (whatever that is, I'm not into skydiving) which they say means you jumped more than 200 times.
BTW, what is a low turn?

Re:Low Turn Most Likely

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone dies, not everyone really lives.
 
What a crock of shit.

Re:Low Turn Most Likely

[SternisheFan]

The original french article sais he had a class C permit (whatever that is, I'm not into skydiving) which they say means you jumped more than 200 times. BTW, what is a low turn?

This video demonstrates a low turn, and the 'sudden stop' that happens right after...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmm-md8uuf0

Re:Low Turn Most Likely

[SternisheFan]

BTW, what is a low turn?

In recent years, advanced canopy designs have led to many fatalities associated with daring maneuvers known as "hook turns" and "swoops".

Inducing a parachute into a steep, sometimes 180 degree, diving, hook-like turn just prior to landing can make for a very exciting "swoop"; a long, high speed (horizontal) landing flare inches from the ground. When properly handled, these "swoops" are an extremely thrilling way to land, and an impressive sight to behold. A skilled canopy pilot can cruise inches above the ground at over 20 or 30mph, slowly bleeding off airspeed to make a soft, tippy-toe landing.

To put it in fighter pilot lingo, this is a skydivers way of "flat-hatting" or "hot-dogging". As with flying high performance aircraft, the risks associated with these kinds of crowd-pleasing, show-off maneuvers are great.

If a jumper misjudges the altitude at which the final diving turn is initiated, or begins leveling-off for their landing too late, the jumper may impact the ground while the canopy is still diving at a very high rate of speed. This is often fatal, and has left the skydiving community often bemoaning the ironies of a skydiver dying under a perfectly good parachute. Many skydive centers have wisely banned the practice of low hook turns.

This type of fatality can also occur when a jumper mistakenly turns his or her canopy too sharply, too low to the ground -- as when maneuvering to avoid an impending collision with another canopy* or ground structure. (*another avoidable scenario is mid-air collisions between skydivers flying under canopy)

http://www.fabulousrocketeers.com/Photo_Jolly_Roger.htm

Re:Low Turn Most Likely

[Greyfox]

Wait 60 years and see if you still think so.

Re:Low Turn Most Likely

[Greyfox]

After poking around in the comments it sounds like that was the case. Guy shoulda waited a couple hundred more jumps. Any time you turn you lose some altitude. They discourage you from turning basically at all under about 200 feet when you're training. You discover you can tweak it 10 to 20 degrees if you're heading for a tree or a pond or something. If you're heading toward power lines or a fence or something, you really should have thought of that above 200 feet.

Swooping is an advanced discipline of skydiving where you initiate a dive at a specific altitude and hopefully level out just above the ground. Quite a lot of the time you see "low turn" in a skydiver fatality, it's due to someone trying that and smacking themselves into the ground at 70+ mph. The first time I saw anyone do it was driving past the local dropzone on my way to work. Since there were buildings in the way I didn't see them land and was certain I was going to hear ambulances shortly. Apparently the local 911 dispatch gets so many calls from people on the road, they call the dropzone to verify their services are needed prior to sending anyone 'round.

So why would anyone do that, then? I guess for the same reason they jump out of airplanes in the first place. If you google on "Swooping is Awesome," you'll find a number of videos from their point of view. The control they have is pretty amazing -- last week someone posted one of a lady swooping into a moving convertable. It's not something I ever plan to get into. I enjoy the ride down and am not in a big hurry to get back to the ground.

Re:Low Turn Most Likely

[GameboyRMH]

Wow, that video really shows you how a canopy drops like a rock in a turn...

Re:look out below !

[Anonymous Coward]

*WHOOSH*! (and *splat*, in honor of our fallen comrade)

Re:look out below !

[Opportunist]

It's not the fall that kills you. It's the sudden halt at the end of of the fall that does it.

Re:look out below !

[CRCulver]

Stalin never said that. Please don't perpetuate spurious quotations.

"Accident"

[andreas.hummelbrunne]

I smell a targeted assassination!

Re:"Accident"

[mrbluze]

It's possible and I'm surprised there wasn't more speculation on this in the discussion here. I have no idea, but it'd be interesting to know if there could have been a motive.

Re: "Accident"

[Anonymous Coward]

Because that's not possible if he killed himself under a perfectly good canopy by doing a low hook turn. Bit hard to assassinate someone that way, if not impossible. Cutting the lines would be helluva lot easier. Disclaimer, newbie skydiver with 350 jumps.

Re:look out below !

[harlequinn]

No, you can't say he didn't. There is simply no record that he did. Considering the vast majority of what he said is not recorded, I'd say it's in the realm of possibility that he said it to someone but we'll never truly know whether or not he did.

Re:look out below !

[CRCulver]

As long as one has no real proof that person X said quotation Y, the decent and honest thing to not is to not attribute the quotation to him. The quotation is still insightful and stands on its out without the spurious attribution to Stalin, Hitler or whatever other historical figure is claimed to have said it.

Re:look out below !

[harlequinn]

"the decent and honest thing ... is to not attribute the quotation to him"

I agree.

Re:look out below !

[findoutmoretoday]

"As long as one has no real proof" unless it's in the bible

Re: look out below !

[rvw]

At least he died doing what he loved!

I'd rather die at 73 mowing the lawn than at 37 while skydiving or having hot sex.

Re:look out below !

[Joce640k]

Besides that is a pretty epic way to die.

Not really.

This news article says he had a bad landing, not that his parachute failed. Seems like he was trying some acrobatics as he approached the ground.

http://www.courrier-picard.fr/region/un-parachutiste-se-tue-dans-l-oise-ia0b0n236167

mathematician dies due calculation error on wingsu

[tjaldprd]

http://xtremesport4u.com/extreme-air-sports/a-solemn-warning-to-wingsuit-flyers/ By looking at his equations ,it seems to me that he underestimated the non linearity of the atmosphere. ..

Re: look out below !

[Joce640k]

At least he died doing what he loved!

This news article says the "hard landing" was due to trying some acrobatics as he approached the landing zone.

http://www.courrier-picard.fr/region/un-parachutiste-se-tue-dans-l-oise-ia0b0n236167

Re:look out below !

[kyrsjo]

In norway we say that "it's not the fart that kills you, its the smell" (where fart = speed and smell = crash)

Remembering Chema Celorio

[DV]

Nearly exactly 10 years ago, the GNOME community also lost a young member, Chema Celorio, in a Skydiving accident which was very similar unfortunately (low height, high speed turn).

Skydiving accidents don't kill people.

[Chardansearavitriol]

The abrupt lack of sky does.

Re:Skydiving accidents don't kill people.

[EngnrFrmrlyKnownAsAC]

This is my favorite interpretation so far of a genuinely stale joke. Kudos

The 'incident' didnt 'leave' him anything

[Anonymous Coward]

Very poor English in the title.
Why not put "Sid Blancher dies in skydiving accident' or something similar?

Re:Hook turn maneuver: Apparently wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

From the report, it sounds like Cédric performed a maneuver called "hook turn"

According to some source on linuxfr.org who claims he was a friend of Cedric as well as a fellow skydiver and was there with him the very day he died, he did not attempt said jump but something went wrong, possibly because of the day's high winds (but within the limit of acceptable speed). While Cedric had been learning about hook turns or whatever they are called, he apparently did not attempt it that day and was extremely square on security in general.

Source: http://linuxfr.org/nodes/100355/comments/1500621

Re: look out below !

[vyvepe]

I bet it depends on how heathy you will be from 37 to 73 :-)

Difference between golf and skydiving

[Alioth]

What's the difference between golf and skydiving?

In golf you go "Whack... uh oh"
In skydiving you go "Uh oh....whack!"

Re: look out below !

[Anonymous Coward]

Geez, even Stephen Hawking has a good attitude.

Re:look out below !

[wisnoskij]

But he lived it.

Re:look out below !

[Anonymous Coward]

Video game quotes, lol.

This is why...

[ziggy_az]

you should never jump out of a perfectly good airplane.

Re: look out below !

[Bigbutt]

I live close to an airport (small one) where skydivers jump fairly often. In watching them, I see them diving quickly towards the ground and then at the last sec, pulling up enough so their feet skim the ground. It doesn't leave a lot of room for mistakes though and there have been a few accidents where someone misjudged the distance and *splat* ended it all. I guess it's thrilling enough though.

Personally I ride a sport bike. The bike will let me hit 77MPH in first gear so I could certainly make a mistake and end up in pieces somewhere assuming I actually regularly rode like that. But it only takes once at high speed to hit an animal (a small one at high speeds might make an impact), or a rock, or any number of things that cause loss of control.

[John]

Re:look out below !

[cHALiTO]

"I'm not going to ride on a magic carpet!" he hissed. "I'm afraid of grounds." "You mean heights," said Conina. "And stop being silly." "I know what I mean! It's the grounds that kill you!"

        -- (Terry Pratchett, Sourcery)

Re: look out below !

[tibit]

diving quickly towards the ground and then at the last sec, pulling up enough so their feet skim the ground

That's how a properly executed paragliding flare looks like, I'm afraid. Paragliding is like flying, and certification exams use a lot of terms that would apply in flying a sailplane or a helicopter, although the distances and altitudes involved are of course scaled differently.

Re:look out below !

[camperdave]

The opposite of gravity is comedy. That's why there's so much black humor.

Close. The opposite of gravity is levity.

Re:Nope. Don't care.

[GameboyRMH]

I like to give people who are afraid of or uninterested in "risky" activities a pass, they don't have to prove anything.

Until they call people who do such activities "stupid." Then they're being just as dickish as if we said they had no balls. So the point is don't sink to that level.

Re:Nope. Don't care.

[Deadstick]

Yeah, point taken.

Re:look out below !

[Anonymous Coward]

...
The death of one is a tragedy
The death of a million is just a statistic

Marilyn Manson (The Fight Song)

Horatio Caine on the scene

[korbulon]

( o_o)

"Well it looks like..."

( o_o)-> ~O-O

"the sky..."

(~O_O)

"was the limit."

YYYYYYEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!

Re: look out below !

[Anonymous Coward]

With skydiving if you die, 9/10 its your own fault. Motorcycles on the other hand I'm going to say is the other way around ... 9/10 its someone sexting or playing candy crush that fails to see a rider ... Rode for 9 years (no longer ride), in my 4th year of skydiving (still doing it) and base jump for 2.

So...

[DrStoooopid]

....I wonder if he had anything to do with the Obamacare website or had anything to do with Hillary Clinton's network. Then it may not be the "accident" that it appears to be.

Re:look out below !

[Beardo the Bearded]

splat !

I suppose a lot of people deal with tragedy through humor, but I sure wouldn't want to be a surviving family member and read some of the comments posted so far.

I dive, and I've been in a diving accident that left me with some spinal cord damage. (It's minor and doesn't affect my mobility). There's a good chance that I could have died through my own stupidity. I still dive, and I'll continue to do so. Will I die in bed? Maybe. Will I die while diving? Maybe. Will I die? And how.

I would like anyone who wants to to make as much fun of me as possible. My family and friends would appreciate the humour, and I'd honestly be touched that someone took the time to say "well, bye".

My funeral, such as it is, includes instructions for everyone to tell the most embarrassing thing they know about me.

Was it rwally an accident?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did the NSA/CIA/FBI/??? help pack his parachute?

Perfectly good nova

[onceuponatime]

Hey, for anyone that likes hook turning. I have a nova canopy for sale, hardly used, maybe only 20 jumps on it :-)

Kim

Maybe it was not an accident

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if,he loved sky diving that much I doubt it would of killed him, he obviously was an experienced sky diver if it was his passion.. Given his passion for his occupation would have made him a valuable asset or a very dangerous threat given all the things going on in the world today such as high tech spying n security...upset the wrong people or refuse to cooperate with those that consider themselves untouchable and you are going to have a fatal accident

Failure at layered security.

[Anonymous Coward]

Security in depth would have required he be covered in springs and airbags as well as having parachutes. He was no security guru.

Not all cutting edge tech should be used

[Anonymous Coward]

Stupid wireless parachutes.

Re:Hook turn maneuver: Apparently wrong

[ciurana]

Cool - thanks for the link.

I suspect that the French parachuting federation issues incident reports, analysis, and corrective measures bulletins just like the USPA does. We'll find out the whole story when that happens; if it's like here, give it 90 days or so.

Cheers!

Farewell, buddy !

[Anonymous Coward]

Cedric was a collegue of mine. Such a great person ! A mensch !

Bye, Sid.
G.

Re:look out below !

[Seraphim_72]

"In an interview with the BBC's Andrew Marr (11.11.2011) Winston Churchill's daughter, Mary Soames, explained that she overheard Stalin say this to her father. Churchill, was upset having received news that a family friend had died. He apologised to Stalin in light of the vast loss of Russian life. And Stalin then gave this reply."

From your wiki link

Oh, and I do believe that first hand accounts still count for quotes do they not?

Re:look out below !

[CRCulver]

Oh, and I do believe that first hand accounts [youtube.com] still count for quotes do they not?

First-hand accounts that are first provided over fifty years later, when the quotation of whatever origin has already spread through popular culture, don't count for much. Human memory is very fallible, and people can easily come to believe strongly in something that never happened.

Re:look out below !

[Seraphim_72]

I take it that you missed the part where she kept a diary the entire time. Do you think that she might have written in her diary something about the death of a family friend and the odd exchange of her father and the Secretary General of the Soviet Union? You also have no proof that this is the only utterance about this she ever made, for all we know she could be the origin of the quote, nor can you prove she ever heard it outside of him saying it. In any event if you are going to dismiss 50 year old recollections then I am sure I can come up with reams of historical documents that took fifty years to write or talk about that you are going to have to toss out as well, not to mention a wealth of history itself. I also note that you didn't even peep about that in the interview she doesn't get the quote exactly right. Which tells me you didn't even watch it, which makes me wonder if you are more interested in being right or correct.

Face it, she was actually was present at the exchange. The onus is on you to prove that she was mistaken with something other than a variant of 'memory is a tricky thing' for someone who has apparently doesn't have memory issues.

Re: look out below !

[Anonymous Coward]

Frankly old chap, I'd rather die at 90 while having hot sex.

sad

[amonamaranth]

that's a sad news.