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

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

If at first you don't succeed...

[Shoten]

...skydiving is not for you.

Re: Security 101

[WWJohnBrowningDo]

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

Source

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: Security 101

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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.

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: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 . . ."

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.