Virtually every human being is afraid of falling, whether physically, emotionally or otherwise (sometimes we fear falling in love) but this article talks about the physical part, that is falling from a very high height and still survive,taking note that any fall from a very high height can lead to death or having serious or life threatening injuries. This is why most people including myself have phobia for height, still there are people that managed to survive falls from heights that a really high.
In this article we will have a look at people who survived high falls and how it actually went down.
VESNA VULOVIC
Vesna Vulovic holds the record for the highest fall survived without the help of a parachute. He was a flight attendant for jugoslavenski aerotransport. He was on a flight over what was then Czechoslovakia, the aircraft broke up when a bomb exploded onboard the plane killing everyone except Vesna Vulovic who fell 33,333ft before hitting the ground and somehow survived with serious injuries, she broke several bones and spent 27 days in coma and 16 months in the hospital. She went on to make a full recovery.
BEAR GRYLLS
Before he became a TV personality, He was in the military and was Involved in the SAS Territorial Army and took part in a training exercise over Zambia. During the exercise while in the air his parachute failed to inflate , he thought he could fix the problem before hitting the ground instead he fell 16000ft and landed on his parachute pack. Luckily there was no severe damage to his spinal cord but he broke his back and that required a 1year 10 hour a day physiotherapy.
JULIANE KOEPCKE
In 1971 Juliane's boarded a plane traveling to Peru on Christmas Eve and an engine on the wing of the plane was struck by lightning. The plane began to experience heavy turbulence. After several minutes of passing through the storm, the aircraft fall without control. Juliane was the only survivor out of the 91 passengers on board, and the 17-year-old landed in the jungle with a broken collar bone. She spent 10 days in the Peruvian jungle before she was rescued. The leading theory for how she survived is that the heavy vegetation softened her fall while the row of seats she was hooked in acted as a glider.
CHRISTINE McKENZIE
Christine McKenzie was a South African skydiver and on August 2004 fell 11,000ft onto high voltage electricity power lines.
The 23-year-old was in free-fall when her parachute failed to open. This made her to try and inflate her reserve chute, but the reserved chute malfunctioned and became tangled as it partially inflated. This incident deprived her of any support and she crashed into series of high voltage power lines before hitting the ground. Those powerlines saved her life, though, absorbing most of the energy from the fall and reduced her impact. Despite all that went wrong, McKenzie managed to survive with just a broken pelvis and some bruising.
ALAN MAGEE
Alan was WWII Sergeant he was involved in a plane crash.
Alan Magee was part of a B-17 Flying Fortress crew that was hit by German fire during a mission. Alan not only found himself plummeting towards the ground in, but he had also been hit by gunfire during the attack. Yet, unbelievably , he still managed to eject himself from the aircraft. Magee parachute had been damaged, meaning he was in free fall and then he crashed through the glass ceiling of a train station. Incredibly , this glass ceiling actually managed to save his life, and only had some minor injuries.
JOSHUA HANSOM(Miracle Man)
Joshua Hanson miraculously survived a fall from 200ft from a hotel. The accident happened when Hanson ran from an elevator in January 2007. He lost his balance and fell through a window, plummeting from the 17th floor of the building onto an overhanging roof. From there, he fell to the ground, somehow landing on his feet. The 29-year-old suffered a myriad of serious injuries, including internal bleeding and multiple broken bones but was lucky to simply stay alive.
JAMES BOOLE
James Boole an experienced skydiver who completed some 2,500 jumps during his lifetime. However, upon all of his years experience it didn't prevent him from falling 6,000 ft in Russia. During one of his skydiving experience he released his parachute too late for it to fully inflate. He hit the ground with a massive amount of force. Somehow, Boole was able to survive, sustaining a broken back and ribs. He had a miraculous recovery and he could walk after just a week of the accident.
STEVE FOSSETT
Steve Fossett was an adventurer who made successful attempts to travel around the world in a hot air balloon. In one of his attempts in August 1998, he suffered a disastrous accident as his hot air balloon crashed into a storm front. Hail tore the structure apart and his small capsule went tumbling towards the ground . After falling almost 30,000 ft, Fossett woke up to discover he had not only survived the crash but was also completely uninjured . The capsule had landed in water and protected him from injury, though, he did have to spend about 10 hours at sea before help arrived.
FELIX BAUMGARTNER
Felix baumgartner survived a fall from space so his story is a little bit more interesting.
Unlike the other stories in this article , Felix Baumgartner did not fall from a great height by accident. Instead, he was performing a stunt partnered by Red Bull in October 2012. The Austrian jumped 128,100ft out of a balloon and reached a maximum speed of 833.9 mph during the descent. Although the parachute was inflated as planned in the last few seconds of the 10 minute drop, Felix did run into trouble twice. While heading down into the final part of Earth’s atmosphere, his visor began to fog due to a malfunction, and while he was dropping he began to tumble rather than remain in a special delta position. Fortunately, he managed to recover and was completely free of injuries upon landing.
TIM STILWELL
In June 2013 Tim stilwell fell from the fifteenth floor of a hotel after noticing he was locked out of his apartment. Tim Stilwell decided the best line of action was to try to hang and drop onto his neighbor's balcony. While executing his plan, he slipped and fell from the fifteenth floor of the hotel building and landed on the roof of a building at ground level. According to medical experts who attended the scene, he was incredibly lucky to have survived the fall. He came away with broken bones and internal bruising but medical personnel said he should make a full recovery.