Top 10 People Who Survived INSANE Falls
#10: James Boole
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An experienced skydiver, James Boole specialized in filming while jumping for movies and documentaries. But even an expert sometimes makes mistakes. In 2009, Boole jumped out of a plane flying six thousand feet over Russia. Focused on getting a great shot, he missed the signal to deploy his parachute; and by the time he realized it, it was too late. Boole crashed into a snowbank at about ninety miles per hour. To his amazement, he was still alive, though in pain from a broken back and a punctured lung. Boole ended up making a complete recovery, and said that while he didn’t intend to give up skydiving entirely, he was going to stop filming at the same time!
#9: Roger Woodward
Young Roger was only seven in 1960, when he and his sister went for a boat ride on the upper Niagara River with an adult family friend. They went downstream for a while, and then the older man decided to go back; but as the small boat turned, its motor stopped. The boat capsized, and they were thrown into the water, the current driving them toward Horseshoe Falls. Roger’s sister managed to get near the shore, and was helped out; the other two were not so lucky. They went over the waterfall and dropped one-hundred-and-seventy feet. The family friend drowned, but Roger survived, becoming the first person to go over Horseshoe Falls without a barrel and live.
#8: Ivan Chisov
Lieutenant Colonel Chisov served as a navigator on a Soviet bomber in World War II. When his airplane was shot and disabled by German fighters, Chisov jumped out. He had a parachute, but he was afraid that if he opened it too soon, he would be an easy target for enemy aircraft. So, he decided to wait a few more seconds–and then promptly passed out from the lack of oxygen. His parachute never deployed. Chisov plummeted twenty-three-thousand feet and landed on a snow-covered slope. The absorbency of the snow, and the fact that the incline redirected his energy, may have saved his life; or maybe he was just super tough because he was back in action within three months!
#7: Shayna Richardson
Shayna Richardson had about the worst possible luck on her first skydiving jump alone. She had already gone skydiving frequently with her boyfriend, but soon after the solo jump from ten-thousand feet, Richardson spun out of control. A toggle was broken on her main parachute. She cut the lines and deployed her reserve parachute–which failed to open properly. Richardson fell helplessly, at great speed, until she landed headfirst on asphalt. Incredibly, she survived, though she was seriously injured. She also got a surprise in the hospital: she had been two weeks pregnant without knowing it! The baby ended up being okay, too. So, if Richardson had terrible luck during the jump, at least it turned around afterwards!
#6: Joe Simpson
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Joe Simpson and his partner, Simon Yates, were descending a perilous mountain in the Andes when Simpson fell over a cliff and fractured his leg. They attached themselves together with a rope for security, but then Simpson stumbled into a crevasse. He hung there, powerless, as Yates tried to pull him back up. He couldn’t do it. After an hour of struggle, Yates felt he had no choice: he cut the rope, sending his partner plummeting to almost certain death. But Simpson survived. However, he was trapped in the crevasse and unable to walk; so he crawled painfully for four days, frozen and famished, before finally making it to base camp. Yates was still there, and Simpson was saved.
#5: Juliane Diller
In the case of Dr. Juliane Diller (née Koepcke), the fall was just the beginning. She and her mother were flying to the Amazon rainforest when the wing of their plane was struck by lightning. The airplane tore apart at almost ten-thousand feet, and Diller fell, blacking out before she hit the ground. When she awoke, she was alone in the Peruvian jungle. No one else had survived. Her collarbone was broken, and she had no food. Insects swarmed around her, infesting her injuries. After eleven days, Diller finally found a camp of forest workers, who helped her get medical treatment; but without her parents’ training on how to survive in the jungle, she would probably have never made it.
#4: Nicholas Alkemade
Nicholas Alkemade was a gunner in the British Royal Air Force during World War II. One night, as his bomber airplane was returning from a mission, it got blown off course–right into German anti-aircraft territory. The plane was hit and burst into flames. Alkemade went for his parachute, but it was already on fire, so he just jumped out. He fell eighteen thousand feet, losing consciousness along the way. When Alkemade came to, he was lying in the snow under a forest of pine trees. He’d been burned, and his knee was sprained, but that was all. When he got picked up by the Nazis, they refused to believe his story–until they found the wreckage of the airplane, and Alkemade’s scorched, unopened parachute.
#3: Steve Fossett
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Steve Fossett was an adventurer, pilot, and aeronaut who made history in 2002 by traveling around the world alone in a hot air balloon. Before that, though, he had a few mishaps–like the time in 1998 when his balloon got sucked into a thunderstorm over the Coral Sea. Flying at thirty-thousand feet, the balloon was ripped to shreds by wind and hail. Fosset tried to slow his descent by jettisoning weight, but in a matter of seconds, the balloon capsule hit the sea and began to sink. Fossett dove through the hatch and managed to escape. Incredibly, he suffered no severe injuries from the fall; Fossett believed his quick unloading before impact might have saved him, but no one knows for sure.
#2: William Rankin
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U.S. Marine pilot William Rankin was flying his jet at forty-seven-thousand feet when the engine suddenly failed. He had no choice but to eject into the freezing, nearly airless upper atmosphere. As Colonel Rankin fell, decompression caused his ears, nose, and eyes to bleed, and his skin burned with frostbite. Then, his parachute automatically deployed–in the middle of a raging thunderstorm. Heavy rain nearly drowned him, while thunder and lightning seemed inches away. Worst of all, violent winds trapped him inside the storm, throwing him around wildly and preventing his descent. Rankin finally made it out and landed. He had been in the air for forty minutes. Afterward, he became known as “The Man Who Rode the Thunder.”
#1: Vesna Vulović
Vesna Vulović holds the current world record for surviving the longest fall without a parachute. Vulović was a stewardess on an airplane, which was flying thirty-three-thousand feet over the Czech Republic when it exploded from a bomb in the luggage compartment. No one else survived, but a nearby villager heard screams and found Vulović trapped in the wreckage. She had many serious injuries, but eventually recovered; the only permanent damage Vulović sustained was a limp, caused by spine trauma. Scientists have been debating ever since as to how she could have survived. Like Chisov, she landed on a snowy slope; like Diller, she was in a mostly intact part of the plane; but those were much lower falls. Vulović’s survival remains a mystery.
