What do people die from when falling from 40,000 feet?
People can die of different things even if they were to land on the same surface.Let’s say there’s a Person A and Person B somewhere. They’re very good friends and good people… They’re not stupid, but have this rather unfortunate tendency to not think things through. One thing led to another, and they’re now falling out of an airplane with no parachute.The plane they were travelling on was flying over the Pacific Ocean. Now, they fell out of the airplane together, and they’re falling at the same speed (terminal velocity), but they land differently.Person A belly flops, and his midsection hits the water. (Ouch. The mother of all bellyflops.) Pow, the tremendous force breaks many of his bones — his skull is fractured, many of his ribs are cracked and broken… He goes into shock from the pain, and that combined with the unbearable trauma kills him quickly. Or perhaps he lands on his head, and he dies instantly.Person B is more lucky than Person A (or less lucky?). He lands in the water feet-first, and both his legs break upon impact, perhaps along with a few vertebrae. Person B is not killed immediately, but he is knocked unconscious by the impact. Unable to swim to the surface for breath, he soon drowns.At terminal velocity (you’re virtually guaranteed this speed from a fall at 40,000 feet), there’s little difference whether you land on a body of water somewhere or flat ground.Unless, of course, you land on something narrow and pointy. Or something with lots of narrow and pointy ends. Say, for example, a tree in a forest…In which case you might find yourself impaled by branches.It’s certainly happened before.And the boy wasn’t even falling from all that high. Heck, he jumped onto the tree. It’ll be a lot uglier if you fall onto the tree. You might be skewered like meat on a stick, or you might be lucky and not be. Who knows?
From how high could a cat fall onto hard ground and not be injured?
I'm assuming you mean house cats, and by falling hard you mean not a controlled fall. Cats are natural daredevils.They are pros at controlled falls. It's quite possible for a cat to survive at her terminal velocity of 60 miles per hour, as demonstrated by a study done on 132 cats falling an average of 5.5 stories, published in The Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association. 90% survived, albeit many requiring medical attention. The study suggested cats often have a better survival rate above a certain height due to their ability to relax and spread out more. In fact, only one of the 13 falling more than 9 stories broke a bone, and the cat that survived the longest fall, of 32 stories, was good to go in two days.However, many a cat fall without the opportunity for "righting reflex". I remember the worst such fall my cat Luna has made...... was when she was lost in a cloth bag atop a 6 foot cabinet. I saw her rolling to the edge and shouted across the room (during a party) "Nooooooo!!!!" But she fell. Straight down. Onto a wood floor.Was she screaming and crying in pain?No, she was not...She seemed a little dazed, but still cat-shaped. I patted her around, looking for some form of reaction, knowing cats instinctively hide injury. She seemed to check out fine, everywhere.There's a realization that I made over time. Cats have evolved to better survive accidents than other species. When a cat hunts prey, they are not trying to go for the jugular. They're just looking to trip their prey up, whether or not they go down with it. They know they're good at recovering very quickly. This ability also helps when they go down with nothing.However, that does NOT mean it's a good idea to facilitate such accidents, or even large falls at all, controlled or not. Cat bones still break, even from smaller heights than Luna fell from. While cats do appreciate height, those perches should be sturdy, with an easy way down. Keep Luna's pals safe!EDIT:There was concern in a comment that this "ground breaking research with cats" was done like this:Noooo... this was a study done on cats that were brought in for medical care. They were just studying accident reports, and not actually inducing "accidents".
Would Revolutionary-War era muskets and Civil-War era rifles be able to pierce a modern-day ballistic vest?
I'm writing a scene for a novel, and I'm curious if muskets and early rifles would be able to pierce a ballistic vest. I understand they had calibers that sometimes bordered on the frankly ridiculous, but would the lack of a powerful propellant limit their effect on the vests? Would the rounded shape of the typical musket ball be less efficient in the piercing? What might one expect wounds inflicted in such a manner to look like--typical musket/rifle wounds? Bruising?
As a plane is about to crash, could one just jump off the plane just before it crashes and survive?
This scenario happened to an instructor while I was in Air Force pilot training.It was not what he intended to do, but it ended up being what you’re suggesting.He and a student got into a spin from which they could not recover. The student, a member of my class, had made comments to friends that if he were ever in a position to eject, he wouldn’t do it. No one reported him for saying that because we didn’t take him seriously.AND THEN IT HAPPENEDUnfortunately, a few weeks later he was in that situation and, as he said, he did not eject. No one will ever know exactly what happened in the last few seconds—so this is speculation from the accident report—but it appeared that the instructor delayed his own ejection trying to talk the reluctant student into pulling the handles.Just about one second too late the instructor pulled his handles anyway. He came out and the chute streamed out behind him, then he hit. One more second and the chute would have had time to inflate.CLOSED CASKET FUNERAL EITHER WAYI supposed you know pretty much nothing about physics, so let me say that the only difference your suggestion would make is that the body would be in slightly better shape. The student was killed in the crash and they recovered nothing more than pieces. The instructor was still intact, but, well, dead is dead. They both had closed casket funerals.WE CAN TAKE A LEAD FROM THE AIR FORCE PROCEDURESAfter this accident inquiry was complete, the Air Force modified its ejection procedures to make it crystal clear that the pilot in command was to say Bail Out! Bail Out! Bail Out! and then do it instantly. No one was to ever delay ejection to attempt to get a reluctant crew member to go.So, if you think about it, in a backwards way, the Air Force officially said that your idea won’t work. Of course those of us who attended the closed casket funerals already knew that.