In 1983, Dana Kunzemade dove into a pool from 172 feet up on live television

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Originally published at: In 1983, Dana Kunzemade dove into a pool from 172 feet up on live television | Boing Boing

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Humans be so crazy!

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I know, right? How did we ever survive evolution?

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I wonder how deep the pool was?

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If you can’t envision how high 172 feet is, it’s as tall as a 17 story building.

More helpfully, around 596 shrews stacked nose to tail.

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That I would like to see.

Imagine the training involved, and in keeping it all safe from owls. I’m so in!

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I mean, I could, if you had bothered to give it in metres.

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It didn’t seem that high until they showed the cameras view looking straight down. Yikes.

I find it interesting that after his world record dive he only scored an 8.8.

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Reagan yoinked that socialist metric shit when I was a kid, but I can tell you it’s 4 and a half standard American school busses.

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This seems like one of those events where the real treasure is getting to keep your spinal column and winning on points is a secondary objective.

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Right? What’s the ratio of air to water in this drop?

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I think there’s a point beyond which it doesn’t matter. I forget what the number is, but I’ve read that hitting water above a certain height (which isn’t actually very high) is like hitting concrete. The surface tension is too high for certain entry velocities, and that vertical entry isn’t just good form. It’s keeping the dive from killing you. My understanding is that the entry depth isn’t linear with entry speed, it’s more of an inverse exponential thing. So a certain fairly modest depth of water is enough for any survivable jump. Really amazing that people will attempt this.

This is apparently a big thing that movies have lied to us about- that any fall is okay if there’s enough water to land in.

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52.43 meters

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I’m pretty certain that I watched this when it was originally broadcast. After 40 years I can’t be 100% sure, but it definitely seems very familiar. I remember having a knot in my stomach worrying about what would happen if it went wrong.

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There was a good Tom Scott episode with a Quebecois high diver training at the old Olympic Pool in Montreal – they have dedicated 15, 18, and 20M platform there.

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Wow, that’s like 17 to 19 storeys, depending on the building!

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Thanks! That’s insanely high!

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Climbing the tower seems more harrowing to me than the jump.

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Depending on the owls, this could work out. Barn owls are 12 - 18 inches, so you’d only need 100 - 170 of those, stacked. They can get cranky, though, so they might have to be glued together, or maybe welded? They’d still flap a lot, which might scare the shrews. But maybe the shrews could be blindfolded, and sedated. I know in the 1960s Psychology-types used to inject rats with morphine and have them run through mazes and stuff. Surely a low-dose opioid could calm the blindfolded shrews to the point that the flapping of welded/glued barn owls wouldn’t disturb them too much.

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You know what, I don’t think we should do this.

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