Liked for the obscure SilverHawks reference.
Practically everyone who was alive in the 80s remembers the ThunderCats, but their offshoot cartoons were oft forgotten…
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The way things are going, “lots of dangerous activities” is actually looking like a more and more realistic “retirement plan…”
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Generally true — unless you’re Luke Aikins. But then, he wasn’t specifically wingsuiting.
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"Check out this cool flying sport!
Oh, it has a high fatality rate… but isn’t it so awesome!"
So, yeah, I’ll be “that guy”… I don’t think activities like these should be illegal, but I do find them to be extremely selfish and narcissistic. I’m sure they do this for the “thrill” or to “feel alive”, but that’s cold comfort to the wife, children, parents, friends left behind when the pursued their ridiculous “passion” or “sport”.
I first started feeling this way after I saw one of those news item where some western thrill seeker goes up Mt. Everest and, as they lie dying from whatever it is that kills you up there, they make some heart-wrenching good-bye call to their wife or girlfriend and all I can think is that they are fucking selfish idiots.
These activities are not advancing science or knowledge or whatever, they’re mere self-indulgence.
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Your sitting inside on the couch, when BAM something hits the window . . .
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Not just lower and lower but into pathways that may not drop off fast enough for the wing suit’s glide ratio. That video was probably the craziest wing suit video I’ve seen, though I can’t say as I’ve made a study of them.
That is, I’d say, a ridiculous bar to set for a hobby. Pretty much nobody’s recreation meets your standard.
I do feel that way sometimes when watching videos like this one, or free climbing or whatnot, by people who have kids. That’s just not right, IMO. But then, should soliders have kids in wartime? Dunno, but that isn’t recreation.
However, at least an accident in wing suit flying is likely to leave you simply dead rather than expensively rehabilitated. In the end, though, motorcycles are a much more humdrum way to kill or injure yourself, or eating fatty and/or sugary foods, or swimming alone, or… But flying seems a lot more thrilling than any of those if you survive.
This, on the other hand, seems entirely stupid, if beautifully filmed:
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Every time I tell myself that my time as an adrenaline junkie is in the past, somebody comes up with a new thing I really want to try. Like this. But if I didn’t die doing it, RatWoman would kill me. Ah well, our choices are our choices.
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But is doing risky things really more selfish than instinctively clinging to life for as long as you can just because you are programmed to?
If I am supposed to make my choices based upon whether or not others are comfortable with my personal decisions, then might those others not be the selfish ones? The way I see it, selfishness manifests as feelings of attachment - to your property, your family, friends, and lovers, your hobby, your life itself. That’s not to say that you can’t have and cherish those things. I’d argue that one doesn’t need the attachment in order to fully experience them, it may even be an obstacle.
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I liked these videos.
then I watched one on liveleak.
Thanks nope.
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And how much risk do you find tolerable?
Comments like this one always leave me uneasy. I’m a hiker, you see. I often go solo. Sometimes more than a day’s travel from the nearest road. Sometimes off trail. Sometimes on pretty technical and exposed rock scrambles (translation: hands-and-feet climbing, and it’s one heck of a way down). Sometimes above timberline in winter. I’m quite aware that people die on some of the routes that I take. I’ve lost friends to falls, and hypothermia, and drownings - never on my watch, mercifully, but I have no illusion that it doesn’t happen. Still, I also know - and statistics bear me out - that I’m at far greater risk in my truck driving to the woods than I am Out There. But my colleagues think I’m taking insane risks.
I’m not in it for the “thrill” or to feel alive; in fact, I’m Out There to unwind and relax. If I never have an adrenaline rush out in the forest, that’s fine with me! I really dislike crowds, and going far out on difficult routes is one way to avoid them. I take all the reasonable safety precautions that I can.
I’ve had the opportunity to see cedar trees that were a century old when Columbus stepped off the boat - on the Eastern Seaboard, where the usual position is that all old-growth forest is destroyed. (I won’t tell you where, except that it’s a very small patch that requires some pretty dodgy rock scrambling to get to it, which is why the loggers missed it.) I’ve had the opportunity to swim in a crystal-clear lake, miles from any other human, and have the illusion of being entirely alone, a man totally unencumbered, naked in the wilderness. (I say ‘illusion’ because my backpack, with gear and supplies, was hanging in a tree not a hundred metres away, and I planned to return to the city just three days later.) I’ve sat on a river bank while a beaver with no fear of humans worked a couple of metres from my feet. I’ve slid down a few hundred metres of icy mountain as if it were a playground slide, controlling my fall with my ice axe.
Was I selfish to enjoy those experiences, for no better reason than that my spirit would be the poorer without them? My wife and daughter seem to think otherwise. But I’ve heard the same rhetoric about being “selfish” and taking “senseless” risks applied to what I do - from people with much less personal interest in what risks I take.
What should I be doing instead? Must I devote every waking hour to “advancing science or knowledge or whatever?” (For what it’s worth, I’m a scientist in my day job, and hope I contribute something…) Is it more laudable to be bored to tears sweating on a treadmill when I could be enjoying myself sweating on a mountain? Should I sit about watching some sportsball team when I could be watching a falcon soaring, with the occasional “whoosh” of wings just feet from my ear? Are my hobbies “irresponsible” merely because they’re unconventional?
I personally would not tolerate the risks of being a wingsuit pilot. But I can’t bring myself to condemn them either. People who live in glass houses, and all that.
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Damn…
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What about Oculus? I just watched this in Cardboard, and you know what? I don’t like heights. Never have, and pretty much as he jumped, I had to lie down on the floor to be okay with continuing.
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Really? I doubt my aft end has ever been so water-tight.
I suspect that flying a wingsuit is fairly safe as such things go for people who prefer to just jump and fly around for a while. It’s probably those who post videos of trying to buzz ever closer objects who risk the worst possible outcomes.
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Yes, it is the close to the terrain “proximity flying,” not the flying, that kills you.
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I wouldn’t do it myself, but I can totally understand it. People have been dreaming of flying for all of history. Not just flying in an aeroplane, but actually spreading your wings out and soaring like a bird without a machine around you. People have died young for much more pointless and mundane reasons. It is selfish in a number of ways, but so is having two houses. It’s an untimely and pointless death, but so is dying in a war or on a motorbike. This largely limits your damage to you and those who feel your loss, and the fact that we can experience it with them increases its value. 1.5 million people watched this video, while over 31 million watched this one:
In many ways I feel that someone like this does more to further human existence than what most people do with their lives.
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You make going “splat” on a rock sound so romantic.
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It’s not about going splat on a rock, it’s about doing something amazing with the chance of going splat on a rock.
If I wanted to go into a diatribe about people pointlessly and selfishly wasting their lives, I wouldn’t start here. I do think that skimming the ground is excessive though.
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I totally would, were it not for age, money and general unsuitability for it. Like a shot.
Worse ways to go. Just fill in the hole, put up a headstone. And it at least it would be quick. 
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Hey man, my nuclear weapons policy is: “walk towards the mushroom cloud. With any luck I’ll be dead before I get there.”
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