Video: BASE jumping disaster

I dunno, it looks to me like he intentinally spun around to grab that outcropping (once being a young male, I could see it being something to try for to see if I could do it), and he miscalulated his rate of inertia and the reality of geology when he got there.

Or you come and do it in New Zealand, where we’ll patch you up for free —so long as you promise not to sue anyone.

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See discussion elsewhere of the fact that the US has a health insurance system rather than a health system. (Though frankly I don’t have a problem with asking folks who deliberately take additional risks to assume commensurate additional responsibilities for the outcome.)

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I’m all too aware of how 3rd World the US is when it comes to coverage for health. My sister had a bad experience while working there because her employer lied about the nature of her health coverage. :frowning:

NZ’s ACC (Accident Compensation Corporation)'s “no fault” compensation scheme is also insurance based, run in parallel with our national healthcare system. For a tourist destination with a lot of dangerous activities and a relatively small economy it’s just cheaper overall for the nation to cover all comers for accidents while they are here, rather than to have everything dragged through the courts or chase people for the cost of their emergency care.

Just don’t get sick while you’re here without travel insurance, that one’s on you. :wink:

(grammar edit)

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Granted; NZ can certainly justify underwriting a lot in order to keep the visitors coming (and spending).

And in New Zealand we even pay to patch up tourists free of charge. So come and do all your dangerous activities here!

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Wall Street, I’ve climbed there, it’s some tough as nuts climbing!

You look at the rock, it’s covered in chalk marks, you think there are loads of grips. You get up there, you realize it’s lots of 2mm shit you have to grab with your fingernails, and the chalk is due to people feverishly trying to hang on.

Because otherwise the terrorists would win!

No really, I never understood that, too.
Too much BS about the power of positive thinking in the diet?

Although - in some respects they are the most risk-adverse, considering the insane amout of money that goes into military spending.

Once I get out of this full body cast, I tell you about the game of Carcassonne that went horribly wrong.

You do have to be careful still, we all remember the Catan incident of '09 where Jim lost an eye.

Reminds me of Jeb;s onboard from Table Mountain. He is jumping again and seems to be back to 100%.

I had to do a Google search to confirm that Dean Potter didn’t actually die in 3:21 - he had a parachute instead of a rope.

Good thing he left it until he was most of the way up before falling…

Yeah, learned to jump with the RAF. First jump someone else packs your chute, second jump you pack your own. I opted out of the second jump…

Well, it’s not freedom if we can’t make bad choices. Judging by the jumper/faller’s right hand in most of the video, he was unconscious for most of the way down. He also wasn’t looking around and problem solving (or panicking) - just inert.

Every once in awhile someone gets hurt here in Canada, and the pro-private health insurance folks crow about risk takers paying for their own and not subsidizing blah blah.

Bottom line is that it is simpler and more cost effective to just take care of people when they get hurt, and leave the judgements and hair splitting to others. Admin costs for deciding who gets cared for would vastly overshadow the occasional savings when we left a silly hangglider to die in pain rather than helping him. Also, it is nice to not be assholes as a society.

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The top rated climbs these days are 5.15c or thereabouts

Am I the only one more afraid of watching the “brown-point” clip than the BASE jump clip?

I believe it’s been Cory who’s spoken of sweaty palms and yadda yadda…I think it took the guy falling for me to notice that the room had suddenly gotten quite hot.

I’m sorry, I hadn’t watched the whole way through that video before I posted it. I was VERY glad to hear the guy wasn’t killed in that fall. My heart stopped; it was intense. But really, these climbers are doing what they love, and they KNOW what the risks are. If they go down doing it, well they LIVED, didn’t they?

It’s funny you looked up the falling climber–I considered doing the same but I figured it wouldn’t matter either way for exactly the reasons you later state.

A much better soundtrack is that uke song posted just above it: