What strikes me the worst is that there was not even a single attempt by any of the jumpers to retard the fall somehow. No attempt to use clothing as improvised parachute. Not anything else. Just… dumb jumping.
And there are enough accidents in aircraft mishaps and parachuting to provide evidence a high-altitude fall can be survived with some luck and some effort and some injury on impact.
A back-of-the-envelope calculation using equations for model-rocket streamers shown that a few meters length of an office carpet torn off the floor could slow down the fall speed quite significantly. I am not sure how well the equations scale here, and would not mind if someone with more aerodynamics knowledge pipes in.
