How do you prepare for impact if you fall off a high platform?

Question

I was having a discussion about this. Let's say you fall off something at a great height, just a height that's not high enough to kill you, but will do some good damage when you hit the ground. Is there anything you can do while falling to brace for impact? What's the best way to land to minimize injury?

No idea where to put this, I guess physics fits somewhat?

Answer 1

As a former Naval Aviator, I had to take parachute training. And by the numbers, the drop and roll landing technique least likely to incur injury is:



1) knees together and legs bent slightly at the knees, do not tense up

2) upon impact, cushion the impact by allowing the legs to bend further and roll your body in the direction of the fall (which depends on the direction you are going upon impact)

3) this applies to chutes only, get rid of the chute ASAP



Physics is a great place for this question as we are talking about taking advantage of impulse to minimize injury. Impulse is the same physics we invoke to come up with air bags in cars to save lives in crashes. Both the drop and roll, and the air bags extend the impact interval dT to lessen the force of the impact. We call that cushioning the impact.

Answer 2

You have to completely absorb the fall, as in, not have any tension in your body so when you hit the ground the impact can be spread over your whole body. There was once a show on the Discovery Channel or something where this guy had fallen out of a plane, but he was unconscious, so when he hit the ground he didn't try to stop his fall or anything and ended up surviving. So basically, you would just need to be as calm and loose as possible.

Answer 3

I have survived a 30 foot fall going down head first! True story: .. I was 13 at the time and fishing with my Dad and older brother. It was the latter that called me "chicken" for not swinging out on this massive rope swing with the moth eaten rope...over a dried river bed! I bit.



The resulting impact shattered my two arms compound below the elbows. By tucking my chin into my chest and timing it just right, I slammed both my my feet on the dried riverbed and flayed out spread eagle at precisely the right moment so as to to allow as much surface area to contact the dried river bed a possible.It worked! No back injury and no broken neck! I attribute this miracle to the hours upon hours of forced gymnastics during P.E. and my love of high speed skiing and falling which is unavoidable.

Answer 4

I guess that the best way to go about this would be to land on your hands and do a shoulder roll. I'm assuming the height would be around 10th feet, and the most injury you would sustain would be a sprained shoulder, however, I can imagine that if you were just running and need to make that jump to save your life or whatever, your arms should've already been warmed up for the impact... takes practice

Answer 5

Hit the ground with 5 consecutive points of contact.



Feet

Knees

Hip

Shoulder

Back



Thats how the army airboune guys are trained.

Answer 6

The only thing I can think of related is that of parachute jump landing.

Can find out about this online - just Google "parachute jumping" or some such.

Answer 7

When stunt men/women do it they always land on their back just beneath the shoulder and roll forwards, slightly leaning to the left.