That’s good to know, but I’m wondering how many deaths per year occur due to chute faults.
If it’s greater than zero, I’m opting to stay right here on the ground. :)
You might not be surprised to learn that I’ve also never tried SCUBA diving or mountain climbing.
Hell, I probably wouldn’t leave the house if I didn’t need a paycheck.
SCUBA is AMAZING and everyone who can swim should try it if you are physically and mentally able. You also need to treat the gear as life support equipment which keeps you alive, but spending an hour swimming on a reef with fish will change your perceptions of the world.
On the other hand, if equipment fails parachuting you will probably die pretty fast, but it’s hard to imagine a non-nightmarish SCUBA drowning scenario.
“Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.”
– Redd Foxx
You do know that driving a car is far more dangerous on a per diem basis than any of the activities you discount as “too dangerous” right?
For example that parachute; you’d need to bungle packing it pretty damn badly for it to open so badly as to kill you, and then there’s the reserve to save you. (Un)Surprisingly few people die because of a bad canopy.
Mountain climbing is as dangerous as you make it. But unlike road traffic, you only have your own negligence to contends with.
Now road traffic… Operating not quite stable machines at breakneck speeds in close formation… counting on a whole lot of people not making stupid mistakes, not being dumb or agressive and not having their not quite stable machines fail catastrophically… It is madness.
And in a few years when the children of todays tesla convey us, we will look upon these decades where we drove gas guzzling penis extensions as utter collective madness.
Isn’t it insane that while America spends billions upon billions trying to keep a bunch of terrorists down (wouldnt they be better spend on building mcdonalds and levis stores in Kabul?) while far, far more people die in road accidents than to terrorism, or even gun violence.
Madness! utter madness!
On the other hand, you’ll be just as dead at the end, so does it really matter?
I love SCUBA diving, it has been way to long since I did it though…
Yeah, I get that. But at some point you have to trust the equipment. I rock climb too, and there are a few single-point-failure=fatality points in that activity too (notably the rope.) The outfit that I skydived with cycles through probably a couple of hundred jumpers a day. (I walked in the door to check in and 35 minutes later was standing in the drop zone.) They’ve done tens of of thousands of tandem jumps with no major incidents. The overall fatality rate for skydiving is about one death per 130,000 jumps, and almost all of those fatalities are during solo jumps, not tandem jumps. Highway driving is probably less dangerous (just over 1 fatality per 100 million miles driven), but neither is a particularly risky activity.
You know, statistics are all well and good but if you hand me a gun and tell me there’s only a 1 in 130,000 chance that a bullet will fire, I’m still not pointing it at my head and pulling the trigger.
But hey, those of you who enjoy skydiving, more power to you.
Eh, it’s on par with the risk of scuba diving or getting knocked out during surgery. It’s significantly lower than the risk of dying due to pregnancy or getting a fatal infection during a hospital visit.
Well I don’t plan to get pregnant or get a fatal infection in a hospital either.
Nobody expects the fatal infection!
30 year risk of a fatal heart event for a moderately healthy 40 year old is about 43,000 in 130,000. You can lower that risk to about 26,000 in 130,000 by exercising regularly and eating lots of fresh fruits and vegetables. That’s the equivalent of not going on 17,000 sky dives. Most people don’t. Humans are bad at estimating risk.
Last adoption update. Why is it the last one?
Because it’s fuckin’ finalized! Legally, it’s like our child sprang forth fully-formed into existence at the age of six months. It was also National Adoption Day (good timing), so we got balloons and cakes and stuff.
We were on the local news! Don’t dox me!
Great news, HappilyBradley!
Now you’re DadleyBradley. Good luck to you!
Congrats (legally of course)!!
That’s good news, man.
Incredibly good news, congrats to the whole family!
That’s awesome. Congrats!
Congratulations. What a nice local news story too.
Congrats.
Mazel Tov. And best of all she won’t look like you when she grows up . (I keed)