Long ago I came across some clip where it was claimed that there's about 20 or so people who were integral to the development of the modern wingsuit and BASE jumping, and every single one of them died in a BASE jumping mishap.
this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2026
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Safety rules are written in blood.
Safety? In BASE jumping? No such thing.
There are a lot of safety rules. I get you're trying to make a flippant joke, but that attitude has cost people their lives
They hear an activity is dangerous and don't understand how important the safety procedures are at mitigating that risk
I can guarantee you there are mistakes that were made to cause this deaths, and lessons that can be learned from it
That's true of a lot of safety critical fields. Regulations/rules are written in blood
Whole lot of people had to die for us to learn about decompression sickness in diving
Some individual lessons in aviation cost us hundreds of lives
Early mariners died in droves for us to learn how difficukt the ocean is to cross
BASE just seems more shocking because of the recency. It developed very late, long after nearly every other safety critical field was mature
Cave diving is largely the same way
I get the concept, but it also seems that there's degree of necessity to most of those other practices. Diving supported exploration, aviation and sailing did the same and travel. I think that part of the shock is that there isn't an obvious necessity to base jumping or cave diving, and that the appeal is the danger for the participants.
The appeal isn't the danger though. If it is you shouldn't be doing it.
It's one of the very few sports that gets more dangerous the more experienced you get.
A friend of mine was engaged to a wingsuit base jumper. This guy wasn't a noob. He had been doing it for years. One day he missed a turn or something happened and he went face first into a side of a mountain.
I'm not sure if this friend ever recovered from that experience. She has a tattoo of his finger point on her to remind her of him.
She told me that base jumping is one of the most dangerous sports.
She told me that base jumping is one of the most dangerous sports
you... needed someone tell you that?
I dont know much about extreme sports. Figured rock climbing without a rope is more dangerous.
That's more controlled. You have time to stop and assess.
You can't pause while falling.
I mean it's no jai alai
Photographer Carl Boenish helped coin BASE as a description of the sport’s adrenaline-inspiring launch points (buildings, antennas, spans, earth) in 1978, when he videotaped early jumps from Yosemite National Park’s El Capitan rock formation.
TIL.
This is why you can kickly reach the top 10 rank in this activity
"You, too, can be one of the top ten BASE jumpers!"
Someone leans in, whispering in their ear.
"Uh.... you, too, can be one of the ten BASE jumpers!"
Even if there are more than ten at certain times, they'll all die so quickly that if you stick with it (and don't die) you're basically guaranteed to end up in the top ten at some point. It's like a revolving door. Everyone gets a turn!
“On today’s jump, something went wrong and he did not have enough lift with his wingsuit,” Peck said. “He impacted the ground at a high rate of speed resulting in his death.”
When I flew RC gliders, we flew off cliffs because the wind hits the cliff and shoots straight up, letting the glider just float around in the updraft. It's called "ridge lift".
Maybe the wind died at just the wrong moment?
I realize wing suits don't fly the way gliders fly. But, I suspect they need ridge lift when they first jump off to get started.
Just a guess.
Wingsuit jumpers just die from time to time. There's no way to do it safely. Every jump is a lottery.
What in the hell is that from?
The new episodes of Red Dwarf is my guess. I wouldn't bother. They don't have the charm of the older stuff.
i wonder how a wingsuit fails? Did the little flappy bits rip?
Wingsuits are inflated by the air rushing into them. If there's an air leak, that could certainly compromise its integrity and render it basically useless.
If your idea if fun is to jump from a lethal height and trust some fabric to keep you alive, I'm just incapable of feeling bad when it kills you. Same for cave diving, incidentally. So you know how easy it is to not do something that can kill you? FFS, I've lived more days of my life, for about 40 years, resisting suicidal ideation, and you're just like "lol gonna go reboot gate today for thrills." Nope, you had this fucking coming bub.
just want to remind you that people in wingsuits also wear parachutes. There are multiple levels of failure here.
I support people who like dangerous sports. Except for gun ownership. That's shit is so stupid dangerous and reckless you don't have to participate to be killed.