Parachutist jumps from the Eiffel Tower. SPLAT!!
 

Base jumping has to be the stoopidest hobby ever.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/france_eiffel_death_dc

story: for the clicking impaired like me...

PARIS (Reuters) - A Norwegian man died parachuting off the Eiffel Tower after his parachute became tangled up in the metal structure, a French police source said on Tuesday.

The 31-year-old jumped off the second floor of the structure on Monday night, planning to descend safely to the ground. But his equipment became caught in the monument and he landed on the floor below.

"The jump didn't happen quite as he wanted," the police source said. "He died on impact." It is illegal to parachute from the 300-meter (980-foot) high landmark. The police were not aware of the man's plan and have opened an investigation.

Hundreds of people, most of them committing suicide, have jumped to their deaths from the tower which was built in 1889 for an exhibition celebrating the French Revolution.

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Best quote from the stry...
Well, gee, maybe he was trying to go splat, and then it did happen exactly as he wanted... pretty presumptious of the police to assume he wasn't a jumper...

:confused: do "jumpers" carry parachutes?

he wanted it to look like an accident :) yeah, that's it...

I was just amused by the comment-- it was more like a thank you, officer, for stating the obvious :)

What a waste of a perfectly good human. What makes people want to do crazy things like that? To take those risks. You have people who are terminally ill, praying to get well, or to receive a new heart, or liver, these people, fighting to stay alive, then this guy, taking the ultimate risk - and losing.

BASE jumping isn't my thing, but riding a motorcycle at 135mph and jumping off cliffs on skis is. Sitting on a couch sucking down beers isn't exactly safe, either. He knew the risk, he took a chance, and he lost. Personal choice, not a waste.

I heard an old veteran talking one time:

"We don't need all that risk taking stuff. We found out just how lucky we were when we came back from the war."

I think that these extreme sports tap into a primitive need to feel that adrenaline rush. I believe that humans are wired to take risks, and when they have pushed enough limits, they can sit back the rest of their lives and remember all of the cool things they did when they were young.

Thoughts?

Perhaps not humans in general, Ben. As a woman, I've never felt the desire to seek physical risks. We were the "gathers", you men-folk were the "hunters." :)

The riskiest thing I do is drink milk from the fridge without checking the past due date. My choice. This guy knew things could go wrong. They did. He lost.

Mmmmm Darwin.

I'm sure someone will call him a hero. Somewhere.

That wouldn't have been the tenor of the conversation among the cleanup crew.

he'd be a hero if he didn't have the parachute.

Damn! I'm a risk taker!

Risk? He jumped from the second floor. I'm not sure what he was thinking, but maybe it went something like this:
Hmm, I want to do something cool and "risky"-looking, without the actual risk. Maybe, if I jump off the Eiffel Tower (with a parachute) people will think I"m cool, and one day say I'm a hero. Anyway, if anything goes wrong, like my parachute getting tangled in the metal structure, I'll be fine since I'm only jumping from the second floor.

I am no expert at base jumping, but it seems to me that an ideal base would not flare out at the base (you would have to have a standing lateral jump like a flea to clear the tower....If I remember correctly a flea can jump 30 times its own length). It also would not be an open structure with lots of beams to snag a parachute.

Ideally, a structure would look like the Space Needle. Regular skyscrapers can give you problems because of updrafts and crosscurrents. Somethign like the Eiffel Tower is for Grade-A idiots only. You would need to jump from near the top and wait quite a while (relatively speaking) before opening the 'chute to clear the structure. It sounds like this guy jumped way too low and didn't check for wind, because even a slight breeze can do a lot to a huge piece of cloth at that altitude.

He tried.

He died.

It's sad for his family and the clean up crew, but I'm not gonna lose any sleep.

I MAY make sure my daughter knows how to stay safe if she ever decides to Base Jump though..... ;)

"Second floor" was probably a mistranslation in the original news reports. Here's a
quote from a more recent article:

Many times i've found myself in this exactly scenario, where although i know what i'm doing is risky and perhaps even stupid, there is an ulterior force that drives me to do it anyways. The pleasure of the adrenaline rush is amazing, but the remembrance of the act itself is a neverending feel of empowerment.

My first thought exactly. Once again the herd thins itself automatically. :)