Basejumper.com - archive

 

Can you define "dead end"?

Do you mean you reach a point of maximum development, and you "can't learn any more"?

Or something else?

 

Everyone dies eventually. Life itself is a terminal disease--no one gets out alive.

People make different decisions about how to live their lives, and no matter what decisions you make, your life will eventually end.

It would be a mistake to reduce the quality of your life drastically in an effort to extend it's duration.

There's an obvious continuum there, with each of us making choices about where to trade off between duration and quality of our lives. Some people, for example, may choose not to consume alcohol in order to extend their life, while others may decide that, for them, consumption of alcohol brings enough enjoyment that they are happy to trade off the reduced life duration for the increased enjoyment from such consumption.

The same sort of decisions apply to most of our activities--including parachuting, wing suiting, rock climbing, etc. You decide what personal rewards an activity will bring you, and therefore what risks you are willing to take in order to achieve those rewards.


Will everyone who ever flies terrain eventually die doing it? I don't think so. But the casualty rate is undoubtedly higher than in many other activities. Participants must make a decision to accept those risks, in order to gain the personal rewards of the activity.

And therein lies the paradox, and each individual makes his/hers own choices or risk vs. reward. It is far better to understand that and be free to choose than be shackled by fear and dogma.

Or not, this was implied but I thought it was worth calling it out. It's intelligent and mature to find something else when the risk vs. reward is not satisfied.

This applies to life of course, not just proxy

says Mr/Mrs anon

I can't see what you are replying to, but very well said.

"Will everyone who ever flies terrain die doing it ? I don't think so. But the casualty rate is undoubtedly higher than in many other activities .Participants must make a decision to accept those risks, in order to gain the personal rewards of the activity"
- just my 2 cents here , but that's the one thing with that sport , it has so many more additional risks than other forms of base jumping. It's really foot launched low altitude wingsuit skydiving. I think what gets a lot of pilots is they aren't aware of all the extra risks. For example, your flying along with good altitude and speed and decide to fly over some committing terrain.When you get there you run into a cross headwind and now have no outs. Also, as the suits improve and change, the risks do to. Back in the day suits couldn't create enough speed to be able to flare them at pull time. Now it's required and we are seeing more no pulls.

"Wingsuit proximity flying" or "W.P.F." has now been officially renamed to:

H.H.S.A.W.I.P.D.

Half hearted suicide attempt wearing an inflatable plastic dress

A good % of AFF students state they are learning to skydive to H.H.S.A.W.I.P.D. but we are still learning how to do it, how to teach it and how to make it more sustainable. (and btw. hitting trees is not where it is at)