Cope With a Double Parachute Failure
While skydiving, it is possible (yet extremely unlikely) that both your primary and reserve parachutes will malfunction, leaving you with no method of reducing your velocity. In the vast majority of cases, this will not occur; nevertheless, in this event these coping strategies may assist.
Contents
Steps
- Remain calm. This may seem obvious, but deep, even breathing (despite the rushing slipstream) and controlling your heart-rate are essential to your continued survival.
- Entreat assistance. If both your primary and reserve chutes have malfunctioned, signal immediately to a fellow jumper who has not yet deployed their chute, waving your arms and signalling that your own is not functional. If this is a solo jump, then skip to step 6.
- Prepare for deployment. After linking arms with your fellow jumper, you will need to hook your arms through their chest strap, or through both sides of the front of their harness, as far as you can, then grab onto your own strap.
- Deploy. The shock of the chute deployment will be intense. The G-forces will multiply your body weight, making it impossible to hold on; this is why hooking your arms through the harness is essential. It is likely that the shock will dislocate or break both your arms; nevertheless this is a small price to pay for your life.
- Prepare for impact. If your companion's canopy has successfully opened, then both your chances of survival have dramatically increased. With a large and slow canopy, your chances are even better. The canopy must be steered away from power lines and similar obstructions; try for a large body of water if you are confident your companion can save you from drowning.
Alternative: Lack of companions
- If this is a solo jump, which constitutes the minority of skydivers, your only recourse is to ensure that at least one of your own chutes opens. In this case, the excellent advice offered by your instructors on assisting chute opening may be of assistance to you.
- If it becomes apparent that you cannot open either of your two parachutes, or that for some other reason they are fatally non-functional, then the following steps may be of some minor assistance.
- Appeal. If you are of a religious turn of mind, you may wish at this point to offer a prayer to a god, goddess, protective spirit or guardian angel. St Jude, the patron saint of Lost Causes, comes to mind. Objectively, this is not likely to help very much; but it may improve your emotional state. If you do not have any religious beliefs, or are for another reason unwilling to appeal to your patron deity, skip this step.
- Contemplate. As you approach the Earth at, or close to, terminal velocity, you may wish to contemplate your past existence, and the possibility of a future afterlife. A strategy that might prove helpful is to consider how fortunate you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life has not been good to you so far, (and considering your current situation this seems more likely) consider how lucky you are that it will not be troubling you much longer.
- Expect impact. You are unlikely to have the time or ability to aim for a soft landing-spot, body of water, or other impact site that might improve your chances of survival. There is a minuscule chance that your impact will result in non-life-threatening injuries; if this seems incredibly far-fetched, comfort yourself that double chute failure in modern times is also extremely unlikely, and that you have already beaten worse odds.
Tips
- Your reserve chute should have been packed by a certified rigger and is moderately less likely to fail; therefore, it may be helpful to focus your efforts on opening your reserve parachute.
- Some humans who have, for various reasons, become aware of their impending death, develop psychological coping strategies to deal with this; for instance, the Kubler-Ross phases of grief. Since your own death approaches far more quickly, this is unlikely to be of any use to you.
- It is mandatory to jump with an AAD (Automatic Activation Device) in some countries. AADs are essentially bullets. They fire when they detect you are falling at large velocity close to the ground, instantly cutting your reserve closing loop and opening your reserve parachute. If for any reason, you can't open your reserve parachute (e.g. you can't grip the handle properly due to loose clothing/material in the way), continue with attempting to open your reserve in a belly-to-earth position until the AAD fires and opens it for you. AADs will save your life.
Warnings
- If, after total chute failure, you land on something soft, it is possible that instead of being killed outright, you may be permanently paralyzed due to spinal injury. If you have a strong aversion to this outcome, aiming head-downward before impact in the manner of an Olympic diver may ensure the destruction of your cranium and your immediate demise.
- Water landings: if you have successfully attached to a companion whose chute opens, keep in mind that both your arms may be broken or dislocated, and you may be unable to swim or tread water before your chute fills and drags you under.
Related Articles
Sources and Citations
- The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook, Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht
