10 Ways to Fall Off a Cliff and Survive
Week 21: Falling off a cliff and surviving while writing Medicine Snake
Week 21: The Writing of Novel Number 10, Medicine Snake
By Jeff Posey
Go to: Week 1
One reason I love to write is the mental places I get to go. This week, I needed to figure out how a character could fall off a high cliff and survive. I imagine the location near Pagosa Springs, Colorado, but this can happy anywhere.
Ten requirements for surviving a freefall off a vertical cliff
Live through the fall
You’ve got to live through freefall beside a sheer face of rock racing past at arm’s length. If that scares you to death, then it doesn’t matter what happens next.
Hit something soft
If you’re anywhere near terminal velocity, the first thing you hit will kill you unless it’s really, really soft. Like: Snow. Especially loose snow, maybe warmed by an afternoon sun, not crusted over by the evening chill. And maybe at the foot of that loose snowpack, there’s kind of a muddy little wash grown over with marshy-moldy stuff.
Start steep
Even if there’s a lovely level marsh, soft and deep, as fast as you’re going, you’d be splat. So muddy, marshy, but at a really high angle, as steep as it could possibly be. The higher the angle, the greater your chance of surviving the first bounce.
Avoid boulders…
Even little boulders. As fast as you’re sliding down this wicked-steep slope, you’d better not hit anything bigger than a potato, and it had better be loose. Because if you hit something immovable now, there goes part of your body. You might live a little longer.
…and trees
Even stumps or fallen logs. If you hit any trees now, they’d better be full rotten. What you need now is braking.
U-shaped valley
Okay, maybe not the whole valley. But right where you fell, it better have some kind of parabolic-curve shape to it, or you’ll slow down too fast and excessive g-forces will turn your innards into jelly.
Lubrication
It’s a universal truth. Everything’s better with lubrication. So maybe you’re sliding through the duff from generations of needles shed by a forest of Engelmann Spruce, composted down deep, but twiggy and scratchy up top. The dust makes you not want to breathe, and the sticks popping you in the face make you squint your eyes hard.
Protection
If you’re wearing a suit made of carbon nanotube fibers you know they have out there in New Mexico somewhere, well then, you’d have a pretty good chance of surviving almost anything. Otherwise, if all you’ve got on is your skivvies, prepared to be flayed. It’d be awful to die of your injuries after surviving the fall just because you got skinned alive.
Lucid liquid
If you managed to fall with a bottle of water, now is a good time to drink it. Otherwise you’re far more prone to pass out or do something stupid. If you see a stream, drink.
Wonderful weather
If it’s the middle of a long drought, you’re doomed. Or if the coldest ten days of the winter are about to hit. So you’ve got to have pretty good weather to have any hope of surviving. In this condition, I believe even your average person could walk back out, or make a valiant effort to do so. If you can’t or don’t for any number of reasons, or help doesn’t find you, then, well, at least you die free and in the mountains. That ain’t bad.
That’s it. I couldn’t think of anymore. Can you?
Ingta Falling: a first-draft excerpt from Medicine Snake
He fell backward and panic kept him from breathing, and even imagining himself a lithe boy with young bones and sinews, he knew he fell too long to survive. The air rushed past like the strongest wind he’d ever known. He tensed and forced himself to relax again, expecting at any moment to hit the ground, but he kept falling, and when he finally struck something hard, it surprised him. His head slammed into slushy snow that exploded all around him, the little air he had in his lungs rushed out, a ringing roar rushed through his ears, his vision narrowed to a pinpoint, and he was barely aware of his limp body flopping and scraping and sliding and bouncing and twisting and rolling. He slammed off of something hard, a boulder or a tree, and it knocked him sitting upright while he skidded past trees and into forest. Pine needles began to plow ahead of him and they curled up and over him as he began to slow. When he finally stopped, which seemed strange and quiet and unreal, he lay in a cocoon of needles and forest floor duff.
Research
I tried to find some truly relevant stuff, some scientific studies or something, even videos showing a dummy falling off a cliff and surviving. But, alas, all I found was stuff like this. The video is pretty interesting. The others…meh.
Good video
A movie crew shoots mountain-climbing scenes without losing any lives.
Great news
But not enough details to learn much: How We Survived a Fall from a 90-Foot Cliff.
A book
How to Fall Off a Cliff by Jerry Zelinka. I didn’t read this book and do not vouch for it. But the title caught my eye. The metaphor is glaring. http://www.amazon.com/How-Fall-Cliff-Jerry-Zelinka/dp/1496906888?tag=wp-amazon-anasastori-20 (Link goes to Amazon)
