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djs191 t1_ja59l29 wrote

She died alone in her apartment at 66 years old of heart failure.

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Angrygiraffe1786 t1_ja5abu9 wrote

That was an insane story. Aside from the whole plane crash thing, she had all the luck that day.

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AnthillOmbudsman t1_ja5ay5a wrote

>Vulović travelled to the United Kingdom after completing her first year of university, hoping to improve her English-language skills. "I initially stayed with my parents' friends in Newbury," she recalled, "but wanted to move to London. It was there that I met up with a friend who suggested we go to Stockholm. When I told my parents I was living in the Swedish capital, they thought of the drugs and the sex and told me to come home at once." Upon returning to Belgrade

Jesus... giving up a dream of living in London in the early 1970s to move back to Yugoslavia. She would have probably had quite a different life in the UK, though I'm not sure what opportunities there were for Serbian expats in London 50 years ago. Maybe she would have ended up in the US.

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Division595 t1_ja5dppg wrote

Sources say that her last words before setting the record were "Ahhhhhh!"

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LordBrandon t1_ja5ex59 wrote

I thought that would be a great story, but she got completely messed up and had permanent spine damage.

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SuccessfulSuspect213 t1_ja5mvc9 wrote

about 15 years ago, on a home video show, they showed go-pro footage of a woman doing a parachute jump. both her chutes failed and she smacked straight into tarmac at terminal velocity.

the surprise on my face when i heard she lived...

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Cannabisseur78 OP t1_ja5qdvm wrote

As my username suggests… I had just ripped some nice Kush Mints and was thinking, I remember hearing people had fallen from planes with no parachute and survived. So I googled and found this.

I’m sharing a few parts I found interesting below. Don’t know how to properly cite the source?

Wiki:

The secondary crew of JAT Flight 367, flying from Stockholm to Belgrade with stopovers in Copenhagen and Zagreb, arrived in Denmark on the morning of 25 January 1972. According to Vulović, she was not scheduled to be on Flight 367, and JAT had confused her for another flight attendant also named Vesna. Nevertheless, Vulović said that she was excited to travel to Denmark because it was her first time visiting the country.

Flight 367 departed from Stockholm Arlanda Airport at 1:30 p.m. on 26 January. The aircraft, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9, landed at Copenhagen Airport at 2:30 p.m., whereupon Vulović and her colleagues boarded the plane. "As it was late, we were in the terminal and saw it park," Vulović said. "I saw all the passengers and crew deplane. One man seemed terribly annoyed. It was not only me that noticed him either. Other crew members saw him, as did the station manager in Copenhagen. I think it was the man who put the bomb in the baggage. I think he had checked in a bag in Stockholm, got off in Copenhagen and never re-boarded the flight."

Flight 367 departed from Copenhagen Airport at 3:15 p.m. At 4:01 p.m., an explosion tore through the DC-9's baggage compartment. The explosion caused the aircraft to break apart over the Czechoslovak village of Srbská Kamenice. Vulović was the only survivor of the 28 passengers and crew. She was discovered by villager Bruno Honke, who heard her screaming amid the wreckage. Her turquoise uniform was covered in blood and her stiletto heels had been torn off by the force of the impact. Honke had been a medic during the Second World War and was able to keep Vulović alive until rescuers arrived.

Air safety investigators attributed Vulović's survival to her being trapped by a food cart in the DC-9's fuselage as it broke away from the rest of the aircraft and plummeted towards the ground. When the cabin depressurized, the passengers and other flight crew were blown out of the aircraft and fell to their deaths. Investigators believed that the fuselage, with Vulović pinned inside, landed at an angle in a heavily wooded and snow-covered mountainside, which cushioned the impact. Vulović's physicians concluded that her history of low blood pressure caused her to pass out quickly after the cabin depressurized and kept her heart from bursting on impact. Vulović said that she was aware of her low blood pressure before applying to become a flight attendant and knew that it would result in her failing her medical examination, but she drank an excessive amount of coffee beforehand and was accepted.

Vulović spent days in a coma and was hospitalised for several months. She suffered a fractured skull, three broken vertebrae, broken legs, broken ribs, and a fractured pelvis. These injuries resulted in her being temporarily paralyzed from the waist down. Vulović made an almost complete recovery but continued to walk with a limp. She had no memory of the incident and had no qualms about flying in the aftermath of the crash.

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No-Owl9201 t1_ja6gj96 wrote

Extraordinary story of survival, though at a huge cost to her health through out the remainder of her life.

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hymen_destroyer t1_ja6yuwy wrote

I think you only have to fall a couple hundred feet to reach terminal velocity. So your odds of surviving a fall don't appreciably change between 1000 and 30,000 feet. It mostly depends on where you land and the orientation of your body at impact. I heard it was actually better to fall into like tall wispy trees like a stand of spruce, anything that slows you down even slightly before you hit the ground can measurably improve your chance of survival.

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meizawesome t1_ja7i4l2 wrote

Do people not remember Felix Baumgartner jumping from space?

−7

nim_opet t1_ja7mui8 wrote

Replying to LordBrandon (#2,039,049)

But she lived for 40+ years after and would appear on bunch of health and charity events, and was a pro-democracy activist. While she suffered from her disability, she did regain use of her legs and lived a decent life.

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_Synt3rax t1_ja7pabn wrote

Title is pretty misleading dont you think?

0

CameronMH t1_ja828wj wrote

Replying to mgvertigo101 (#2,057,518)

But you won't die of hypoxia or hypothermia while falling as skydivers don't jump from cruising altitude, and even if you did you wouldn't be there for long enough to pass out, you cover about 10000 feet per minute at terminal velocity and cruising altitude for a plane is roughly 35000 feet

Within 60 seconds you would be at a low enough altitude to breathe just fine and 2-3 minutes later you will be on the ground

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