Random People Who Fell from Ridiculously High Heights, But Managed To Survive (12 items)

(#12) Tim Stilwell Fell From The Fifteenth Floor Of A Hotel

After finding out that he was locked out of his own apartment in June 2013, Tim Stilwell decided the best course of action was to try to hang and drop onto his neighbor's balcony. Things didn't exactly go as planned, and the 20-year-old slipped and fell from the fifteenth floor of the building and landed on the roof of a building at ground level. According to medical experts who attended the scene, he was incredibly lucky to have survived the fall.

And some suggested that the roof of the building may have broken his fall, preventing life-threatening injuries. He came away with broken bones and internal bruising but was expected to make a full recovery.
(#4) Christine McKenzie Fell 11,000 Feet Onto Power Lines

August 2004 was not a good month for South African skydiver Christine McKenzie. The 23-year-old was in free-fall when her parachute failed to open. This prompted her to try her reserve chute, but this too malfunctioned and became tangled as it partially inflated. The incredibly rare occurrence meant that McKenzie hardly slowed before she smashed into a series of powerlines before hitting the ground. Those powerlines saved her life, though, absorbing most of the energy from the fall and drastically reducing her impact.

Despite the fact that literally everything that could go wrong in her jump did go wrong, McKenzie managed to survive with just a broken pelvis and some bruising.
(#9) Teen Survived Suicide Leap From Golden Gate Bridge

The Golden Gate Bridge has become a hugely popular location for those attempting to commit suicide. The 200+ ft fall kills 98% of all of those who jump on impact, and the icy cold waters below make it even harder to survive. But survival is possible. This is exactly what happened to a 16-year-old girl who jumped from the bridge in April 2011.

Precisely how she survived is not known, but research suggests that the younger and fitter a person is the more likely they are to manage to live through the ordeal.
(#3) Juliane Koepcke Lived After Her Plane Was Struck By Lightning

Juliane Koepcke was a passenger on a flight traveling over Peru on Christmas Eve in 1971 when the plane began to experience heavy turbulence. After several minutes of passing through the storm, an engine on the wing was hit by lightning, and the aircraft plummeted towards the ground. Juliane was the only survivor out of the 91 passengers on board, and the 17-year-old landed in the jungle with a broken collar bone, one shoe, and only a few sweets for food.

She spent 10 days in the Peruvian jungle before she was rescued. The leading theory for how she survived is that the heavy vegetation softened her fall while the row of seats she was strapped in acted as a makeshift glider.
(#2) Bear Grylls Almost Died In An SAS Training Mission

Before he became a popular television personality and adventurer, Bear Grylls spent a short amount of time in the armed forces. During this military service, he was involved with the SAS Territorial Army and took part in a training exercise over Zambia. During a skydive, his parachute failed to inflate.

Thinking he had time to fix the problem before he hit the ground, he chose not to open the reserve chute and instead fell 16,000 ft and landed on his parachute pack. Although he narrowly avoided severing his spinal cord, he did break his back, which required him to go through 12 months of 10-hour-a-day physiotherapy.
(#8) Steve Fossett’s Hot Air Balloon Was Destroyed By A Storm As He Crashed To Earth

Steve Fossett was an adventurer who made several attempts to travel around the world in a hot air balloon. In one such attempt in August 1998, he suffered a catastrophic accident as his balloon crashed into a storm front. Hail tore apart the structure and sent his small capsule tumbling towards Earth. After falling almost 30,000 ft, Fossett woke up to discover he had not only survived the ordeal but was also completely unharmed.

The capsule had landed in water and protected him from injury, though, he did have to spend 10 hours at sea before he was rescued.