What height can you survive falling from?

Fall injury depends on the speed at impact and on how far the body is allowed to decelerate. Roughly speaking, most people survive falls of two storeys, about half survive four, and survival becomes uncommon beyond six or seven storeys onto hard ground. Terminal velocity in air for a human is around 53 metres per second in a belly-to-earth position, which is reached after roughly 450 metres, so beyond that height further distance adds nothing to impact speed. That is why documented survivals from extreme heights exist at all: Vesna Vulović survived a fall of about 10,000 metres inside a section of aircraft fuselage in 1972, and Juliane Koepcke survived a fall of roughly 3,000 metres in 1971 while still strapped into a row of seats. In every such case something extended the deceleration — tree canopy, deep snow, wreckage collapsing — which is the same principle crash structures use deliberately.

What happens, in order

Compiled from published fall injury literature; outcomes depend heavily on landing surface, body position and age.

Physiology, not instruction. Every figure here is a population range under particular conditions, and individual variation is large — temperature, exertion, fitness and health move all of them substantially. Nothing on this page is medical advice.

Situations

• Can you survive a plane crash? Usually — across all US airline accidents studied, more than 95 per cent of occupants survived.
• How long do you have to escape a sinking car? Usually 30 seconds to a couple of minutes of floating — and the window is the way out, not the door.
• Can quicksand pull you under? No. Quicksand is roughly twice as dense as a human body, so you float — you sink to about waist depth and stop.
• How far from a nuclear blast do you have to be to survive? It scales with yield: for a one-megaton airburst, survival is unlikely within about 5 km and likely beyond about 10-12 km.
• How long can you survive in a hot car? Under an hour on a warm day for a child — the interior gains about 20 °C in the first ten minutes.
• How long does it take to drown? Under a minute to lose consciousness — and it is almost silent, which is why so many drownings happen in sight of others.
• What happens if a lift cable snaps? Essentially nothing — lifts hang from multiple ropes and have a speed-triggered brake that grips the rails.
• How likely are you to survive a shark attack? Very likely — of roughly 60 to 80 unprovoked bites worldwide each year, fewer than ten are fatal.
• What happens if you fall into lava? You would not sink — lava is about three times denser than a body — but you would not survive the heat either.
• What should you do if you are caught in a rip current? Rips pull you out, not under. Swim parallel to the beach until you are out of the flow, then come in.
• Could you survive inside a whale? You cannot be swallowed by almost any whale — their throats are too narrow — and a stomach offers no air.
• How long do you have to escape a burning house? Around three minutes from the alarm sounding in a modern furnished home.
• Can you survive a tsunami? Yes, by moving inland and uphill immediately — 30 centimetres of moving water can knock an adult off their feet.
• How long can you survive in a sealed container? Carbon dioxide becomes dangerous long before oxygen runs out — a few hours in a cubic metre of air.