Reward: Fun, Notoriety, Companionship, . . .    Risk: THE WORLD

BASE Jumping Pros and Cons

A few brief points, pro et contra BASE jumping, are worth considering. The pro side includes fun, great excitement, mastery of a very fundamental fear, demonstration of great skill, self reliance and the companionship of others who share those values. Et contra is the risk of death, severe injury and the expense for the jumper, the first and second responders and the jumper’s family. One item is on both the pro and con lists; that’s the opportunity for notoriety via social media, Youtube views and monetization.

The pros are valuable although, except for the Youtube monetization, not quantifiable. Several of the cons on the other hand can be quantified. Since plenty of data is available on BASE jumping fatalities and severe injuries, actuarial information on the risks and some of the costs are known.

The Only Study

One study, available from the U.S. National Center for Biotechnology Information, is consistently cited in articles and other studies on the subject. It’s titled: “How dangerous is BASE jumping? An analysis of adverse events in 20,850 jumps from the Kjerag Massif, Norway”.

The authors are a surgeon, a pathologist and a scientist whose specialty is unspecified. They’re Norwegian and Danish. Their “Methods” were to, “review records of 20,850 BASE jumps from 1995 to 2005 at the Kjerag massif in Norway. Frequency of deaths, accidents, and involvement of helicopter and climbers in rescue were analyzed. Fatalities were scored for injury severity scores (Abbreviated Injury Scale score, Injury Severity Score, New Injury Severity Score) on autopsy.”

The results of the Norwegian study were: “During an 11-year period, a total of 20,850 jumps resulted in 9 fatal (0.04% of all jumps; 1 in every 2,317 jumps) and 82 nonfatal accidents (0.4% of all jumps; 1 in every 254 jumps).”

Over the same period covered by the study the United States Parachute Association reports 73 deaths and 28 million jumps from airplanes, which makes BASE jumping from the Kjerag massif in Norway 165 times more deadly than skydiving. It varies from year to year but an estimate of non-fatal accidents that require medical care from skydiving for experienced, male jumpers is about one injury for every 1300 jumps. Assuming BASE jumping from the Kjerag massif during the period of the study is still representative of BASE jumping elsewhere, non-fatal accidents that require medical care occur at a rate five times greater for BASE jumping than skydiving.

Breaking it Down

Humans consistently and massively misjudge the risk of engaging in dangerous activities. In our example the first time you BASE jump from the Kjerag massif in Norway the odds of you dying are one in 2,317. If you do it twice the odds are therefor 2,317/2 or one in 1,158. The odds on the fourth jump is 597 to 1. That’s almost exactly the likelihood of a malfunction of a skydiver’s main canopy.

Three jumpers I know have three hundred BASE jumps each. At some point the risks are affected by mitigating factors but even so, by doing it three hundred times, the odds of life versus death that those three gentleman are facing are almost exactly the same as playing Russian roulette with an eight round revolver.

Be Rational

In a Sky News article titled, “ ‘Carnage’ as Wingsuit BASE Jumping Death Spree Reaches 20”’, the commander of the mountain rescue agency in Chamonix, Switzerland, Colonel Stephane Bozon, is quoted as saying: “It is a practice that frightens us … we must return to people behaving a little more rationally.”

The Colonel is right. His climbers, pilots and paramedics risk their lives to rescue and recover the remains of people who made a fundamentally irrational choice. Their families are stuck with having to tell people that their loved-one died doing something they loved, with all knowing that it wasn’t even remotely worth it.

If your thinking of trying BASE jumping or worse still, doing it repeatedly, please don’t. If you’ve done it already please be satisfied with the fact that you’ve tried it, but don’t put it on your resume or CV. Employers prefer workers with better judgment. And if you’re considering proposing marriage to an actuary, anyone on Colonel Bozon’s staff or any other subset of responsible and rational humans, don’t be surprised if they decline the risk.