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In my childhood days there was this proposition/myth that claimed there is a big chance that you'd die from a shock induced heart failure (hart attack/cardiac arrest) before hitting the ground, when jumping off a building (for suicide or for escaping a fire for instance).

Is there any validity to this claim?

Monkey Tuesday
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Decent Dabbler
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  • Please feel free to add some more relevant tags to this question, as I don't have enough rep. to create original tags. – Decent Dabbler Apr 28 '11 at 01:59
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    Hey, I also remember to got this story told from another kid when I was little. I'm from Germany, so dependent from where the OP is this might be actually quite wide spread. – Martin Scharrer Apr 28 '11 at 06:37
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    This really depends on what you consider dead. People have been without a heartbeat for many minutes and been revived with no ill-effects. – DampeS8N Apr 28 '11 at 11:09
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    I think there is a more likely chance you would faint, then die as you hit the ground. – Craig Apr 28 '11 at 12:23
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    A query - why do skydivers not die? They fall an awfully long way. Or if it is a proximity thing, why do bungee jumpers or cliff divers survive? – Rory Alsop Apr 28 '11 at 13:55
  • @Martin Scharrer: I'm from The Netherlands. So I'm in close vicinity. – Decent Dabbler Apr 28 '11 at 14:03
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    @Rory Alsop: Yes, I considered this too. Although those people have a reasonable expectation to survive the 'ordeal'. :) People with no safety net, can reasonably expect to die from it, which might lead to a shock. – Decent Dabbler Apr 28 '11 at 14:08
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    I am deleting my answer because A) I haven't cited, and B) after having done some research, I now think I was wrong. :) – John Dibling Apr 28 '11 at 16:05
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    Skydivers don't die because they have a parachute which they know will save them. Jumping off a building the result is inevitable, splat. But learner parachute jumpers do go tandem so they don't panic, pass out and have the same result, splat. – Craig Apr 28 '11 at 23:49
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    @Craig: Passing out and dying are completely unrelated. Also, suicidal persons *expect* to die when jumping off a building. Why should they panic? – Tim Pietzcker Apr 29 '11 at 08:17
  • @Tim Pietzcker if you pass out when skydiving, you can't open the parachute and you die, so i don't agree that it's unrelated. Btw, there are people jumping and regretting their decision instantly, maybe those can panic. – Terry Apr 29 '11 at 15:11
  • @djerry: If you pass out, you don't die before hitting the ground. Which is what the question is about and what I meant by my first sentence. – Tim Pietzcker Apr 29 '11 at 19:35
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    Even if you have a heart attack, you don't die immediately. People survive for hours with them. Even if your heart stops it takes a couple of minutes to technically die. You've got to fall about four miles for that to get you before the fall. – DJClayworth Jun 01 '11 at 14:42
  • If they are blind, their ears have been cut out, and their sensory nerves fried, I doubt they'd die of shock. (If they have not died from the lack of functioning sensory nerves.) – Mateen Ulhaq Dec 15 '11 at 04:18

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There are a handfull of instances of people surviving much higher falls from plane crashes. Vesna Vulović is one such person. The Straight Dope also mentions a case were someone survived a jump from the Golden Gate Bridge.

From this we can safely conclude that that if it was indeed the shock that kills, It definitely doesn't occur 100% of the time, so it is at best plausible. Going further than that to definitively prove the claim false in most or all cases is exceedingly difficult since the trauma caused by impact would overshadow evidence of cardiac arrest during an autopsy.

Ryathal
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