Just three months ago, I put my not-yet-patented, three-point system for how to survive a midair collision between any military paratrooper system to the test and it carried me to safety. Granted, by "safety" I mean more or less not paralyzed and, frankly, lucky to be alive. Also, I didn't know at the time that I was putting this system to the test. But I did and I lived to tell about it.
(Disclaimer: No one should consider this advice any sort of authority on matters of midair collision survival, nor should anyone attempt to defend his or herself in a court of law citing the surrounding paragraphs before a judge. This is just the stuff that helped me survive a harrowing accidental entanglement with another paratrooper for our entire 800-foot descent this past May.)
1. Trust your training.
Paratroopers are taught safety measures at Airborne School. As the school progresses, they are gradually made more and more aware of what they've chosen to get into. (It's also in the first sentence of the U.S. Army Paratrooper Creed.) All these things together will typically ensure a paratrooper stays calm and safe under pressure. However, it is possible to be too calm under pressure. This I learned as I spent what felt like an eternity (about 19 seconds, all told) trying to untangle a fellow jumper's lines from around my neck and helmet. Which is why number two is so key to my three-point system.
2. Remember where you are (in the air) and act quickly.
James Griffith, a psychology professor at Shippensburg University, said in a science article on Slate.com (www.slate.com/id/2210526) that two kinds of personalities emerge under extreme pressure.
The first personality type tries to keep solving problems no matter what happens. This type never quits and sometimes even dies trying to save his or herself. The second type surrenders very quickly, choosing to not take any kind of active role in preserving his or her life.
It is highly unlikely that paratroopers will be of this second type - the quitters. For sure, I am of the first type because I kept trying to untangle myself up to the moment I hit the ground.
This is probably a good place to let would-be jumpers know that airborne descents can be deceptively quick. Also, some irreversible things can happen just in the first two of the roughly 20 seconds of descent.
Nevertheless, if you do forget where you are in the seconds after your midair collision, pray to the higher power of your choice that you gather yourself, then proceed at once to number three.
3. Trust the medical personnel who will very likely come running to your aid.
After my entangled and half-deployed parachute collapsed on the ground like a dropped napkin, I just had to climb to my feet. So I did, and then shuddered back down to my knees and rolled on to my back before medical personnel took over and I passed out.
I survived a midair collision that May night thanks to the tried and true genious (I mean "genius") of my three-point system. But seriously, readers, why did I stagger to my feet right after suffering multiple compression fractures in my upper back' Partly to prove to myself I wasn't paralyzed. But also because of an old Confucian line whose literalness bothered me the instant all the pain of the fractures was made so frighteningly real: "Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."
Though it caused me immense pain to get on my feet, I am glad I did. Because it allowed me to see that so long as there is air in my lungs, I will not be defeated. And it is that - the determination to live - which is perhaps the most important part of how to survive anything.
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