r/theydidthemath • u/Fizzerolli • 3d ago

[request] Assuming fresh powdery snow, how deep would it have to be for the paratrooper to survive, if possible?

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My son sent me this. My immediate thought based on nothing is that it’s unsurvivable regardless of the depth.

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u/SoylentRox 1✓ 3d ago

Note the skydiver doesn't have to be going terminal velocity. Potentially the drop could be from, say, 100 feet up, right at the stall speed of the 1940s Soviet transport aircraft used. At impact with the deep snow the skydiver will be traveling at ? m/s, or ? mph

Say it's 50-60 mph, for the Lisunov Li-2, a Soviet copy of the DC-3, which has a stall speed of 51 mph. Then at impact

v = sqrt[(v_0)^2 + 2gh]

Where:

  v₀ = initial speed (stall speed ≈ 27.7 m/s)
  g = 9.81 m/s² (gravitational acceleration)
  h = height (100 ft ≈ 30.5 m)

At impact, without drag, they will be traveling about 37 m/s or 83 mph.

I also tried a python script to model the speed vs time to take into account horizontal drag. I get

Impact results:

x: 61.19 m, y: -0.00 m

Horizontal speed: 18.97 m/s

Vertical speed: -21.59 m/s

Total speed: 28.74 m/s, which is ~64 mph

Then if the person, impacting at 64 mph, decelerates over 1m through the snow, they are subject to 42G of deceleration, which is on the edge of survivable.

About 5-10% of soldiers might survive this.

I am hoping the Soviets did experiments with dummies of the instrumented non living kind to test this before trying actual soldiers...

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u/Remarkable-Ask2288 3d ago

This is the Soviets we’re talking about. Of course they didn’t

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u/CrazyCatLady108 3d ago

considering there is no proof this ever happened, they probably didn't.

quick search brought up bunch of sites with no references and a mention of a 'myth' of a heroic squad jumping out of planes to stop a nazi tank column heading to moscow that started from a fiction book.

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u/eyesotope86 3d ago

Gotta weigh that against the knowledge that the Soviets were (are) pretty resistant to acknowledging stupid things they did...

The CIA finally had to admit they were aiming for mind control, and that took nearly 50 years to admit, so one can only imagine the Russians are tight-lipped about really, really, really stupid ideas they messed with.

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u/Spooder_guy_web 3d ago

Dawg the soviet archives are literally open, you can’t just say “the soviets were idiots and I think they’d do this, those dumb Russians”

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u/eyesotope86 3d ago

And if anyone has proven how trustworthy they can be, it's the Russians.

What do you do at the Kremlin, by the way?

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u/SteelWheel_8609 3d ago

What do you do at the CIA? Both can play that game. It’s childish. 

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u/eyesotope86 3d ago

Except I used the CIA doing something stupid and keeping it hidden as an example of 'don't assume it didn't happen just because it's stupid'

So...

What's weird is the implication that I somehow called Russia more stupid, and the odd moral outrage at that.

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u/Bobzegreatest 3d ago

You're missing the point saying someone is working for russia because they disagree with you is childish

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u/eyesotope86 3d ago

Oh no! Not on this most dire, most serious subreddit!

How will I ever achieve my goals, now?

This sub is becoming a shitty parody of itself.

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u/arbiter12 2d ago

The only parody here, is you.... You could have taken the L about 6 messages ago and been done.

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u/eyesotope86 2d ago

and been done

God knows r/theydidthemath is leaving scars on my psyche.

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u/Spooder_guy_web 2d ago

You’re so racist Jesus, replace Russian with my other minority but cause it’s Russian it’s all good

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u/eyesotope86 2d ago

'Russian' is a nationality, not a race, nitwit.

And their government has not been remotely trustworthy, which is clearly what was being discussed.

Do you have brain damage?

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u/Spooder_guy_web 2d ago

Just admit you’re racist Jesus, this liberal dancing around it is bullshit. I bet if I went through everything you’ve probably called them “orcs” too

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u/eyesotope86 2d ago

Racist against the KGB?

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u/DramaticLeave2563 3d ago

The CIA also attempted mind control. I wouldnt exactly call it stupid lmao. Theres simply 0 evidence for this event.

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u/endlessupending 3d ago

Who hasn't attempted mind control tbf?

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u/eyesotope86 3d ago edited 3d ago

That was literally one of the stated goals of Project Monarch, which was a sub project under MKUltra.

LSD was originally an experiment in mind control drugs. Along the same lines as sodium pentabarbatol.

None of this is classified anymore, go read it.

Edit to add: totally misread your comment. Very high.

Only point I was making was, don't dismiss government projects and experiments just because they sound outlandish and stupid.

Russia may not be as forthcoming with their classified stuff, and doubly so with their classified stupid stuff. Lack of evidence could be due to them trying once and covering up the inevitable blunder.

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u/DramaticLeave2563 2d ago

Sure in some cases, but we know for sure this was most likely a hoax.

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u/AutoRedialer 3d ago

Please…just stop 🙏🏼 https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/S0gfkx5UEb

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u/eyesotope86 3d ago

Really not that deep.

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u/CrazyCatLady108 3d ago

that's not how facts work. either something happened or it didn't. if it did, you gotta show some proof besides "i feel like they are the type of people to do that."

not fact checking leads us to the same place as the 'Haitians eating cats and dogs' claim. it is not a good place and all of us should fight to not wind up there.

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u/AffectionateTale3106 3d ago

To be fair, they're not saying they can prove it, they're merely saying that the absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. Of course, this line of reasoning can also be abused - a certain news network constantly airs people talking about the possibility that conspiracy theories might be true to make them seem more credible through pure repetition, for example. But I don't think this is particular discussion is in such bad faith

(And to be doubly fair, while absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, it could still lower the expected probability of something actually existing to near-zero without actually being zero, e.g. the Fermi paradox, which I think is more to your original comment's reasoning)

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u/CrazyCatLady108 2d ago

i agree with you, and certain things can also be very much 'on brand' but this is also the sort of reasoning that is often used in propaganda.

and lets say they did test jumping out of planes with people. the way it is phrased is "soviets do not care about people so they would 100% kill their own kind" not "they were so desperate to save their people from being exterminated by the nazis, they were willing to jump out of planes without parachutes."

US/western world has been firehozed with propaganda about soviets for decades. reddit is drowning in propaganda right now. people claim that today truth matters more than anything, and then regurgitate that same propaganda. the response to 'this is not supported by facts' should not be 'yeah, but it could be'.

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u/eyesotope86 3d ago

Did you work for the KGB?