What do people die from in a plane crash? What the bodies of passengers can tell about the plane crash

"Pulse speed is lower than explosion speed"

In the area of the village of Stepanovskoye, Ramensky district, Moscow region, search work continues at the site of the crash of the Saratov Airlines AN-148 plane. Locals, meanwhile, they organized a memorial here and lit 71 candles - according to the number dead passengers and crew members. The answer to the question: “Why did the disaster happen?” After decoding the data from the flight recorders, experts will give information. But after each such emergency, the relatives of the victims and many other people who often board an aircraft, not without fear, are tormented by other questions: “What did the person feel at the time of the disaster? Was he in pain? Did he understand that he was dying? We asked the head of the laboratory for the development of the human nervous system at the Research Institute of Human Morphology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Sergei Savelyev, to answer them.

AN-148 salon.

- Sergei Vyacheslavovich, tell me, during an explosion, does the human brain have time to transmit painful sensations to the body?

Since all this happens so quickly, I can say that most likely the victim of a plane crash does not have time to feel pain. Everything is very simple. The speed of impulses in our body along the nerves to the receptors is much lower than the speed of the explosion. It's just instant death.

- Does the brain have time to understand that death is about to occur?

Again, it all depends on the situation. If you mean, again, an explosion, then, of course, no. And if we consider that a person is flying in a plane that has lost control for several seconds, then everything happens according to a different scenario. The fact is that in such cases we are programmed for a positive outcome. A person always hopes that he will get out and stay alive. Resists to the last, as long as the brain is alive. And he dies last. This is due to our blood supply system.

Sergey Vyacheslavovich, is it true that before a flight, some people’s intuition may tell them not to board an airliner that is about to crash?

There is no intuition in this regard. Well, imagine, you approach the plane and see that everything is fine with it. What will life experience tell you in this case? Nothing. And sometimes you approach an airplane (I had such a case), and one of its engines is smoking. He sat down and flew away. Everything went fine. Astral tails don't help here.

Is it possible to trick the brain during a flight if it’s too scary? Suppose you close your eyes and imagine that you are on a train?

I have always been interested in what people experience in a falling plane. Summarizing the experience of eyewitnesses who survived plane crashes, we can draw one interesting conclusion - the devil is not as terrible as he is painted...

First, be more afraid when driving to the airport. In 2014, over 33 million flights were made in the world, 21 plane crashes occurred (and most of the troubles in the sky occur in freight transportation), in which only 990 people died. Those. The probability of a plane crash is only 0.0001%. During the same year, in Russia alone, 26,963 people died in road accidents, and according to WHO, 1.2 million people die in road accidents in the world every year and about 50 million are injured.

Secondly, judging by the statistics, your chances of dying on an escalator in the subway or contracting AIDS are much greater than dying on an airplane. So the chance of dying in a plane crash is 1 in 11,000,000, while, for example, in a car accident - 1 in 5,000, so now it is much safer to fly than to drive a car. Moreover, every year aviation technology becomes safer. By the way, Africa remains the most unfavorable continent in terms of flight safety: only 3% of all flights in the world are carried out here, but 43% of plane crashes have occurred!

Thirdly, under severe overloads, you will not remember anything According to research by the Interstate Aviation Committee, the consciousness of a person in a falling plane is switched off. In most cases - in the very first seconds of the fall. At the moment of impact with the ground there is not a single person in the cabin who is conscious. As they say, the body’s defense reaction is triggered. This thesis is confirmed by those who managed to survive plane crashes. Silence also accompanies minor air incidents, video selection

Fourth, the experience of survivors of plane crashes. The story of Larisa Savitskaya is included in the Guinness Book of Records. In 1981, at an altitude of 5220 meters, the An-24 plane in which she was flying collided with a military bomber. 37 people died in that disaster. Only Larisa managed to survive.

I was 20 years old then,” says Larisa Savitskaya. - Volodya, my husband, and I were flying from Komsomolsk-on-Amur to Blagoveshchensk. After takeoff, I immediately fell asleep. And I woke up from noise and screams. My face burned with cold. Then they told me that our plane’s wings were cut off and the roof was blown off. But I don’t remember the sky above my head. I remember it was foggy, like in a bathhouse. I looked at Volodya. He didn't move. Blood was gushing down his face. I somehow immediately realized that he was dead. And she prepared to die too. Then the plane fell apart and I lost consciousness. When I came to my senses, I was surprised that I was still alive. I felt like I was lying on something hard. It turned out to be in the aisle between the chairs. And next to it is a whistling abyss. There were no thoughts in my head. Fear too. In the state I was in - between sleep and reality - there is no fear. The only thing I remembered was an episode from an Italian film, where a girl, after a plane crash, soared in the sky among the clouds, and then, falling into the jungle, remained alive. I didn't expect to survive. I just wanted to die without suffering. I noticed the rungs of the metal floor. And I thought: if I fall sideways, it will be very painful. I decided to change position and regroup. Then she crawled to the next row of chairs (our row was near the rift), sat down in the chair, grabbed the armrests and rested her feet on the floor. All this was done automatically. Then I look - the ground. Very close. She grabbed the armrests with all her strength and pushed herself away from the chair. Then - like a green explosion from larch branches. And again there was a loss of memory. When I woke up, I saw my husband again. Volodya sat with his hands on his knees and looked at me with a fixed gaze. It was raining, which washed the blood from his face, and I saw a huge wound on his forehead. Under the chairs lay a dead man and woman...

Later it was established that the piece of the plane, four meters long and three meters wide, on which Savitskaya fell, glided like an autumn leaf. He fell into a soft, marshy clearing. Larisa lay unconscious for seven hours. Then for two more days I sat in a chair in the rain and waited for death to come. On the third day I got up, started looking for people and came across a search party. Larisa received several injuries, a concussion, a broken arm and five cracks in the spine. You can’t go with such injuries. But Larisa refused the stretcher and walked to the helicopter herself.

The plane crash and the death of her husband remained with her forever. According to her, her feelings of pain and fear are dulled. She is not afraid of death and still flies calmly on airplanes.

Another case confirms the blackout. Arina Vinogradova is one of the two surviving flight attendants of the Il-86 plane, which in 2002, barely taking off, crashed into Sheremetyevo. There were 16 people on board: four pilots, ten flight attendants and two engineers. Only two flight attendants survived: Arina and her friend Tanya Moiseeva. They say that in the last seconds your whole life flashes before your eyes. This didn’t happen to me,” Arina tells Izvestia. - Tanya and I were sitting in the first row of the third cabin, at the emergency exit, but not in service chairs, but in passenger seats. Tanya is opposite me. The flight was technical - we just needed to return to Pulkovo. At some point the plane began to shake. This happens with IL-86. But for some reason I realized that we were falling. Although nothing seemed to happen, there was no siren or roll. I didn't have time to get scared. Consciousness instantly floated away somewhere, and I fell into a black void. I woke up from a sharp jolt. At first I didn’t understand anything. Then I gradually figured it out. It turned out that I was lying on a warm engine, littered with chairs. I couldn't unfasten myself. She started screaming, pounding on the metal and disturbing Tanya, who then raised her head and then lost consciousness again. The firefighters pulled us out and took us to different hospitals.

Fifth, a plane crash is a positive experience for survivors! Scientists have come to a unique conclusion: people who survived plane crashes subsequently turned out to be healthier from a psychological point of view. They showed less worry, anxiety, did not become depressed and did not experience post-traumatic stress, unlike subjects from the control group who had never had such an experience.

In conclusion, I bring to your attention the speech of Rick Elias, who sat in the front row on the plane that made emergency landing into the Hudson River in New York in January 2009. You will find out what thoughts came to his mind while the doomed plane was falling down...

Still afraid of flying?-)

Fall from high altitude(in a plane crash)

I don't believe it's a coincidence. Nothing happens by chance. The events that they deserve happen to people. People die when they are supposed to die. If, for some reason, it is too early for a person to die, he will not die, even if death seemed inevitable.

There are two women who survived plane crashes and falls from great heights (10,160 and 5,200 meters).

They shouldn't have survived. The fact is that when an airplane crashes in the air, a person finds himself in an extremely unfavorable environment.

Low temperatures (about -60) combined with strong winds (several hundred km/h) lead to rapid freezing of the skin, eyes and other exposed areas of the body. A sharp drop in pressure is also dangerous: overboard its level is two and a half times lower than in the cabin. Therefore, when air rushes in at great speed through a crack in the hull, a person may experience a condition that is well known to scuba divers. This is decompression sickness. The result is tragic: gases dissolved in the blood and tissues begin to form bubbles that destroy the walls of cells and blood vessels.

Stewardess Vesna Vulovich

The 22-year-old flight attendant should not have been on this flight. but due to an error by the airline, it was assigned to him instead of another flight attendant with the same name (Vesna Nikolic). On the day of the disaster, Vesna had not yet completed her training and was on the crew as a trainee.

The plane crashed at an altitude of about 10,160 meters (bomb explosion).

When the explosion occurred, Vesna Vulović was working in passenger compartment. She immediately lost consciousness, and subsequently could not remember what she was doing and where exactly she was (in the middle part of the fuselage or in the tail).

Local residents arrived at the crash site before the rescuers. They disassembled the fragments and tried to find survivors. Peasant Bruno Honke discovered Vesna, gave her first aid and handed her over to the arriving doctors. Vesna was in a coma and received many injuries: fractures of the base of the skull, three vertebrae, both legs and the pelvis.

According to Vesna Vulovich herself, the first thing she asked for when she returned to consciousness was to smoke.

The treatment took 16 months, of which for 10 months the girl’s lower body was paralyzed (from the waist to the legs).

After the disaster

According to the memoirs of Vesna Vulovich, she did not develop a fear of flying, since she did not remember the moment of the disaster. Therefore, after recovery, the girl tried to return to work as a flight attendant at Yugoslav Airlines, but ended up getting an office position with an airline.

She got married in 1977 (divorced in 1992). Have no children.

In 1985, the name of Vesna Vulović was included in the Guinness Book of Records. (like someone who squeezes out when falling from the greatest height).

For some unknown reason, that day fate did not want to take away any Vesnu Nikolic, nor Vesna Vulovic. One simply didn’t get on the plane due to an error at the airline, and the other, although she got on the plane, still survived.

Usually, the “right” people simply don’t get on the unfortunate plane. They break (an arm or a leg), or lose a ticket, or something else happens that saves their life.

In this case, Vesna Vulovich still got on the ill-fated plane. But it was too early for her to die. Therefore, she was the only survivor.

Death

Vesna Vulović died in December 2016 at home in Belgrade. On December 23, her body was discovered after the police opened the apartment, where the woman’s friends turned, concerned that she had not appeared on the street for several days and did not answer phone calls. The cause of death has not been disclosed by authorities.

Savitskaya, Larisa Vladimirovna

Larisa Vladimirovna Savitskaya, born Andreeva(born January 11, 1961, Blagoveshchensk, Amur Region) - a woman who survived a plane crash and a fall from a height of 5200 meters

On August 24, 1981, the An-24 plane on which the Savitsky spouses were flying collided with a Tu-16 military bomber at an altitude of 5220 m.

There was a lot on the plane free seats, and, despite the fact that the Savitskys had tickets for the middle part of the plane, they took seats in the tail.

After the collision, the crews of both aircraft died. As a result of the collision, the An-24 lost wings with fuel tanks and the top of the fuselage. The remaining part broke several times during the fall.

At the time of the disaster, Larisa Savitskaya was sleeping in her seat at the rear of the plane. I woke up from a strong blow and a sudden burn (the temperature instantly dropped from 25 °C to −30 °C). After another break in the fuselage, which passed right in front of her seat, Larisa was thrown into the aisle, waking up, she reached the nearest seat, climbed in and pressed herself into it, without having buckled herself in. Larisa herself subsequently claimed that at that moment she remembered an episode from the film “Miracles Still Happen,” where the heroine squeezed into a chair during a plane crash and survived.

Part of the plane's body landed on a birch grove, which softened the blow. According to subsequent studies, the entire fall of the plane fragment measuring 3 meters wide by 4 meters long, where Savitskaya ended up, took 8 minutes. Savitskaya was unconscious for several hours. Waking up on the ground, Larisa saw in front of her a chair with the body of her dead husband. She received a number of serious injuries, but could move independently.

Two days later, she was discovered by rescuers, who were very surprised when, after two days of coming across only the bodies of the dead, they met a living person. Larisa was covered in paint flying off the fuselage, and her hair was very tangled in the wind. While waiting for rescuers, she built herself a temporary shelter from the wreckage of the plane, keeping warm with seat covers and covering herself from mosquitoes with a plastic bag. It rained all these days. When it ended, she waved to rescue planes flying past, but they, not expecting to find survivors, mistook her for a geologist from a nearby camp. Larisa, the bodies of her husband and two other passengers were discovered as the last of all the victims of the disaster.

Doctors determined she had a concussion, spinal injuries in five places, and broken arms and ribs. She also lost almost all her teeth.

The consequences affect Savitskaya’s entire subsequent life.

___________________

Despite numerous injuries, Larisa did not receive a disability: according to Soviet standards, the severity of her individual injuries did not allow her to receive a disability, and it was not possible to receive it collectively. Later, Larisa was paralyzed, but she was able to recover, although she could not do many jobs and was forced to do odd jobs and even went hungry.

In 1986, Larisa gave birth to a son, Gosha, without her husband, and for a long time they lived only on child care benefits.

The unusual fate attracted the attention of the press, and numerous interviews with Savitskaya appeared. She became the heroine of television programs of several television companies.

Larisa Savitskaya was twice included in the Russian edition of the Guinness Book of Records:

like a person who survived a fall from a maximum height,
as a person who received the minimum amount of compensation for physical damage - 75 rubles.

____________________

Note!

Both surviving women (Vesna Vulovich and Larisa Savitskaya) were not even wearing seat belts! But this did not prevent them from surviving a fall from a height of 10,160 and 5,200 meters, respectively.

Their lives were especially valuable, so there was, one might say, a direct “Divine intervention” that saved them.

Usually, fate acts more gently and the “right people” simply do not end up on bad planes (and other bad situations).

_____________________

What happens to useless people?

Here's what:

Dear friends, be helpful! Helpful people are usually more resilient and happier.

First, be more afraid when driving to the airport. In 2014, over 33 million flights were made in the world, 21 plane crashes occurred (and most of the troubles in the sky occur in cargo transportation), in which only 990 people died. Those. The probability of a plane crash is only 0.0001%. During the same year, in Russia alone, 26,963 people died in road accidents, and according to WHO, 1.2 million people die in road accidents in the world every year and about 50 million are injured.

Thirdly, under severe overloads, you will not remember anything. According to research by the Interstate Aviation Committee, the consciousness of a person in a falling plane is switched off. In most cases - in the very first seconds of the fall. At the moment of the collision with the ground, there is not a single person in the cabin who would be conscious. As they say, the body’s defense reaction is triggered. This thesis is confirmed by those who managed to survive plane crashes. Silence also accompanies minor air incidents, video selection

Fourth, the experience of survivors of plane crashes. The story of Larisa Savitskaya is included in the Guinness Book of Records. In 1981, at an altitude of 5220 meters, the An-24 plane in which she was flying collided with a military bomber. 37 people died in that disaster. Only Larisa managed to survive.

The plane crash and the death of her husband remained with her forever. According to her, her feelings of pain and fear are dulled. She is not afraid of death and still flies calmly on airplanes.

Another case confirms the blackout. Arina Vinogradova is one of the two surviving flight attendants of the Il-86 aircraft, which in 2002, barely taking off, crashed into Sheremetyevo. There were 16 people on board: four pilots, ten flight attendants and two engineers. Only two flight attendants survived: Arina and her friend Tanya Moiseeva. They say that in the last seconds your whole life flashes before your eyes. This didn’t happen to me,” Arina tells Izvestia. - Tanya and I were sitting in the first row of the third cabin, near the emergency exit, but not in service chairs, but in passenger seats. Tanya is opposite me. The flight was technical - we just needed to return to Pulkovo. At some point the plane began to shake. This happens with IL-86. But for some reason I realized that we were falling. Although nothing seemed to happen, there was no siren or roll. I didn't have time to get scared. Consciousness instantly floated away somewhere, and I fell into a black void. I woke up from a sharp jolt. At first I didn’t understand anything. Then I gradually figured it out. It turned out that I was lying on a warm engine, littered with chairs. I couldn't unfasten myself. She started screaming, pounding on the metal and disturbing Tanya, who then raised her head and then lost consciousness again. The firefighters pulled us out and took us to different hospitals.

Fifth, a plane crash is a positive experience for survivors! Scientists have come to a unique conclusion: people who survived plane crashes subsequently turned out to be healthier from a psychological point of view. They showed less worry, anxiety, did not become depressed and did not experience post-traumatic stress, unlike subjects from the control group who had never had such an experience.

In conclusion, I bring to your attention the speech of Rick Elias, who sat in the front row of the plane that made an emergency landing in the Hudson River in New York in January 2009. You will find out what thoughts came to his mind as the doomed plane fell down...

"No. Izvestia tracked down several people who survived plane crashes or were involved in serious flight accidents...

“I somehow immediately realized that my husband was dead”

The story of Larisa Savitskaya is included in the Guinness Book of Records. In 1981, at an altitude of 5220 meters, the An-24 plane in which she was flying collided with a military bomber. 37 people died in that disaster. Only Larisa managed to survive.

I was 20 years old then,” says Larisa Savitskaya. - Volodya, my husband, and I were flying from Komsomolsk-on-Amur to Blagoveshchensk. We were returning from honeymoon. First we sat in the front seats. But I didn’t like the front, so we moved to the middle. After takeoff, I immediately fell asleep. And I woke up from noise and screams. My face burned with cold. Then they told me that our plane’s wings were cut off and the roof was blown off. But I don’t remember the sky above my head. I remember it was foggy, like in a bathhouse. I looked at Volodya. He didn't move. Blood was gushing down his face. I somehow immediately realized that he was dead. And she prepared to die too. Then the plane fell apart and I lost consciousness. When I came to my senses, I was surprised that I was still alive. I felt like I was lying on something hard. It turned out to be in the aisle between the chairs. And next to it is a whistling abyss. There were no thoughts in my head. Fear too. In the state I was in - between sleep and reality - there is no fear. The only thing I remembered was an episode from an Italian film, where a girl, after a plane crash, soared in the sky among the clouds, and then, falling into the jungle, remained alive. I didn't expect to survive. I just wanted to die without suffering. I noticed the rungs of the metal floor. And I thought: if I fall sideways, it will be very painful. I decided to change position and regroup. Then she crawled to the next row of chairs (our row was near the rift), sat down in the chair, grabbed the armrests and rested her feet on the floor. All this was done automatically. Then I look - the ground. Very close. She grabbed the armrests with all her might and pushed herself away from the chair. Then - like a green explosion from larch branches. And again there was a loss of memory. When I woke up, I saw my husband again. Volodya sat with his hands on his knees and looked at me with a fixed gaze. It was raining, which washed the blood from his face, and I saw a huge wound on his forehead. Under the chairs lay a dead man and woman...

The plane crash and the death of her husband remained with her forever. According to her, her feelings of pain and fear are dulled. She is not afraid of death and still flies calmly on airplanes. But her son, who was born four years after the disaster, is terrified of flying.

“Consciousness instantly floated away somewhere”

Arina Vinogradova is one of the two surviving flight attendants of the Il-86 plane, which in 2002, barely taking off, crashed into Sheremetyevo. There were 16 people on board: four pilots, ten flight attendants and two engineers. Only two flight attendants survived: Arina and her friend Tanya Moiseeva.

They say that in the last seconds your whole life flashes before your eyes. This didn’t happen to me,” Arina tells Izvestia. - Tanya and I were sitting in the first row of the third cabin, at the emergency exit, but not in service chairs, but in passenger seats. Tanya is opposite me. The flight was technical - we just needed to return to Pulkovo. At some point the plane began to shake. This happens with IL-86. But for some reason I realized that we were falling. Although nothing seemed to happen, there was no siren or roll. I didn't have time to get scared. Consciousness instantly floated away somewhere, and I fell into a black void. I woke up from a sharp jolt. At first I didn’t understand anything. Then I gradually figured it out. It turned out that I was lying on a warm engine, littered with chairs. I couldn't unfasten myself. She started screaming, pounding on the metal and disturbing Tanya, who then raised her head and then lost consciousness again. The firefighters pulled us out and took us to different hospitals.

Arina still works as a flight attendant. The plane crash, she said, did not leave any trauma in her soul. However, what happened had a very strong impact on Tatyana Moiseeva. Since then, she no longer flies, although she has not left aviation. She still works in the flight attendant squad, but now as a dispatcher. She doesn’t even tell her close friends about what she experienced.

"Someone kissed the ground, someone burst into tears of happiness..."

The Lyceum group is known throughout the country. But few people know that two singers from this group - Anna Pletneva and Anastasia Makarevich - also survived the fall on the plane.

This happened about five years ago,” Anna Pletneva tells Izvestia. “I was always terrified of flying by plane, but now I became brave.” I flew with Nastya Makarevich to Spain. We had a great time. In a cheerful mood we returned to Moscow on a Boeing 767. The neighbors were with the child. The minute we started descending and the flight attendants told us to fasten our seat belts, the child was in my arms. And then the plane went down sharply. Things fell on their heads, the flight attendants shouted: “Hold the children! Bend down!” I realized that we were falling and hugged the baby to me. A thought flashed through my head: “Is this really all?” I used to think that when it’s so scary, my heart should be pounding. But in reality you don’t feel the heart. You don’t feel yourself, but you look at everything as if from the outside. The worst thing is hopelessness. You can't influence anything. But there was no panic like they show in the movies. Deathly silence. Everyone, as if in a dream, buckled up and froze. Some prayed, some said goodbye to their relatives.

Anna doesn't remember how much time has passed. Maybe seconds... Or minutes.

“Suddenly the plane gradually began to level out,” she recalls, “I looked around: was it really just me imagining it? But no, others also perked up... Even when we stopped on the runway, I couldn’t believe that everything ended well. The commander announced: “Congratulations to everyone! We were born in a shirt. Now everything will be fine in your life.”

Surprisingly, I stopped being afraid of flying on airplanes,” she says. - And on charter flights pilots often let us into the cockpit and let us taxi. I like it so much that I want to buy my own small plane in the near future. We will fly it on tour.

“I really wanted to rewind the film.”

Our colleague, Izvestia journalist Georgy Stepanov, also survived the fall.

This happened in the summer of 1984, he recalls. - I flew on a Yak-40 plane from Batumi to Tbilisi. When I entered the plane, I felt like I was in a gypsy camp - there were so many things there. They filled all the compartments on top, as well as the passage of the cabin. Don't overcrowd. There were, of course, also more passengers than expected. We took off and gained altitude. Below is the sea. I felt drowsy. But then it was as if someone had hit the fuselage with a sledgehammer, the noise of the turbine became different, and the plane went down sharply, almost vertically. Everyone who was not wearing a seat belt flew off their seats and rolled around the cabin, interspersed with their things. Screams, squeals. A terrible panic began. I was wearing a seat belt. I still remember my state - horror. Everything in me broke down, my body seemed numb. I had the feeling that everything was happening not to me, but that I was somewhere on the side. The only thing I thought was: poor parents, what will happen to them? I could neither scream nor move. Everyone nearby was completely white with fear. Their dead, motionless eyes were striking, as if they were already in another world.

We actually fell for no more than a minute. The plane leveled off: the passengers began to come to their senses and pick up their things. Then, when we were approaching Tbilisi, the pilot came out of the cockpit. He was like a zombie. We began to ask: what happened? In response, he wanted to laugh it off, but somehow it turned out to be a pity; he felt embarrassed for him.

This fall still haunts me to this day. When I board a plane, I feel like a completely helpless creature in an insecure shell.

The world knows more than a dozen cases of happy salvation

No matter how much experts, citing statistics, assure us that air transport is the safest, many are afraid to fly. The earth leaves hope, the height does not. How did those who did not survive the plane crash feel? We will never know. According to research by the Interstate Aviation Committee, the consciousness of a person in a falling plane is switched off. In most cases - in the very first seconds of the fall. At the moment of the collision with the ground, there is not a single person in the cabin who would be conscious. As they say, the body’s defense reaction is triggered.

The ancient Greek poet Theognis wrote: “What is not destined by fate will not happen, but what is destined, I am not afraid of.” There are also cases miraculous salvation. Larisa Savitskaya is not the only one who survived the plane crash. In 1944, the English pilot Stephen, shot down by the Germans, fell from a height of 5500 meters and survived. In 2003, a Boeing 737 crashed in Sudan. A two-year-old child survived, although the plane was almost completely burned down. The world knows more than a dozen such cases.

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