00:01Felix Baumgartner
00:03On October 14, 2012, Felix Baumgartner stepped into the void from a capsule 128,000 feet above the Earth.
00:12For 4 minutes and 20 seconds, he plummeted towards the New Mexico desert,
00:18reaching a top speed of 843.6 miles per hour and breaking the sound barrier with his own body.
00:26Really impressive!
00:27The Austrian daredevil was a global icon,
00:31a man who made a career of cheating death in the most spectacular ways imaginable.
00:36In July 2025, the 56-year-old was taking a far less demanding flight.
00:42He was paragliding over the calm, sunny coastline of Porto Sant'Elpidio, Italy.
00:48For tourists below, it was just another colorful canopy against the blue sky.
00:53But then, witnesses saw the paraglider begin to wobble, then spiral downwards at an increasing speed.
01:02An official investigation later cited a simple human error as the cause.
01:07The idyllic afternoon was shattered by a loud splash and the sound of snapping plastic.
01:14Felix crashed directly into the deep end of a luxury hotel's swimming pool.
01:19The vibrant red and yellow fabric of his paraglider billowed across the chlorinated water like a bizarre oversized lily pad.
01:29Hotel guests watched in horror as the tangled mess of lines and harness slowly sank.
01:37What the emergency services found left little to the imagination.
01:43They pulled him from the water, still strapped into his harness.
01:47His body limp and entangled in the cords.
01:50Felix was pronounced dead at the scene.
01:55Dean Potter
01:56On the evening of May 16, 2015, Dean Potter and his flying partner Graham Hunt stood at Taft Point,
02:04a 7,500-foot promontory overlooking Yosemite Valley.
02:09Dean was one of the most influential climbers and base jumpers of his generation.
02:14A controversial figure, known for his daring, often illegal, stunts.
02:21As the sun set, they prepared for a proximity wingsuit flight.
02:25A dangerous discipline where fliers skim just feet away from cliffs and trees.
02:31Up on Taft Point, they went through their final checks.
02:35For normal people, that means tying your shoes or making sure you locked your front door.
02:40For Dean and Graham, it meant making sure their wingsuits wouldn't turn them into high-speed wheelbarrows at 100 miles
02:47an hour.
02:49Their target? A narrow, V-shaped notch in a rocky ridgeline.
02:54Graham jumped first, with Dean following a moment later.
02:58From the helmet camera of a spotter, their two dark, winged figures are seen, silhouetted against the twilight sky, gliding
03:07at over 100 miles per hour.
03:10As they approached the notch, something went wrong.
03:14Graham, flying on the right, suddenly veered and struck the ridge.
03:17A small puff of dust is visible on impact.
03:22Dean, seeing his partner crash, made a split-second evasive maneuver, banking hard to the left.
03:29For a moment, it looked like he might clear the ridge, but he was too low.
03:33He clipped the rocks on the opposite side of the notch.
03:37The spotter's camera recorded only silence after the two men disappeared behind the ridge.
03:43A search and rescue team was dispatched, but it was too late.
03:48Their bodies were found the next morning by a helicopter crew, located on a rocky ledge several hundred feet below
03:55the notch.
03:56The investigation concluded they were killed instantly on impact.
04:00But you probably saw that coming.
04:05Jesse Combs
04:06On August 27th, 2019, in the flat, empty expanse of the Alvor Desert in Oregon, Jesse Combs was strapped into
04:16the cockpit of a 52,000-horsepower jet-powered car.
04:20The 39-year-old professional racer and television personality, known as the fastest woman on four wheels, was attempting to
04:28break the women's land speed record.
04:30Her goal was to exceed 512 miles per hour.
04:36Bro, at that speed, you don't really drive the car anymore.
04:39You just try to convince physics to be nice to you for a few seconds.
04:43On her final run of the day, she pushed the machine to its absolute limit, accelerating across the desert floor
04:50at a speed that was almost too fast to comprehend.
04:54Suddenly, at a velocity approaching 550 miles per hour, the front wheel assembly of the car collapsed.
05:01The crash investigation later confirmed the cause as mechanical failure of the front wheel, not driver error or miscalculation.
05:09The failure was instantaneous and catastrophic.
05:13The vehicle, no longer stable, veered violently and disintegrated as it tore across the desert.
05:20Combs was killed instantly.
05:23The official cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma to the head, which occurred before the wreckage
05:29was engulfed in flames.
05:31She had been traveling at a speed where even the slightest mechanical failure meant certain death.
05:37She was posthumously awarded the record, having reached a top speed of 522.783 miles per hour.
05:47Shane McConkie.
05:49Shane McConkie was a pioneer who blended big mountain skiing with base jumping, creating a sport and a spectacle all
05:58his own.
05:59He was famous for his incredible skill, his infectious humor, and for inventing the rockered ski, which changed the industry
06:09forever.
06:09In short, this man was a legend in his own time.
06:15Now, rewind back to March 26th, 2009.
06:20Shane, aged 39, is standing atop a 2,000-foot cliff in the Italian Dolomites, preparing for a stunt he
06:27had done before.
06:28The plan was to ski off the cliff, perform a double backflip, release his skis in mid-air, and then
06:36fly away in his wingsuit.
06:39A routine day at the office for him.
06:42He executes the jump perfectly, launching into the vast emptiness.
06:47But then, a critical failure occurs.
06:51His left ski fails to release from its binding.
06:55The ski acts like an anchor, sending him into an uncontrollable inverted spin.
07:01For 12 agonizing seconds, he struggles to free himself, fighting against the violent rotation to reach his parachute.
07:12But it's too late.
07:13He is too low, and the spin is too severe.
07:18Shane impacts the snowy slope below, without a deployed parachute.
07:23The force of the impact created a deep crater in the snow.
07:26Rescuers found him there, partially buried, his body twisted and entangled in the lines of his undeployed parachute,
07:34with the single, stubborn ski still attached to his boot.
07:39The cause of death was massive impact-related trauma.
07:44A tragic end for a true innovator.
07:50Eric Runner
07:51On September 28, 2015, a crowd gathered for a celebrity golf tournament in Squaw Valley, California.
07:58The opening ceremony was set to feature a skydiving performance by members of the Nitro Circus crew,
08:04including 39-year-old Eric Roehner.
08:07Eric was an extreme sports icon, known for his daring stunts on MTV.
08:12He was part of a three-man group jump, a routine performance meant to wow the golfers below.
08:18For most people at a golf tournament, the biggest fear is hitting a tree.
08:23Sadly for Eric, it became a fatal reality.
08:27As he came in for his landing, he was off target and flying too fast.
08:31He slammed directly into a large pine tree.
08:35The impact was extremely violent.
08:38He hung there, limp and unnaturally twisted,
08:42a marionette caught in the strings of his own failed stunt.
08:47Spectators on the golf course watched in horror.
08:50They tried to form a human ladder, a desperate, futile attempt to reach him.
08:55But he was too high.
08:57It took emergency crews over 30 minutes to get him down.
09:01By the time they reached him, it was too late.
09:04Eric was pronounced dead at the scene.
09:07The official cause of death was massive internal injuries sustained from the impact with the tree.
09:14Sarah Burke.
09:16Sarah Burke was a force of nature in freestyle skiing.
09:20A four-time X Games gold medalist, she was the undisputed queen of the super pipe, a discipline she fought
09:28to get included in the Olympics.
09:29She was a pioneer.
09:31And at 29, she was at the top of her game.
09:36On January 10, 2012, Sarah was training in Park City, Utah.
09:42It was a routine day on the pipe.
09:44She dropped in to practice a flat spin 540, a trick where the skier launches into the air and spins
09:51one and a half times on a nearly horizontal axis.
09:55She executed the spin perfectly and landed cleanly on her feet.
10:00But as she rode away, a small, seemingly insignificant bounce caused her to fall, and her head whipped back against
10:08the rock-hard snow of the pipe floor.
10:11It wasn't a spectacular crash.
10:14Many in the sport had walked away from worse, but the impact was devastating in a way no one could
10:20see.
10:20The whiplash motion tore her vertebral artery, a critical vessel supplying blood to the brain.
10:27The tear caused a massive internal hemorrhage.
10:30Right there on the snow, Sarah went into cardiac arrest.
10:35Her heart stopped beating.
10:37Medical teams revived her on site, and she was airlifted to a hospital.
10:41But the damage was already done.
10:44The lack of oxygen during the cardiac arrest had caused severe, irreversible brain damage.
10:50After nine days in a coma, Sarah Burke was pronounced dead.
10:54Drumshead
10:55Drumshead
10:55Drumshead
