Steps

1. 

   

   The arch position
   Slow down your fall. Unless you’re falling from an airplane, you won’t have enough time to try this step. Maximize your surface area by spreading yourself out. Use skydiving technique to stabilize yourself: position yourself so that the front of your body faces the ground; arch your back and pelvis and tilt your head back like you’re trying to touch the back of your head to the back of your legs; extend your arms so that your upper arms are straight out to the sides, and bend your elbows at a 90 degree angle so that your lower arms and hands point forward (parallel to, and on the sides of, your head) with your palms facing down; spread your legs to shoulder width, and bend your knees slightly.
2. Find the best landing spot. This step can only be performed if falling from an airplane. For very high falls, the surface on which you land is the greatest influence on your chance of survival. Observe the terrain below you as you are falling. Hard, inflexible surfaces such as concrete are the worst on which to fall. Very uneven or jagged surfaces, which present less surface area to distribute the force of impact, are also undesirable. The best possible surfaces on which to fall are snow, deep water (preferably water that is fast moving or frothy, such as the kind found at the bottom of a waterfall; see Warnings), soft ground (such as that in a newly tilled field or in a marsh), and trees or thick vegetation (although these present a high risk of impalement). If you are over an urban area, you probably won’t be able to control your flight precisely enough to choose a good landing surface, but glass- or tin-roofed structures, awnings, and cars are preferable to streets and concrete rooftops.
3. 

   

   U.S. soldiers performing a free-fall.
   Steer yourself to the landing spot. If you’re falling from an airplane, you will usually have about 1-3 minutes before impact, depending on your starting altitude. You will also have the ability to travel horizontally (while, obviously, traveling vertically) a good distance (up to a couple of miles). From the arch position described above, you can direct your flight forward by pulling your arms slightly back at the shoulders (so that they are not extended forward as much) and straightening (extending) your legs. You can move backward by extending your arms and bending your knees as though you are trying to touch the back of your head with your heels. Right turns may be accomplished while staying in the arch position by twisting your upper body slightly to the right (dipping your right shoulder), and left turns are performed by dipping the left shoulder.
4. Bend your knees. Possibly nothing is more important to surviving a fall (or simpler to do) than bending your knees. Research has shown that having one’s knees bent at impact can reduce the magnitude of impact forces 36-fold. Also, the physics equation for momentum p = γ m v suggests that increasing the massive surface falling would decrease velocity for the conserved momentum value, so bending knees decreases the force on the surface in contact with the floor.
5. Relax. Relaxing during a long fall—especially as you near the ground—is easier said than done, but try anyway. If your muscles are tense, your body will transfer force more directly to your vital organs. Studies of long-fall survivors have shown that those who reported being relaxed suffered, on average, far less severe injuries than those who reported being panicked or tense. It has also been shown that people who jump intentionally and those who are intoxicated at the time of the fall have disproportionately higher survival rates than fall victims in general. While the reason for these higher survival rates is unclear, one likely explanation is that people who are drunk or who actually want to die may be more relaxed before and upon impact. One way to remain (relatively) calm is to focus on performing the steps and being aware of your body. Doing so gives you something else to think about besides impending death.
6. Land feet-first. No matter what height you fall from, you should always try to land on your feet. While landing feet-first concentrates the impact force (in pounds per square inch) on a small area, it also allows your feet and legs to absorb the worst of the impact. If you are in any other position, try to right yourself before you hit the ground (fortunately, attaining the feet-first position seems to be an instinctive reaction). Keep your feet and legs tightly together so that both your feet hit the ground at the same time.
7. Land on the balls of your feet. Point your toes slightly down before impact so that you will land on the balls of your feet. This will allow your lower body to more effectively absorb the impact.
8. Protect your head on the bounce. When you fall from a great height onto land, you will usually bounce. Some people who survive the initial impact (often with a feet-first landing) suffer a fatal injury on their second impact. Cover your head with your arms. One technique for doing so is to put your arms on the sides of your head with your elbows facing forward (and projecting in front of your face) and your fingers laced behind your head or neck. This covers a large portion of your head, but obviously not all of it. If you have time to get an indication of which way you’re bouncing (and hence which part of your head you’re likely to hit), you can quickly adjust your arms to cover that part of your head.
9. Control the orientation of your body on the bounce. As you would expect, mortality is highest when the initial point of impact is the head. Mortality declines (in this order) when the point of impact is ventral (the front of the body), dorsal (back of the body), lateral (side of the body), and feet-first. Assuming you succeed in taking the brunt of the initial impact feet-first, you should try to control your body upon initial impact and during the bounce so that you land on your side or back on the second impact. Ideally, you should twist your hips to one side or the other immediately upon initial impact. At much lower velocities (such as those experienced with a proper parachute-assisted landing), this motion will help you distribute the force first through your legs, then through your buttocks and shoulder. In reality, you will be going as much as five or six times faster than you would with a parachute and your control over your body’s motion will be severely limited. The key is to stay aware of your body and your surroundings and, even in midair on the bounce, try to get your body to land first on your legs or side.
10. Get medical help immediately. With all the adrenaline flowing in response to your flight, you may not even feel injured upon landing. Even if you are not visibly injured, you may have sustained fractures or internal injuries that must be treated immediately. No matter how you’re feeling, get to a hospital as quickly as possible.

Tips

• Water landings are best done landing feet-first with legs tight together and arms extended straight above your head, while leaning back very slightly. Leaning back helps to reduce forced unnatural movement of the neck and the amount of water that will rush up your nose. If in doubt, you basically want to be as straight vertical as possible. There is some disagreement on whether, when entering water from a very high fall, your feet should be flat or you should point your toes down. Pointing your toes down serves to minimize the surface area of your body that comes into contact with the water, thus minimizing the effect of surface tension. Going in with your feet flat, however, may better concentrate the initial impact on your lower body. A similar point can be made if entering the water head-first: pointing your fingers straight above your head (actually below your head since you’re upside-down) reduces surface tension, while flattening your palms against the water (again, above your head) creates a “shadow” that may serve to protect your head a bit. For very high falls, proper diving technique (that is, head-first entry) should not be used because it will be nearly impossible for an untrained diver to correctly execute at such high speeds. You will travel quite deep into the water, so try to keep your wits about you and quickly swim toward the surface (look for light). When you enter the water you will create a path of bubbles which may be followed as they float up towards the surface. If there is no light, follow the bubbles.
• It can be argued that you will be traveling so quickly you won’t have time to adjust your position at impact or during the bounce. This may or may not be so. Research has indicated that in high-stress situations such as a free-fall, your perception of time may be slowed significantly, possibly even enough to consciously perform movements that you would ordinarily not have enough “subjective time” to do. In other words, you can think faster.
• Choose a large landing spot. Unless you have substantial skydiving experience, you will probably not be able to steer with much precision. While it might be great to steer yourself so that you land on a large pile of mattresses, you will probably not be able to identify small targets from great heights, and you will almost certainly not be able to guide yourself to them. Your primary goal should be to steer yourself away from particularly undesirable surfaces.
• Skydiving turns are not easy to perform without practice, and you may find yourself flipping and spinning wildly at some point in your flight. Try to regain stability by going into the arch position. If nothing else, the stability will help you to remain somewhat calm.
• If you are in an arch position while falling from an airplane, try to get your body vertical well before you hit the ground so that you don’t get caught in some other position at impact (as a guide, keep in mind that at 1,000 feet, depending on your velocity, you have about 6-10 seconds before impact). As far as your chances of survival, the benefits of a feet-first landing will generally outweigh the increase in velocity that will occur when you switch from the arch to the feet-first position.
• Good physical condition and youth seem to positively influence free-fall survival rates. You can’t change your age, but if you’re looking for yet another reason to get in shape, here it is.

Warnings

• If choosing to land in water, it is important to understand that unless the water is quite deep and you land feet-first with your body nearly vertical, water will cushion you about as much as concrete. In addition, if you survive the impact, you may be severely injured and/or unconscious, and thus the risk of drowning is high.
• Neither the authors nor wikiHow endorse attempting a long free-fall. The procedures outlined here, even if executed perfectly, cannot guarantee survival of a fall from heights, and your chances of surviving such a fall are slim, at best. In fact, no procedure has been proven consistently effective to survive such falls without the use of a parachute or other protective equipment. This is because:
  
  
  • It is not possible to perform adequate scientifically controlled experiments to find out how the human body reacts to very high falls (though simulations have been attempted);
  • It is almost never possible to determine the exact circumstances of any given case of a fall that has already occurred, let alone a statistically meaningful sample of many cases; and
  • People very seldom survive falls from heights of 100 feet or more, and mortality is high even at heights of 20-30 feet. It is always best not to fall at all.

Related wikiHows

• How to Do a Running Catleap
• How to Land a Jump in Parkour
• How to Become a Skydiver
• How to Increase Your Vertical Leap
• How to Survive in the Woods for 3 Days

External Links

• Injury Prevention OnlineAnalysis of falls from heights of 50-150 feet
• Jack R. Hunt Library, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University “Survival of High-Velocity Free-falls in Water” by Richard G. Snyder, 1965: a Federal Aviation Administration report
• SkydiveOhio.com Skydiving manual
• Institute for Ethics and Emerging TechnologiesDiscussion of slowed perception of time under stress
• Greenharbor.com The Free Fall research page. Lots of information about free-falls from airplanes, including specific survival stories.
• Jack R. Hunt Library, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University “Human Survivability of Extreme Impacts in Free-Fall” by Richard G. Snyder, 1963: a Federal Aviation Administration report.
• NPR.org Audio commentary about suicide from the Golden Gate Bridge
• StraightDope.com Q&A on building and bridge falls

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Tests close in on 400-year-old Jamestown bones' identity

POSTED: 10:20 p.m. EST, November 20, 2006

Steps

1. Take a shower instead of a bath. A bath uses a lot more water than a short shower. Considering that each minute under the average shower uses 2.5 gallons of water and an average full bath tub takes 35 gallons of water, a five minute shower will use 12.5 gallons instead of the average bath's 35 gallons. Make the shower even shorter and you're saving a lot more. You don't need more than 1 minute under a shower to get properly clean - the rest of the stay is enjoyment.
2. Only fill the bathtub a quarter or half way. Doing this will lessen the water usage. It will also make you colder in colder weather, so the shower is again preferable for colder days. However, this is usually fine for small kids in any weather. A good rule of thumb is to fill no more than 5 inches for small kids, and 10 inches for adults and older children.
3. Share a bath. You and your beloved can hop into the bath together rather than filling it up again. Children can share one bath, or at least one after the other can use the same bathwater but there will be complaints from the children following that the bathwater is cold.
4. Put the plug in your bathtub during a shower. If your shower sits over your bathtub, pop the plug in while you shower. Then your feet can luxuriate in the water and you can have a quick dip at the end of the shower. However, the big drawback is that this water will usually be cool and full of suds.
5. Have a sponge bath. If you've ever been in the Armed Forces, or camped rough, you'll know this one. It is simply a case of putting water into the basin (you at least have the luxury of warm water!), dipping a sponge into it, soaping up the sponge and then washing over your body. Pay particular attention to underarms, genital region and feet. Your face should be washed separately with a softer cloth. Rinse the soap off of the sponge (put clean water on the sponge). It may sound icky but it works just as well as a shower; it is just that we've become accustomed to sheer luxury in our bathroom habits.
6. Take a "Navy Shower". In a dire water emergency, use this to save on water and still get a clean feeling. Turn on the shower and jump under it and wet yourself. Turn it off, soap up. Then jump in and wash off soap quickly. Turn off shower and dry yourself really quickly.
7. Think laterally. If you have smelly, tired feet, just bathe them in a bowl. You can also soak scratches and similar injuries in just a small bowl, as long as they are on a leg or an arm.
8. Install a low-flow shower head. This will make the most of the least amount of water coming out.
9. Switch to the bucket-and-mug method. This is the most economical and has been used in many countries even when water wasn't so scarce. It does entail sitting on a low wood or other waterproof stool, or squatting. You will be surprised by how little water (usually one bucketful) you really need in order to bathe well. The hot-water source is typically an installed overhead "instant" geyser.

Tips

• 

  

  Take a quick shower instead...
  Recycle your bathwater. Bucket it outside to your plants or rig up a hose and pump through your window and pump it outside. If you're really serious, install a gray water system.
• Teach children to get used to the shower early. Many are afraid of the ferocity of the water pressure - make sure the nozzle can provide soft, gentle flow over the child's head and get a nozzle that can be both lifted off and moved down to the child's height. It may cost a little more at the outset but the water savings will be huge in the long run and your life suddenly gets easier when a child can shower from an early age.
• Install a rainwater tank or a rain barrel. Not only is the water supply more dependable for you, it does absolute wonders for your hair.
• Fix drips immediately. A lot of water is lost through a dripping tap every day.
• For more information on conserving water, look on Google for websites in areas or countries that have water problems now and use that information to improve water usage in your home and area. Such places with severe water shortage problems include Australia, California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, UK, Spain etc.

Warnings

• Don't waste water, it's precious and you'll notice it when it's gone.
• Be aware of local water laws. In water scarce areas or where there are strong water rights laws it may be illegal to use greywater or rainwater.

Related wikiHows

• How to Dry Yourself After a Shower
• How to Fix a Leaking Shower Head
• How to Create an Inexpensive Shower Enclosure for an Old Fashioned Bathtub
• How to Fix a Torn Shower Curtain Hole
• How to Take a 3 Minute Shower

External Links

• Water usage chart (USA)
• Water usage in metric (Australia)
• Conserving water at home (USA)
• Save water 49 ways (USA)
• Conserve water (Australia)
• Water Treaty.org - trying to make water accessible to everyone in the world (international)

Steps

1. Stay calm. The camel will eventually stop. In fact, a runaway camel will usually regain its composure and slow down pretty quickly. Until it does, you need to keep your wits about you.
2. Hang on to the reins. Because camels are cud-chewing animals (they are constantly chewing), their reins are usually attached to a peg inserted into the nose, as opposed to being attached to a bit in the mouth, as is the case with horses. Thus, unlike with a horse, you can’t try to steer an out-of-control camel by pulling hard on the reins. A hard pull will break the reins or, worse, tear the peg out of the camel’s nose, which will cause it to panic even more. While you don’t want to pull on the reins too much, you do want to make sure to keep hold of them so you can steer the camel once it slows down.
   
   
   • 

     

     A seated camel. Note the head halter.
     If the reins are attached to a head halter, as is often the case with camels that are ridden on tourist expeditions, you can pull on the reins to get the camel to turn in a circle and, eventually, slow down. Work with the camel, not against it. Pull the reins to the side that the camel wants to turn its head. If the camel decides to turn its head the other way, allow it to do so, and pull the rein on that side instead.
3. Consider a quick dismount. If the camel is just starting to pick up speed and won’t respond to commands to stop, consider sliding off. This is especially useful if you have lost the reins. Kick out of the stirrups and attempt to hit the ground running, bending your knees slightly as you land. Note that this should not be attempted at high speeds unless there is impending danger ahead (a cliff, for example). Once you’re on the ground, try to grab the reins. The camel will most likely come to a stop once you have the reins in your hands again.
4. Hang on. The camel will eventually stop. Your goal is to hold on until it does. Press yourself to the camel to lower your center of gravity, grip the camel between your legs, and hold the horn of the saddle. If you aren’t using a saddle, just hold on as well as you can, and try to lean back a little so that you avoid riding near the tip of the hump, which will be a very bumpy ride at high speeds.
5. Get off the camel once you have it under control. Once the wild ride is over, have the camel sit. Dismount and continue to hold the reins.

Tips

• Don’t get angry with the camel or strike it after you have it under control. While your adrenaline may be pumping, it’s important that you keep your cool. Camels tend to hold grudges, so if you frighten or mistreat them, they are liable to be unpleasant in the future.
• Make sure you have sturdy reins and a head halter, especially if you don’t have much riding experience. A head halter can make it much easier to regain control of your camel, and you won’t have to worry about hurting it by ripping the peg out of its nose.
• Learn and memorize the correct commands to give a camel while riding it. Different camels are trained to respond to different commands.
• Only apply a slight pull to the reins when trying to get the camel to turn. It usually doesn’t take much, and an overzealous pull can hurt your camel if the reins are attached to a nose peg.
  

  

  Camels generally don't like to be alone in unfamiliar places, so a runaway camel will often come back on its own. This racing camel is looking for its caretaker. Later, he trotted back down the track the way he came.
• Most, but not all, camels like to stay close to the herd or close to home, so if you fall from your camel, the camel will likely come back once it calms down.

Related wikiHows

• How to Bathe When Water Is Scarce
• How to Avoid Injury when Falling off a Horse
• How to Calm Your Horse Down Quickly
• How to Enjoy Dubai
• How to Make Water in the Desert

External Links

• CaravanOfLight.com Riding a camel