BASE Jumping

BASE jumping’s fatality rate of one death per 2,317 jumps makes it over 40 times deadlier than conventional skydiving, which sees roughly one death per 100,000 jumps. Leaping from fixed objects like buildings, antennae, spans, and earth, jumpers deploy parachutes within 2–3 seconds at altitudes too low for typical skydiving. Norwegian pioneer Carl Boenish made the first recorded BASE jump from El Capitan in 1978 and died in a jump in 1984; now thousands participate at extreme sites from the Eiger to the Kuala Lumpur Tower. This sport’s margin for error is razor-thin, with only 0.04% of jumps fatal — yet that’s still a risk more than 40% higher than the average extreme sport.