Falling from cliffs

[Juliana]

Ouch indeed!

 

[tinkerdan]

The fall might work better without all the armor unless it's flexible armor.

The reason I suggest this is that often on impact the object, depending on how it lands, can have shear damage which usually has the most effect on the weakest part. Armor human flesh and bone-maybe toss-up but possibly the person will get some damage.

Overall though a lot depends on how they land though once again if there is any air gap room then you might have the suit stopping prior to the body and that would bounce a bit inside the armor and become jelly to some extent.

I'd say that there will be bruising and if the armor is the softer piece it could cause damage by buckling in inconvenient places.

Also it is probably easier to relax outside of armor than inside, if the armor adds any weight to the person. Rigid and relaxed bodies react differently to the impact.

The good news is that whatever the weight; the rate of descent will be constant, so what matters most is material that brings the acceleration to an abrupt halt.

 

[jastius]

If my character, in full combat body armor (SWAT team type stuff) and a helmet, was thrown off a smallish cliff, unconscious (so he is limp and would land relaxed, not tense), would it be plausible that he might be banged up but not break anything?

He's be landing on grassy stuff, or possibly I could give him bushes to break his fall. Cliff would be about one, or one and a half stories high; not crazy high but enough so that his enemy would logically assume he'll be hurt enough to die in an approaching wildfire.

I need him to be able to walk the next day, poor man...

He would survive. Drop in from a plane with a parachute and that would be a typified landing height. Unless you had bad bones or landed funny, you wouldnt even notice it the next day. Reasonable expectation of harm? Of course. But actual risk? Negligable.
When i was a kid, there was an old quarry in the woods by our house. The big cliff was thirty feet. The small one fifteen to twenty, then a pile of grit over small stone pieces.. Then another ten foot drop. We would jump. It was a little worse if you carried your bike with you when you jumped..

 

[Avid Scifi Fan]

That height seems reasonable.

Enough for him to bump his head or sprang something toc reate the injury you're looking for. not sure about the death appearance though, doesn't seem high enough for that.

I would go for 50ft with a nasty tumble and something for him to slow his fall at the bottom (bush and a rock). Maybe bump his head on a rock at the bottom to knock him out and make him appear dead (that's what the bad guy was looking for).

 

[Juliana]

Thanks everyone!

 

[AnyaKimlin]

Looks like you have had your answer but I fell off a smallish cliff when I was about 10 and didn't even have a bruise to show my parents. (I was trying to use a rope swing with my cousins in a disused quarry in the woods). All I was wearing was t-shirt and shorts. Then there was the incident running along a 30ft wall in Majorca and I fell off into an empty oil drum - that time there was rust on my clothes and a bruise beneath my knee. The biggest problem was getting out of the oil drum.