At that point, the sight of the power lines rushing up toward her had to have seemed like part of a cruel prank intended to kill her in the most cartoonish way possible. Yet it was the lines that saved her life. They broke her fall (without electrocuting her in the process) enough that she found herself still alive after flopping to the ground below.

As her jump buddies landed and made their way to her crash site, they feared they would be scraping her charred pancake of a body off the ground. Instead, they were shocked to discover her talking and complaining about her broken bones. She was even cracking jokes while waiting for the rescue helicopter to the hospital. Incredibly, McKenzie suffered only mild bruises and a cracked pelvis.

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"I'll fall from three miles up next time. Gravity can suck it."

And speaking of people who should not be alive after encounters with power lines ...

So, as the unidentified man jumped from the top of the 400-foot-tall tower, his friend filming it for future YouTubing, one immediately notices that his parachute is taking a really long time to open.

"Lookin' good so far!"

"OK, open your chute!"

"Can you hear me? If you can hear me, open your chute!"
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This is followed by several awkward, motionless seconds before he turns the camera off.

Yeah, he just straight up hit the ground at full speed. Again: This is from 400 feet. That's 100 feet higher than the Statue of Liberty.

Somehow, this gentleman only broke his vertebrae, pelvis and legs, and didn't shatter into a million Russian base jumper pieces. How? The snow, apparently, was enough to cushion him (you can see the crater he created above). Well, hell, if that's all it takes, why bother with a chute at all? You're not getting soft on us, are you, Russia?

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"Hey, how many Battles of Stalingrad did the rest of y'all win? Thought so."

For many years, it was rumored that he survived the fall because a bomb exploded directly underneath him and its shock wave slowed his plunge. However, in 2006 MythBusters tested out the theory and declared it BUSTED, and that's good enough for us. It is, after all, one of the few times when busting the myth makes it more amazing: All that saved Magee was a split-second pause in his descent caused by crashing through a pane of glass like a goddamned Hollywood stuntman.

It was then, while in the water, that his parachute finally fully deployed. Naturally, it opened underwater, and the current started to drag him under. With a broken back, ankles and pelvis, and a collapsed lung, plus kidneys and intestines in critical failure, he was somehow able to summon the willpower to cut the cords with a knife he had strapped to his body. He survived with just moments to spare.

With his injuries, swimming was out of the question, but he was able to keep afloat. Rough seas prevented rescue craft from landing, but they were able to drop emergency life rafts, which in his state he was too weak to reach. Finally, a plane was able to drop a raft trailing a 200-foot cord that he was able to grab, pulling the raft to him. Because his limbs basically couldn't function anymore, though, the best he could do was manage to get a good grip on the side of the raft as he waited two and half hours before a ship could come get him.

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"No, it's cool, I'm sure Senator Brown's tax reforms are just as interesting."

But survive he did, as the newspaper headline says. In fact, the first link in this entry is to an interview with Judkins that took place almost 50 years later.

This probably saved his life.

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"I fall, I black out, I wake up in pain. Just like my Saturday nights."

Yes, it helped that he was flying over that ice-encrusted, snow-blanketed winter wonderland known as the Soviet Union, and he smacked down on an angled, snow-covered slope. But being unconscious actually helps people survive free falls, as the body is relaxed when it hits the ground (you can enjoy the same benefits by being "drunk, on drugs, suicidal or crazy, according to top experts in the field"). Nearby Soviet ground forces rushed to pick up what was left of him and were shocked to find Chisov injured but still alive. In three months he was back in the air.

Then, during the same war, a British pilot named Nicholas Alkemade went through an arguably more impressive version of the same thing. German fighters turned his bomber into a flaming inferno, and the fire destroyed his parachute. He realized that he faced either jumping into the black void or burning to death in his flying metal coffin. Picking door number 1, Alkemade did a backward somersault out of his cockpit and, of course, promptly passed out due to immediate lack of oxygen. He never got the chance to pull his ripcord.

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Blowing your only chance at survival pulling an awesome aerobatic move? Totally worth it.

There was no gentle slope waiting for him below, but there was a forest full of pine trees. Instead of getting impaled on a tree limb, he passed through layers of branches that slapped him all the way down, slowing his fall bit by bit. Once he made it all the way through the trees, he landed in a huge snowdrift that cushioned his fall further.

Alkemade awoke in the snow and discovered that his injuries were nothing more than a cut over his eye and a sprained ankle. The Germans quickly captured him, but became suspicious when they heard his story, thinking that they were really in custody of an Allied spy. After all, what kind of superman can fall from the sky and survive without even deploying his parachute?

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The same superman who can rock that mustache without looking like a pedophile.

Further Nazi investigation discovered his plane and confirmed his story. The Germans were so impressed that Alkemade had jumped without his chute that they gave him a certificate, and he became something of a celebrity while living out the war in a POW camp.

Eric Yosomono writes for GaijinAss.com and has a Facebook page here. Show him some love and LIKE him!

For more amazing tales of survival, check out The 6 Most Insane True Tales of Survival and The 5 Most Badass Tales of Wartime Survival.