Well ... that wasn't what we were expecting. That surprisingly not-mutilated-beyond-recognition woman is South African Christine McKenzie. She was a veteran skydiver who was on her 112th jump when everything that could possibly go wrong did, save for maybe getting sucked into the jet engine of a passing airliner.
As she was whipping through the air from a height of 11,000 feet, she pulled her ripcord to open the parachute. To her horror, the main chute failed. But, hey, any skydiver knows that's a possibility. That's why you have a reserve chute for backup. So, she released it, and yep, it too failed.
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."
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