Well, let's not put this mildly... the act of masturbating whilst launching your body from an open window.

Now, the logistics are fairly hard to pull off. You must choose a high-enough window that will allow you to have enough time in the air to achieve orgasm. Then comes the whole problem of obtaining a parachute, so you can stay on this mortal coil, and explaining to cops why you parachuted down from a high building with your zipper undone...

See the Cronenberg movie 'Crash'.

What if I wanted to achieve autoerotic defenestration and survive?

Disclaimer

I am neither an authority on safety,
nor parachutes, nor BASE jumping
nor sexuality.
I do believe
autoerotic defenestration is generally a bad idea
and should not be performed.
This commentary is provided merely as a curiosity.

The question

discofever says:

Now, the logistics are fairly hard to pull off. You must choose a high-enough window that will allow you to have enough time in the air to achieve orgasm. Then comes the whole problem of obtaining a parachute, so you can stay on this mortal coil…

For the sake of satisfying everyone’s curiosity, I’ll attempt some numbers.

A high-enough window

The Wikipedia article on Free Fall¹ states that a human skydiver’s terminal velocity is around 195 km/h (122 mph). Thanks to the computational power of Wolfram Alpha, we know that a human falling from the tallest structure in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, a whopping 828 meters,² will hit the ground in only 13 seconds³ assuming point mass.⁴ This gives us an idea of the scales we’ll need to solve this problem, but it uses idealizations. Maybe we can do better.

Wikipedia cites a small website called The Free Fall Research Page,⁵ documenting the stories of «A few people (who) have survived a fall of thousands of feet without a working parachute.» This page is chock full of interesting, albeit mostly unsourced, stories and statements on human free fall.⁶ Its Math subpage hosts a small file on “Speed, Distance, and Time of Fall for an Average‐Sized Adult in Stable Free Fall Position”⁷ about the distance covered by a skydiver in a stable free fall position.⁸ According to their source,⁹ you can drop only 1,483 ft¹⁰ by using the correct position, leaving you with some 1,200 feet to deploy a parachute and maybe survive. David Adam at The Guardian states that 100ft seems to be the lower end to parachute from¹¹ and Quora user Sashanka Bitra mentions BASE jumps from under 1,000 ft.¹²

So far I haven’t been able to see raw, unedited footage of BASE jumpers from the Burj Khalifa. The Guinness World Record for highest BASE jump from a building belongs to Fred Fugen and Vince Reffet,¹³ but their video, although impressive, is heavily edited and doesn’t give a good measure for time spent in free fall. However, there’s a video sneaking around¹⁴ of two guys who jumped from the building before it was finished. Although less official (and legal), their video has better footage of the actual jump. A few rounds with my phone stopwatch tell me they spend around 22 seconds in free fall before deploying the parachute.

These numbers present us with a few challenges; namely, the subject of appropriate technique: these jumps assume you fall in a specific position and react in a matter of seconds to deploy the parachute, and neither of those are exactly compatible with the act of self-pleasure. Furthermore, it is estimated that male masturbation lasts roughly 3 minutes solo and 5 minutes when aided by a partner.¹⁵

Fortunately, there’s an idea that solves all these problems in one stroke ^{Pun not intended}

Proper skydiving

Now, this admittedly needs to relax our standards for “window”, but if you’re into autoerotic defenestration, a little more adrenaline should balance whatever buzz you lose from using a non-window.

A quick YouTube search for “Raw skydiving footage” yields several videos, but my preliminary¹⁶ research gives me free falling times between 30 seconds and one minute by YouTube user Jeffrey James Cappatt.¹⁷ This won’t do.

The next logical step would be to remove yourself from the act of deploying and managing whatever anti-splattering device you’re willing to use. Fortunately, we have the record by Action Office¹⁸ showing Antti Pendikainen, Finnish actor and stuntman, skydiving from 13,000 ft high without a parachute and surviving by being lifted by another skydiver with a parachute.

But maybe you’re not comfortable by being shirtless, or being lifted by someone else. After all, self-pleasure can be a very personal thing and you might want to do it all by yourself.

Improper skydiving

In July 2016, Luke Aikins also jumped from a plane without a parachute. The main differences here were that, unlike Pendikainen, he would jump from almost twice the height (25,000 ft) and without being lifted by anyone else.

No sir, Aikins' plan was to land on a 100 x 100 feet net, suspended some 200 ft from a splattering end in South California.¹⁹ For his family and insurer’s greatest pleasure, he survived the fall without a hitch. His free fall took a bit over two minutes and required to use an oxygen mask partway down the ride, which he later removed and gave to a member ^{tee hee} of his support staff ^{tee hee}.

So this proves it can somehow be done. You only need to be quick to do the deed under the 2-minute limit²⁰ and be really comfortable around your support team. Also, having 18,000 jumps under your belt would be enough practice for this act.

The fluid dynamics of this stunt are left to the reader as an exercise.

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1. Free Fall - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia↩

2. Approximately 2,717 ft↩

3. Wolfram Alpha: “Free fall from Burj Khalifa”↩

4. From Wikipedia: Point mass (pointlike mass) is the concept, for example in classical physics, of a physical object (typically matter) that has nonzero mass, and yet explicitly and specifically is–or is being thought of or modeled as–infinitesimal (infinitely small) in its volume or linear dimensions.↩

5. The Free Fall Research Page - Home↩

6. They say you can take the wikipedian out of Wikipedia…↩

7. speedtime.pdf↩

8. The exact values of terminal speed, the time and distance needed to achieve it depend on the shape and weight of an object. For instance, a human will achieve a greater speed if he’s falling head- or feet first.↩

9. Sellick, Bud (1981). The wild, wonderful world of parachutes and parachuting. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall ISBN 978-0-13-959577-6. Google Books link↩

10. Fine, I’ll use your primitive units.↩

11. The Guardian - Science questions. 15 May 2003↩

12. Quora - What is the minimum altitude to deploy your parachute↩

13. Guinness World Records - Highest BASE jump↩

14. YouTube - Two Guys Jumped Off the Burj Dubai and Lived to Tell About It↩

15. Bohlen JG, Held JP, Sanderson MO, Patterson RP. Heart Rate, Rate-Pressure Product, and Oxygen Uptake During Four Sexual Activities. Arch Intern Med. 1984;144(9):1745-1748. doi:10.1001/archinte.1984.00350210057007. URL↩

16. Read: not really exhaustive due to boredom↩

17. YouTube - SKYDIVING Raw Footage↩

18. YouTube - Skydiving Without Parachute - Antti Pendikainen↩

19. The Guardian - Daredevil skydiver jumps from 7.6km without parachute↩

20. A trivial problem if you’re willing to give yourself a head start↩

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