Some people never stop pushing the adrenaline envelope, and unfortunately, these daredevils lost their lives while attempting some insane stunts. Here are a few notorious examples of stunts that went horribly wrong.
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00:00Some people never stop pushing the adrenaline envelope, and unfortunately, these daredevils
00:04lost their lives while attempting some insane stunts.
00:08Here are a few notorious examples of stunts that went horribly wrong.
00:12Wu Yongning
00:13Wu Yongning was a 26-year-old daredevil who performed stunts on rooftops — really, really
00:17high rooftops — with no safety equipment.
00:21At the time of his death, he had shared nearly 300 videos of the stunts, so it's not like
00:25he was inexperienced at what he was doing.
00:27The one that ended Yongning's life was performed at the top of a 62-story skyscraper in China.
00:33In the video that recorded the tragedy, Yongning can be seen performing a pull-up stunt and
00:37then struggling to climb back up to safety.
00:40In one of the most heartbreaking moments ever caught on video, he then loses his grip entirely.
00:45What's particularly awful about this story is that Yongning was mostly doing it for the
00:49money.
00:50According to the New York Post, an unknown entity was supposedly offering $15,000 for
00:55the stunt, and Yongning planned to use the funds in part to pay for his wedding.
00:59According to the Daily Mail, a man named Kyle Lee Stocking attempted to duplicate a feat
01:03he saw on YouTube in March 2013.
01:07If it had gone as planned, the 22-year-old would have swung beneath the 110-foot Corona
01:11Arch in Utah after jumping off the top.
01:14But he misjudged the length of the rope he was using, and instead of swinging he struck
01:18the ground, and the impact killed him.
01:20The tragedy highlighted a growing problem of people trying to imitate stunts they see
01:24on YouTube, from swallowing cinnamon, which according to CBS News can give you a collapsed
01:29lung, to jumping off moving vehicles.
01:32While YouTube claims to prohibit content that encourages dangerous behavior, the video that
01:36inspired the fatal stunt is alive and well as of 2018, nearly five years after the accident,
01:42with no warning on it.
01:44Russian BASE jumper Valery Rossov was trying to conquer the seven summits, hoping to jump
01:49from the highest peak in each of the seven continents while wearing a wingsuit.
01:53According to IBT, Rossov had already jumped from the Olvatana in the Antarctic, and in
01:572009 had even leaped into an active volcano.
02:00Even in the air I feel that, whew, hey."
02:06Rossov held the world record for highest BASE jump in a wingsuit.
02:09That was for jumping from a 23,688-foot peak in Tibet, which is north of Mount Everest.
02:15So the 22,000-foot peak he was jumping from at the time of his death was actually a little
02:20bit lower than his record, but that doesn't make it any safer.
02:23The 52-year-old daredevil died when he crashed into a cliff after leaping off a peak in eastern
02:28Nepal.
02:29In another tragic BASE jumping accident, well-known climber Dean Potter and his friend Graham
02:33Hunt died in Yosemite National Park when they jumped from Taft Point wearing wingsuits and
02:38crashed into a rocky ridgeline.
02:40This accident highlights the sad fact that experience doesn't necessarily protect you.
02:45Potter had made the exact same jump at least 20 times, and Hunt was probably similarly
02:50experienced.
02:51That's something that I need to practice, because otherwise it just doesn't happen."
02:56Other climbers expressed regret at Potter's death, but the words of fellow climber Doug
03:00Robinson may have summed it up best.
03:02According to BBC News, he said,
03:04"...we're very sad, but not very surprised."
03:06He was pushing the envelope all his life.
03:09Free diving is the diving version of free climbing.
03:11It's more or less done without equipment, and it's about a million times more dangerous
03:15than the version that's done with equipment.
03:18According to ABC News, roughly 2 percent of the free diving population dies every year.
03:23That's 100 deaths per 5,000 divers.
03:26In 2002, free diving champion Audrey Mest was trying to break the world record dive
03:31of 531.5 feet.
03:34Everything went well, until she was on her way back up.
03:37According to the Miami Herald, her cause of death was equipment failure.
03:40In No Limits Free Diving, an air tank fills a balloon, which helps the diver get quickly
03:44back to the surface.
03:46In the end, Mest's air tank didn't have enough air in it to inflate the balloon.