BASE jumping is illegal and extremely dangerous, even to experts. The death total to this day is 92. Most base jumpers end up getting impaled, drowned, or getting smashed into a cliff or building.  BASE jumping is not like skydiving at all.  People just jump off places with high altitudes.  There is no guarantee they will just fall on the rock below or that the wind will through them into the cliff, building, or river that they’re jumping near.

BASE jumpers just pick any place to jump from and even though it is illegal they jump in plain view.  There is usually a crowd watching them jump to so any one could call in and get the jumper arrested.  BASE jumpers will even jump off buildings in the center of cities.  Often when they land they are arrested. 

However there are legal jumps in BASE.  The biggest of these is Bridge Day.  It is held every year without fail on the third Saturday in October from 9 AM to 3 PM.  The BASE jumpers jump off the New River Gorge Bridge (876 ft tall) in West Virginia. The bridge over looks the New River.  The website, that I visited, says the event is safe however I visited another website that said that 3 people died during the jump over it’s years of activity.

To BASE jump you need some good equipment.  First you need a parachute.  The manufacturers I found were Apex, Atair, ParaAvis, and Vertigo.  You will also need harness and container systems.  The manufacturers I found for this were Apex, Asylum Design, Bombproof, Bounceproof Rigging, Gravity Sports,  Morpheus Technologies, ParaAvis, Paratech, Performance Variable.  The harness system secures you to the parachute.  The container system controls the deployment of the canopy/parachute.

In BASE jumping the diver will sometimes use a wingsuit.  A wingsuit allows freefall delays and horizontal distances to be reached.  This makes it almost impossible for you to hit the object you jumped off of.  Striking the object you jumped from kills the most BASE jumpers in the world.  However the suit has its flaws.  The suit restricts body movement making it difficult to exit.