eli5: What is it that generally kills everyone onboard when a large plane crashes ? If they’re all still strapped in and the plane doesn’t explode, is it just the force of the impact?

Question

I watched that recreation of the scenario and the audio of that crash where the pilot had his kids in the cockpit and the older kid accidentally messed with something and the G forces made it so the pilots couldn’t fix the situation before the place lost too much altitude and crashed. Now I understand why people who aren’t seatbelted would die from such a crash, but Im just wondering what kills all the other passengers?

Are their insides crushed to death by impact with the seatbelt? Are their brains instantly nullified by hitting the inside of their skulls to forcibly?

And, is it also the same reason why train derailments are often equally deadly? Because there too… Thomas the tank engine stories make it look like a derailing is just a whoops! Better call Gordon! kinda situation…. But in the news it seems like all the passengers often get killed in those scenarios too…

What’s the deal?

In: 1

Answer 1

Any number of things. The biggest is the impact itself. Going from several hundred miles per hour to zero miles per hour that quickly produce forces of several hundred Gs. Think about what happens when you throw an egg at a wall as hard as you can, and then imagine that happening to the human body. There’s also blunt force trauma from items in the cabin flying around at high speeds and burns and smoke inhalation from fires.