Why does catching someone or something falling in most cases negate or reduce the injury/damage applied to it? Shouldn’t it be almost just as damaging, just a few feet further up?

Question

Why does catching someone or something falling in most cases negate or reduce the injury/damage applied to it? Shouldn’t it be almost just as damaging, just a few feet further up?

In: 2

Answer 1

if you try to catch them without absorbing the impact in any way, it wont be much different from them just hitting the ground

the idea is to catch them in a way that will bleed enough energy from the impact to survive.

kind of like crumple zones in a car, they’re designed to crumple and fold and take a lot of energy from an impact to keep it from being transmitted to the occupants.

except in this scenario, the catcher is acting as a living crumple zone, using their body to disperse the energy from an impact