(This thread is kind of silly, but I can't just leave it alone.)

I don't agree with what you said about moving out of the way. If you can provide one example since the Wright Brothers in which somebody said they ducked to avoid a crashing plane, then I may take one step in the direction of believing you.

Did the plane hit the ground before it hit the jogger?

"There was no noise". It "was 'basically gliding' as it hit and instantly killed Jones."

Those lead me to believe it was still airborne when it hit him. And that, maybe, if he had seen it, he could have ducked or thrown himself flat and avoided it that way. But this is all speculation based on incomplete information, and shouldn't be taken as any more than that. It's a tragic "one in a million", and my sympathy goes out to the family and to the pilot.

Quite.

Then again, DFA, Death From Above, coming out of nowhere plucks the strings of instinctual fears. Things many people fear at a visceral level. Another common one getting eaten by an animal. They are not entirely unfounded fears, they happen, but it is also not entirely rational either.

I know people who simply will not swim in the ocean for fear of being eaten by a shark. Many deep-water sailors refuse to swim in the middle of the ocean. Something about swimming over several thousand feet of water grips them. They can swim in water near shore without a problem but out of sight of land with hundreds or thousands of feet of open water under you is just too much like stepping out into the void for them.

The picture on the cover of "Jaws" might sum it up. A lone figure in a wide dark sea. With a great beast directly below them, unseen, about to eat them alive.

At some level we are still cave dwellers huddling together for safety. Shivering in fear as unseen monsters howl and bellow. We are not armored and we lack any inherent weapons. For most of the history of humanity, many thousands of years, we survived by backing into a corner or climbing a tree and hiding. Waking up to new dawn. Looking around to see who got dragged off and eaten and who survived. Part of our brain is focused on unseen forces that might snatch up away to an untimely end. We haven't changed much.

That is so true, but at the same time we can't let that fear go to extremes. We need to "figure the odds". Even though this happened, the "odds" were extremely slim; they are still extremely slim.

As they say, you never hear the one that gets you.