# Flying question, severe updrafts



## SeverinR (Oct 31, 2011)

I have been on more then one Airliner that dropped suddenly.

In my book, a dragon flies a first time flier(unrestrained) into a hot desert, when they are hit with a massive 
updraft, slamming the passinger's head into the dragons back, and she barely stays on the dragons back, dragon leans into a turn to assist her in staying on, she is able to get back up just before they land.  Very likely if she was not balanced on landing she would be ejected from the dragon and have alot worse injuries.

Realistically:
Severe updraft? Enough to slam an unsuspecting person into something enough to break her jaw?
Is it possible? happens but uncommon? happens occasionally?

I think I could reverse it, sudden drop and just as sudden stop causing her to slam her face, but liked the first better. 2nd would already have her off balance when she struck her face, making it more likely to not be able to catch herself.

Not sure what class of (modern) plane a dragon would be compared too.


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## Ravana (Nov 1, 2011)

Any turbulence would be sufficient to mess up the rider if she wasn't ready for it. Check to see if equestrians ever break their jaws whacking them on a horse that's jumping or balking (no, I don't know if this happens or not). 

Whether or not your rider would suffer injuries upon landing has a lot more to do with how the landing is accomplished–remember, the dragon routinely lands in such a way that it doesn't injure _itself_. (Which may also limit the severity of the updraft you can use: the dragon's wings need to be capable of coping with it, or the rest becomes highly rhetorical.) If the passenger is aware and paying attention by the time the landing happens, I don't see why she'd suffer any additional grief. If not, well.…

And in both cases, what probably matters most of all is how the passenger is remaining on the back of the dragon in the first place. On the one hand, this could limit her ability to do a header into the beastie; on the other, if it limited it too much, it could snap her spine in the process. And on a third hand, if she wasn't relatively secure, my guess is she'd miss the dragon's back altogether and not break anything until that sudden stop at the end.…


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## Shadoe (Nov 1, 2011)

If you're trying to compare your dragon to an plane, you first need to know the size of the dragon. A-37, F-15, C-5? Lighter aircraft are more affected by wind than heavier ones, so I'd think a smaller dragon would be more affected by wind than a larger one.

The rider's experience would also depend largely on the preparation. If the rider just leaped on a stray dragon and took off, without any kind of gear on dragon or rider, then chances are, there would be a lot more danger involved. If this dragon riding was a planned event, something that happened frequently, there would be steps taken to keep the rider ON the dragon, such as some sort of modified "seat belt," only with more belts.


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## SeverinR (Nov 1, 2011)

Thanks for the answers.

This was basically her first flight, she spent hours clinging tightly to the dragon's neck, then to tired keep that up she relaxed. I think the mishap happened the next day, she was more relaxed when they entered the desert.

The dragon did not have a saddle, because she did not expect to have a rider.

After slamming into the neck of the dragon with her jaw, she tumbled off the side except for one hand and one foot. Concussion and severe pain of the broken jaw makes for a tough time pulling herself back up even with the dragon turning to help.

Landing; with only one hand and an ankle keeping her on the dragon, almost any bump would dropped her.

The landing at the oasis in the desert (a water town) was difficult as she was barely concious and not speaking very well, but she was able to keep herself upright.

Looked up jumping and bronco busting, both have occasional broken jaw injuries.

Everytime she rides after this she wears a helmet with a full face.  Slurping meals for several days encourages safety. (in real life its weeks, but there is a magic healer involved, but bones are not strong enough for chewing for several days, and full strength weeks away.)


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## Devor (Nov 6, 2011)

I think it would be hard to compare dragons to an airplane, as the planes have a different propulsion systems and a dragon would be better suited to adapt to changing turbulence than an airplane.  I'd suggest you read more about bird flight to get an idea of what would happen and leave off airplanes entirely.  In fact, I just googled it and read three paragraphs at the link below.  Updrafts are caused by thermal currents, where the ground is kind of warm.

Soaring Flight of Land Birds

So in order to get an updraft big enough to derail a dragon, I would expect something similar to volcanic activity or a forest fire occurring on the ground below.  Does that open up any plot points for you?

(edit)  I just noticed the other page I opened up seems to have diagrams and such.

http://people.eku.edu/ritchisong/554notes3.html

I didn't spend any time with it.


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## SeverinR (Nov 8, 2011)

Devor said:


> I think it would be hard to compare dragons to an airplane, as the planes have a different propulsion systems and a dragon would be better suited to adapt to changing turbulence than an airplane.  I'd suggest you read more about bird flight to get an idea of what would happen and leave off airplanes entirely.  In fact, I just googled it and read three paragraphs at the link below.  Updrafts are caused by thermal currents, where the ground is kind of warm.
> 
> Soaring Flight of Land Birds
> 
> ...



Amazing information in that one websight.

Actually the dragon wasn't harmed by the updraft, just the suprised new rider on her back.  Having been on jumbo jets freefalling, and sudden updrafts, so I know a dragon could experience them too.
but with this thread, I have realized my experiences were over the ocean.

Might have to distract the dragon with something and have them fly over a cliff. It would only have to distract her enough to forget she has a rookie on her back, ie forget to warn her about the cliff affect winds. 

They are flying from woods to desert around a large mountain range, it could easily drop elevation compared to the woods side. Desert wind hitting shear cliffs.


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## Devor (Nov 8, 2011)

SeverinR said:


> They are flying from woods to desert around a large mountain range, it could easily drop elevation compared to the woods side. Desert wind hitting shear cliffs.



Based on my two minutes of reading from when I posted earlier, winds crashing into a steep cliff should work just fine.  But I really do want to repeat, a dragon would be a lot more flexible and maneuverable than an airplane.  Dragons are like birds and are in control of their flights.  Airplanes have to move forward or crash.


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## SeverinR (Nov 10, 2011)

Devor said:


> Based on my two minutes of reading from when I posted earlier, winds crashing into a steep cliff should work just fine.  But I really do want to repeat, a dragon would be a lot more flexible and maneuverable than an airplane.  Dragons are like birds and are in control of their flights.  Airplanes have to move forward or crash.



I see what your saying,
the dragon would absorb the updraft through its body, but the dragon in my story is unphased by it, her rider is unprepared and her head is slammed into the dragons neck, dragon bends like the reed(even more the dragons neck reflexively adjusts to unstable air, head goes up, rider's go down), rider breaks like a stick.


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## Sheilawisz (Nov 14, 2011)

From my point of view, whether such severe updrafts could be real and believable or not would depend entirely on the nature of the world that you have created for your stories!! I think it's a good idea and it could happen, especially if the rider in question was not ready for that (a first time flier and unrestrained, as you say) and it sounds natural to me

I am now totally amazed at how different the stories that you all write are to my own stories and worlds... you all want believable worlds, precise geography, believable situations, everything to be realistic while in my stories I am the exact opposite to all of this... maybe I do not fit here in Mythic Scribes after all =(


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## Devor (Nov 14, 2011)

Sheilawisz said:


> I am now totally amazed at how different the stories that you all write are to my own stories and worlds... you all want believable worlds, precise geography, believable situations, everything to be realistic while in my stories I am the exact opposite to all of this... maybe I do not fit here in Mythic Scribes after all =(



Pfft, you're fine.  I've seen some posts which I think go overboard.  I can't speak for anyone else, but I only look for real-world details because my imagination isn't as fun as the real world.  The research helps me expand my settings and my plots.  I find myself reading about new ideas which I can use in my story, or I find that combining real-world limitations ends up adding complexity to the setting.  But when it actually comes down to realism versus story, story wins.

Also, this is sort of the research forum, so of course people here are asking about realism and details.  If you want to find out if your stories fit in - and I'm sure they do - then you should read through stories in the Showcase forum.


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## Ravana (Nov 15, 2011)

I favor as much _fidelity_ to the real world as possible: I don't necessarily include all the details (research will tend to outnumber writing about ten to one for most professional writers), but I want to avoid _unnecessarily_ including "fantastic" elements. That makes the ones I do use that much more plausible when I use them. 

Remember that in writing for fantasy and/or SF, you're writing for what is probably the most educated audience of any genre (unless you count poetry as a "genre," and perhaps even then). There will inevitably be readers who will see something you've written and say "that isn't possible"–at which point, if you haven't _intended_ to do something "impossible," and are prepared to give an account of why it is possible in your world, you run a good chance of losing that reader. 

Inventiveness is fine: we wouldn't be in fantasy if we weren't interested in being creative, in including things that defy real-world expectations. Sloppiness, on the other hand, is not. 

Besides, what Devor said could easily have come straight out of my mouth (fingers?): the more I learn, the more I have to write _about_. I don't think I've ever gone into research mode without coming out of it with new _story_ ideas, let alone new things to include in whatever it was I was doing the research for. Plus it's just plain _fun_; I think if I ever ran out of new things to learn, I'd have to kill myself. (Which, in my case, is far from an exaggeration, as I already have firsthand knowledge of what else would make me want to.…) Fortunately, with the amount of knowledge available in the world today, I'm perfectly safe there.


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## Devor (Nov 15, 2011)

Ravana said:


> I don't think I've ever gone into research mode without coming out of it with new _story_ ideas, let alone new things to include in whatever it was I was doing the research for.



I want to give an example so we don't look like we're making excuses, and as we've kind of hijacked the thread, I'll bring it back to point at the same time.

From just a few minutes of googling on the topic of updrafts and bird flight, I learned that updrafts are caused by thermal currents and from winds hitting cliffs.  Severin has already adjusted his landscape to build in cliffs for the scene he's working on.

But now I could envision that a dragon, who is being chased through the air, might look for or even start a forest fire beneath him hoping the updraft will dislodge his opponent for a moment and buy him time to escape or find another way to attack.

That's potentially a big story point and an exciting scene, and you would never think of it without the research.


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## Sheilawisz (Nov 15, 2011)

Yeah, sorry for hijacking your thread Severin!! As an additional note, I think that a first time flier that is unrestrained when that happens would simply fall off the dragon and get killed... Maybe the dragon would hurry and catch its rider before that happens, and that would be a great scene for any story with dragons =)



Devor said:


> Pfft, you're fine.  I've seen some posts which I think go overboard.  I can't speak for anyone else, but I only look for real-world details because my imagination isn't as fun as the real world.  The research helps me expand my settings and my plots.  I find myself reading about new ideas which I can use in my story, or I find that combining real-world limitations ends up adding complexity to the setting.  But when it actually comes down to realism versus story, story wins.


Thanks Devor =)



Ravana said:


> I favor as much _fidelity_ to the real world as possible: I don't necessarily include all the details (research will tend to outnumber writing about ten to one for most professional writers), but I want to avoid _unnecessarily_ including "fantastic" elements. That makes the ones I do use that much more plausible when I use them.
> 
> Remember that in writing for fantasy and/or SF, you're writing for what is probably the most educated audience of any genre (unless you count poetry as a "genre," and perhaps even then). There will inevitably be readers who will see something you've written and say "that isn't possible"—at which point, if you haven't _intended_ to do something "impossible," and are prepared to give an account of why it is possible in your world, you run a good chance of losing that reader.


Thanks for your post Ravana =) The only time that I did some research was historical research for my Joan of England series, the only one of my stories that is a little realistic because it takes place in a parallel Earth with human characters... even in that story loads of impossible things happen, anyway

My other series are pure and raw surrealism (what a friend of mine from Madrid called simply unreality) and now I think that Fantasy readers would just hate them saying "that's impossible" all the time, like when my mages fly at 70000km/h into a giant storm in my endless sea because they just don't care about winds...

An additional note for the thread: updrafts of warm air are sometimes so powerful that there is a special kind of aircraft that uses them to fly for very long distances without engines =)


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## SeverinR (Nov 15, 2011)

Sheilawisz said:


> From my point of view, whether such severe updrafts could be real and believable or not would depend entirely on the nature of the world that you have created for your stories!! I think it's a good idea and it could happen, especially if the rider in question was not ready for that (a first time flier and unrestrained, as you say) and it sounds natural to me
> 
> I am now totally amazed at how different the stories that you all write are to my own stories and worlds... you all want believable worlds, precise geography, believable situations, everything to be realistic while in my stories I am the exact opposite to all of this... maybe I do not fit here in Mythic Scribes after all =(



Its alot easier for a reader to believe if they feel some connection to the real world.
(Example; the red baron was an Orc dragon rider. take a situation everyone knows and change it to fantasy)
I go even further then most, if I don't write why, I try to at least reason why something works or is the way it is.


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## Ravana (Nov 15, 2011)

Devor said:


> That's potentially a big story point and an exciting scene, and you would never think of it without the research.



Bingo.

Though I'm not sure a dragon would be able to start a large enough fire rapidly enough to create that kind of updraft. Looking for one in progress, yes. _Or_… starting one in advance, on the off chance he might need one.… 

Or flying over an area of geothermal surface heating: hot springs, geysers, etc. If the pursuer isn't familiar with the terrain, the dragon could pull a really nasty trick by establishing a weaving flight, as if to avoid attack from the rear, timing the weave so that it would pass just barely around the heat source… while the pursuer, following in a straighter line to close the distance, ends up going _over_ it–and _he_ catches the updraft, by surprise. 

(The same tactic could be reversed, too, so that the pursuer's line doesn't hit the updraft, while the dragon's weave does. One quick updraft-assisted barrel roll, and the dragon is now pursuer rather than pursued. A variation on standard dogfighting tactics.)

-

Sheilawisz: you're quite welcome. 

There's nothing wrong with "surreal" (or "unreal"), as long as that's what the reader expects. It's when the reader isn't primed to expect such things that it becomes important not to introduce them unnecessarily, and especially not accidentally. Plus, as mentioned, you never know what you might find while researching that you never would have thought of using until you did run across it–which, I feel, is even more important than making an effort to "get it right."

(Though 70k km/h seems a bit excessive to me… why not just have them teleport?  )

-



> I go even further then most, if I don't write why, I try to at least reason why something works or is the way it is.



What SeverinR said. I may never introduce a given explanation into a story, but I like to know, _for myself_, why things work. Makes it easier to figure out what else is "possible"–including, especially, the "impossible" things.

By the way, updrafts and downdrafts aren't limited to certain terrain, they're just more common there. They can happen anywhere, though, based on the current weather in the area, especially where frontal boundaries are meeting. And "turbulence" (as it's so innocuously called on commercial flights) probably occurs most often as the flier passes vertically through different layers of air moving at different speeds, in different directions, etc. Here, you don't even need an updraft: the flight could move from lower-level air moving one direction to a higher level shearing in a different one (or vice versa), causing the dragon to experience a sudden decrease in speed, until it adjusts to the new conditions. The rider, not knowing such things are even possible, gets the full benefit of inertia… instant owwie. 

(P.S. In addition to a broken chin, I'd expect she'd have one hellacious case of whiplash.…)


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## Sheilawisz (Nov 16, 2011)

SeverinR said:


> Its alot easier for a reader to believe if they feel some connection to the real world.
> (Example; the red baron was an Orc dragon rider. take a situation everyone knows and change it to fantasy)
> I go even further then most, if I don't write why, I try to at least reason why something works or is the way it is.


I agree that having a connection between fantasy and something from the real world helps readers to feel more related to characters and stories.. I have never read the A Song of Ice and Fire series, but I read somewhere that it can be related to the real world story of the Wars of the Roses- They say also that a character from that series is quite similar to Edward the Black Prince (interesting for me, as he was the most famous of Joan's brothers!!) so that's good for stories =)



Ravana said:


> @Sheilawisz: you're quite welcome.
> 
> There's nothing wrong with "surreal" (or "unreal"), as long as that's what the reader expects. It's when the reader isn't primed to expect such things that it becomes important not to introduce them unnecessarily, and especially not accidentally. Plus, as mentioned, you never know what you might find while researching that you never would have thought of using until you did run across it—which, I feel, is even more important than making an effort to "get it right."
> 
> (Though 70k km/h seems a bit excessive to me… why not just have them teleport?


Thanks for your post =) Then I think that I should call myself a surrealism writer from now on instead of a fantasy writer, or maybe a surreal fantasy writer?? Whatever.. well, now I know that marketing my stories if they are published someday would be different to the marketing of more traditional fantasy series- by the way, my mages teleport too!! It's just that they love flying at high speeds because I am totally obsessed with flying =)

Back to the original question, my theory is that starting a great fire in forests below could create a firestorm and maybe even a fire tornado!! That happens in the real world and it could be useful for a dragon in many surprising ways...


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## Elder the Dwarf (Nov 16, 2011)

Sheilawisz said:


> I agree that having a connection between fantasy and something from the real world helps readers to feel more related to characters and stories.. I have never read the A Song of Ice and Fire series, but I read somewhere that it can be related to the real world story of the Wars of the Roses- They say also that a character from that series is quite similar to Edward the Black Prince (interesting for me, as he was the most famous of Joan's brothers!!) so that's good for stories =)



You should really check the books out.  You know, if you're into that whole self torture thing.  But really, they are great, they just make you want to strangle the author at points because you get the impression that he really likes screwing with readers.


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## Devor (Nov 17, 2011)

Ravana said:


> Though I'm not sure a dragon would be able to start a large enough fire rapidly enough to create that kind of updraft. Looking for one in progress, yes. _Or_… starting one in advance, on the off chance he might need one.…



I kind of thought you would be right, or that at least the dragon would need a head start.  I've got a Deadliest Warrior episode on, and a flamethrower just did 1200 degrees and burned down the woods and a hut in what looks like a minute.  But they said it's launching a propellant with the fire that usually sticks to the target, and I'm assuming that a dragon probably wouldn't that much propellant to spit.  Figured it was interesting.


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## Sheilawisz (Nov 17, 2011)

Thanks Elder, I'll try to find those books and check them out!! =)



Devor said:


> I kind of thought you would be right, or that at least the dragon would need a head start. I've got a Deadliest Warrior episode on, and a flamethrower just did 1200 degrees and burned down the woods and a hut in what looks like a minute. But they said it's launching a propellant with the fire that usually sticks to the target, and I'm assuming that a dragon probably wouldn't that much propellant to spit. Figured it was interesting.


Hey Devor!! I like Deadliest Warrior even though I sometimes disagree with the results, but it's fun to watch.. A military flamethrower works with napalm, which is a terrible thing that actually sticks to the targets and keeps burning for very long causing awful injuries and damage =(

In the movie Reign of Fire they described that the dragons created fire via a chemical reaction similar to napalm, and in my stories there are dragon-like creatures that walk on two legs and spit a fiery liquid similar to napalm as well- Maybe the dragons in other Fantasy works could create fire by magic, but in general I think that they would easily cause enormous fires in a forest!!

A dragon taking advantage from a fire tornado would be a great scene =)


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## Ravana (Nov 17, 2011)

Devor said:


> I kind of thought you would be right, or that at least the dragon would need a head start.  I've got a Deadliest Warrior episode on, and a flamethrower just did 1200 degrees and burned down the woods and a hut in what looks like a minute.  But they said it's launching a propellant with the fire that usually sticks to the target, and I'm assuming that a dragon probably wouldn't that much propellant to spit.  Figured it was interesting.



Actually, I was figuring the dragon wouldn't be able to start a _large_ enough fire to create an updraft that would be useful to it in one shot–though this may depend on the size of the dragon relative to the amount of fire it can spit. At the size normally associated with dragons, passing over a couple burning huts would be more like hitting a speed bump, I'd imagine.

(And, yes, it's not terribly likely the dragon's innards are manufacturing styrofoam, either.)


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## Elder the Dwarf (Nov 17, 2011)

Sheilawisz said:


> Hey Devor!! I like Deadliest Warrior even though I sometimes disagree with the results, but it's fun to watch..



Exactly how I feel it really bothers me sometimes.  I don't really understand their prediction method anyway.


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