They also did an MRI scan on Honnold and found that he doesn't have the usual fear response. It's not clear if this was trained away, or if it's something innate.

https://nautil.us/the-strange-brain-of-the-worlds-greatest-s...

This. Watching Honnold makes your palms go clamy and makes you uncomfortable because you imagine how terified you'd be in that position. But for an athlete like Honnold, the experience is more similar to just a "hard hike". Strenuous, but just work. It's just normalized because he does it so damn much. He really seriously is not gonna fall off that building, just like you're not gonna get seriously injured on a class 3 hike.

(Source: I'm also a climber. Not remotely close to Alex's level. But frequent exposure significantly changes how your brain processes these situations)

I don't think it required much training for Alex, I think he just has an under active amygdala or something

There are many answers depending on what you meant by this, but in terms of actual risk this is probably not much worse to him than e.g. riding a motorcycle, and certainly better than what it would have been to be crew on the space shuttle.

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Nope! Startup founder who happened to be visiting Taiwan at the right time.

The Googlers had way better views XD

They kept most folks pretty far away, you needed a pass or to work in one of the offices to get really close.

I was also terrified when ppl would engage with him directly lol

>Climbing star, 23, dies after falling from Yosemite's El Capitan [this past Wednesday]

>Balin Miller, 23, was live-streamed on TikTok ascending and subsequently falling from the monolith on Wednesday.

>Details of what caused the incident are not clear, but Miller's brother Dylan told AFP he was lead rope soloing - a technique that enables climbing alone while still protected by a rope - on a 2,400ft (730m) route named Sea of Dreams.

>He had finished the climb and was hauling up equipment when he likely rappelled off the end of his rope, Dylan said.

>Tom Evans, a Yosemite-based photographer who witnessed Miller fall, told Climbing magazine he called 911 after Miller tried to free his bag, which was stuck on a rock.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz08jp4xv2jo

https://archive.ph/vjETS

Yes, Freerider (the route he climbed on El Capitan) is much harder than the climbing on Taipei 101. The style of climbing is also very important, some of the moves on Freerider are very insecure and hard to climb in a reliable way, whereas on Taipei the difficulty largely comes from doing the same moves over and over again which means your body gets tired in a specific ways.

The climbing on Taipei was way more chill for him than the climbing on Freerider.

He was able to practice El Capitan over and over, though. Was he able to in Tapei?

Ah I haven't watched the videos yet, just what I could see through binoculars. When did he clip in to rapelle down? Immediately before doing so?

I wonder what he was thinking about up there.

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The one educated in bird law.

I guess watching the film ('free solo' is the one you mention) is the lowest effort way of getting his perspective and I recommend the film.

For a deeper dive, the book "Alone on the wall" is a good read and I recommend it. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36531127-alone-on-the-wa..., although that said the book might be less appealing to someone who 'knows nothing about climbing' and is more of a time investment than the short documentary :)

I believe it's also documented that he has an underdeveloped amygdala, so he literally doesn't experience fear in the same way most people do.

Second person to climb it (Spidey got there first), but only one to free solo it.

Is it known how much he made?

I am not sold that this way of raising money qualifies as putting family first.

No I didn’t, you’re talking about big sheets of stuff, which probably won’t have anything to hold onto on it. I’m talking about the fiddly little bits that he’s likely to be holding onto. A little bit of flashing around a window has a wind load approaching zero.

He’s said in multiple interviews (like on his own climbing podcast, Climbing Gold) that he’d do it for free with no publicity. He’s been trying for a very long time to get permission to do something like this, just because it’d be really cool.

The fact that Netflix was behind it might’ve made it possible to get permission to climb this specific tower though.

My heart beats fast just watching him. I wonder if the path has been clean/power washed before the climb.

Netflix have absoluely no taste. Everything they make has unbearbly bland cinematography.

Many people do.

He mentioned he considers partying more dangerous than climbing. I can't tell how dangerous his stunts are, but he's still alive, so perhaps he knows what he's doing?

Then again, there's always Mute. Turn up your favorite music/sound or just silence. Could be good

With the Netflix infrastructure, I'm surprised they broadcast it so conventionally. Different channels running at the same time (with the crowd at the bottom, with the crowds as he passed each floor, with his wife watching, with pro climbers talking technical climbing stuff with simultaneous 8K online illustrating graphics, etc.), different audio tracks (with commentators, with crowd at bottom only, etc.*). Alex Honnold was paid only $500K for the event, so maybe there simply wasn't a lot of money allocated to the project to get fancy with the live broadcast.

Did he do this climb with no safety equipment for Taiwan or for Alex?

I'm with the OP - watching people so willfully put their lives in danger isn't my cup of tea. I'm just glad he didn't die.

That a government would be willing to risk this for publicity isn't really changing my mind.

"Come to Taiwan; you may or may not watch someone plummet to their death while here" doesn't appeal to me, personally anyway. Anyway that guy that did it with safety equipment a few years back made the rounds in the news too, so not sure this was necessary in that regard.

It's not 25% per climb, but it's not near zero either, especially in aggregate. It only takes one mistake. A fairly high percentage of famous free soloists (I'd say over 25%) have died prematurely, either while free soloing, or during other extreme sports.

> The travel to/from Taiwan was statistically riskier than the climb.

That doesn't seem plausible. What's the number of free soloists who have died in climbing accidents vs in commercial aviation accidents?

> The travel to/from Taiwan was statistically riskier than the climb.

You just made this up.

> The travel to/from Taiwan was statistically riskier than the climb

That is not even close to being true, haha. Probably not as risky as it looks but come on.

Near zero is a bs number you pulled out of thin air.

Selfish is too harsh, but don’t go making up stats for this.

Factually inaccurate, the Wikipedia page for free solo climbing has an entire section on prominent free solo climber deaths.

In my view this guy is pretty irresponsible especially for promoting a “sport” that is unnecessarily dangerous in the most preventable way imaginable.

A bunch of kids and stupid adults watched that live stream and a non-zero amount of them now think they can try the same thing without anywhere near as much training and skill.

I'm not saying money wasn't a factor in his decision to do this for a livestream, but it clearly wouldn't be the only factor and I doubt that would make him stop. (He free solo'd before, without cameras, although not this building).

For people like Alex, it's much more about the thrill, the experience, and 'proving' themselves than it is about money.

I think NYT said their sources claim he was paid mid 6-figures? Which is really shitty of Netflix. If I were him I would've asked for at least $5M.