What happens when a fighter pilot black out in Zero-G?

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Reply Tim Hibbetts, M pilot / A-18C:

Sometimes you wake up, sometimes it does not. It may take several seconds to regain full function. If the aircraft is not far enough away from the ground when the lone rider comes around, all your worries are over. It is likely that the same result if the nap starts in the middle of a fight.

If deprived of oxygen quickly, the brain has about five seconds of useful consciousness. That's usually enough to let go of the stick if you know what's coming. But if you have a fast-G start, that most modern fighters are able to deliver, you may not realize you just put the blood supply of the brain in a back pocket. When this happens, loss of consciousness, or G-force induced G-LOC occurs.

If you have not started on the sofa, there are times when you can experience the various stages to G-LOC and let up on the stick pressure to avoid entering the sleep time. Tunnel vision, loss of color vision, peripheral vision bright, and some are good indicators that are on the edge. The next step was black, is a thin slice between here and not here.

I have actually experienced this in forming centrifuge. Technicians were running coach called him "A-LOC" loss of consciousness almost. They said they had never seen anyone get there and back. Synchronization with the end of the trip was perfect. Here is a snippet of my training; which is the last of the five or six sessions of 10 to 20 seconds on high-G. For this, we need to look at a point on the left shoulder, pretending to be in a dogfight. A few seconds after the start, you can see that I lose a couple of inches in height after losing the tension in the legs and buttocks, which removes the protection that a good maneuver tension can give. A few seconds later you can see my eyes roll mode "confused cattle". I lost all vision, and if the journey does not stop, I'd probably have G-loc'd. The recovery in this case was quick, as you can see. Blood rose again, and the vision became almost immediately. He had asked the amount he had lost vision in each trip, hence my comment, "100 percent."

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