The landings are relatively rough, at least compared to something like the Space Shuttle. About 5G and if something goes wrong and Soyuz lands with its failsafe mode (which happened a few times in the past) G forces can exceed 8G.

It’s not very glamourous but compared to the Space Shuttle Shuttle it’s very safe. It has been safely returning humans for decades like clockwork.

Don't think the field is altogether random. They do know orbital mechanics and math.

But, I came here to say that landing looked pretty dang hard.

The variance in Soyuz landings is pretty large, to the point that the crew has a survival kit in case the ground crew cannot find them fast enough. The survival kit contains a hunting rifle, not for hunting (they have rations) but for defense against wolves and bears. At least one crew used that, in the '60s I think, spending a night in cold weather, some -20 C, with wolves circling and stalking them - the wolves are extra aggressive in winter. Some other crews landed in lakes, but fortunately the capsule floats pretty well and has its own oxygen supply. What with being a space capsule and all.

I believe you're thinking of the Voskhod 2 mission. They landed in deep snow in the Urals and had to camp the night out in their spacecraft until the rescue party could reach them the next day.

Alexei Leonov's 1st-person account can be read here: http://tinyurl.com/voskhod2 (taken from the book "Two Sides of the Moon", co-authored with Apollo 15's Dave Scott)

I'd tend to agree with my above sibling that bringing guns in a spaceship sounds like the opposite of safe, but according to Leonov they had a pistol, and "plenty of ammunition".

"bringing guns in a spaceship sounds like the opposite of safe"

After the millions of pounds of propellant spent on getting them to and from orbit, you're going to sweat a few grams of gunpowder? Everything in space is an explosive if you consider the kinetic energy involved. The gun is one of the few things in the spacecraft we can honestly say we have centuries of experience with; if that even shows up on your top 100 list of risks and concerns, you've got a pretty damn safe space program.

Seems like with -20C temps they would just stay inside the capsule and wait for the support team. They should be quite safe from the wolves inside.

I'm a little surprised they could actually defend themselves against wolves and fire rifles after prolonged freefall.

Also, pretty surprised that rifles are a standard thing that they have in space. I thought "no guns" was a pretty basic safety idea for space.

As other's have noted, the landings are very rough when compared to the space shuttle. But let's not forget that these were designed at around the time of the Apollo program. Landing in the ocean at that speed is not much different from landing on the ground. In some ways I think this is much safer than a water landing, especially considering what happened with Liberty Bell 7 in the mercury program.

There are multiple tiers of parachutes to decelerate the capsule, plus retro-rockets IIRC. The USSR developed and used retro-rockets extensively, including to land overweight armoured vehicles.