Sure, but now we’re talking about a situation where your engine has already failed… That’s very different.
What to do on engine failure is one of the first things they teach you after basic flight lessons. After that many instructors will even simulate surprise engine failure by cutting off the engine at random while the student is trying to learn about some other emergency situation. Engine failure is part of the check rides every pilot needs to pass to get a license.
When the engine stops working because it doesn't get enough fuel because there's nothing left in the tanks, the root cause is not putting enough fuel in the tanks, not engine failure.
Here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29731719 it seems like you are essentially saying "engine failure is not too dangerous; one of the leading causes of death is running out of fuel".
I did not say running out of fuel should be formally classified as an engine failure. It was more that I supposed that the effect on the airworthiness of their airplane should be approximately the same whether the engine stops due to failure or running out of fuel. So that makes your comment appear contradictory. Hence my prompting for an explanation, I'm quite willing to believe I misunderstood something of your post or about aviation so I didn't intend for it to sound glib.
I think it's pretty obvious this was staged and he very carefully chose the landing spot.
> But if it was me in that plane and I saw a 10% risk of serious bodily harm / death in trying to land and a 0.1% risk in jumping, it would be tempting to jump.
I think your intuition is wildly off base w.r.t. the risks of general aviation and sky diving.
If you exclude experimental aircraft like fighter jets and kit builds, general aviation isn't much more dangerous than riding a motorcycle. The leading causes of death are misjudging the weather and miscalculating fuel because most of a pilot's training isn't in how to fly a plane but how to troubleshoot it midair or land safely if that is impossible.
An unplanned skydive in a mountainous area in Southern California during Santa Ana season? Now, that's risky. (Edit) For perspective, Nevada sky diving companies won't even jump over Black rock desert because of the wind and that's a desert so big and flat that it's used for amateur rocketry in the 100k+ feet range.