A dumb doubt on stalls

Orval Fairbairn wrote:
The Velocity has a very large forward underside that does the same
thing. In fact, the designer rode one all the way into a swamp doing
deep stall tests. He was about to bail out when he noticed that the sink
rate was on the order of 1000 fpm, so he rode it down and emerged unhurt.
In fact, the airplane was repaired and flew again.

Interesting. I can just imagine the thought process in that scenario.
"Oh s**t I've lost it! Oh God!... uh... hey, it's only falling at
1000fpm - this should be survivable!! I'll stay with it then!! G


I heard of a pair of engineers from SRI who took a TC up high and tried
the deep stall. They tried everything to recover and ended up unbuckling
their seatbelts and getting under the panel. The plane finally recovered
into a high speed dive and bent the structure on recovery.

I would like to see two humans fit under the panel in a Twinkie. Were
these guys circus freaks??