I guess behind is better than in front.
We had a guy who got sucked down the intake of a Tomcat while I was there. It was either VF-32 or VF-14, I don’t remember which.
Apparently, the guy walked out from under the engine nacelle and stood up right in front of the intake with his back to it and got sucked right in.
The pilot had been looking right at the intake when the guy appeared, stood up and went in backwards, head first, and the pilot had the wherewithal to shut down the the engines immediately.
The pilot’s quick thinking saved the guy’s life, but the unlucky guy slammed head first into the cone on the front of the compressor and snapped his neck. They airlifted him off, and we heard later he was a quadriplegic.
I went down in the hangar bay a couple of days later, they had pulled the engine out of the Tomcat and had it sitting in a cradle down there, waiting to be shipped out. The engine case had some big, jagged holes in the sides, apparently some of his tools had come out of his pouch as he went in and preceded him into the engine. They went in, chewing up some of the compressor blades, then were ejected right through the compressor section casing.
It was very sobering to see.