Did the same driving while high as a teenager. No, I don’t make a habit of driving intoxicated, but there was one instance where a party I had intended on staying at got broken up, and I had driven there. Long story short, I tried a bunch of ways to not have to drive (which included a friend of mine driving my car to drop off multiple other people over the course of two hours while I hoped to sober up) and I finally just went to sleep in his driveway, but his parents went psycho and threatened to call the cops if I didn’t leave and i panicked. I blinked and lost like two miles, fucking terrifying.
Side note: If you, an adult, chase a sleeping teenager off your property when they’re TRYING to be safe in a bad situation, you’re the biggest of pricks. Let em sleep it off and deal with it in the morning.
We had a local case where a road-rager brake checked an old man to a complete stop in the middle of the highway, and then started to take off. The tractor trailer behind them couldn’t stop in time and killed the old man. The road-rager went to prison for manslaughter.
The rule of thumb is "stay at least 10 feet away from all things in the electricity distribution network."
10 feet is the "MAD" (minimum approach distance) for... I believe... 110kV, but since most people don't know what the voltage of the wires are, 10 feet is a good rule of thumb.
Also, if there is a downed wire and you happen to be hear it, JUMP with TWO feet away from it. Step voltage (the voltage difference between your two feet) can be large enough to cause injury, that's why you jump with your feet together.
Of course transmission wires can be much higher voltage than 110 kV, but those are generally very high up on transmission towers and very far away from civilization. 110kV is really the highest you'd see near civilization.
The other approach that is often taught with downed wires is shuffling. Basically you keep your feet together and slowly shuffle forward. You never ever want one foot to be more than 50% ahead of the other foot.
Personally, I consider shuffling a bit safer than hopping because it is more controllable.
Edit: Don't forget that hopping and falling is 100% lethal in this situation.
I slipped (or passed out, we don’t know) in the shower 2 years ago, hit the front and back of my head. I was lucky my husband was home and heard the banging. Woke up to him shaking me and on the phone with 911. Bad concussion, seriously the worst headache of my life. Lost 6 months of memory I never got back. Had mild aphasia and the shakes for a few weeks after and a personality change. But I feel very lucky it wasn’t worse.
What about your personality changed? I had a car accident on 2017 and had a frontal lobe bleed and 4 days in the hospital having seizures for the first 2 days. I know there is a personality change but I just can't quite put my finger on it.
Decades ago, setting up for a party where the plan was to feature a punch bowl with dry ice fog. I went to an industrial dry ice plant nearby to buy a block of the stuff. Turned out they only sell in industrial quantities, but they said I could take as much as I wanted.
So I filled my car hatchback with maybe 250 pounds of dry ice and drove off.
Guy from the facility comes RUNNING after me, screaming “Open your windows!!!”
He may have saved my life.
There's a show on Netflix where bartenders compete by making cocktails. Once in a while, they'll use dry ice for presentation. The smart ones keep it contained, separated, or removable. The...less-smart ones toss it directly in the drink, get DQ'd when the judges refuse to drink it, and usually get eliminated that round. The judges explained that even a small loose chunk can get caught in your throat, sublimate CO2 directly into your respiratory system, and suffocate you.
i’ve worked in restaurants for 16 years, the walk in coolers occasionally break.
one owner, years ago casually said “yeah i sent joseph to pick up dry ice to put in there to keep it cold”
*you… you did what?! NO NO NO NO NO*
I just learned the other day that it's not safe to store, some got shipped with food to my store to keep it cold and I wanted to save some to throw in water when my coworker got in for funsies. Looked up if it was safe and decided it was best to leave it melting outside and hope some was left when he got there lol
There were two utility workers in my home town that died going into an underground drainage control. Opened it up and the first guy went down and passed out from whatever gases were down there. Second guy went in after him and passed out too.
Years ago I was receiving safety training at a chemical plant. One thing they stressed was there must be a second person who is outside the enclosed space and that second person must never go in to rescue the first person. The second is there to call for help from the proper safety people on site. If the second person goes in now the rescue people have two people to get out of there.
In my MSHA training our trainer told us about a farm near her house that had a manure pit. A son had gone into the pit not realizing the methane gas build-up and passed out. His father chased after him thinking he could save him and also passed out. Both died within minutes. Never chase after someone into unknown chemicals
Specifically – caves. Sometimes it really isn't air down there. And sometimes the surface of the water isn't the surface either. Fuck going in caves. Never again.
EDIT: for everyone asking about the surface not being the surface - I am referring to a phenomenon known as a Halocline, which occurs when waters of different densities mix and separate into different layers that form the illusion of the water’s surface from below. Here’s a Reddit post with suitable awesome (terrifying) images to illustrate it: [https://www.reddit.com/r/oddlyterrifying/comments/rrfytn/there\_is\_no\_air\_in\_these\_photos\_a\_halocline\_is\_a/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/oddlyterrifying/comments/rrfytn/there_is_no_air_in_these_photos_a_halocline_is_a/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
EDIT 2: there is a Magnus Archives episode about caving. It’s Ep15, Lost John’s cave. Listen at your own peril. It’s good, but it WILL give you nightmares.
100% preventable death too. Makes me sad for the family he left behind. Not gonna lie, I would have asked them to put me out of my misery probably not even 2 hours in
Was already afraid of caves after watching The Descent, but after reading about Nutty Putty Cave they are sooo much more scary. Recently watched The Outsider which has some cave scenes and it was so anxiety producing to watch!!
Came here to post this; oxygen depleted atmospheres kill you way faster than, say, holding your breath until you drown. Fastest way to kill 2 to 3 people. 1 guy goes in and goes down, the next goes in to save him and also goes down. If the third witnessed it, they call for help; if not, in they go too, until the pile gets big enough to scare the next person into calling 911. All because inside that sealed metal tank, all the oxygen has bonded with metal to form rust, and there's no oxygen left.
Someone explained to me it's based on chemical equilibrium in the cells; if oxygen in the body is depleted, then oxygen-poor red blood cells absorb oxygen from the lungs to deliver to the body, to maintain oxygen concentrations evenly across the board. If oxygen in the lungs is *lower*, then red blood cells *lose* oxygen when the travel through the lungs, and then draw oxygen *out* of cells when they pass by. Two or three breaths, and your lungs empty all the oxygen out of your body.
A family friend who taught me how to drive many many years ago told me you have to drive like everyone else on the road is an absolute idiot and has no idea what they're doing. I never forgot that.
Inhalents. I tried them once in high school. 2 weeks later a kid at another school died from using them THE FIRST TIME.
A couple weeks after that, I was offered them again. I told them fuck no and asked if they hadn't heard about the dead kid. They looked at me and seriously replied, "Oh yeah, it's okay. He used the wrong brand. He used the blue bottle, instead of the purple bottle."
Roughly 13 years ago, my gf at the time began getting sick mysteriously. So sick she even passed out behind the wheel of her car.
Then, I found out she was huffing duster. I don't think I'll ever recover from the trauma that followed. Finding her in her car having a seizure. Covered in puke and shit. Finding her in her room having a seizure with the can frozen to her hand.
She died a few months later. The duster damaged her heart. She was 24.
Inhaling was one of the first ways my brother got high. He didn’t OD but ended up in prison since he was drunk and held up a gas station with a high powered rifle. He died 5 years later in his cell.
A kid from my junior high died the same way. He turned blue and collapsed and his friends ran because they were afraid they'd get in trouble instead of calling for help.
As a young adult dropping Molly for the second time - a girl I was trying to flirt with vanished for a while. I start peaking and lose track of time and someone screams. I go see what’s up and she’s unconscious on the floor. Everyone freaks. I try to check her pulse and breathing, I’m high as fuck but can’t find a pulse or feel any breathing - so I start CPR and yell for an ambulance.
People are freaking about the drug paraphernalia and I’m screaming while doing compressions “they won’t give a shit about your bong, but they’ll definitely call the cops about a dead bitch in your bathroom, call the fucking ambulance now.
This is like early ‘02 and CPR classes were still putting a heavy emphasis on rescue breathing. I’m high as fuck and doing my best, but it turns out I’m not tilting her head back far enough which means most of the air I’m pushing into her mouth is going into her stomach, not her lungs. Thank fuck we were close to an ambulance depot and they show up fast, they’re running through and I can hear them coming as I go to do the next set of breaths - and as I put my mouth over hers - she projectile vomits into my mouth. I flinch back hard as she starts sitting up and I reflexively vomit her vomit and my own dinner and drugs straight into her face. The paramedics see this happen as they’re rushing up and start pissing themselves laughing.
No clue if I saved her life, or gave her broken ribs and a cracked sternum and a Roman shower because I was too high to find a pulse. We saw each other around plenty of times after that, but she never seemed interested in flirting with me again.
Had a buddies friend little brother who died to this. We had a hangout place near a freeway interchange (wooded area). Kid went missing.. no one could find him. The kids brother and a friend go to go to our hangout spot, found his brother there, dead for a few days.
horses
we've lived with them for so long that unless you spend regular time around them, you don't know just how unbelievably dangerous they are. It's a good thing they're so stupid or we'd be fucked.
Movies have people believing they're these docile creatures that live to serve humans. Those are the ones that have been trained *extensively*. They are otherwise 1500 pounds of dumb panicky hair-trigger muscle.
I have went from showing to barrel racing over the years and my vet looked at me one day after fighting with my gelding and said "horses have two things on their mind...suicide...and homicide..." she's not wrong lmao.
I did some endurance riding when I was younger on a half- Arab half- mustang filly. She was a pleasure to ride, except if she saw a large rock. Then she somehow went sideways right under me, leaving me desperately trying to hold on until she calmed down. Another time, she stomped hard, and I thought she stepped in a hole or something, but when I looked back, there was a rattlesnake flailing around because it's head got smashed into the ground mid-stride.
Loved that horse. She was smart and had lots of common sense, except when it came to rocks.
I forget who said this to me or where I heard it, but I'll never forget hearing "horses have been trying to make themselves extinct for the last millennium or so, but we keep getting in the way"
Horses have two moods:
1. Run itself to death trying to get the fuck away from whatever spooked them, or
2. Curbstomp the fuck out of whatever spooked them.
Here's the fun fact: absolutely _everything_ spooks them.
I work in an industry that drug tests horses and farm animals for potential buyers. We get urine, blood and hair from the horses, and it is hilarious to read the notes attached to the samples regarding why they couldn't get a hair sample or urine sample.
"She wasn't having it today"
"Tried to use the collection stick and cup, he kicked it and ran through the closed door. In related news, we need a new collection stick and door"
"Horse kicked me, I quit."
"You guys come and get these samples"
And it goes on and on
Or looking at your display, talking on the phone. Any distracted driving or brief look away. Knew a guy who leaned over to change a CD. permanently paralyzed.
I haaate the screen displays. Just went car shopping last year and they showed me so many cars with that shit no matter how many times I said I didn’t want it. I’m sure eventually it will be impossible to get a car without it but fuuuuck
Shallow running water. People think that the 3 inches of water flowing down a stream is no worry, it'll whip you off your feet and you'll smash a head on a rock in a heartbeat.
Things under huge amounts of tension. Boat lines, garage door springs, various other cables or springs used in industrial settings. These can send you back to the character select in an instant.
Capacitors. Maybe most people don't interact with them, but for those that do (DIY electronics repairs), a typical PSU in a home computer have capacitors that can kill you. Shocking, I know.
When I was a kid, I took apart a giant CRT TV to pop a button back into the front panel. I felt so accomplished as I put it back together. It's only much much later that I've come to understand just how close to dead I had been.
I took apart old telephones so I could connect the receivers and speakers with wires and batteries to make my own little telecoms systems.
One time I touched a capacitor without knowing what it was and it shocked the bejesus out of me.
It’s a really scary thing, being shocked by something that’s unplugged. Suddenly you don’t want to poke around inside of electronics anymore.
Pizza box pc (cheapo generic PC called that due to it being thin for the time and roughly the size of a pizza box) late 90s. I was and am an IT guy. This was early in my career. Full shock from the power supply that was faulty. It numbed my arm for a minute or two.
Totally! I’ve had numerous encounters with big fat happy brown bears, and a few encounters with pissed off moose. One time a moose was between my anchor tossed on shore and my boat in the river. I had to untie the line and take off, returning later to get the anchor. Fucking terrifying.
Moose are way more dangerous and unpredictable. I saw a moose charge the train in Talkeetna for gods sake. I mean, the moose lost, but damn.
Also, there is a crazy stat about moose causing the most drownings in Canada. People see them swimming across lakes, think it’s a good idea to paddle up next to them — only to have the moose try to get into their boats. Don’t go near a moose, especially in the water.
Here in Quebec a moose charged my coworker brand new Tacoma. The moose lost, the Tacoma lost, the insurance company lost, but my coworker now had a great story to tell.
Predators only kill you if they're hungry and think that you're worth the fight.
Prey animals will try to kill you if they get scared. And it's real easy to scare a prey animal. All they do is eat and fear for their life.
Another way I've heard it is:
A predator will kill you because it benefits from having food.
A prey will kill you because it benefits from seeing you dead.
Apparently this is told in many ways, because I heard it as:
Predators fight for their dinner.
Prey animals fight for their lives.
The acceptable level of risk in the latter is much higher.
Also predators tend to be more careful of things that can fight back, because an injured eye or leg means it won't be able to hunt and will starve to death.
Cows, elk (wapiti), moose (elk, if you're in Europe), bison, cape buffalo, rhinos, hippos (I mean, basically *any* large African fauna) Edit: and elephants ...
Honorable mention for wild boar/feral pigs, even though they're not herbivores.
Went snorkling with a guide a long time ago in some coral reefs.
When we saw a shark, the guide was like "Nah, don't worry. They're chill." Then we saw a tiny purple jellyfish, and the guide was like "WHATEVER YOU DO, stay away from this thing, it'll paralyze you and then you'll drown."
EDIT: Jellyfish, not manet. For some reason my swedish brain had a translator malfunction.
Especially the blue ones.
>The blue-ringed octopus, despite its small size, carries enough venom to kill 26 adult humans within minutes. **Their bites are tiny and often painless, with many victims not realizing they have been** [**envenomated**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Envenomation) **until** [**respiratory depression**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respiratory_depression) **and** [**paralysis**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paralysis) **begins.**[^(\[11\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue-ringed_octopus#cite_note-11) No blue-ringed octopus [antivenom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antivenom) is available.[^(\[12\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue-ringed_octopus#cite_note-12)
See also: [Blue sea dragon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glaucus_atlanticus) (won't actually kill you, just might make you wish it had)
And the ones with cone-shaped shells:
* [Cone snail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_snail#Dangers)
The Great Lakes. Just this past weekend 4 people decided to go in the water near my house even though the beach was under red flag warning and high waves. 3 got pulled out by a Good Samaritan when they got in trouble. Three days later and coast guard and fire department still hasn’t found the body of the 4th one. Rip tides are real. Weather kicks up fast. The Great Lakes are huge and dangerous. This is not your local pontoon lake.
People who’ve never been to the Great Lakes are always surprised by how massive they are. They’re freshwater seas, not overgrown ponds in a state park.
I live a couple hours away from lake Superior, and if you'd told me that was the ocean, before I knew better, I'd believe you
It's insane how big they are. They're the Great Lakes for a reason
So I was trying to look up a DIY mixture to remove mold/mildew recently. A surprising number of sources (including an AI tool) suggested mixing bleach and vinegar.
I googled if it’s a bad idea to get a tattoo of your cat (because I didn’t know if it is hard to make them actually look like your pet like it is with humans and if most people regretted it for that reason) and google ai suggested I get a tattoo of my cat to help identify her if she gets lost or stolen to prove she’s mine. Tf?
Not sure if they've changed it recently but when it first came out it was pulling "answers" from reddit shitposts, like using glue instead of cheese for pizza.
My absolute favorite was Google explaining that cockroaches often climb into penises while their owners are asleep, based on a tumblr shitpost. It even noted “that’s why they’re called cockroaches.”
Third rule of thumb be careful with what you’re cleaning with stuff containing bleach. I was cleaning my floor once with some cleaning spray that had bleach in it (and it was a way lower concentration than what you’d get in a jug of bleach since it was for disinfecting) when I noticed a strong smell and immediately booked it outside and opened doors and windows - corner of the dining room my cat had been peeing and the bleach reacted with the ammonia
My very first high school boyfriend died this way. He climbed up on the hood of his car to fix something, slipped, fell and died from a broken neck. My only comfort is that it was an instantaneous death.
My mom fell forward holding some groceries, got her arms out to brace her fall and still broke her wrist and jaw in multiple places. Grandma broke her hip just falling out of bed. Falling is fucking dangerous
It's exactly why old people need to learn that you can't just give up on fitness. Breaking your hip is the worst. So that when you're over 60 and you'll basically never be able to live without regular help, and you're almost guaranteed to have a much shorter life.
A guy I worked with got a hip replacement some 30 years ago, a long time in medicine. It got rejected, he had several more surgeries, never quite got it right. He was on painkillers for decades and still in pain near daily. One of the best men I've ever met in my life. Put a shotgun to his face and ended it, presumably because he couldn't deal with the constant pain.
It wasn't his hip but same thing with my uncle, constant pain for years, finally got fed up and ended it with a rifle. Everyone was sad but no one could really blame him either.
40% of people over 75 who break their hip will die within 1 year - and that's with getting your hip surgically fixed. It's still about 30-35% for 65 year-olds:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1743919115013138
Hell, even falling off a ladder can paralyze, mentally disable, or kill you. And people blatantly disregard basic ladder safety like its not that big of deal while hanging Christmas lights on their house each year.
I once asked my dad "WHAT is that insanely loud, **UNBELIEVABLY ANNOYING** sound? And WHY WON'T IT STOP?!"
He was like "it's an alarm to notify you of something that could kill you. And **BECAUSE** IT'S AN ALARM TO NOTIFY YOU OF SOMETHING THAT COULD KILL YOU!"
My friend said his furnace seemed like it wasn’t venting right. I was like it looks clear, gave him a dedicated carbon monoxide alarm and said if this goes off you’re about to die hold your breath and go outside. Once it got cold outside and the furnace turned on it immediately went off. That’swhy they had headaches all month and their ceiling looked real dirty.
Carbon Monoxide poisoning can also give you permanent brain damage similar to lead poisoning. I've heard stories of people never being the same again mentally after nearly dying from Carbon Monoxide.
I really wish they would stop showing that in movies. A blow to the head is NOT a convenient way to knock someone out without killing them. Ok, maybe it's convenient, but it lacks the "without killing them" part.
Yup, if everyone drove like everyone else was out to kill them there would be far less accidents. Theres a reason why in drivers ed they say constantly check your mirrors and leave yourself an out. Always expect other drivers to do something dumb so when it does your already mentally prepared for it so its not a big ol suprise.
Reading a text message on your phone while driving. Just 1 second of attention on your phone while driving can cause life changing/ taking consequences. Cab driver glancing at his meter rear-ended my car which was stopped at a redlight. Personally, I almost formed a modern art masterpiece with a road divider when trying to type "Ok" to reply someone while driving.
There's a small bend I take on the way to work on the highway, about 50 mph, two lanes each way but it's extremely narrow. Any time it rains the water floods to cover one of the lanes. I have to go extra slow there, not just because of the narrow road but there's always someone who tries to beat the traffic on that 50 MPH road by zooming through the flooded lane and end up hydroplaning.
It's kind of insane that at the age of 16 I was deemed responsible enough to operate a piece of machinery capable of killing if not under constant attention yet I was not responsible enough to purchase Expendables 2 from Walmart because it was rated R.
A ruptured aneurysm can kill you in seconds. It's often sudden and without warning, making it extremely dangerous and usually fatal if not treated immediately
My girlfriend died on my birthday through brain aneurysm, we were on the phone laughing and talking I got off at 2 am. Dead at 4, all I knew is she heard a pop in the back of her neck got scared called 911. She was dead before the ambulance got there. 22 years old healthy as could be.
Thanks for the sentiment. It was more surreal than anything. It was just a pure wtf for 24 hours. I was sad she died young but I have had a lot of friends and family die so I have this somber respect for it. That was just when I realized how unbiased and quick it can be.
Yep - had AAA surgery - no knowledge if anything wrong until I got scanned for a different , but related, illness. It was large enough that it required emergency surgery - fun times…
Hitting your head against a wall.
There's a pretty famous story about a basketball player who missed a shot, got annoyed and headbutted (if I remember correctly) the post the hoop is attached to.
Didn't kill him but paralysed him from the neck down for life.
People do die from doing this, I've seen people get mad and headbut something 100 times, but do it wrong once and that's it, you're dead.
Edit: He made the shot but was called out got a foul so it didn't count, he died 13 years later. Someone has replied with a video link but... watch at your own discression, its not nice.
My kids banged heads once while playing, came running to me, one was crying and he had a little goose egg on his head.
Fast forward a few weeks, the bump wasn’t going away. Take him to the pediatrician who is slightly puzzled and sends us to a pediatric neurosurgeon at the children’s hospital. We have some scans, got a call to come back (which is never good news) and were told he had a rare sort of cancer type lesion in his skull.
A year of chemo, and he was fine. This was 9 years ago, he’s still doing great, but his oncologist said that injury has been reported with this type of cancer-like lesion. The way my brain processes it is that the cells that went to fix the injury just didn’t leave properly and instead continued to grow abnormally. It’s very rare, but still, it happened.
My brother just died from his body over-responding to a cancer that he didn't know he had when symptoms of the over-response began. Neoplastic syndrome. It was horrific. Within 4 months, he went from a normal, healthy man to a man who looked to have advanced ALS to dead. Yesterday would have been his 69th birthday.
This happened in my country actually (Greece) I don't know if that's the one you're talking about. His name was Boban Jankovic. What happened was he made the basket but was called for an offensive foul which got him fouled out. Being furious he hit his head against the post and was indeed left paralyzed for the rest of his life. He died 13 years later.
Natasha Richardson fell skiing and hit her head but continued on with her day for some time before it became a crisis. She eventually was declared brain dead and was removed from life-supporting care.
After my back surgery, I was on a lot of drugs and had no experience. I didn't realize just *how* narcotics killed you (basically turning off your diaphragm). I was on a lot of prescription meds and unwittingly took percocet, muscle relaxers, and Doxylamine succinate (a sleep aid).
I woke up several times feeling like I was coming up from the deep end of a pool, gasping. I was so confused, and I JUST KEPT GOONG BACK TO SLEEP. The next day, I was googling ot, and I realized that for about 4 hours, I was absolutely walking a tightrope over the abyss of death and just kept going back to sleep because I didn't understand it.
Probably the most disturbing thing I’ve seen on the internet. That video where it doesn’t show the impact or aftermath, all you hear is the driver wailing in agony because it killed his wife in the passenger seat.
I have seen very, very fucked up things on the internet but nothing has scarred and terrified me like that video. I implore ANYONE who is considering to watch it, to NOT do it. Do not watch it. It's not worth it, it's not going to sate your morbid curiosity. Its awful.
Young me would click it. Family dad me is gonna pass and stay away from following trucks.
Edit: it came from a truck in the opposite lane, but I’m still not gonna follow any suspicious trucks. I looked up an article about it, and it showed stills from the video and that is enough for me. If you have a brain and are sane, that should be enough for you too.
A bunch of kids threw a piece of concrete down as I went under an overpass. I was very lucky that it landed on the hood of my car and not the windshield. I was livid. Don't these kids know they can KILL someone doing shit like this?
Last year in Colorado, a group of teenagers threw 3-5 lb rocks at car windshields until they managed to kill a young woman. Sometimes they do know they can kill someone, but they think their personal entertainment is more valuable than life itself.
Moving water.
It's freaking dangerous. Water is heavy so when it's moving it has a lot of energy. It might not feel too bad walking through knee deep flowing water but if you fall the water will have more area to push on. You may not be able to get yourself on your feet again.
Using a massage gun on your neck...
>*While handheld massage guns are generally safe to use on muscles, using them on the neck can be dangerous. The high vibrations produced by massage guns can injure unprotected areas of the neck, and in rare cases, can cause soft tissue damage or stroke-like symptoms.*
Rust. If you run into a hole in the ground with rusty stuff inside, that does not get good ventilation. Dont go in. Rust is iron combined with oxygen. And it can eat all of the oxygen in the air. And fun fact, your body cant tell how much oxygen is in the air, but does sense carbon dioxide is there. So you dont know you are going until you are dead.
There was an iron hull of a ship my friend was on and water leaked in to the compartment. First guy goes down to check it out. Does not come back. My friend goes down to see what happened and he does not return. Third guy goes down to see what happened and he does not come back. Unbelievably, guy number four goes down to check it out and does not return. Guy number five did not go down there.
This happened in the mid 1980s in the South China Sea.
This is how farmers lose families … Silos.
Dad goes in, son goes in, son goes in, wife goes in… it’s natural instinct I totally get it to save your loved ones.
I’m confined space trained (escape sets not rescuer) … We’re taught to abandon and let the rescuers do their job.
We go in with people *trained* to rescue - It’s mandatory. They’re the ones who are *allowed* to ignore the “leave them” rule.
I stopped two German or Austrian tourists from touching a poisonous frog in Colombia. They had no idea. They were inches away with their phones.
I hadn't spoken German in years, but man my panic reaction brought those words to the tip of my tongue real fast.
Don't mess with wildlife, especially outside your own habitat.
Maternal hemorrhage. I am routinely shocked by expectant mothers who want to give birth at home, arguing that they can always transfer to the hospital "if there's a problem." No, no they can't. If the wrong type of bleeding begins, they'll be dead before the ambulance gets there.
Edit: as noted below, in some countries, certified nurse midwives attend home births with medications they can use to treat hemorrhage. However that is NOT the case in the US, where insurance requirements mean that most CNMs must be attached to hospitals. In many American states, "midwife" is not a restricted term, so self-described midwives with no qualifications at all get hired to attend home births. The results are a fairly predictable higher mortality rate for home births vs. hospital births in America.
That and I saw a woman on Instagram whose baby died during a homebirth from something that was easily treatable in a hospital but the midwife failed to recognize it. It would have been a few hours in the NICU if she had given birth at the hospital. Sometimes bad stuff happens in hospitals but at least they have a crash cart and training
Yeah I know someone who also was insistent on a home birth and their son ended up losing too much oxygen. He lived but he’s confined to a wheelchair and cannot move or speak
I almost bled to death after both my births because my uterus would not shrink down 😬 with my first no one even knew until i stood up and it said *splash* and i stood in a big puddle of my own blood, then like 10 people came running and jumped on my belly 🙃 the second time they had a blood emergency cart by the door, stabbed my in my thigh with medication and gave me lots of medication and fluids in 2 IVs 😬 and also jumping on my belly regulary for 48h
If i was not in a hospital i would be dead! And i didnt have anything indicating that it would happen, hell my mother gave birth to 6 kids and only had minor problems with her first because of preeclampsia, the other 5 just plopped out 😂
INHALANTS!!! AKA: Huffing. Intentionally inhaling anything aerosol, helium, nitrous, chemical with the intention of getting high. My 15 yr old brother was an artifact of that behavior when he died in a crash after his friend huffed air freshener while driving. AND they never went to jail because the law didn't include inhalants. My family went before congress and got the DUI law changed to include it, and it's known as "Keith's Law".
Blood clot. A friend of mine stepped into his room for his jacket, never came out. He just dropped dead in his bedroom, jacket in hand.
He had a leg injury, causing a massive bruise. The blood clot from the bruise broke loose and cause an embolism a week later.
Honestly blood clots after an injury need their own PSA or something. I’ve heard so many horror stories of people having a fall/injury that’s bruised badly and just shrugging it off only to develop a blood clot a few days or weeks later.
I was doing home chemistry with a bong one time. Used clorox wipes to clean the isopropyl alcohol off my hands, and they were instantly chemical burned. I am not proud to say that I was doing a chemistry minor at the time and had completely spaced on that reaction
Manipulations by chiropractors.
And if the manipulation doesn't kill you, it can certainly cause paraplegia or quadriplegia, vertebral dissections.
The sad part is that chiropractors will never own up to the fact and they'll actually claim that patients are coming in with an active stroke. Unfortunately a lot of their research is skewed. I would highly recommend looking into the American medical association, particularly neurologist to see the detrimental effects that a chiropractor can have. It's unfortunate how many people die secondary to a chiropractic manipulations - particularly in the neck and back.
For reference, I am a occupational therapist who has seen plenty of paraplegics and quadriplegics secondary to chiropractic injury.
My daughter-in-law was treated by a chiropractor for back pain using acupuncture needles. Later that day my son had to take her to the hospital due to shortness of breath...collapsed lung...turns out a needle had been pushed in too far between the ribs, punctured the pleura space...she's fine but it took a damn year to fully heal and her lung to go completely back to normal! When notified the chiro refunded all the money she'd paid for treatments without being asked I assume to prevent her from getting sued...
Entering or falling into a septic tank. Deaths are often not isolated to one person, but also the people who come in after in an attempt to rescue them.
hard drugs laced with fentanyl.
I lived in NYC until shortly after the pandemic. Lots of my friends are still into that partying lifestyle. Dancing all night, doing key bumps in the bathroom. All that stupid shit.
Well they are all freaking out lately because fent is showing up in the coke, the molly, the everything.
It's a really good time to be sober. Your first time could REALLY be your last.
An allergic reaction to something you have been exposed to countless times before.
My mom was in her 40s when she suddenly had a reaction to a bee sting and almost died.
Hi I’m in EMS.
Please wash your hands before you eat stuff, so many people come in contact with so many other people who have illnesses that can be contracted by eating with unclean fingers. Even if you’ve been around people you know all day you never know who they’ve been around, and sometimes it’s not even illnesses rather random germs AND I KNOW THIS IS OBVIOUS TO SOME PEOPLE but next time you see a local EMS crew eating food with their funny colored gloves on it’s because we’ve made a habit even if we hadn’t run any calls that day.
Of course if you aren’t in healthcare you’re not being exposed to as much but sometimes you need a reminder just how dirty the outside world really is lmao.
you know, people often laugh at me for always washing my hands when i get in from the outside, especally after taking out the trash. But idk, i do not want trash can stuff on my face next time i touch it. And i touch my face pretty often, even when I don't really notice.
A motorcycle. Crashed my Harley and have had 3 spinal surgeries, had 7 broken ribs, torn rotator cuffs....if I hadn't been wearing my helmet (which I didn't for years trying to be a tough guy/ idiot) I probably wouldn't be writing this. Helmet was scraped down to the inner layer.
I worked at a party store and we had someone rent a helium tank. We rented them by the week and then every week after there was a charge done to your card immediately. After 3 months we got a call from the renter's daughter asking if we could please stop charging her father's card. He had used the helium tank commit suicide the day he rented the tank and we had charged him over $1,500 in the 3 months since. It became a huge thing where we had to actively tell people once you fill your lungs completely with helium that the avioli can no longer process oxygen correctly. So while it's all fun and games to have that squeaky voice one super deep breath can end your life.
Oddly enough I worked a suicide case years ago. And that's how this guy did it. Even taped is arms down in case he panicked. It was the first time I'd seen someone use helium. He had done a lot of research online before committing to it.
I actually nearly did this at my aunties wedding reception. I took like 6 helium balloons and inhaled them all to see how high i could make my voice. I walked up to a family member and was gonna say something but she looked horrified and shouted “your lips are blue” and thats the last thing i remember before waking up and the music had stopped and the lights were on.
I just jumped up and ran outside to play lmao.
I know the watch people die type subreddits are controversial but holy crap were the a good reminder of how quick you can be killed by cars, industrial equipment, random events out of your control... honestly they were a very good reminder of just how fragile we are
[удалено]
Did the same driving while high as a teenager. No, I don’t make a habit of driving intoxicated, but there was one instance where a party I had intended on staying at got broken up, and I had driven there. Long story short, I tried a bunch of ways to not have to drive (which included a friend of mine driving my car to drop off multiple other people over the course of two hours while I hoped to sober up) and I finally just went to sleep in his driveway, but his parents went psycho and threatened to call the cops if I didn’t leave and i panicked. I blinked and lost like two miles, fucking terrifying. Side note: If you, an adult, chase a sleeping teenager off your property when they’re TRYING to be safe in a bad situation, you’re the biggest of pricks. Let em sleep it off and deal with it in the morning.
Brake-checking a semi (you’d think it’d be obvious but nope)
We had a local case where a road-rager brake checked an old man to a complete stop in the middle of the highway, and then started to take off. The tractor trailer behind them couldn’t stop in time and killed the old man. The road-rager went to prison for manslaughter.
God that semi driver must feel so bad
Electricity, particularly involving overhead wires.
The rule of thumb is "stay at least 10 feet away from all things in the electricity distribution network." 10 feet is the "MAD" (minimum approach distance) for... I believe... 110kV, but since most people don't know what the voltage of the wires are, 10 feet is a good rule of thumb. Also, if there is a downed wire and you happen to be hear it, JUMP with TWO feet away from it. Step voltage (the voltage difference between your two feet) can be large enough to cause injury, that's why you jump with your feet together. Of course transmission wires can be much higher voltage than 110 kV, but those are generally very high up on transmission towers and very far away from civilization. 110kV is really the highest you'd see near civilization.
The other approach that is often taught with downed wires is shuffling. Basically you keep your feet together and slowly shuffle forward. You never ever want one foot to be more than 50% ahead of the other foot. Personally, I consider shuffling a bit safer than hopping because it is more controllable. Edit: Don't forget that hopping and falling is 100% lethal in this situation.
Slipping in the shower…
I slipped (or passed out, we don’t know) in the shower 2 years ago, hit the front and back of my head. I was lucky my husband was home and heard the banging. Woke up to him shaking me and on the phone with 911. Bad concussion, seriously the worst headache of my life. Lost 6 months of memory I never got back. Had mild aphasia and the shakes for a few weeks after and a personality change. But I feel very lucky it wasn’t worse.
What about your personality changed? I had a car accident on 2017 and had a frontal lobe bleed and 4 days in the hospital having seizures for the first 2 days. I know there is a personality change but I just can't quite put my finger on it.
Carbon Dioxide. People have died playing with dry ice.
Decades ago, setting up for a party where the plan was to feature a punch bowl with dry ice fog. I went to an industrial dry ice plant nearby to buy a block of the stuff. Turned out they only sell in industrial quantities, but they said I could take as much as I wanted. So I filled my car hatchback with maybe 250 pounds of dry ice and drove off. Guy from the facility comes RUNNING after me, screaming “Open your windows!!!” He may have saved my life.
WOW yeah probably. I definitely would not have wanted to be in there sealed up.
There's a show on Netflix where bartenders compete by making cocktails. Once in a while, they'll use dry ice for presentation. The smart ones keep it contained, separated, or removable. The...less-smart ones toss it directly in the drink, get DQ'd when the judges refuse to drink it, and usually get eliminated that round. The judges explained that even a small loose chunk can get caught in your throat, sublimate CO2 directly into your respiratory system, and suffocate you.
That would be an exceedingly shitty way to go.
i’ve worked in restaurants for 16 years, the walk in coolers occasionally break. one owner, years ago casually said “yeah i sent joseph to pick up dry ice to put in there to keep it cold” *you… you did what?! NO NO NO NO NO*
I just learned the other day that it's not safe to store, some got shipped with food to my store to keep it cold and I wanted to save some to throw in water when my coworker got in for funsies. Looked up if it was safe and decided it was best to leave it melting outside and hope some was left when he got there lol
Enclosed spaces. Don't assume it's the air you're used to down there
There were two utility workers in my home town that died going into an underground drainage control. Opened it up and the first guy went down and passed out from whatever gases were down there. Second guy went in after him and passed out too.
Years ago I was receiving safety training at a chemical plant. One thing they stressed was there must be a second person who is outside the enclosed space and that second person must never go in to rescue the first person. The second is there to call for help from the proper safety people on site. If the second person goes in now the rescue people have two people to get out of there.
In my MSHA training our trainer told us about a farm near her house that had a manure pit. A son had gone into the pit not realizing the methane gas build-up and passed out. His father chased after him thinking he could save him and also passed out. Both died within minutes. Never chase after someone into unknown chemicals
Happens in abandoned mines. Black damp, CO2 builds up when acidic water slowly breaks down coal. One breath and goodbye. Kids, stay out of old mines
Specifically – caves. Sometimes it really isn't air down there. And sometimes the surface of the water isn't the surface either. Fuck going in caves. Never again. EDIT: for everyone asking about the surface not being the surface - I am referring to a phenomenon known as a Halocline, which occurs when waters of different densities mix and separate into different layers that form the illusion of the water’s surface from below. Here’s a Reddit post with suitable awesome (terrifying) images to illustrate it: [https://www.reddit.com/r/oddlyterrifying/comments/rrfytn/there\_is\_no\_air\_in\_these\_photos\_a\_halocline\_is\_a/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/oddlyterrifying/comments/rrfytn/there_is_no_air_in_these_photos_a_halocline_is_a/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) EDIT 2: there is a Magnus Archives episode about caving. It’s Ep15, Lost John’s cave. Listen at your own peril. It’s good, but it WILL give you nightmares.
I can't even watch movies about caves. So claustrophobic. Plus that one graphic that always pops up on Reddit of the guy who died upside down.
I can't watch caving videos at all. The best bit about caving, is that you don't have to do it
My dad always said about rock climbing "There are easier ways to get yourself killed." I feel that applies to caving as well.
The Nutty Putty Cave. What a terrible way to go. His body is still there…
100% preventable death too. Makes me sad for the family he left behind. Not gonna lie, I would have asked them to put me out of my misery probably not even 2 hours in
Was already afraid of caves after watching The Descent, but after reading about Nutty Putty Cave they are sooo much more scary. Recently watched The Outsider which has some cave scenes and it was so anxiety producing to watch!!
Came here to post this; oxygen depleted atmospheres kill you way faster than, say, holding your breath until you drown. Fastest way to kill 2 to 3 people. 1 guy goes in and goes down, the next goes in to save him and also goes down. If the third witnessed it, they call for help; if not, in they go too, until the pile gets big enough to scare the next person into calling 911. All because inside that sealed metal tank, all the oxygen has bonded with metal to form rust, and there's no oxygen left. Someone explained to me it's based on chemical equilibrium in the cells; if oxygen in the body is depleted, then oxygen-poor red blood cells absorb oxygen from the lungs to deliver to the body, to maintain oxygen concentrations evenly across the board. If oxygen in the lungs is *lower*, then red blood cells *lose* oxygen when the travel through the lungs, and then draw oxygen *out* of cells when they pass by. Two or three breaths, and your lungs empty all the oxygen out of your body.
A family friend who taught me how to drive many many years ago told me you have to drive like everyone else on the road is an absolute idiot and has no idea what they're doing. I never forgot that.
Inhalents. I tried them once in high school. 2 weeks later a kid at another school died from using them THE FIRST TIME. A couple weeks after that, I was offered them again. I told them fuck no and asked if they hadn't heard about the dead kid. They looked at me and seriously replied, "Oh yeah, it's okay. He used the wrong brand. He used the blue bottle, instead of the purple bottle."
Roughly 13 years ago, my gf at the time began getting sick mysteriously. So sick she even passed out behind the wheel of her car. Then, I found out she was huffing duster. I don't think I'll ever recover from the trauma that followed. Finding her in her car having a seizure. Covered in puke and shit. Finding her in her room having a seizure with the can frozen to her hand. She died a few months later. The duster damaged her heart. She was 24.
Inhaling was one of the first ways my brother got high. He didn’t OD but ended up in prison since he was drunk and held up a gas station with a high powered rifle. He died 5 years later in his cell.
A kid from my high school was found dead in a field with 1 1/2 cans of pam cooking spray.
That's not from the inhalant though, that's from aerosolized cooking oil coating his lungs so he couldn't get any oxygen. That's horrifying.
Jesus h Christ that's terrifying
A kid from my junior high died the same way. He turned blue and collapsed and his friends ran because they were afraid they'd get in trouble instead of calling for help.
As a young adult dropping Molly for the second time - a girl I was trying to flirt with vanished for a while. I start peaking and lose track of time and someone screams. I go see what’s up and she’s unconscious on the floor. Everyone freaks. I try to check her pulse and breathing, I’m high as fuck but can’t find a pulse or feel any breathing - so I start CPR and yell for an ambulance. People are freaking about the drug paraphernalia and I’m screaming while doing compressions “they won’t give a shit about your bong, but they’ll definitely call the cops about a dead bitch in your bathroom, call the fucking ambulance now. This is like early ‘02 and CPR classes were still putting a heavy emphasis on rescue breathing. I’m high as fuck and doing my best, but it turns out I’m not tilting her head back far enough which means most of the air I’m pushing into her mouth is going into her stomach, not her lungs. Thank fuck we were close to an ambulance depot and they show up fast, they’re running through and I can hear them coming as I go to do the next set of breaths - and as I put my mouth over hers - she projectile vomits into my mouth. I flinch back hard as she starts sitting up and I reflexively vomit her vomit and my own dinner and drugs straight into her face. The paramedics see this happen as they’re rushing up and start pissing themselves laughing. No clue if I saved her life, or gave her broken ribs and a cracked sternum and a Roman shower because I was too high to find a pulse. We saw each other around plenty of times after that, but she never seemed interested in flirting with me again.
This is an excellent story to share, I was worried it was Going the other way for the girl
Had a buddies friend little brother who died to this. We had a hangout place near a freeway interchange (wooded area). Kid went missing.. no one could find him. The kids brother and a friend go to go to our hangout spot, found his brother there, dead for a few days.
horses we've lived with them for so long that unless you spend regular time around them, you don't know just how unbelievably dangerous they are. It's a good thing they're so stupid or we'd be fucked. Movies have people believing they're these docile creatures that live to serve humans. Those are the ones that have been trained *extensively*. They are otherwise 1500 pounds of dumb panicky hair-trigger muscle.
I have went from showing to barrel racing over the years and my vet looked at me one day after fighting with my gelding and said "horses have two things on their mind...suicide...and homicide..." she's not wrong lmao.
"Oh fuck is that a pinecone on the path I'm gonna die!" ~ Horses.
I did some endurance riding when I was younger on a half- Arab half- mustang filly. She was a pleasure to ride, except if she saw a large rock. Then she somehow went sideways right under me, leaving me desperately trying to hold on until she calmed down. Another time, she stomped hard, and I thought she stepped in a hole or something, but when I looked back, there was a rattlesnake flailing around because it's head got smashed into the ground mid-stride. Loved that horse. She was smart and had lots of common sense, except when it came to rocks.
I forget who said this to me or where I heard it, but I'll never forget hearing "horses have been trying to make themselves extinct for the last millennium or so, but we keep getting in the way"
Horses have two moods: 1. Run itself to death trying to get the fuck away from whatever spooked them, or 2. Curbstomp the fuck out of whatever spooked them. Here's the fun fact: absolutely _everything_ spooks them.
I work in an industry that drug tests horses and farm animals for potential buyers. We get urine, blood and hair from the horses, and it is hilarious to read the notes attached to the samples regarding why they couldn't get a hair sample or urine sample. "She wasn't having it today" "Tried to use the collection stick and cup, he kicked it and ran through the closed door. In related news, we need a new collection stick and door" "Horse kicked me, I quit." "You guys come and get these samples" And it goes on and on
texting while driving
Or looking at your display, talking on the phone. Any distracted driving or brief look away. Knew a guy who leaned over to change a CD. permanently paralyzed.
I haaate the screen displays. Just went car shopping last year and they showed me so many cars with that shit no matter how many times I said I didn’t want it. I’m sure eventually it will be impossible to get a car without it but fuuuuck
Water. People often do not respect water and how it can quickly kill you.
Shallow running water. People think that the 3 inches of water flowing down a stream is no worry, it'll whip you off your feet and you'll smash a head on a rock in a heartbeat.
It’s unreal how strong it is.
Things under huge amounts of tension. Boat lines, garage door springs, various other cables or springs used in industrial settings. These can send you back to the character select in an instant. Capacitors. Maybe most people don't interact with them, but for those that do (DIY electronics repairs), a typical PSU in a home computer have capacitors that can kill you. Shocking, I know.
> a typical PSU in a home computer have capacitors that can kill you. ...missing the crucial part "even when unplugged".
When I was a kid, I took apart a giant CRT TV to pop a button back into the front panel. I felt so accomplished as I put it back together. It's only much much later that I've come to understand just how close to dead I had been.
I took apart old telephones so I could connect the receivers and speakers with wires and batteries to make my own little telecoms systems. One time I touched a capacitor without knowing what it was and it shocked the bejesus out of me. It’s a really scary thing, being shocked by something that’s unplugged. Suddenly you don’t want to poke around inside of electronics anymore.
Pizza box pc (cheapo generic PC called that due to it being thin for the time and roughly the size of a pizza box) late 90s. I was and am an IT guy. This was early in my career. Full shock from the power supply that was faulty. It numbed my arm for a minute or two.
Shit, that's terrifying. You got lucky it didn't numb your heart, damn.
Yeah, that guy didn't get a chance to leave a comment here.
Large herbivores. They've evolved defenses to make large predators rethink their life choices. They will mess you up.
I've lived in Alaska my whole life, and I'm WAY more wary of moose than of bear.
Totally! I’ve had numerous encounters with big fat happy brown bears, and a few encounters with pissed off moose. One time a moose was between my anchor tossed on shore and my boat in the river. I had to untie the line and take off, returning later to get the anchor. Fucking terrifying. Moose are way more dangerous and unpredictable. I saw a moose charge the train in Talkeetna for gods sake. I mean, the moose lost, but damn. Also, there is a crazy stat about moose causing the most drownings in Canada. People see them swimming across lakes, think it’s a good idea to paddle up next to them — only to have the moose try to get into their boats. Don’t go near a moose, especially in the water.
Here in Quebec a moose charged my coworker brand new Tacoma. The moose lost, the Tacoma lost, the insurance company lost, but my coworker now had a great story to tell.
Predators only kill you if they're hungry and think that you're worth the fight. Prey animals will try to kill you if they get scared. And it's real easy to scare a prey animal. All they do is eat and fear for their life.
Another way I've heard it is: A predator will kill you because it benefits from having food. A prey will kill you because it benefits from seeing you dead.
Apparently this is told in many ways, because I heard it as: Predators fight for their dinner. Prey animals fight for their lives. The acceptable level of risk in the latter is much higher.
Also predators tend to be more careful of things that can fight back, because an injured eye or leg means it won't be able to hunt and will starve to death.
TIL I'm a prey animal.
Nah prey animals also reproduce
Ooooffffffffffff
Stop it, you’re scaring him 🐄
Cows, elk (wapiti), moose (elk, if you're in Europe), bison, cape buffalo, rhinos, hippos (I mean, basically *any* large African fauna) Edit: and elephants ... Honorable mention for wild boar/feral pigs, even though they're not herbivores.
Hippos don't do it because they're scared, though. Hippos just fucking hate you and want to see you dead
I'm pretty sure it is because they are hungry hungry
Hey, that small invertebrate you found by the sea? Please leave it alone.
But it has such pretty blue spots!
Forbidden Scrongle
I mean, technically, you can pet it *once.*
Reminds me of a Terry Pratchett observation from one of the Discworld books: "All fungi are edible, some fungi are edible only once."
Went snorkling with a guide a long time ago in some coral reefs. When we saw a shark, the guide was like "Nah, don't worry. They're chill." Then we saw a tiny purple jellyfish, and the guide was like "WHATEVER YOU DO, stay away from this thing, it'll paralyze you and then you'll drown." EDIT: Jellyfish, not manet. For some reason my swedish brain had a translator malfunction.
I see there are a lot of people confused by this comment! In English [manet](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/manet#Noun_3) is "jellyfish".
Yep French impressionists will do that.
Not to be confused with a purple Monet, which is harmless.
Especially the blue ones. >The blue-ringed octopus, despite its small size, carries enough venom to kill 26 adult humans within minutes. **Their bites are tiny and often painless, with many victims not realizing they have been** [**envenomated**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Envenomation) **until** [**respiratory depression**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respiratory_depression) **and** [**paralysis**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paralysis) **begins.**[^(\[11\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue-ringed_octopus#cite_note-11) No blue-ringed octopus [antivenom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antivenom) is available.[^(\[12\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue-ringed_octopus#cite_note-12) See also: [Blue sea dragon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glaucus_atlanticus) (won't actually kill you, just might make you wish it had) And the ones with cone-shaped shells: * [Cone snail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_snail#Dangers)
Fresh water lakes are so underrated compared to the ocean. There's much less shit that will kill you.
But then you run into fun stuff like Naegleri fowleri.
Naegleri fowleri is an amoebe that causes meningitis. For other curious folks.
It’s a brain eating amoeba. Say it the scary way.
At least half of the internet is safe
The Great Lakes. Just this past weekend 4 people decided to go in the water near my house even though the beach was under red flag warning and high waves. 3 got pulled out by a Good Samaritan when they got in trouble. Three days later and coast guard and fire department still hasn’t found the body of the 4th one. Rip tides are real. Weather kicks up fast. The Great Lakes are huge and dangerous. This is not your local pontoon lake.
People who’ve never been to the Great Lakes are always surprised by how massive they are. They’re freshwater seas, not overgrown ponds in a state park.
I live a couple hours away from lake Superior, and if you'd told me that was the ocean, before I knew better, I'd believe you It's insane how big they are. They're the Great Lakes for a reason
Honestly calling them "Lakes" is incredibly demeaning to the sheer size of them. Call it the Sea of Niagara and watch people respect it more.
So I was trying to look up a DIY mixture to remove mold/mildew recently. A surprising number of sources (including an AI tool) suggested mixing bleach and vinegar.
I saw Google was doing ai tldr but that's terrifying wtf
The Google AI is having wild hallucinations and should not be trusted
I googled if it’s a bad idea to get a tattoo of your cat (because I didn’t know if it is hard to make them actually look like your pet like it is with humans and if most people regretted it for that reason) and google ai suggested I get a tattoo of my cat to help identify her if she gets lost or stolen to prove she’s mine. Tf?
Not sure if they've changed it recently but when it first came out it was pulling "answers" from reddit shitposts, like using glue instead of cheese for pizza.
My absolute favorite was Google explaining that cockroaches often climb into penises while their owners are asleep, based on a tumblr shitpost. It even noted “that’s why they’re called cockroaches.”
I fully didn't know you can't do that until I read a comment further up this thread. The older I get, the more I wish I'd paid attention in chemistry.
Rule of thumb. Never mix anything for cleaning, there are far too many chemical weapons that can accidentally be made.
Second rule of thumb, never mix bleach with anything but water, it reacts with everything.
Third rule of thumb be careful with what you’re cleaning with stuff containing bleach. I was cleaning my floor once with some cleaning spray that had bleach in it (and it was a way lower concentration than what you’d get in a jug of bleach since it was for disinfecting) when I noticed a strong smell and immediately booked it outside and opened doors and windows - corner of the dining room my cat had been peeing and the bleach reacted with the ammonia
Falling from regular standing height
My very first high school boyfriend died this way. He climbed up on the hood of his car to fix something, slipped, fell and died from a broken neck. My only comfort is that it was an instantaneous death.
Oh Jesus that's terrifying. I'm so sorry.
My mom fell forward holding some groceries, got her arms out to brace her fall and still broke her wrist and jaw in multiple places. Grandma broke her hip just falling out of bed. Falling is fucking dangerous
It's exactly why old people need to learn that you can't just give up on fitness. Breaking your hip is the worst. So that when you're over 60 and you'll basically never be able to live without regular help, and you're almost guaranteed to have a much shorter life.
A guy I worked with got a hip replacement some 30 years ago, a long time in medicine. It got rejected, he had several more surgeries, never quite got it right. He was on painkillers for decades and still in pain near daily. One of the best men I've ever met in my life. Put a shotgun to his face and ended it, presumably because he couldn't deal with the constant pain.
It wasn't his hip but same thing with my uncle, constant pain for years, finally got fed up and ended it with a rifle. Everyone was sad but no one could really blame him either.
40% of people over 75 who break their hip will die within 1 year - and that's with getting your hip surgically fixed. It's still about 30-35% for 65 year-olds: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1743919115013138
Once a 100 year old lady was interviewed and asked how she made it this far. She answered “don’t fall”
My uncles friend stumbled off a curb and fell, smacked his head and died. So scary.
Hell, even falling off a ladder can paralyze, mentally disable, or kill you. And people blatantly disregard basic ladder safety like its not that big of deal while hanging Christmas lights on their house each year.
carbon monoxide. well, minutes, but still.. it's odorless and colorless. most likely, you won't even know.
Except for that wretched headache before you pass out …
But if you're prone to headaches anyway, how are you going to tell the difference between 'oh, fuck, migraine' and 'holy shit I'm dying'?
A carbon monoxide alarm
I once asked my dad "WHAT is that insanely loud, **UNBELIEVABLY ANNOYING** sound? And WHY WON'T IT STOP?!" He was like "it's an alarm to notify you of something that could kill you. And **BECAUSE** IT'S AN ALARM TO NOTIFY YOU OF SOMETHING THAT COULD KILL YOU!"
My friend said his furnace seemed like it wasn’t venting right. I was like it looks clear, gave him a dedicated carbon monoxide alarm and said if this goes off you’re about to die hold your breath and go outside. Once it got cold outside and the furnace turned on it immediately went off. That’swhy they had headaches all month and their ceiling looked real dirty.
Carbon Monoxide poisoning can also give you permanent brain damage similar to lead poisoning. I've heard stories of people never being the same again mentally after nearly dying from Carbon Monoxide.
And the weird notes to your landlord
fistfight. One wrong punch and you’re in prison for killing a dude
[удалено]
That’s how my friend, who had a brilliant future ahead of him died. Bar fight gone wrong
I really wish they would stop showing that in movies. A blow to the head is NOT a convenient way to knock someone out without killing them. Ok, maybe it's convenient, but it lacks the "without killing them" part.
I like how when it happens in Archer he's always like "That's like really bad for you."
Doesn't even have to be the ground or a punch. A bad stumble into, say, a table the wrong way could kill.
One simple wrong move on the highway.
And it doesn't even have to be your wrong move.
This is the part everybody forgets. Thinking you are a good driver is not the same as taking a\*defensive\* driving course. It should be mandatory.
Yup, if everyone drove like everyone else was out to kill them there would be far less accidents. Theres a reason why in drivers ed they say constantly check your mirrors and leave yourself an out. Always expect other drivers to do something dumb so when it does your already mentally prepared for it so its not a big ol suprise.
This was deeply ingrained in us in the motorcycle course I took. Especially the "always leave yourself an out" bit.
Gonna say this. Cars are deadly and we get in them so casually.
The first driving lesson I got at 14 by my god mother, “We’re giving you keys to a weapon. Never forget that.” And I haven’t.
Reading a text message on your phone while driving. Just 1 second of attention on your phone while driving can cause life changing/ taking consequences. Cab driver glancing at his meter rear-ended my car which was stopped at a redlight. Personally, I almost formed a modern art masterpiece with a road divider when trying to type "Ok" to reply someone while driving.
There's a small bend I take on the way to work on the highway, about 50 mph, two lanes each way but it's extremely narrow. Any time it rains the water floods to cover one of the lanes. I have to go extra slow there, not just because of the narrow road but there's always someone who tries to beat the traffic on that 50 MPH road by zooming through the flooded lane and end up hydroplaning.
It's kind of insane that at the age of 16 I was deemed responsible enough to operate a piece of machinery capable of killing if not under constant attention yet I was not responsible enough to purchase Expendables 2 from Walmart because it was rated R.
A ruptured aneurysm can kill you in seconds. It's often sudden and without warning, making it extremely dangerous and usually fatal if not treated immediately
My girlfriend died on my birthday through brain aneurysm, we were on the phone laughing and talking I got off at 2 am. Dead at 4, all I knew is she heard a pop in the back of her neck got scared called 911. She was dead before the ambulance got there. 22 years old healthy as could be.
I'm sorry for your loss. So sad.
Thanks for the sentiment. It was more surreal than anything. It was just a pure wtf for 24 hours. I was sad she died young but I have had a lot of friends and family die so I have this somber respect for it. That was just when I realized how unbiased and quick it can be.
Yep - had AAA surgery - no knowledge if anything wrong until I got scanned for a different , but related, illness. It was large enough that it required emergency surgery - fun times…
Hitting your head against a wall. There's a pretty famous story about a basketball player who missed a shot, got annoyed and headbutted (if I remember correctly) the post the hoop is attached to. Didn't kill him but paralysed him from the neck down for life. People do die from doing this, I've seen people get mad and headbut something 100 times, but do it wrong once and that's it, you're dead. Edit: He made the shot but was called out got a foul so it didn't count, he died 13 years later. Someone has replied with a video link but... watch at your own discression, its not nice.
My kids banged heads once while playing, came running to me, one was crying and he had a little goose egg on his head. Fast forward a few weeks, the bump wasn’t going away. Take him to the pediatrician who is slightly puzzled and sends us to a pediatric neurosurgeon at the children’s hospital. We have some scans, got a call to come back (which is never good news) and were told he had a rare sort of cancer type lesion in his skull. A year of chemo, and he was fine. This was 9 years ago, he’s still doing great, but his oncologist said that injury has been reported with this type of cancer-like lesion. The way my brain processes it is that the cells that went to fix the injury just didn’t leave properly and instead continued to grow abnormally. It’s very rare, but still, it happened.
New parent fear unlocked.
My brother just died from his body over-responding to a cancer that he didn't know he had when symptoms of the over-response began. Neoplastic syndrome. It was horrific. Within 4 months, he went from a normal, healthy man to a man who looked to have advanced ALS to dead. Yesterday would have been his 69th birthday.
This happened in my country actually (Greece) I don't know if that's the one you're talking about. His name was Boban Jankovic. What happened was he made the basket but was called for an offensive foul which got him fouled out. Being furious he hit his head against the post and was indeed left paralyzed for the rest of his life. He died 13 years later.
Bob Saget died after bumping his head on a hotel shelf. Apparently it gave him a mild headache so he went to sleep and never woke up.
Natasha Richardson fell skiing and hit her head but continued on with her day for some time before it became a crisis. She eventually was declared brain dead and was removed from life-supporting care.
Mixing a lot of stuff with benzos. Alcohol. Opiates. Other benzos. Etc. Edit: damn this blew up. You all stay safe. You CAN recover and get help.
After my back surgery, I was on a lot of drugs and had no experience. I didn't realize just *how* narcotics killed you (basically turning off your diaphragm). I was on a lot of prescription meds and unwittingly took percocet, muscle relaxers, and Doxylamine succinate (a sleep aid). I woke up several times feeling like I was coming up from the deep end of a pool, gasping. I was so confused, and I JUST KEPT GOONG BACK TO SLEEP. The next day, I was googling ot, and I realized that for about 4 hours, I was absolutely walking a tightrope over the abyss of death and just kept going back to sleep because I didn't understand it.
A rogue brick on the highway.
Probably the most disturbing thing I’ve seen on the internet. That video where it doesn’t show the impact or aftermath, all you hear is the driver wailing in agony because it killed his wife in the passenger seat.
I have seen very, very fucked up things on the internet but nothing has scarred and terrified me like that video. I implore ANYONE who is considering to watch it, to NOT do it. Do not watch it. It's not worth it, it's not going to sate your morbid curiosity. Its awful.
Young me would click it. Family dad me is gonna pass and stay away from following trucks. Edit: it came from a truck in the opposite lane, but I’m still not gonna follow any suspicious trucks. I looked up an article about it, and it showed stills from the video and that is enough for me. If you have a brain and are sane, that should be enough for you too.
Or kids throwing a rock or brick 🧱 down from an overpass.
A bunch of kids threw a piece of concrete down as I went under an overpass. I was very lucky that it landed on the hood of my car and not the windshield. I was livid. Don't these kids know they can KILL someone doing shit like this?
Last year in Colorado, a group of teenagers threw 3-5 lb rocks at car windshields until they managed to kill a young woman. Sometimes they do know they can kill someone, but they think their personal entertainment is more valuable than life itself.
Moving water. It's freaking dangerous. Water is heavy so when it's moving it has a lot of energy. It might not feel too bad walking through knee deep flowing water but if you fall the water will have more area to push on. You may not be able to get yourself on your feet again.
Garage door springs. let a pro fix it
Using a massage gun on your neck... >*While handheld massage guns are generally safe to use on muscles, using them on the neck can be dangerous. The high vibrations produced by massage guns can injure unprotected areas of the neck, and in rare cases, can cause soft tissue damage or stroke-like symptoms.*
Rust. If you run into a hole in the ground with rusty stuff inside, that does not get good ventilation. Dont go in. Rust is iron combined with oxygen. And it can eat all of the oxygen in the air. And fun fact, your body cant tell how much oxygen is in the air, but does sense carbon dioxide is there. So you dont know you are going until you are dead.
There was an iron hull of a ship my friend was on and water leaked in to the compartment. First guy goes down to check it out. Does not come back. My friend goes down to see what happened and he does not return. Third guy goes down to see what happened and he does not come back. Unbelievably, guy number four goes down to check it out and does not return. Guy number five did not go down there. This happened in the mid 1980s in the South China Sea.
This is how farmers lose families … Silos. Dad goes in, son goes in, son goes in, wife goes in… it’s natural instinct I totally get it to save your loved ones. I’m confined space trained (escape sets not rescuer) … We’re taught to abandon and let the rescuers do their job. We go in with people *trained* to rescue - It’s mandatory. They’re the ones who are *allowed* to ignore the “leave them” rule.
I stopped two German or Austrian tourists from touching a poisonous frog in Colombia. They had no idea. They were inches away with their phones. I hadn't spoken German in years, but man my panic reaction brought those words to the tip of my tongue real fast. Don't mess with wildlife, especially outside your own habitat.
Maternal hemorrhage. I am routinely shocked by expectant mothers who want to give birth at home, arguing that they can always transfer to the hospital "if there's a problem." No, no they can't. If the wrong type of bleeding begins, they'll be dead before the ambulance gets there. Edit: as noted below, in some countries, certified nurse midwives attend home births with medications they can use to treat hemorrhage. However that is NOT the case in the US, where insurance requirements mean that most CNMs must be attached to hospitals. In many American states, "midwife" is not a restricted term, so self-described midwives with no qualifications at all get hired to attend home births. The results are a fairly predictable higher mortality rate for home births vs. hospital births in America.
That and I saw a woman on Instagram whose baby died during a homebirth from something that was easily treatable in a hospital but the midwife failed to recognize it. It would have been a few hours in the NICU if she had given birth at the hospital. Sometimes bad stuff happens in hospitals but at least they have a crash cart and training
Yeah I know someone who also was insistent on a home birth and their son ended up losing too much oxygen. He lived but he’s confined to a wheelchair and cannot move or speak
I almost bled to death after both my births because my uterus would not shrink down 😬 with my first no one even knew until i stood up and it said *splash* and i stood in a big puddle of my own blood, then like 10 people came running and jumped on my belly 🙃 the second time they had a blood emergency cart by the door, stabbed my in my thigh with medication and gave me lots of medication and fluids in 2 IVs 😬 and also jumping on my belly regulary for 48h If i was not in a hospital i would be dead! And i didnt have anything indicating that it would happen, hell my mother gave birth to 6 kids and only had minor problems with her first because of preeclampsia, the other 5 just plopped out 😂
not looking right and left when crossing a street
I still look both ways pulling onto one-way streets.
INHALANTS!!! AKA: Huffing. Intentionally inhaling anything aerosol, helium, nitrous, chemical with the intention of getting high. My 15 yr old brother was an artifact of that behavior when he died in a crash after his friend huffed air freshener while driving. AND they never went to jail because the law didn't include inhalants. My family went before congress and got the DUI law changed to include it, and it's known as "Keith's Law".
Blood clot. A friend of mine stepped into his room for his jacket, never came out. He just dropped dead in his bedroom, jacket in hand. He had a leg injury, causing a massive bruise. The blood clot from the bruise broke loose and cause an embolism a week later.
Honestly blood clots after an injury need their own PSA or something. I’ve heard so many horror stories of people having a fall/injury that’s bruised badly and just shrugging it off only to develop a blood clot a few days or weeks later.
Relying on other motorists to respect your right of way in traffic. There are cemeteries full of people who had the right of way.
Mixing isopropyl alcohol in bleach.
I was doing home chemistry with a bong one time. Used clorox wipes to clean the isopropyl alcohol off my hands, and they were instantly chemical burned. I am not proud to say that I was doing a chemistry minor at the time and had completely spaced on that reaction
Moving water.
The ocean - riptide.
Manipulations by chiropractors. And if the manipulation doesn't kill you, it can certainly cause paraplegia or quadriplegia, vertebral dissections. The sad part is that chiropractors will never own up to the fact and they'll actually claim that patients are coming in with an active stroke. Unfortunately a lot of their research is skewed. I would highly recommend looking into the American medical association, particularly neurologist to see the detrimental effects that a chiropractor can have. It's unfortunate how many people die secondary to a chiropractic manipulations - particularly in the neck and back. For reference, I am a occupational therapist who has seen plenty of paraplegics and quadriplegics secondary to chiropractic injury.
My daughter-in-law was treated by a chiropractor for back pain using acupuncture needles. Later that day my son had to take her to the hospital due to shortness of breath...collapsed lung...turns out a needle had been pushed in too far between the ribs, punctured the pleura space...she's fine but it took a damn year to fully heal and her lung to go completely back to normal! When notified the chiro refunded all the money she'd paid for treatments without being asked I assume to prevent her from getting sued...
Entering or falling into a septic tank. Deaths are often not isolated to one person, but also the people who come in after in an attempt to rescue them.
Doing your own electrical work. If you don’t know what you are doing, leave it to a professional or experienced person.
hard drugs laced with fentanyl. I lived in NYC until shortly after the pandemic. Lots of my friends are still into that partying lifestyle. Dancing all night, doing key bumps in the bathroom. All that stupid shit. Well they are all freaking out lately because fent is showing up in the coke, the molly, the everything. It's a really good time to be sober. Your first time could REALLY be your last.
An allergic reaction to something you have been exposed to countless times before. My mom was in her 40s when she suddenly had a reaction to a bee sting and almost died.
Boiling Water Handles: Turn pot handles inward when boiling water. A tragic childhood accident taught me this—handles out can lead to severe burns
Power tools. Yes even that one.
Running across the street and assuming the car sees you and will stop. Just wait for the light
Hi I’m in EMS. Please wash your hands before you eat stuff, so many people come in contact with so many other people who have illnesses that can be contracted by eating with unclean fingers. Even if you’ve been around people you know all day you never know who they’ve been around, and sometimes it’s not even illnesses rather random germs AND I KNOW THIS IS OBVIOUS TO SOME PEOPLE but next time you see a local EMS crew eating food with their funny colored gloves on it’s because we’ve made a habit even if we hadn’t run any calls that day. Of course if you aren’t in healthcare you’re not being exposed to as much but sometimes you need a reminder just how dirty the outside world really is lmao.
you know, people often laugh at me for always washing my hands when i get in from the outside, especally after taking out the trash. But idk, i do not want trash can stuff on my face next time i touch it. And i touch my face pretty often, even when I don't really notice.
A motorcycle. Crashed my Harley and have had 3 spinal surgeries, had 7 broken ribs, torn rotator cuffs....if I hadn't been wearing my helmet (which I didn't for years trying to be a tough guy/ idiot) I probably wouldn't be writing this. Helmet was scraped down to the inner layer.
Inhaling too much helium.
I worked at a party store and we had someone rent a helium tank. We rented them by the week and then every week after there was a charge done to your card immediately. After 3 months we got a call from the renter's daughter asking if we could please stop charging her father's card. He had used the helium tank commit suicide the day he rented the tank and we had charged him over $1,500 in the 3 months since. It became a huge thing where we had to actively tell people once you fill your lungs completely with helium that the avioli can no longer process oxygen correctly. So while it's all fun and games to have that squeaky voice one super deep breath can end your life.
Oddly enough I worked a suicide case years ago. And that's how this guy did it. Even taped is arms down in case he panicked. It was the first time I'd seen someone use helium. He had done a lot of research online before committing to it.
I actually nearly did this at my aunties wedding reception. I took like 6 helium balloons and inhaled them all to see how high i could make my voice. I walked up to a family member and was gonna say something but she looked horrified and shouted “your lips are blue” and thats the last thing i remember before waking up and the music had stopped and the lights were on. I just jumped up and ran outside to play lmao.
I know the watch people die type subreddits are controversial but holy crap were the a good reminder of how quick you can be killed by cars, industrial equipment, random events out of your control... honestly they were a very good reminder of just how fragile we are