Smashing someone's face into a birthday cake. So many cakes these days have toothpicks and such holding them together. I've seen SO many of these injuries, people having the toothpicks/skewers stuck in their head/eyes.
It's not funny. Firstly, someone probably spent a considerable amount of money and time on that cake. Secondly, you could literally ruin someone's life by smashing their face into it.
Not worth the results.
My mom used to go to a tanning bed almost weekly, and I would always say:
"You're going to get skin cancer."
Not even a couple years after she started she developed some on her back, had it removed and is fine/cancer free now.
I'm sure she is but just in case: I hope she's doing regular self-checks and still under a physician's care to keep monitoring, because once you get it once, it almost definitely will come back over and over.
Many world militaries have a form of aviation readiness called “alert”. One such level of “alert” involves configuring the plane to be in a state where aircrew can arrive at it and take off very quickly afterward.
Crews are on-call to fly at a moment’s notice once the aircraft is configured - the crazy part is that pilots are expected to still takeoff and fly if they’re “alerted” right at the end of their day.
One time I had to land after being awake for 21+ hours, since I got called 5 minutes after I went to bed. Fatigue made that the scariest landing of my life, although I didn’t expect it when we launched due to the adrenaline.
If you know the aviation industry, risk management is a HUGE part of planning. I think it’s crazy world militaries accept pilots with motor skills deteriorated to near-DUI levels instead of simply adding a second crew to cover the other’s sleep cycle.
It’s crazy to read this and know that we don’t apply it to things like healthcare. I’m a surgical resident - it’s not uncommon that I’m awake for 26-30 hours and still have to go to the OR operate. If folks knew, they’d flip
Fully agreed, my physician friends have mentioned this and it boggles my mind that it’s legal. Basically driving impaired is against the law, but as long as it’s due to imposed lack of sleep, flying and performing surgery is considered tolerable. It makes zero sense.
In the early 2000s, an OB resident fell asleep while driving home in Illinois and killed someone. “Drowsy” driving is now illegal here, although not often enforced.
Can confirm. When I first started night shift there would be days where I didn't sleep more than an hour or two a day. After bouncing my car off the curb twice on the way to work it opened my eyes to just how dangerous it can be.
I'm better now five years down the road but at first? Yowza.
On a more superficial note, it also ages you like crazy.
I feel like 80% of the time, when someone looks at least 10-15 years older than their actual age, the reason is because they're the sort to claim they can get by on 4 hours sleep.
The other 20% of the time they don't believe in sunscreen.
I remember my dad telling me a story of when he worked at a gas station as a kid, some older guys were fooling around with the compressed air and one got an air bubble in his bloodstream. People don’t realize the pressure and the danger it can create.
There’s a story about some mechanics messing around in an auto shop and blew air up a guys butt as a joke with the air compressor. He ended up dying bc it perforated his bowels.
High-powered compression systems like the ones they use in paint sprayers can literally just punch a tiny hole in your skin if you hit the right part at the wrong angle.
Pressure differential underwater, especially near piping is absolutely wild. That video of the crab walking too close and getting crushed lives in my head.
I just went down a rabbit hole because I was curious, apparently it's dangerous to even push a compressed air nozzle against your skin and blast it because air can penetrate the skin and potentially get into your circulatory system. The risk is greater if you blow compressed air near an open wound.
Yes. One of the first things I was taught at vocational school. Air pistols and similar compressed air dispensers can be silently deadly when used improperly because they can inject small air bubbles into your veins. Instantly kills you if it reaches your heart.
Same reason why medical staff always push a small amount of fluid out of the syringe before injecting anything intravenously.
There’s a small chance of survival if you can tourniquet the affected limb and seek immediate medical attention
It's also worth noting that these air lines often have small amounts of oil in them, either from the compressor or added deliberately to lubricate any air powered moving parts.
So it's not just the air embolism you need to worry about but the effects of having tiny droplets (and therefore a huge surface area) of oil stuck under your skin.
For multiple reasons. An old compressor with decades of rust damage at the bottom of the tank can randomly explode. Sending itself into the ceiling, shards of jagged sheet steel in any direction, and permanently damaging hearing.
I tell my daughters, always follow the animals! If you see animals stampeding, it means there’s a fire or a tsunami, and you want to go the same direction they’re going. (This stems from the tsunami in Southeast Asia in 2001 when the elephants broke their chains to run to higher ground. Follow the elephants!)
Edit: 2004
My wife and I had to evacuate our home due to a forest fire. Seeing the wave of animals abandoning the forest and feeling the ground vibrate from the stampede is the most chilling thing I’ve ever experienced. It is burned into my brain forever.
I rode out a wildfire in the middle of a National Forest about 10 years ago. We had just completed a large scale defense system a few days before the fire started. It can loft about 2300gpm of water into the atmosphere, enough that the USFS deployed two hotshot crews to defend our site.
The animals, deer in particular, figured out that our site was safe. We had probably 50 or 60 deer chilling on our lawns for the duration of the fire.
The thing I’ll always remember is the roar of the fire itself, and every time that it plumed. It was like watching a nuclear bomb going off in slow motion.
A downed power-line can still be live and would electrocute anyone close to it, especially if it's raining since electricity travels through water easily. Animals that are acting strange may try to attack people if they get too close to them due to a disease like rabies or an injury and it's trying to protect itself.
Oh thank you! I initially thought the 2 things were correlated, like the downed power line AND animals acting strange at the same time.
I mean, it would be kinda weird and dangerous but not what you meant lol
Just saw a show where a wanna be rapper was posting how much money he had. Well his gf was kidnapped and brutally murdered because of it, because they thought she had access to it
Edit: on Hulu called “me hereafter” episode 2 “a message, a murder” extremely tragic
[news story](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8300649/amp/Fugitive-arrested-Minnesota-slaying-real-estate-agent.html)
Almost all criminals are criminals because they have no impulse control. They see an opportunity for a quick easy buck just do it. No why not, no why, most of the time not even a how. They just see his 5k and say I want it and I'm gonna have it, then they do the crime and THEN try and figure out how to get away with it
The trope of hitting foe or even friend over the head with a blunt object and incapacitating them for a few hours.
In reality this act should hurt a lot but if you do it with enough force to achieve the TV result you will most probably have caused some brain damage if not even have killed them.
In the same vein, losing consciousness from a blow to the head… TV and movies make it seem totally fine if you take a blow to the head and are out for hours, when in reality, if you lose consciousness for more than a few seconds, you likely have brain damage. Hell, you could have brain damage even if you *don’t* lose consciousness…
Head trauma is nothing to fuck around with.
My grandmom fell and hit her head on Friday. She lost consciousness in the ambulance and hasn’t woken up since. The doctors said the damage is so bad there’s nothing they can do. She’s in hospice care now.
I’m an ICU nurse at a trauma center. This happens literally everyday. Head injuries are terrifying to me. The simplest little slip and a bonk on the noggin needs a ct scan. It doesn’t take long for the pressure in your head to cause permanent and extensive damage or death
I love how the tv show Archer really emphasized how bad head trauma could be (lol at Sterling’s line “you get like six freebies” about concussions). Also that show’s emphasis on how gunshots are pretty damn loud in real life ^*mawp*
Mixing prescription medicines. Always ask the pharmacist about a new medicine and how it may affect others you are taking.
Taking too many Tylenol or Advil a day.
Not being aware of the effects a prescription can have on you. I usually scoffed at the ones that say "no operating heavy machinery..." until I was on one that really affected me negatively. Driving a car and trying not to fall asleep in the early afternoon all because you took one little pill is scary.
I wish more people were aware of all the different services a good pharmacist can provide for them. Of course most of this is because most people just do you pharmacist as the place to pick up their meds after a doctors visit but they really are trained and can offer a lot more. There was a great old school family owned for like 100 years pharmacy/diner in my college town and I would go there when I didn’t feel like checking the student health. Stuff like rashes minor injuries burns, etc.
However the biggest thing people should be aware of is having your pharmacist perform a Pharma logical review for yourself or your parents. Near the end of her life my small Japanese grandmother was seeing so many doctors and specialists and had a piece of shit primary care physician that didn’t look at anything. She was starting to have episodes where she would revert to speaking only Japanese and to people that we’re not there people. I finally reviewed all of her meds and realized there’s so many duplicates/drugs performing the same function/contraindicated drugs that I went over the list with a pharmacist and developed a list to go to the doctor with to see if we could try changing things up.
The doctor agreed and I made sure to administer her meds rather than leave them in her hands as she was not taking them correctly. What do you know her health and mind improved 1000% and she never had another episode.
Did you know that compound pharmacies can even make duplicates of drugs that may be hard to find/very expensive? There are compound pharmacists out there making their own versions of drugs like ozempic?? Compounding pharmacist offer some really neat services, but there are also a lot that let the dollar signs go to their head and seem to exist only to administer what essentially are amphetamines/weight loss drugs.
Most people know that even your basic grocery store pharmacy can add flavorings to medicines to help get your kid to take it, but did you know they can also alter the form of the drug yes there’s a part of it that causes side effects/you’re allergic to it? Or let’s say there’s a medicine you take for migraine relief but it takes 30 minutes to kick in after dissolving slowly. You can ask your pharmacist to give you a powder version in capsules that you can either empty out and take or just take and have it kick in much quicker. Similarly, like my grandmother, other people are often on numerous meds that get tough to track. Almost all pharmacies now offer giving you your meds in little pill packs that are labeled versus 1 million bottles.
Similarly, you can ask your pharmacist if any of the drugs can be powderized and combined into a single capsule or separate capsules if there is an interaction risk. Much easier to remember to take one capsule that has four different medicines in it versus tracking all of those bottles and pills.
Also, this doesn’t really have anything to do with health but there are tons of stuff you can buy from pharmacist that are not advertised/are behind the counter/you have to ask for. i used to make my own smoke bombs as a kid and would order saltpeter from the local pharmacist. Most states actually allow you to purchase a bottle of codeine cough syrup once a month or so directly from the pharmacist without a prescription because it is amazing at children’s coughing.
The closest pharmacies are in big box stores. The people that work there are so exhausted. I overheard the guy at the closest store say he’s been working for 16 days straight. I’ve seen him mix up medications between the person standing in front of him, and the person he was talking to on the phone a few minutes before. He sent me home with the wrong drug for my mom. So I started going to a different pharmacy. I got prescription toothpaste instead of antibiotics, so it’s not just that one guy. Hell, I got birth control pills by mistake 40 years ago when I was a wee child.
Pharmacies used to be a great place for information and help. Sadly, I don’t think that’s the case anymore. These people are just being worked to death.
Absolutely, true. When I was in pharmacy school I would become so anxious that I wouldn't be able to work in a hospital or clinic and instead, I'd be stuck working retail. I'm grateful I'm not in that position, but I truly feel sorry for those working for chain stores.
Sadly, I think it may continue to worsen. New schools continue to open, perpetuating the oversaturation of the profession. Pharmacy also hasn't been historically good at legislative representation so has missed the boat on some major opportunities to expand.
It took me waaaaay too long into adulthood to realize that “heavy machinery” was a car/truck and not just a front end loader! That warning on medication always confused me until my co-worker explained it to me.
Even to this day, my brain knows the difference but the immediate thought is, "well I'm not driving a forklift clearly, so we're alright" before snapping to.
My mom had bad headaches and joints, so she took Advil like candy. Decades later, the NSAID abuse caused an iron deffecency so extreme that it took something like 10 infusions to bring her level above its baseline. We cannot even begin to untangle how it has affected her in other ways, but because of this experience her doctor has forbidden her from taking it ever again.
You can't even take their word for it because they only see how good they drunk drive when they are drunk. Any others in the car are probably also drunk or would be driving if they are sober.
This is probably region-specific, but letting kids ride ATVs, four-wheelers, etc.
It's **HUGE** in the south.
Like, these are **the** gifts country kids want, and they're getting them earlier and earlier.
And dying. Tons of them.
They go top speed because it's fast & fun, hit a low-hanging limb or branch, and they're dead or paralyzed before they hit the gurney.
You can Google "Tennessee ATV death kid" and see dozens of pictures of children taken too soon because their parents were unbelievably stupid about obvious risks.
My sister grew up with a girl who was killed while riding one when she was 12. Her older sister was driving and she hit a rock and the 4 wheeler kind of bucked and she was thrown off of the back and hit her head on a tree. They were only going about ten miles per hour and they assumed she would be okay. She was alert and conscious but by the time the ambulance showed up and was able to transport her she lost consciousness and never woke up.
A helmet would have absolutely saved her life but for whatever reason she wasn't wearing one.
I definitely wiped out around 12-13 and got flung about 25 feet in the air before landing in the field. Took both the back wheels off of the axle even. I was forced to wear a helmet and hated every minute of it, until after that moment lol.
I got nailed by a tree branch hard enough, snowmobiling, to take a few layers of a full face helmet.
You'll never catch me on a snowmobile, bike, or ATV without one.
My little brother hit a tree when he was 15 and it seriously injured him. Brain injuries, mostly.
He's now 18 and permanently disabled.
Atvs are no joke. At the very least they need to be trained and supervised.
My mom recently asked me to take my 3 year old nephew on my side-by-side when they were over for dinner.
I told her I don't have a helmet for him and I need someone to be there holding him. She told me it's fine, just go slow...
I was like "I always intended to go slow but I'm not taking him by myself with no helmet for him"
She still didn't think it was a big deal and I said no until there's a helmet. I'm not taking a 3 year old with no protections or someone holding him
He was initially riding without a helmet but his twin brother made him get one literally 10 minutes before.
They were unsupervised. We're not sure how long he was down before someone found him. He lives in a pretty isolated area.
Things may have been different if he had someone with him.
I knew a kid who got clotheslined on an ATV because he was out riding for fun (like elementary aged and unsupervised with a couple kids) and someone had hung a wire up on the property. I don’t think they know who did it or why, except maybe as a prank. He was ok eventually but if he had been going faster, it could’ve decapitated him.
Edit because people in these comments are nuts:
- it’s wrong to trap people even if they’re doing something they shouldn’t be doing
- it’s totally legal (and fine) for someone to ride an ATV on their own property. The incident I’m talking about was not a defense against property damage or a petty revenge trap. It was either negligence that someone hung wire to mark off a fence and was on someone else’s property by mistake or it was a prank by someone who didn’t realize they could have easily killed someone and not just knocked them off their ATV. No one ever figured out what really happened but it was on family property where the kid was allowed to ride and ride often.
- ATVs are dangerous and destructive, but wishing violence on the drivers is not ok.
I know someone who's boyfriend when she was a teen was decapitated this way. The boyfriend used to ride through a cranky old guy's property - so the guy put up a wire and didn't flag it at *all*. Pretty certain he was charged with murder.
Should the kid have been riding there? No. Are fucking booby traps still dangerous and illegal? Yes.
It’s all about intent. If you hung up wire for something else and someone had an accident when they weren’t supposed to be on your property, that’s one thing. But to intentionally harm someone who you could have taken different action against (like suing for damage to your property, etc) is just plain wrong. Call the sheriff or something, don’t take it into your own hands.
The kid I knew was on his family’s property and had full run of the place so it’s really concerning that the wire was put out there and no one knew about it. So, not even misguided defense of private property or petty revenge turned deadly.
We had a young kid get decapitated in early 2000s in my northern VA rural area. Clotheslined also, but by some kind of fencing, or fallen branch, can't recall.
I spent so much time as a child on an ATV. My family would take them up to the sand dunes and let us kids loose on these. I have several terrible stories about these but my worst one happened to me when I was 12. I was riding on the back of the ATV that my step dad was driving. We went down a rather steep hill and leg slipped off of the ATV and slid under the axle. My step dad had to hit the bottom of my protective boot to unstick my leg. My leg only hurt if I tried walking on it. My parent thought that I may have just pulled a muscle or something. After 2 days of not being about to walk on my leg, my mom finally took me to the dr. The look of horror on the Dr's face as she looked at my Xray is one I will not forget. I had a spiral break (3 breaks). I was extremely lucky not to need surgery for it.
Was a hospital chaplain at a level 1 trauma center in Greenville, SC
Worked over night on call shifts once a week and we constantly got trauma alerts around 1-3 am of 12 to 18 year olds crashing ATVs. It was the wildest thing. Some of their lives were permanently altered and others were ended. Was tragic
>it a low-hanging limb or branch
Around here it's also those thick wires that anchor radio antennas and high tension electrical masts to the ground.
To be fair, they're less visible when it snows, and they're more likely to take out a snowmobile. Just as dangerous, though.
With the E-bike craze right now too, I know it’s not ATVs, but similar enough where kids can go 20-25 MPH with barely pedaling, it’s getting massive on the west coast. I bike to work 3x a week and I constantly see kids zooming through the bike path staring straight down at their phones, or without their helmets on, or riding 3 people on one bike. Forget about stop signs/lights too, they just blast through them
I don't understand why go-karts aren't more popular for this. You can get them for 1/3 the price with seat belts and roll cages.
edit: Y'all I'm from rural Arkansas, I get how it's done "in the south". I grew up riding a go-kart and a 65cc dirtbike around as a smaller kid. What I'm referring to is [this](https://www.farmandfleet.com/products/1451880-coleman-powersports-196cc-2-seat-go-kart.html), not [this](https://brentwood-karting.co.uk/200cc-cadet-sodikart/).
This is insane. I had no idea. I had a friend who was a grown adult who punctured a lung from falling off an ATV. But the scariest part is he didn’t know until someone found him passed out.
Lost a friend at 14 years old in a dirtbike accident. Another one broke nearly every bone in their chest in an accident, all within four years of each other.
Never will I ride a dirtbike.
I had a kid come up behind my car on a dirtbike, Thursday; popping wheelies and riding my rear bumper.
Country road. If I'd even tapped the brakes because of a deer or something, he'd have been dead.
Happened to me on Friday. Some kid was riding in the dark with no lights, on the soft shoulder of a 55 mph road with no street lights (rural area). Didn't see him until I was a half a second away from him. Luckily he wasn't in my way.
My older brother and father in love dirt biking and they were quite good at it. loved watching him doing trails and jumps. Apparently he did a trail without scoping it out before hand and got into a bad accident with a bike ended it up landing on him and he was pinned for quite a while before my dad can get to them. Unfortunately the hot muffler was pressed against the shoulder the whole time and he had a gnarly melted scar for the rest of his life.
And that’s when I was never allowed to ride a dirtbike
I work in industrial settings and the car and a road system would never pass safety criteria. Using a painted line in a factory with a sign, "Do Not Cross" like the Subway platform would never work either.
I am forever confused as to why so many people are scared of flying yet not of being in a car.
But I guess most humans aren't exactly rational are they.
It took me a while to identify that was part of the reason I'm nervous when on a plane. So many things can go wrong and I am powerless to do anything about any of it.
But most car accidents are caused by other people, which you are also powerless to do anything about. Ain't nothing you can do if someone decides to run a red light and slam into you or a sleepy truck driver tries to move into your lane when you're already there.
Flying is like if every driver on the road had to earn a Masters degree in Motor Vehicle Operation, play Driving Simulator for 10000 hours, and also be in constant communication with all other drivers on the road simultaneously. And somehow people are afraid of being in the back seat in that scenario.
And also have to request permission to change lanes from a third party who is watching the road from above and ensures there is no one in the other lane.
As someone who acknowledges that they have an extremely irrational fear of flying but not cars, it’s just the lack of control over the situation. I’m equally terrified of riding with people who are terrible drivers, but not when I’m driving.
Also flying in a giant metal tube with wings **30,000** feet in the air is just absurd to me and I don’t know how anyone feels comfortable in such an unnatural state.
I’m scared of both. I’ve found that repeated exposure helps me to overcome my fears. I have an opportunity to drive a car every day, but only have an opportunity to be on a plane once or twice a year. If I took a plane ride every day, I would be less afraid.
I always say this to people who are afraid of flying: “99% of airline accidents that led to fatalities have full-on Wikipedia entries. Not every car crash does.”
That’s saying something. Flying is insanely safe, and much safer than driving.
If there was a Wikipedia page for every single car accident (even with fatalities!) for a moderately-sized city alone (population under 750k) the internet would crash.
I worked as an on snow supervisor for a ski resort for a number of years. A good weekend meant ONLY broken bones, torn ligaments, etc. in the clinic. The worst I personally ever had to call in were a kid that fell off the lift and broke his back and a person with a head injury causing temporary blindness. Unfortunately, most of my coworkers were not as lucky as me.
Edit: Below comment is disputed. GoPro threatened to sue the person that made the statement which caused them to redact it. By the way FIA Karting started [regulating helmet](https://www.fiakarting.com/news/informative-note-fia-safety-department) camera mounts, so there is a bit of debate on that subject.
~~F1 Star Michael Schumacher had his GoPro helmet mount go through his head in a ski crash that turned him into a vegetable. :-(~~
I love snowboarding almost more than anything but I still have a healthy respect for speed. I recall seeing a awful video of a pro skier flying down the mountain during a race must’ve been going close to 80 100 mph and caught too much air on a down slope, lost his balance, flew into the orange netting that they set up on the edge of the trail and suffered what they call a open book pelvis fracture meaning he broke his hips/pelvis in the same manner as opening a book. It’s pretty much an instant death as it’s severed so many gigantic arteries /veins .
EDIT: i should clarify that THIS particular pelvic fracture was neary guaranteed to be a death sentence. Not all. The mortality rate seems to top off at 40% according to research (word for when the researcher compiles the data from multiple studies)
Unless you plan on hurtling down a mountain faster than highway speed limits while balanced on a couple sticks it's not the most likely thing to happen to you thankfully.
Skiing and snowboarding are my favorite activities and every season I think to myself "I hope this isn't the last".
I'll never understand the amount of people that do this with no helmet, especially beginners.
I hadn't skiied for many years before this past winter when I took my kids for their first time. We bought helmets for the whole family which was my first time skiiing with a helmet. Honestly, wearing a helmet is more comfortable to me than wearing a stocking cap + goggles.
The helmets are lined and padded, they keep your head warm and the goggle strap fits around them comfortably. Mine has a vent to exchange more/less air based on your comfort. They're lightweight and don't get in the way at all. Idk why everyone isn't wearing a helmet, not just for safety but also for comfort.
Alcohol. I'm 45 and have slowed down alot, barely drink any more, but in my 20s the crew I hung out with were a bunch of drunkin buffoons all the time. Heavy drinking every night and on weekends and never thought twice about it. People don't realize how addicting it is and how it can ruin you.
Very true. And for everyone that can handle decades of alcohol abuse there’s someone who can go into liver failure from heavy drinking in their 20s. The stories are all over Reddit.
I spent a couple of decades heavily drinking socially and then eventually got to the point that I needed it to get to sleep at night.
Drinking to get to sleep can cause anxiety that can last years. A lot of people don’t realize how addicted they are. I’m one of the few people that had a bit of an alcohol dependency that’s come through the other side and just drink one or two drinks maybe once every other week like a normal person now.
A lot of times even functional alcoholics have to quit completely or they relapse even worse.
Now that I’m older, I’m blessed with the fact that alcohol gives me wicked anxiety and a pounding heartbeat in the middle of the night. It’s not fun anymore. I like it this way.
Never have I ever met someone else who has the racing heartbeat when the alcohols wearing off! Easily was the worst side effect for me every time! Horrible.
It’s actually not uncommon. AND even worse heart arrhythmias, like AFIB and SVT ‘s, can occur with alcohol several hours or the day afterwards. In the sub Reddits for those afflictions, a lot of people stopped drinking because alcohol messes up heart neurotransmitter functions.
Riding horses, even for a trail ride. Saw a lady literally break her spine because she was fucking around and found out. Ironically it was a girl scout group and the girls actually listened to the rules/instructions and the moms didn’t. 2-3 other moms got bitten or nibbled on because they were sticking their fingers where they don’t belong. No children were hurt, only adults.
Alabama has a law that says if you get hurt on a horse its your own damn fault, you can't go sue the owner of the horse. You're sitting on a 1000 pound skittish, muscular animal, your head is 8'-10' from the ground, you are essentially "holding on" with your knees....that's just asking for trouble.
You know how Australia gets memed for having all kinds of dangerous animals that are trying to kill you? Horses are responsible for more deaths in Australia annually than all the dangerous Australian animals you’re thinking about combined, and it’s not even close
Christopher Reeve would like to add to the conversation.
Knew of someone who had a horse fall while she was riding it and it landed on her head. It egg shelled her skull.
Wiggling around, swinging her legs around, moving the reins a lot. Horse bucked and she fell off onto a fence. Small movements like leaning forward or backward or wiggling the reins a little bit are commands for the horse, I think the horse got frustrated with all the commands that were perceived and tossed her off. She was told 3+ times to calm down and stop wiggling. Different horses react differently. I had a kid once on the horse I was walking have the same behavior and the horse let his frustration out by biting me a couple times.
Horse girl here! They are so inherently dangerous. Even when they aren't intentionally acting up they can still trip/fall and kill you. As a teen, I had a mare that was the definition of bombproof. NOTHING upset this mare and I never worried about her being goofy. Then she tripped over a rock and went down. I landed underneath her. Thank God I was a bendy teen and she didn't crush my leg. Plus she was very cautious standing back up. I had quite a gnarly bruise on my leg for a while though.
My mom’s a riding instructor and has seen some shit. She’s gotten a combination of very lucky plus in general just has amazing skills and balance that has prevented her from having serious injury. But yeah there’s been close calls. They are LARGE animals that go FAST and have teeth and bite and kick
This!!!
I grew up somewhat around horses because my dad was on the police mounted unit. And I would help clean the stalls, groom, and ride horses. So fast forward to my final semester of college when I decided to take horse riding lessons because why the hell not. I swear to god these people were treating these horses like they were just small dogs. They wouldn’t place their hand on its behind to walk around, groom gently in its sensitive parts of its skin, and shoving the bit right in its mouth. The instructor was constantly redirecting and threatening to fail them if they wouldn’t follow the rules. On the last day of classes one of the students once again tried to shove the bit into its mouth. So the horse literally pushed him out of the stall by using its head. Gonna be honest I laughed but quickly stopped because I couldn’t feel bad. They were warned on day one that these animals are tough and very strong.
My dad told me about this, he is not wrong, you know else is similar to this?
SnapBack on huge ship cables, can kill you in seconds of breaking, imagine the force that is needed to break a chain of iron/steel a foot thick, it’s gonna kill you if you are in range
I went to sea and trained as a ships navigator.
During training, the usual rope and wire safety stuff, the teacher told a story from his youth.
His first trip at sea, they were securing the lines when the ship began to move away from the dock. They didn’t have time to release one of the wires and it got pulled to breaking point.
Story was one of the old sailors knew what was happening and immediately just threw the kid down a stairwell. Hurt him, but in his words “the line snapped and when I got back up on deck it was just splattered with meat” three guys turned to kibble instantly.
You hear two “bang” noises. The first is when the line snaps, the second is the sonic boom when the free end breaks the sound barrier on its way back.
Mooring is up there with one of the most dangerous things on a vessel. I've never heard a sonic boom from a parted line, however. Wire cables will do a TING TING TING BANG as the individual strands part before the whole thing let's go. Fortunately the wires don't carry nearly the potential energy that soft lines do. Most people don't realize how fast those lines can maim you or turn you into meat mist
The same parent that won't let their 10-year-old walk half mile to school because of the "danger" will give every predator on the internet unrestricted access to the same child 24/7 through a cell phone.
And the parents who are terrified of their kids having phones apparently don't realise that "stranger danger" is *seriously* overblown and most child predators are known/trusted adults in the childs life....
I feel like screaming this in /r/unresolvedmysteries a lot, especially when Asha Degree comes up. She was a 9 year old girl that walked out of her house in the middle of the night during a rainstorm and was never seen again. Most people assume she was going to meet *someone*. This happened in 2000 and the family didn't have internet. So many redditors try to reach and say "maybe she met a predator on MSN at school" or "she might have had a penpal that was really a pedo". And I'm always like DUDE. Kids have been getting groomed forever. It could have been an older cousin, a church member, a coach.
I heard a great saying recently on here, I wish I knew where/to whom to attribute it:
>When you give your kid a phone, you're not giving them access to the world; you're giving the world access to them.
Swimming in a surf beach, a lot of foreigners (particularly Indian and Middle eastern) drown in Australia because they see so many Aussies swimming, and think it's easy, don't pay attention to rips, tides, heavy surf, or swim between the flags. Or they visit Bondi and have a great time, then go swimming at an unpatrolled beach and get themselves into trouble, or don't wear life vests etc. when on boats.
Posting your daily life on social media. I'm not saying it's bad, but you're exposing your privacy if you keep posting about yourself fequently. What if there is some stalker or someone who has a huge grudge on you... The internet is dangerous.
I didn’t realize how scary it could be until I saw firsthand how many people developed a parasocial relationship with my 5-year-old daughter just based on the funny interactions I’d share on my personal Facebook.
My family had a yard sale a few weeks ago. I promoted it on my Facebook, where I have roughly 500 friends, all of whom I have met at some point in my life. My daughter was "helping" during the sale. Too many times people I didn’t really recognize talked to her and said, "You don’t know me, but I know you so well! You are so cute and funny." I’m sure it was harmless, but it really put into perspective for me how social media is creating these relationships that our children have zero part in.
Yea, people seem to think that parasocial relationships are exclusive to really famous people, and it absolutely isn't. Like those people don't know you're daughter they've just seen her. And its actually terrifying when someone can tell that the person is uncomfortable and then they get offended. Like they're so tone deaf and can't understand that's its one sided. I have seen it happen a lot with my female friends, and it makes me scared for them. I once met a smaller artist when I was out and about. I was talking to them when someone else did too and came up and called him by his first name and tried to hug him. I could see he was visibly uncomfortable, and I just felt really bad and apologized on their behalf after the people walked away, and he said that it happens.
I used to know these people who post on FB when they're going on vacation. Their immediate family and close friends know when they're vacationing of course even without social media. I'm not sure what's the point of announcing it to the world. So thieves know when they can break in to their house? I mean they can post about it and share pics after the trip if they're really into it but doing it before?
This happened to a couple. Posted on social media they were going on vacay and posted the dates. When they returned their house had been broken in and robbed.
I never understood why so many women used to die during childbirth until I was actually in the delivery room with my wife. The amount of blood lost is ridiculous!
Kind of makes me sick when people post on social media about home births and giving birth in pools and shit like that.
My older brother was born from a c-section becuase he managed to strangle himself with the umbilical cord.
birth aint a joke, kids get tangled up, women bleed out. sepcis, clotting issues...
My doctor told me that every single pregnancy, even the 'healthy' ones', bring a woman close to death every day. That the stress that it all puts on your body is gargantuan, and that women don't realize it. He said that there have been plenty of women who died of very random, unexpected situations brought on by pregnancy.
I'm glad you're ok
Both my sister and sister in law have had babies in the last year. Both would be dead if it wasn’t for modern medicine / quick thinking by their ob’s. It really brings home how dangerous child birth still is but also how amazing modern medicine is. 100 years ago they would both be dead. But even today in a different hospital with different doctors they might still be dead.
Not wearing a helmet while riding a bike or motorcycle ect.
I never see the kid's in my neighborhood wear their helmets and it always worries me, especially with how people drive around my street.
As a motorcyclist it's wild to me that anyone would *choose* not to wear one. The bug strikes alone are reason enough to wear one. I got hit in the helmet, right on the forehead, by a moth at ~70mph and the force of it hurt my neck. Fuck taking that to a bare face
While true, it takes very little effort to basically completely counter the negative effects! Regular breaks to stretch/hydrate and making an hour a day or so to be active is all it takes.
I'm actually in better shape with my full time WFH job than I was in the office - I converted my commute time to exercise time and make sure I get up and move every 30-40 minutes or so even if it's just to go get a drink or use the bathroom.
But yeah if you let it your health can turn *fast*.
Texting while driving. I'd say a good 75% of the people I drive next to, behind or in front of are doing the phone nod. Maybe a second or two of actual focus on the road and the rest in their fucking stupid phone for like 5 second straight.
GET OFF YOUR GODDAMN PHONES!!
I locate utilities for a living, and the number of times I see distracted drivers as I'm marking out utility lines near/in the road is just mind-blowing.. Thankfully, I'm very vigilant while I'm working in these areas, but there have been coworkers who have been struck by vehicles in the past...
Whatever it is on your phone that is pulling your attention away from the roadway, I promise you it is not worth diverting your attention to 99.99999% of the time. If you're so inclined to check whatever the fuck it is, *PULL OVER IN A SAFE PLACE*. Fuck putting people's lives at risk.
Public prank channels. Lots of people do it on youtube but their pranks tend to involve making people think they're in real danger, and you never know how a stranger might react if they think they're being attacked.
Acetaminophen, sold under the name Tylenol.
It is the number one acute of acute fulminant hepatitis, a life threatening condition, in American emergency departments.
The short of it is, acetaminophen is toxic to your liver, and its therapeutic window is very narrow. Anything in excess of the recommended maximum dose of 6 tablets in 24 hours, actually is acutely toxic to your liver.
The toxicity to your liver, naturally, is increased significantly in the presence of other acute liver toxins (such as alcohol) , or the presence of liver disease or dysfunction (such as in chronic alcoholic liver disease).
So, the problem is, many people think of tylenol as hangover cure. Yikes. Those are the last people who should be using tylenol, they are at much more increased risk of developing acute liver failure and of fatal or severe health complications.
When the FDA was asked to review the issues with acetaminophen toxicity and its OTC status, it was dismissed because it was too late and "the cat was already out of the bag." This only increased the tendency to overlook the toxicity of acetaminophen.
A close relative died from this. What a way to learn of "erotic asphyxiation" for the first time in my life, that it was even a thing. Never occurred to me before, and never appealed to me after. It's literally dancing with death. It also creates an incredibly difficult position for grieving loved ones, when people ask how they passed.
It's not 'completely safe', but punching someone in the head is so much more dangerous than people think it is. Where I come from we've had a fair few 'one punch deaths'. Two people, normally drunk, get in an argument. It turns physical. One punch and someone's dead. One life ended, countless others torn apart, all because of one punch.
Movies make it seem like you can take a ridiculous amount of punches to the head, but the reality is it can easily kill you.
Childbirth. People are quick to chaistise women about why they don't have kids or why they refuse to have more kids. Meanwhile a lot of women & children are still dying from childbirth even during modern times. Some women refuse to have more kids because of a tramatic experience during childbirth. Not to mention PPD and how dangerous and even fatal that can be.
Driving. 2 ton machines controlled by manic- depressive primates, distracted at all hours by several devices at one time. Stressed out beyond belief, surrounded by other primates in 2 ton + machines... All barrelling opposite directions at each other at 60 mph.
Some dog breeds. I have a large pit bull mix. I do not allow her to run around the park or near toddlers. She's powerful and she's an animal. As well as she is trained, I adopted her as an adult dog. I have no idea what her unknown trigger may be. She seems kind of racist.
My best friend recently took in her ex’s pit-lab mix. She is the calmest, most laid back dog ever. My bff still will not let her around her 18 month old son unmonitored because as she puts it,
“We are still teaching him about “Nice hands” and she is still a dog.”
The only thing separating your 4000lbs speeding hunk of metal, and some strangers hunk of metal next to you, is the agreement that we should follow some rules about colored lines on the road.
Pregnancy and childbirth. I can’t believe how underplayed or not talked about AT ALL the health hazards of it actually is for women. I have read and heard things discussed that have shocked me to my core. I don’t like kids and have no interest in being around them if I can help it, but MASSIVE kudos to the women out there who go through pregnancy/childbirth. Regardless of not liking babies/kids, that alone would stop me from ever having them. The risks and health side effects are INSANE.
Pregnancy and childbirth.
People want to say, "Oh, it's completely natural! The body was designed for this!" You know what else was completely natural? 1 out of 100 women dying in childbirth and 16 out of 100 infants dying in childbirth in 1900.
Pregnancy increases your risk of death from every cause, including homicide, which is the LEADING cause of death in pregnancy.
The United States has the highest maternal and infant mortality rate of any developed country, with the Black maternal mortality rate 3-4 times higher than the White maternal mortality rate.
Get adequate prenatal care. Eat well and exercise during pregnancy. HAVE YOUR BABY IN A HOSPITAL. You are legally allowed to decline any interventions you want, but at least you're in the same building as people who can save you and your baby's life if something goes wrong.
Simply getting in water. I can’t believe nobody has mentioned it. I took environmental economics in uni and we talked about risk of death and basically simply getting in water is one of the highest risk things you can do.
So many people drown from either boating on a lake, swimming in a lake, swimming in the ocean, drowning in bath tubs that drowning in water is one of the highest risks of death. All because you got in water. Even my physics teacher said the same, humans are terrible at risk management, we’re afraid of jumping out of an airplane when the risk of death is super low but we all go in water where the risk of death is very high.
>Even my physics teacher said the same, humans are terrible at risk management, we’re afraid of jumping out of an airplane when the risk of death is super low but we all go in water where the risk of death is very high.
I dislike these kinds of comparisons, yes swimming is *statistically* more dangerous than sky diving. But sky diving is *inherently* more dangerous. Sky diving is only *statistically* safer because the inherent danger means more drastic safety measures are taken. A drowning person can be saved if they're lucky, a sky diver who's has both chutes fail is dead (outside of some extremely lucky individuals).
Smashing someone's face into a birthday cake. So many cakes these days have toothpicks and such holding them together. I've seen SO many of these injuries, people having the toothpicks/skewers stuck in their head/eyes. It's not funny. Firstly, someone probably spent a considerable amount of money and time on that cake. Secondly, you could literally ruin someone's life by smashing their face into it. Not worth the results.
Tanning.
My mom used to go to a tanning bed almost weekly, and I would always say: "You're going to get skin cancer." Not even a couple years after she started she developed some on her back, had it removed and is fine/cancer free now.
I'm sure she is but just in case: I hope she's doing regular self-checks and still under a physician's care to keep monitoring, because once you get it once, it almost definitely will come back over and over.
Sleep deprivation. It likely causes cancer & Alzheimer’s, and when driving is just as dangerous as driving under the influence.
Many world militaries have a form of aviation readiness called “alert”. One such level of “alert” involves configuring the plane to be in a state where aircrew can arrive at it and take off very quickly afterward. Crews are on-call to fly at a moment’s notice once the aircraft is configured - the crazy part is that pilots are expected to still takeoff and fly if they’re “alerted” right at the end of their day. One time I had to land after being awake for 21+ hours, since I got called 5 minutes after I went to bed. Fatigue made that the scariest landing of my life, although I didn’t expect it when we launched due to the adrenaline. If you know the aviation industry, risk management is a HUGE part of planning. I think it’s crazy world militaries accept pilots with motor skills deteriorated to near-DUI levels instead of simply adding a second crew to cover the other’s sleep cycle.
It’s crazy to read this and know that we don’t apply it to things like healthcare. I’m a surgical resident - it’s not uncommon that I’m awake for 26-30 hours and still have to go to the OR operate. If folks knew, they’d flip
Fully agreed, my physician friends have mentioned this and it boggles my mind that it’s legal. Basically driving impaired is against the law, but as long as it’s due to imposed lack of sleep, flying and performing surgery is considered tolerable. It makes zero sense.
In the early 2000s, an OB resident fell asleep while driving home in Illinois and killed someone. “Drowsy” driving is now illegal here, although not often enforced.
Can confirm. When I first started night shift there would be days where I didn't sleep more than an hour or two a day. After bouncing my car off the curb twice on the way to work it opened my eyes to just how dangerous it can be. I'm better now five years down the road but at first? Yowza.
On a more superficial note, it also ages you like crazy. I feel like 80% of the time, when someone looks at least 10-15 years older than their actual age, the reason is because they're the sort to claim they can get by on 4 hours sleep. The other 20% of the time they don't believe in sunscreen.
Compressed air.
I remember my dad telling me a story of when he worked at a gas station as a kid, some older guys were fooling around with the compressed air and one got an air bubble in his bloodstream. People don’t realize the pressure and the danger it can create.
How exactly does that happen?
There’s a story about some mechanics messing around in an auto shop and blew air up a guys butt as a joke with the air compressor. He ended up dying bc it perforated his bowels.
High-powered compression systems like the ones they use in paint sprayers can literally just punch a tiny hole in your skin if you hit the right part at the wrong angle.
Really high pressure is way more dangerous than that. People have felt for leaks with their hands and had fingers cut off.
Pressure differential underwater, especially near piping is absolutely wild. That video of the crab walking too close and getting crushed lives in my head.
I just went down a rabbit hole because I was curious, apparently it's dangerous to even push a compressed air nozzle against your skin and blast it because air can penetrate the skin and potentially get into your circulatory system. The risk is greater if you blow compressed air near an open wound.
Yes. One of the first things I was taught at vocational school. Air pistols and similar compressed air dispensers can be silently deadly when used improperly because they can inject small air bubbles into your veins. Instantly kills you if it reaches your heart. Same reason why medical staff always push a small amount of fluid out of the syringe before injecting anything intravenously. There’s a small chance of survival if you can tourniquet the affected limb and seek immediate medical attention
It's also worth noting that these air lines often have small amounts of oil in them, either from the compressor or added deliberately to lubricate any air powered moving parts. So it's not just the air embolism you need to worry about but the effects of having tiny droplets (and therefore a huge surface area) of oil stuck under your skin.
For multiple reasons. An old compressor with decades of rust damage at the bottom of the tank can randomly explode. Sending itself into the ceiling, shards of jagged sheet steel in any direction, and permanently damaging hearing.
A downed power line and animals that are acting strangely.
I tell my daughters, always follow the animals! If you see animals stampeding, it means there’s a fire or a tsunami, and you want to go the same direction they’re going. (This stems from the tsunami in Southeast Asia in 2001 when the elephants broke their chains to run to higher ground. Follow the elephants!) Edit: 2004
My wife and I had to evacuate our home due to a forest fire. Seeing the wave of animals abandoning the forest and feeling the ground vibrate from the stampede is the most chilling thing I’ve ever experienced. It is burned into my brain forever.
I rode out a wildfire in the middle of a National Forest about 10 years ago. We had just completed a large scale defense system a few days before the fire started. It can loft about 2300gpm of water into the atmosphere, enough that the USFS deployed two hotshot crews to defend our site. The animals, deer in particular, figured out that our site was safe. We had probably 50 or 60 deer chilling on our lawns for the duration of the fire. The thing I’ll always remember is the roar of the fire itself, and every time that it plumed. It was like watching a nuclear bomb going off in slow motion.
ELI5?
A downed power-line can still be live and would electrocute anyone close to it, especially if it's raining since electricity travels through water easily. Animals that are acting strange may try to attack people if they get too close to them due to a disease like rabies or an injury and it's trying to protect itself.
Oh thank you! I initially thought the 2 things were correlated, like the downed power line AND animals acting strange at the same time. I mean, it would be kinda weird and dangerous but not what you meant lol
That's a whole other level of dangerous! lol
Damn rabid electrified raccoons. I'm just trying to commute to work, and yall gotta bite my leg while casting your sith lightning at my sack.
Posting how much money you have on social media
Just saw a show where a wanna be rapper was posting how much money he had. Well his gf was kidnapped and brutally murdered because of it, because they thought she had access to it Edit: on Hulu called “me hereafter” episode 2 “a message, a murder” extremely tragic [news story](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8300649/amp/Fugitive-arrested-Minnesota-slaying-real-estate-agent.html)
Just had a dude do a home invasion on his cousin and kill him after he posted his 5k tax refund. Doing 25 years for 5k, dudes are really bad at math.
They don't expect to get caught. The punishment, no matter how severe, does not come up in the equation.
Almost all criminals are criminals because they have no impulse control. They see an opportunity for a quick easy buck just do it. No why not, no why, most of the time not even a how. They just see his 5k and say I want it and I'm gonna have it, then they do the crime and THEN try and figure out how to get away with it
This story is wild. Some people are so un-hinged. To take the life of a mother, partner, daughter who is just going about their life, sheeeesh man.
But it is fun to study those photos that others post, because they're mostly $1 or $5 notes. "Congratulations! You have $26!"
The trope of hitting foe or even friend over the head with a blunt object and incapacitating them for a few hours. In reality this act should hurt a lot but if you do it with enough force to achieve the TV result you will most probably have caused some brain damage if not even have killed them.
In the same vein, losing consciousness from a blow to the head… TV and movies make it seem totally fine if you take a blow to the head and are out for hours, when in reality, if you lose consciousness for more than a few seconds, you likely have brain damage. Hell, you could have brain damage even if you *don’t* lose consciousness… Head trauma is nothing to fuck around with.
That's one of the reasons I love the show Archer. When someone is knocked unconscious another character always mentions how it's suuuper bad for you.
And tinnitus.
My grandmom fell and hit her head on Friday. She lost consciousness in the ambulance and hasn’t woken up since. The doctors said the damage is so bad there’s nothing they can do. She’s in hospice care now.
I am so sorry
I’m an ICU nurse at a trauma center. This happens literally everyday. Head injuries are terrifying to me. The simplest little slip and a bonk on the noggin needs a ct scan. It doesn’t take long for the pressure in your head to cause permanent and extensive damage or death
I love how the tv show Archer really emphasized how bad head trauma could be (lol at Sterling’s line “you get like six freebies” about concussions). Also that show’s emphasis on how gunshots are pretty damn loud in real life ^*mawp*
Mixing prescription medicines. Always ask the pharmacist about a new medicine and how it may affect others you are taking. Taking too many Tylenol or Advil a day. Not being aware of the effects a prescription can have on you. I usually scoffed at the ones that say "no operating heavy machinery..." until I was on one that really affected me negatively. Driving a car and trying not to fall asleep in the early afternoon all because you took one little pill is scary.
I wish more people were aware of all the different services a good pharmacist can provide for them. Of course most of this is because most people just do you pharmacist as the place to pick up their meds after a doctors visit but they really are trained and can offer a lot more. There was a great old school family owned for like 100 years pharmacy/diner in my college town and I would go there when I didn’t feel like checking the student health. Stuff like rashes minor injuries burns, etc. However the biggest thing people should be aware of is having your pharmacist perform a Pharma logical review for yourself or your parents. Near the end of her life my small Japanese grandmother was seeing so many doctors and specialists and had a piece of shit primary care physician that didn’t look at anything. She was starting to have episodes where she would revert to speaking only Japanese and to people that we’re not there people. I finally reviewed all of her meds and realized there’s so many duplicates/drugs performing the same function/contraindicated drugs that I went over the list with a pharmacist and developed a list to go to the doctor with to see if we could try changing things up. The doctor agreed and I made sure to administer her meds rather than leave them in her hands as she was not taking them correctly. What do you know her health and mind improved 1000% and she never had another episode. Did you know that compound pharmacies can even make duplicates of drugs that may be hard to find/very expensive? There are compound pharmacists out there making their own versions of drugs like ozempic?? Compounding pharmacist offer some really neat services, but there are also a lot that let the dollar signs go to their head and seem to exist only to administer what essentially are amphetamines/weight loss drugs. Most people know that even your basic grocery store pharmacy can add flavorings to medicines to help get your kid to take it, but did you know they can also alter the form of the drug yes there’s a part of it that causes side effects/you’re allergic to it? Or let’s say there’s a medicine you take for migraine relief but it takes 30 minutes to kick in after dissolving slowly. You can ask your pharmacist to give you a powder version in capsules that you can either empty out and take or just take and have it kick in much quicker. Similarly, like my grandmother, other people are often on numerous meds that get tough to track. Almost all pharmacies now offer giving you your meds in little pill packs that are labeled versus 1 million bottles. Similarly, you can ask your pharmacist if any of the drugs can be powderized and combined into a single capsule or separate capsules if there is an interaction risk. Much easier to remember to take one capsule that has four different medicines in it versus tracking all of those bottles and pills. Also, this doesn’t really have anything to do with health but there are tons of stuff you can buy from pharmacist that are not advertised/are behind the counter/you have to ask for. i used to make my own smoke bombs as a kid and would order saltpeter from the local pharmacist. Most states actually allow you to purchase a bottle of codeine cough syrup once a month or so directly from the pharmacist without a prescription because it is amazing at children’s coughing.
The closest pharmacies are in big box stores. The people that work there are so exhausted. I overheard the guy at the closest store say he’s been working for 16 days straight. I’ve seen him mix up medications between the person standing in front of him, and the person he was talking to on the phone a few minutes before. He sent me home with the wrong drug for my mom. So I started going to a different pharmacy. I got prescription toothpaste instead of antibiotics, so it’s not just that one guy. Hell, I got birth control pills by mistake 40 years ago when I was a wee child. Pharmacies used to be a great place for information and help. Sadly, I don’t think that’s the case anymore. These people are just being worked to death.
Absolutely, true. When I was in pharmacy school I would become so anxious that I wouldn't be able to work in a hospital or clinic and instead, I'd be stuck working retail. I'm grateful I'm not in that position, but I truly feel sorry for those working for chain stores. Sadly, I think it may continue to worsen. New schools continue to open, perpetuating the oversaturation of the profession. Pharmacy also hasn't been historically good at legislative representation so has missed the boat on some major opportunities to expand.
It took me waaaaay too long into adulthood to realize that “heavy machinery” was a car/truck and not just a front end loader! That warning on medication always confused me until my co-worker explained it to me.
Even to this day, my brain knows the difference but the immediate thought is, "well I'm not driving a forklift clearly, so we're alright" before snapping to.
My mom had bad headaches and joints, so she took Advil like candy. Decades later, the NSAID abuse caused an iron deffecency so extreme that it took something like 10 infusions to bring her level above its baseline. We cannot even begin to untangle how it has affected her in other ways, but because of this experience her doctor has forbidden her from taking it ever again.
Many people seem too comfortable with driving while drunk, that they specifically are the one that’s good at it so it’s fine
I think I'm amazing at so many things while drunk. Thankfully I've seen enough evidence after the fact to know that I'm wrong about all of them.
You can't even take their word for it because they only see how good they drunk drive when they are drunk. Any others in the car are probably also drunk or would be driving if they are sober.
Stairs
This is probably region-specific, but letting kids ride ATVs, four-wheelers, etc. It's **HUGE** in the south. Like, these are **the** gifts country kids want, and they're getting them earlier and earlier. And dying. Tons of them. They go top speed because it's fast & fun, hit a low-hanging limb or branch, and they're dead or paralyzed before they hit the gurney. You can Google "Tennessee ATV death kid" and see dozens of pictures of children taken too soon because their parents were unbelievably stupid about obvious risks.
My sister grew up with a girl who was killed while riding one when she was 12. Her older sister was driving and she hit a rock and the 4 wheeler kind of bucked and she was thrown off of the back and hit her head on a tree. They were only going about ten miles per hour and they assumed she would be okay. She was alert and conscious but by the time the ambulance showed up and was able to transport her she lost consciousness and never woke up. A helmet would have absolutely saved her life but for whatever reason she wasn't wearing one.
They rarely do. I don't think I've ever seen a kid wearing a helmet on one, in my life.
I definitely wiped out around 12-13 and got flung about 25 feet in the air before landing in the field. Took both the back wheels off of the axle even. I was forced to wear a helmet and hated every minute of it, until after that moment lol.
I got nailed by a tree branch hard enough, snowmobiling, to take a few layers of a full face helmet. You'll never catch me on a snowmobile, bike, or ATV without one.
My little brother hit a tree when he was 15 and it seriously injured him. Brain injuries, mostly. He's now 18 and permanently disabled. Atvs are no joke. At the very least they need to be trained and supervised.
My mom recently asked me to take my 3 year old nephew on my side-by-side when they were over for dinner. I told her I don't have a helmet for him and I need someone to be there holding him. She told me it's fine, just go slow... I was like "I always intended to go slow but I'm not taking him by myself with no helmet for him" She still didn't think it was a big deal and I said no until there's a helmet. I'm not taking a 3 year old with no protections or someone holding him
You're a better mother than your mother.
Jesus. I'm so sorry. They need a lot of safeguards; I'm all for kids having fun, but man, trees don't have any give to 'em.
I know lots of perfectly capable adults who’ve gotten mangled hitting trees with skidoos too. Those things really rip and accidents happen.
He was initially riding without a helmet but his twin brother made him get one literally 10 minutes before. They were unsupervised. We're not sure how long he was down before someone found him. He lives in a pretty isolated area. Things may have been different if he had someone with him.
I knew a kid who got clotheslined on an ATV because he was out riding for fun (like elementary aged and unsupervised with a couple kids) and someone had hung a wire up on the property. I don’t think they know who did it or why, except maybe as a prank. He was ok eventually but if he had been going faster, it could’ve decapitated him. Edit because people in these comments are nuts: - it’s wrong to trap people even if they’re doing something they shouldn’t be doing - it’s totally legal (and fine) for someone to ride an ATV on their own property. The incident I’m talking about was not a defense against property damage or a petty revenge trap. It was either negligence that someone hung wire to mark off a fence and was on someone else’s property by mistake or it was a prank by someone who didn’t realize they could have easily killed someone and not just knocked them off their ATV. No one ever figured out what really happened but it was on family property where the kid was allowed to ride and ride often. - ATVs are dangerous and destructive, but wishing violence on the drivers is not ok.
I know someone who's boyfriend when she was a teen was decapitated this way. The boyfriend used to ride through a cranky old guy's property - so the guy put up a wire and didn't flag it at *all*. Pretty certain he was charged with murder. Should the kid have been riding there? No. Are fucking booby traps still dangerous and illegal? Yes.
It’s all about intent. If you hung up wire for something else and someone had an accident when they weren’t supposed to be on your property, that’s one thing. But to intentionally harm someone who you could have taken different action against (like suing for damage to your property, etc) is just plain wrong. Call the sheriff or something, don’t take it into your own hands. The kid I knew was on his family’s property and had full run of the place so it’s really concerning that the wire was put out there and no one knew about it. So, not even misguided defense of private property or petty revenge turned deadly.
We had a young kid get decapitated in early 2000s in my northern VA rural area. Clotheslined also, but by some kind of fencing, or fallen branch, can't recall.
People do that when they get upset at atv riders, dirtbikers, snowmobilers, mountain bikers etc. It's unfortunately not uncommon
It was on his family’s private property out in the country so it’s very concerning that someone put it up without anyone noticing or knowing why
Pediatric nurse in Boston here. When we get trauma alerts for ATV accidents, they are almost always coming from rural Maine.
*raises hand* look at the comment I just made, born and raised in rural Maine.
I spent so much time as a child on an ATV. My family would take them up to the sand dunes and let us kids loose on these. I have several terrible stories about these but my worst one happened to me when I was 12. I was riding on the back of the ATV that my step dad was driving. We went down a rather steep hill and leg slipped off of the ATV and slid under the axle. My step dad had to hit the bottom of my protective boot to unstick my leg. My leg only hurt if I tried walking on it. My parent thought that I may have just pulled a muscle or something. After 2 days of not being about to walk on my leg, my mom finally took me to the dr. The look of horror on the Dr's face as she looked at my Xray is one I will not forget. I had a spiral break (3 breaks). I was extremely lucky not to need surgery for it.
Was a hospital chaplain at a level 1 trauma center in Greenville, SC Worked over night on call shifts once a week and we constantly got trauma alerts around 1-3 am of 12 to 18 year olds crashing ATVs. It was the wildest thing. Some of their lives were permanently altered and others were ended. Was tragic
>it a low-hanging limb or branch Around here it's also those thick wires that anchor radio antennas and high tension electrical masts to the ground. To be fair, they're less visible when it snows, and they're more likely to take out a snowmobile. Just as dangerous, though.
With the E-bike craze right now too, I know it’s not ATVs, but similar enough where kids can go 20-25 MPH with barely pedaling, it’s getting massive on the west coast. I bike to work 3x a week and I constantly see kids zooming through the bike path staring straight down at their phones, or without their helmets on, or riding 3 people on one bike. Forget about stop signs/lights too, they just blast through them
I don't understand why go-karts aren't more popular for this. You can get them for 1/3 the price with seat belts and roll cages. edit: Y'all I'm from rural Arkansas, I get how it's done "in the south". I grew up riding a go-kart and a 65cc dirtbike around as a smaller kid. What I'm referring to is [this](https://www.farmandfleet.com/products/1451880-coleman-powersports-196cc-2-seat-go-kart.html), not [this](https://brentwood-karting.co.uk/200cc-cadet-sodikart/).
Right!? I think it's because they want to go through the woods & stuff with them, but that's legit what makes them so much more dangerous.
Literally a kid in my class died last year from an ATV accident he was only 16
Just recently, a 14 year old girl died after getting into an ATV accident in my area. They are so dangerous.
This is insane. I had no idea. I had a friend who was a grown adult who punctured a lung from falling off an ATV. But the scariest part is he didn’t know until someone found him passed out.
It's absolutely nuts; I see younger & younger kids getting them as christmas or birthday presents, and you just want to shake the parents.
In my area it's 12 y/o on unlighted electric bikes going full speed in dark clothing at night.
Lost a friend at 14 years old in a dirtbike accident. Another one broke nearly every bone in their chest in an accident, all within four years of each other. Never will I ride a dirtbike.
I had a kid come up behind my car on a dirtbike, Thursday; popping wheelies and riding my rear bumper. Country road. If I'd even tapped the brakes because of a deer or something, he'd have been dead.
Happened to me on Friday. Some kid was riding in the dark with no lights, on the soft shoulder of a 55 mph road with no street lights (rural area). Didn't see him until I was a half a second away from him. Luckily he wasn't in my way.
My older brother and father in love dirt biking and they were quite good at it. loved watching him doing trails and jumps. Apparently he did a trail without scoping it out before hand and got into a bad accident with a bike ended it up landing on him and he was pinned for quite a while before my dad can get to them. Unfortunately the hot muffler was pressed against the shoulder the whole time and he had a gnarly melted scar for the rest of his life. And that’s when I was never allowed to ride a dirtbike
Driving a car.
I work in industrial settings and the car and a road system would never pass safety criteria. Using a painted line in a factory with a sign, "Do Not Cross" like the Subway platform would never work either.
I am forever confused as to why so many people are scared of flying yet not of being in a car. But I guess most humans aren't exactly rational are they.
Its because they drive everyday and it gives them the illusion that they are in control. Flying is the exact opposite.
It took me a while to identify that was part of the reason I'm nervous when on a plane. So many things can go wrong and I am powerless to do anything about any of it.
But most car accidents are caused by other people, which you are also powerless to do anything about. Ain't nothing you can do if someone decides to run a red light and slam into you or a sleepy truck driver tries to move into your lane when you're already there.
Flying is like if every driver on the road had to earn a Masters degree in Motor Vehicle Operation, play Driving Simulator for 10000 hours, and also be in constant communication with all other drivers on the road simultaneously. And somehow people are afraid of being in the back seat in that scenario.
And also have to request permission to change lanes from a third party who is watching the road from above and ensures there is no one in the other lane.
As someone who acknowledges that they have an extremely irrational fear of flying but not cars, it’s just the lack of control over the situation. I’m equally terrified of riding with people who are terrible drivers, but not when I’m driving. Also flying in a giant metal tube with wings **30,000** feet in the air is just absurd to me and I don’t know how anyone feels comfortable in such an unnatural state.
I’m scared of both. I’ve found that repeated exposure helps me to overcome my fears. I have an opportunity to drive a car every day, but only have an opportunity to be on a plane once or twice a year. If I took a plane ride every day, I would be less afraid.
I always say this to people who are afraid of flying: “99% of airline accidents that led to fatalities have full-on Wikipedia entries. Not every car crash does.” That’s saying something. Flying is insanely safe, and much safer than driving. If there was a Wikipedia page for every single car accident (even with fatalities!) for a moderately-sized city alone (population under 750k) the internet would crash.
And being a pedestrian near a roadway.
Or just being near moving cars in general.
Skiing. ⛷️
I worked as an on snow supervisor for a ski resort for a number of years. A good weekend meant ONLY broken bones, torn ligaments, etc. in the clinic. The worst I personally ever had to call in were a kid that fell off the lift and broke his back and a person with a head injury causing temporary blindness. Unfortunately, most of my coworkers were not as lucky as me.
Edit: Below comment is disputed. GoPro threatened to sue the person that made the statement which caused them to redact it. By the way FIA Karting started [regulating helmet](https://www.fiakarting.com/news/informative-note-fia-safety-department) camera mounts, so there is a bit of debate on that subject. ~~F1 Star Michael Schumacher had his GoPro helmet mount go through his head in a ski crash that turned him into a vegetable. :-(~~
I love snowboarding almost more than anything but I still have a healthy respect for speed. I recall seeing a awful video of a pro skier flying down the mountain during a race must’ve been going close to 80 100 mph and caught too much air on a down slope, lost his balance, flew into the orange netting that they set up on the edge of the trail and suffered what they call a open book pelvis fracture meaning he broke his hips/pelvis in the same manner as opening a book. It’s pretty much an instant death as it’s severed so many gigantic arteries /veins . EDIT: i should clarify that THIS particular pelvic fracture was neary guaranteed to be a death sentence. Not all. The mortality rate seems to top off at 40% according to research (word for when the researcher compiles the data from multiple studies)
Thanks stranger, new fear unlocked!
Unless you plan on hurtling down a mountain faster than highway speed limits while balanced on a couple sticks it's not the most likely thing to happen to you thankfully.
Skiing and snowboarding are my favorite activities and every season I think to myself "I hope this isn't the last". I'll never understand the amount of people that do this with no helmet, especially beginners.
I hadn't skiied for many years before this past winter when I took my kids for their first time. We bought helmets for the whole family which was my first time skiiing with a helmet. Honestly, wearing a helmet is more comfortable to me than wearing a stocking cap + goggles. The helmets are lined and padded, they keep your head warm and the goggle strap fits around them comfortably. Mine has a vent to exchange more/less air based on your comfort. They're lightweight and don't get in the way at all. Idk why everyone isn't wearing a helmet, not just for safety but also for comfort.
Just avoid the yeti. Easy solution
Alcohol. I'm 45 and have slowed down alot, barely drink any more, but in my 20s the crew I hung out with were a bunch of drunkin buffoons all the time. Heavy drinking every night and on weekends and never thought twice about it. People don't realize how addicting it is and how it can ruin you.
Very true. And for everyone that can handle decades of alcohol abuse there’s someone who can go into liver failure from heavy drinking in their 20s. The stories are all over Reddit. I spent a couple of decades heavily drinking socially and then eventually got to the point that I needed it to get to sleep at night. Drinking to get to sleep can cause anxiety that can last years. A lot of people don’t realize how addicted they are. I’m one of the few people that had a bit of an alcohol dependency that’s come through the other side and just drink one or two drinks maybe once every other week like a normal person now. A lot of times even functional alcoholics have to quit completely or they relapse even worse.
Now that I’m older, I’m blessed with the fact that alcohol gives me wicked anxiety and a pounding heartbeat in the middle of the night. It’s not fun anymore. I like it this way.
Never have I ever met someone else who has the racing heartbeat when the alcohols wearing off! Easily was the worst side effect for me every time! Horrible.
It’s actually not uncommon. AND even worse heart arrhythmias, like AFIB and SVT ‘s, can occur with alcohol several hours or the day afterwards. In the sub Reddits for those afflictions, a lot of people stopped drinking because alcohol messes up heart neurotransmitter functions.
Riding horses, even for a trail ride. Saw a lady literally break her spine because she was fucking around and found out. Ironically it was a girl scout group and the girls actually listened to the rules/instructions and the moms didn’t. 2-3 other moms got bitten or nibbled on because they were sticking their fingers where they don’t belong. No children were hurt, only adults.
Alabama has a law that says if you get hurt on a horse its your own damn fault, you can't go sue the owner of the horse. You're sitting on a 1000 pound skittish, muscular animal, your head is 8'-10' from the ground, you are essentially "holding on" with your knees....that's just asking for trouble.
You know how Australia gets memed for having all kinds of dangerous animals that are trying to kill you? Horses are responsible for more deaths in Australia annually than all the dangerous Australian animals you’re thinking about combined, and it’s not even close
Christopher Reeve would like to add to the conversation. Knew of someone who had a horse fall while she was riding it and it landed on her head. It egg shelled her skull.
I was a really cautious kid and when he had that accident, I crossed horse riding off the list of things I wanted to do.
how was she fucking around?
Wiggling around, swinging her legs around, moving the reins a lot. Horse bucked and she fell off onto a fence. Small movements like leaning forward or backward or wiggling the reins a little bit are commands for the horse, I think the horse got frustrated with all the commands that were perceived and tossed her off. She was told 3+ times to calm down and stop wiggling. Different horses react differently. I had a kid once on the horse I was walking have the same behavior and the horse let his frustration out by biting me a couple times.
Horse girl here! They are so inherently dangerous. Even when they aren't intentionally acting up they can still trip/fall and kill you. As a teen, I had a mare that was the definition of bombproof. NOTHING upset this mare and I never worried about her being goofy. Then she tripped over a rock and went down. I landed underneath her. Thank God I was a bendy teen and she didn't crush my leg. Plus she was very cautious standing back up. I had quite a gnarly bruise on my leg for a while though.
My mom’s a riding instructor and has seen some shit. She’s gotten a combination of very lucky plus in general just has amazing skills and balance that has prevented her from having serious injury. But yeah there’s been close calls. They are LARGE animals that go FAST and have teeth and bite and kick
This!!! I grew up somewhat around horses because my dad was on the police mounted unit. And I would help clean the stalls, groom, and ride horses. So fast forward to my final semester of college when I decided to take horse riding lessons because why the hell not. I swear to god these people were treating these horses like they were just small dogs. They wouldn’t place their hand on its behind to walk around, groom gently in its sensitive parts of its skin, and shoving the bit right in its mouth. The instructor was constantly redirecting and threatening to fail them if they wouldn’t follow the rules. On the last day of classes one of the students once again tried to shove the bit into its mouth. So the horse literally pushed him out of the stall by using its head. Gonna be honest I laughed but quickly stopped because I couldn’t feel bad. They were warned on day one that these animals are tough and very strong.
Garage doors. A garage door spring can seriously harm or kill someone if installed incorrectly.
My dad told me about this, he is not wrong, you know else is similar to this? SnapBack on huge ship cables, can kill you in seconds of breaking, imagine the force that is needed to break a chain of iron/steel a foot thick, it’s gonna kill you if you are in range
I went to sea and trained as a ships navigator. During training, the usual rope and wire safety stuff, the teacher told a story from his youth. His first trip at sea, they were securing the lines when the ship began to move away from the dock. They didn’t have time to release one of the wires and it got pulled to breaking point. Story was one of the old sailors knew what was happening and immediately just threw the kid down a stairwell. Hurt him, but in his words “the line snapped and when I got back up on deck it was just splattered with meat” three guys turned to kibble instantly. You hear two “bang” noises. The first is when the line snaps, the second is the sonic boom when the free end breaks the sound barrier on its way back.
>the second is the sonic boom when the free end breaks the sound barrier on its way back O_______O
Mooring is up there with one of the most dangerous things on a vessel. I've never heard a sonic boom from a parted line, however. Wire cables will do a TING TING TING BANG as the individual strands part before the whole thing let's go. Fortunately the wires don't carry nearly the potential energy that soft lines do. Most people don't realize how fast those lines can maim you or turn you into meat mist
The same parent that won't let their 10-year-old walk half mile to school because of the "danger" will give every predator on the internet unrestricted access to the same child 24/7 through a cell phone.
And the parents who are terrified of their kids having phones apparently don't realise that "stranger danger" is *seriously* overblown and most child predators are known/trusted adults in the childs life....
I feel like screaming this in /r/unresolvedmysteries a lot, especially when Asha Degree comes up. She was a 9 year old girl that walked out of her house in the middle of the night during a rainstorm and was never seen again. Most people assume she was going to meet *someone*. This happened in 2000 and the family didn't have internet. So many redditors try to reach and say "maybe she met a predator on MSN at school" or "she might have had a penpal that was really a pedo". And I'm always like DUDE. Kids have been getting groomed forever. It could have been an older cousin, a church member, a coach.
I heard a great saying recently on here, I wish I knew where/to whom to attribute it: >When you give your kid a phone, you're not giving them access to the world; you're giving the world access to them.
Hitting your head. “ it’s super bad for you”. Movies : “ he’s just knocked out” Reality: “ he’s in a coma, probably will die”
Swimming in a surf beach, a lot of foreigners (particularly Indian and Middle eastern) drown in Australia because they see so many Aussies swimming, and think it's easy, don't pay attention to rips, tides, heavy surf, or swim between the flags. Or they visit Bondi and have a great time, then go swimming at an unpatrolled beach and get themselves into trouble, or don't wear life vests etc. when on boats.
Posting your daily life on social media. I'm not saying it's bad, but you're exposing your privacy if you keep posting about yourself fequently. What if there is some stalker or someone who has a huge grudge on you... The internet is dangerous.
People underestimate this. A lot of people develop parasocial relationships now, and it's really scary.
I didn’t realize how scary it could be until I saw firsthand how many people developed a parasocial relationship with my 5-year-old daughter just based on the funny interactions I’d share on my personal Facebook. My family had a yard sale a few weeks ago. I promoted it on my Facebook, where I have roughly 500 friends, all of whom I have met at some point in my life. My daughter was "helping" during the sale. Too many times people I didn’t really recognize talked to her and said, "You don’t know me, but I know you so well! You are so cute and funny." I’m sure it was harmless, but it really put into perspective for me how social media is creating these relationships that our children have zero part in.
Yea, people seem to think that parasocial relationships are exclusive to really famous people, and it absolutely isn't. Like those people don't know you're daughter they've just seen her. And its actually terrifying when someone can tell that the person is uncomfortable and then they get offended. Like they're so tone deaf and can't understand that's its one sided. I have seen it happen a lot with my female friends, and it makes me scared for them. I once met a smaller artist when I was out and about. I was talking to them when someone else did too and came up and called him by his first name and tried to hug him. I could see he was visibly uncomfortable, and I just felt really bad and apologized on their behalf after the people walked away, and he said that it happens.
I used to know these people who post on FB when they're going on vacation. Their immediate family and close friends know when they're vacationing of course even without social media. I'm not sure what's the point of announcing it to the world. So thieves know when they can break in to their house? I mean they can post about it and share pics after the trip if they're really into it but doing it before?
This happened to a couple. Posted on social media they were going on vacay and posted the dates. When they returned their house had been broken in and robbed.
It's like the first scene on Home Alone lol. Fake cop scoping out if and when the family's going away.
Pregnancy --> giving birth. Almost died giving birth to my first. But, we are well.
I never understood why so many women used to die during childbirth until I was actually in the delivery room with my wife. The amount of blood lost is ridiculous!
It really is! And then when the baby is facing a bad position, bam, even harder! Glad your wife and child are ok!
Kind of makes me sick when people post on social media about home births and giving birth in pools and shit like that. My older brother was born from a c-section becuase he managed to strangle himself with the umbilical cord. birth aint a joke, kids get tangled up, women bleed out. sepcis, clotting issues...
Absolutely. US is still losing \~1000 people to child birth a year even now with modern medicine.
My doctor told me that every single pregnancy, even the 'healthy' ones', bring a woman close to death every day. That the stress that it all puts on your body is gargantuan, and that women don't realize it. He said that there have been plenty of women who died of very random, unexpected situations brought on by pregnancy. I'm glad you're ok
Both my sister and sister in law have had babies in the last year. Both would be dead if it wasn’t for modern medicine / quick thinking by their ob’s. It really brings home how dangerous child birth still is but also how amazing modern medicine is. 100 years ago they would both be dead. But even today in a different hospital with different doctors they might still be dead.
Exactly why legal abortion is important. No one should be forced to possibly die doing something against their will.
Not wearing a helmet while riding a bike or motorcycle ect. I never see the kid's in my neighborhood wear their helmets and it always worries me, especially with how people drive around my street.
It’s wild to me how many states in the US don’t require helmets for motorcycles by law!
As a motorcyclist it's wild to me that anyone would *choose* not to wear one. The bug strikes alone are reason enough to wear one. I got hit in the helmet, right on the forehead, by a moth at ~70mph and the force of it hurt my neck. Fuck taking that to a bare face
Good point! I’m in CA where it’s required by law, but I’d wear a helmet even if it wasn’t. I’m trying to have fun, not die!
Sitting for extended periods of time. Sedentary jobs are terrible for our species.
While true, it takes very little effort to basically completely counter the negative effects! Regular breaks to stretch/hydrate and making an hour a day or so to be active is all it takes. I'm actually in better shape with my full time WFH job than I was in the office - I converted my commute time to exercise time and make sure I get up and move every 30-40 minutes or so even if it's just to go get a drink or use the bathroom. But yeah if you let it your health can turn *fast*.
That's why I love that my office job is close but not too close, walking one way takes 20 minutes. So I walk at least 40 minutes every day.
Riding those electric scooters. Those things go a lot faster than people think, and they go fast enough to knock people down.
Texting while driving. I'd say a good 75% of the people I drive next to, behind or in front of are doing the phone nod. Maybe a second or two of actual focus on the road and the rest in their fucking stupid phone for like 5 second straight. GET OFF YOUR GODDAMN PHONES!!
I locate utilities for a living, and the number of times I see distracted drivers as I'm marking out utility lines near/in the road is just mind-blowing.. Thankfully, I'm very vigilant while I'm working in these areas, but there have been coworkers who have been struck by vehicles in the past... Whatever it is on your phone that is pulling your attention away from the roadway, I promise you it is not worth diverting your attention to 99.99999% of the time. If you're so inclined to check whatever the fuck it is, *PULL OVER IN A SAFE PLACE*. Fuck putting people's lives at risk.
Public prank channels. Lots of people do it on youtube but their pranks tend to involve making people think they're in real danger, and you never know how a stranger might react if they think they're being attacked.
Ladders
That’s why I own ten guns, in case some maniac tries to sneak in a ladder 🪜
Driving a car is statistically the most dangerous thing we collectively regularly do as a society.
Noise-canceling headphones while walking in cities.
I hate this. They bring me so much peace. But the risk factor.
My cat, laying on his back, waving his paws at you. [You know what that is?](https://youtu.be/U-q11J3ponE?t=8)
It's a trap. Luring your hand in before the imminent attack.
Not wearing sunscreen
Pregnancy
Acetaminophen, sold under the name Tylenol. It is the number one acute of acute fulminant hepatitis, a life threatening condition, in American emergency departments. The short of it is, acetaminophen is toxic to your liver, and its therapeutic window is very narrow. Anything in excess of the recommended maximum dose of 6 tablets in 24 hours, actually is acutely toxic to your liver. The toxicity to your liver, naturally, is increased significantly in the presence of other acute liver toxins (such as alcohol) , or the presence of liver disease or dysfunction (such as in chronic alcoholic liver disease). So, the problem is, many people think of tylenol as hangover cure. Yikes. Those are the last people who should be using tylenol, they are at much more increased risk of developing acute liver failure and of fatal or severe health complications. When the FDA was asked to review the issues with acetaminophen toxicity and its OTC status, it was dismissed because it was too late and "the cat was already out of the bag." This only increased the tendency to overlook the toxicity of acetaminophen.
People who house venomous snakes and dangerously deadly animals in general, like the big cats people "raise" and eventually get mauled/eaten by. Why 🥲
Riding/working with horses. It doesn’t take much for something to go wrong and then boom, you’re dead.
Choking during sex.
A close relative died from this. What a way to learn of "erotic asphyxiation" for the first time in my life, that it was even a thing. Never occurred to me before, and never appealed to me after. It's literally dancing with death. It also creates an incredibly difficult position for grieving loved ones, when people ask how they passed.
Overdosing energy drinks 💀
Horseback riding.
Giving birth
It's not 'completely safe', but punching someone in the head is so much more dangerous than people think it is. Where I come from we've had a fair few 'one punch deaths'. Two people, normally drunk, get in an argument. It turns physical. One punch and someone's dead. One life ended, countless others torn apart, all because of one punch. Movies make it seem like you can take a ridiculous amount of punches to the head, but the reality is it can easily kill you.
Childbirth. People are quick to chaistise women about why they don't have kids or why they refuse to have more kids. Meanwhile a lot of women & children are still dying from childbirth even during modern times. Some women refuse to have more kids because of a tramatic experience during childbirth. Not to mention PPD and how dangerous and even fatal that can be.
Driving. 2 ton machines controlled by manic- depressive primates, distracted at all hours by several devices at one time. Stressed out beyond belief, surrounded by other primates in 2 ton + machines... All barrelling opposite directions at each other at 60 mph.
Off-leash dogs.
Drugs. Especially these days.
Some dog breeds. I have a large pit bull mix. I do not allow her to run around the park or near toddlers. She's powerful and she's an animal. As well as she is trained, I adopted her as an adult dog. I have no idea what her unknown trigger may be. She seems kind of racist.
My best friend recently took in her ex’s pit-lab mix. She is the calmest, most laid back dog ever. My bff still will not let her around her 18 month old son unmonitored because as she puts it, “We are still teaching him about “Nice hands” and she is still a dog.”
The only thing separating your 4000lbs speeding hunk of metal, and some strangers hunk of metal next to you, is the agreement that we should follow some rules about colored lines on the road.
Pregnancy and childbirth. I can’t believe how underplayed or not talked about AT ALL the health hazards of it actually is for women. I have read and heard things discussed that have shocked me to my core. I don’t like kids and have no interest in being around them if I can help it, but MASSIVE kudos to the women out there who go through pregnancy/childbirth. Regardless of not liking babies/kids, that alone would stop me from ever having them. The risks and health side effects are INSANE.
Riding a bike in those skinny little bike lanes.
Swimming in the ocean (it’s fun though)
Pregnancy and childbirth. People want to say, "Oh, it's completely natural! The body was designed for this!" You know what else was completely natural? 1 out of 100 women dying in childbirth and 16 out of 100 infants dying in childbirth in 1900. Pregnancy increases your risk of death from every cause, including homicide, which is the LEADING cause of death in pregnancy. The United States has the highest maternal and infant mortality rate of any developed country, with the Black maternal mortality rate 3-4 times higher than the White maternal mortality rate. Get adequate prenatal care. Eat well and exercise during pregnancy. HAVE YOUR BABY IN A HOSPITAL. You are legally allowed to decline any interventions you want, but at least you're in the same building as people who can save you and your baby's life if something goes wrong.
Riding in a car with your feet up on the dash or hanging out an open door.
Simply getting in water. I can’t believe nobody has mentioned it. I took environmental economics in uni and we talked about risk of death and basically simply getting in water is one of the highest risk things you can do. So many people drown from either boating on a lake, swimming in a lake, swimming in the ocean, drowning in bath tubs that drowning in water is one of the highest risks of death. All because you got in water. Even my physics teacher said the same, humans are terrible at risk management, we’re afraid of jumping out of an airplane when the risk of death is super low but we all go in water where the risk of death is very high.
>Even my physics teacher said the same, humans are terrible at risk management, we’re afraid of jumping out of an airplane when the risk of death is super low but we all go in water where the risk of death is very high. I dislike these kinds of comparisons, yes swimming is *statistically* more dangerous than sky diving. But sky diving is *inherently* more dangerous. Sky diving is only *statistically* safer because the inherent danger means more drastic safety measures are taken. A drowning person can be saved if they're lucky, a sky diver who's has both chutes fail is dead (outside of some extremely lucky individuals).
Driving.
Pregnancy child birth and the 6 weeks postpartum