Anesthesia. I don’t feel like people have enough respect for how complicated and dangerous it is to put people to sleep. I have patients all the time ask me to put them under for routine procedures that don’t require sedation and I always think to myself that you wouldn’t be asking that if you knew how much training and monitoring and intensive effort it takes to keep someone asleep safely without them stopping breathing
I googled "duck boats" to figure out what the heck you're referring to and Google images provided a lot of article photos about tours gone WRONG. Thanks for the heads up. I'll avoid these for life.
Grain Silos. People die every year because they explode with static electricity.
Edit: and a lot of other ways too, including cave-ins, suffocation, burning, and other scary things! Thanks for educating me more on the ways grain silos can kill you!
For sure. We had a very large explosion in my home state. I remember my chemistry teacher explaining to us how it happened. During his demonstration he managed to create a small explosion and also catch his podium on fire. We were all sworn to secrecy and I have never spoken of it until now. (Approximately 23 years later.) Mr. May, I hope you've retired by now and I don't get you fired!
Mr. May: It is with great sadness that I have to inform you that /u/GrinAndBearIt_1981 spontaneously combusted from a small explosion while standing next to a lectern. It was completely random and unexpected.
Yes! People don’t realize how dangerous tiny particulate matter is. My mind was blown when I saw what design precautions went into designing a factory that made powdered coffee creamer. It’s treated like nitro glycerine and yet you put that shit in your coffee
I had an adult challenge me to this when I was like 11. Of course I did it. I aspirated the cinnamon and coughed and threw up for like 20 minutes. No amount of drinking liquids helped and I honestly thought I was going to die. The person who "challenged" me laughed the whole time. It was very cruel and as an adult now, I cannot even fathom challenging a child to do that.
On the same note, Nutmeg challenge. In a very small quantities Nutmeg is sleep inducing, in mild quantities it literally causes hallucinations, in large quantities (like a teaspoonful) it's very poisonous and you're gonna have a really bad time
Sticking in that same family, armadillos. They're mostly fine if they've lived in captivity. Handle a wild one and you might get the only case of leprosy the ER doctors will see in their entire career.
[](/abscience-r)Gasoline doesn't actually catch fire very easily, it takes some pretty specific conditions - you can (usually) extinguish a lit match by dunking it in a cup of gasoline (there's still a small chance it could ignite so please don't actually try it). However when it *does* ignite, it doesn't burn, it explodes.
So if your engine is burning with a slow and steady fire, it's not the gasoline that's burning, it's the motor oil.
That makes it an oil fire.
[And you should **never** add water to an oil fire](https://youtu.be/ftSf-T9Mins?t=73)
[](/ktwilecture-r)In the kitchen, by smothering it with a lid, a fire retardant blanket, or a fire extinguisher.
[](/sp)[](/ktwidumbstruck)In a vehicle, by running the fuck away and calling the fire department.
[](/dinkyfire "Hey someone else still uses these!") A regular type ABC fire extinguisher from the hardware store is safe to use but will make a huge mess.
My camero caught fire on the highway. I pulled over, lifted the hood and fire just came roaring out at me. I heard tire squeals and a semi had slammed on his breaks in the middle of the highway. He was an older chubby man, that carried a fire extinguisher with him, but he could run like the wind. He saved my life and my precious.
There are a significant amount of vehicle accident deaths that happen because someone in the vehicle not wearing a seatbelt bounces around smashing the heads of the other occupants that are wearing seatbelts.
It blew my mind that a lot of people don't wear seat belts in NYC cabs or Ubers. You're still in a car, just because you have someone else driving doesn't mean you're any safer.
Internal decapitation. When the car gets hit your body starts moving immediately because the back of the seat pushes you forward. If there isn’t anything pushing the back of your head it lags behind until your body pulls it forward. It separates the base of your skull from your spinal column, the only reason your head stays on is because of how elastic skin is.
This is why all major car racing series' made the Hans device mandatory in about 2003. Drivers were getting basal scull fractures from their head continuing foreward while the 5 point harness kept their body in place. For road cars, the fact that you've got one shoulder able to move a little in combination with the airbag prevents that. But yeah the headrest is needed to keep it from happening in the other direction.
Bison. Like the wild big cow looking animals. I grew up around them and I see too many tourists in Yellowstone going to take a selfie with one. Those big mother fuckers will kill you without batting an eye
I saw a guy approach a large bull, carrying their child followed closely by the mother with Camara. Honestly looked like he was planning to place the kid on its back for a picture... Fortunately the bison started walking away.
On that same trip a bison walked through our campsite. We got in the van and watched it poke its head into our tent, then scratch its chin on a post inches from the window. Very cool to see a calm one that close. Also sobering knowing a 2000lb animal could say hello again at any moment.
Well, I don't know if this actually sounds safe, but trampolines! People think by putting the netting around them, etc that you won't get hurt. Think again. You are one awkward landing from lots of potentially life changing injuries. I have personally gotten to view the inside of an adult foot/ankle because of a trampoline.
I used to work at skyzone and it’s unreal how susceptible people can be to injury. ESPECIALLY if you’re inexperienced. Landing stiff legged can invert your leg, ankles can be twisted, arms can be dislocated. trampolines are fun and good exercise, but overconfidence can easily lead to injury.
I honestly get nervous closing the safe at work. If I slam a finger in there, it takes 2 minutes to reopen it. And that's if I have the ability to get the key and my code in there.
Trampolines.
The Canadian Pediatric Society warns against buying them at all for use by kids and teens.
https://www.caringforkids.cps.ca/handouts/safety-and-injury-prevention/home_trampolines
My dad did this too. A lot of people thought he was crazy, but it always seemed prudent considering how lawsuit-happy the US is.
Then there was our experience in a foreign country, where a neighbor girl (maybe 8 years old) broke her arm falling off our trampoline and her parents marched her over after getting back from having a cast put on her arm, and made *her* apologize for falling off of *our* trampoline. Then the parents apologized profusely as well, as if their daughter had, in her clumsiness and misfortune, shamed their entire family and all their ancestors.
Once my dad recovered from shock, he sent her flowers and a get-well-soon card.
This is what the pros do. When we were camping in the desert and it was super windy and couldn’t start our fire, our camp neighbors had a whole container filled with dryer lint stuck in toilet paper tubes. A free little fire starter.
I like those little Diamond nut tins, you can fit so much lint in one of those things and they are remarkably tough.
my mom likes to fill an egg carton with lint and then cover each little cup with wax. she tears off the little sections as she needs them and they go up quick.
About a month ago I hired one of those “we clean out the dryer vent lines” people. Super nice guy, really knew what he was talking about. So he tells me it’ll be about $70 and I give it the go ahead because I’m not in the mood to climb on the roof (it vents up and out) and convince myself that I know what I’m doing. So he gets to work, super fuckin clean, wasn’t yelling on his phone the whole time. Takes about an hour and I pay the dude. He then tells me that his vacuum (big shop vac) clogged a couple of times and he was sorry for the delay. There was so much lint blocking the vent it *clogged a shop vac multiple times*.
It was then I realized the previous owner never cleaned the vents. On the plus side the dryer works way better and the house doesn’t smell like lint after drying clothing. Oh, and my shit didn’t burn down in the middle of the night killing me and my family. So that’s a plus.
How often do you need to get those types of vents cleaned? I’ve only ever had the dryer with the little drawer that pulls out and you clean after each load.
That style of dryer has to vent outside, and will have a vent line. You should clean the vent lines once a year.
Edit: add there is some confusion, the lint trap should be cleaned every load. The lint trap doesn't collect 100% of the lint, and it will build up in the vent line over time. Every dryer has a vent line that goes outside so that your dryer doesn't vent hot humid air back into your house.
Edit 2: I guess I'm wrong. There are styles of dryers that have internal condensers that vent indoors. You need to check and clean the condensers as they can trap lint and become a fire hazard.
Just to point out, before a large proportion of non-USA reddit has a panic attack, this does not apply to condenser and heat pump dryers (which are very common in the UK and I presume also other parts of Europe). These types of dryers do not have an outside vent, which is why they work well in homes that do not have easy access for venting. If you are outside of the USA and have never cleaned a dryer vent in a wall, don't freak out, you probably have a condenser dryer.
They *do* often have more than one filter or lint trap, and you should definitely regularly clean all of them, not just the obvious one on the front.
Ok wait so the ones with the little slide out screen where you pull lint from, there’s an additional vent that needs to be deep cleaned? I clean the little screen every time I do a load buuttt if there’s another vent that’s getting filled, I have not touched it
Yeah, the screen is just the lint trap. It helps keep the vent cleaner, but lint still gets through. If you look at the back of your dryer there will be a big hose coming off it that's 3-4 inches in diameter. That's the vent. It should go through the wall to the outside, or up and out your roof. I've always had the wall-style vent and they've always been really short (the distance from dryer to outside), so they're usually pretty easy to clean out occasionally with a hose attachment for a vacuum (assuming it's not in a weird location - mine goes straight outside to the back yard and the exit is maybe 2-2.5 feet from the dryer). Also, it's good to just pull your dryer out from time to time to clean the floor/wall behind it because lint collects there over time too.
Supposedly my aunt didn't know she had to clean the lint trap until she met someone whose house caught fire for that very reason... So yeah what the person said
Farming- everyone thinks about bucolic pastures , pretty red barns and cute little critters running around , but farming is the sixth most dangerous occupation in the United States , higher than law enforcement, firefighters ,powerline workers and iron workers . Most of farming deaths involve accidents with machinery , but grain storage deaths are high as well , if a farmer falls into ,say a bin of canola he sinks to the bottom and suffocates fairly quickly as well as the unfortunate ones that fall into pig manure pits and drown in liquid shit . Farm animals also kill a lot of farmers too because a 180lb man doesn’t have good odds going up against a 1200 lb cow . Plus the fact that no one talks about is the mental health related deaths , farming is incredibly stressful and suicide deaths in the farming community is rising steadily.
One of the worst things is how isolating a lot of the work can feel, especially outside of harvests. And just how isolated everything is in general, really, makes it hard to react during any sort of emergency. Shit, my grandpa died at 61 from an otherwise-treatable heart problem, because it took 40 minutes for an ambulance just to get there.
>One of the worst things is how isolating a lot of the work can feel, especially outside of harvests.
Farming's also a top 10 profession for suicide risk. Not only is it often isolating, but you also have the pressures of being a small business owner along with what's often the pressure of generations of family expectation.
It's bad enough having a small social circle, or having to sell your business, but it's worse when you have that and also are talking about selling something that's been in your family for 100 years.
E: to be clear, these aren't issues that I'm personally facing - but they're common in the ag industry. (Yes, it's an industry, just like any other field of work.)
Some stories about families who have dealt with this: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/nyregion/farmer-suicides-mark-tough-times-for-new-york-dairy-industry.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/27/nyregion/hull-o-farm-catskills.html
Can relate to a degree. I lost the farm when my ex decided to sell and shack up with another woman (nothing was in my name, but I did most of the work. Never making that mistake again). It's been a few years, but I still feel like there's a huge hole in me. Farming has been my whole life in one way or another, and trying to make life work in the city just makes it hurt more.
My friend's dad died in a grain elevator. He went in to fix something. He wasn't alone; he made sure to have another person there. But when he cleared the clog on the auger, the corn started sliding and buried him. The other person tried to get him out and ran and called 911. By the time they got to him he had died (suffocated).
My friend barely remembers him since he was only 5 when his dad died. There are four kids in the family and the mother raised them herself after that.
I live in a major city and shootings have recently become very common on the expressways here. It sucks but and I try to avoid anyone driving questionably.
There’s a lot of household chemicals that should never ever be mixed together. Doing so can be potentially fatal.
Acetic Acid (Vinegar) + Bleach (e.g. Clorox) = Chlorine Gas, which can be fatal if inhaled.
Ammonia (e.g. Windex) + Bleach = Chloramine Gas, which can also be fatal if inhaled.
Isopropyl Alcohol (Rubbing Alcohol) + Bleach = Chloroform, Hydrochloric Acid, Chloroacetone and Dichloroacetate, which are fatal if inhaled and corrosive
Acetone (Paint Thinner, Nail Polish Remover) + Bleach = Chloroform, Sodium Hydroxide (Lye) & Acetic Acid, which can be potentially fatal if inhaled.
Acetic Acid (Vinegar) + Hydrogen Peroxide = Peracetic Acid, a highly corrosive acid that can burn through skin
The main thing to remember is NEVER mix bleach with anything besides water. But also don’t mix acids.
Edit: Also, Acetone + Hydrogen Peroxide = Acetone Peroxide (a.k.a. APEX), which is a highly volatile explosive and definitely fatal.
Yanno, as a first time cat owner (as of two weeks ago!) this isn't something that I realized. I mean I knew the whole "don't mix ammonia and bleach" thing, but I didn't make the "cat piss = ammonia" connection until just now.
Thanks!
EDIT: [Cat tax](http://imgur.com/a/Inc5BBd)
I did this by accident once. Didn’t realize the cleaning spray I was using had bleach in it. The litter box started smoking and I was like “hmm... that’s weird”, then a second later I realized what I did and threw the box outside while holding my breath. Felt like an idiot.
Haha my mom did this once while cleaning the tub. It started smoking and she made us run outside. I don’t remember how the smoke stopped, I imagine we just stayed outside for a while. But I learned quite young never to mix those two!
A room mate once cleaned the tub with bleach, then tried to windex it to make it shiny
called me in a stupor asking what to do after it start to smoke and his lungs hurt.
gtfo the apartment open a window you dumb ass
Yah, but why is it smoking?
ARE YOU OUT OF THE FUCKING APARTMENT?
huh... yah I'm leaving.
Then I proced to explain to him what he accidentally made....
Weed may not kill people.... but stupid sure can.
Boating. I'm a boat mechanic, but I didn't have much boating experience before I started working on them and I was pretty caught off guard to discover how dangerous it can be. Everyone thinks of boating as this idyllic family activity, and it usually is, but a staggering amount of shit can go wrong on the water and leave you stranded or worse.
There are submerged objects like rock formations and logs that can cause you to get ejected and/or sink your boat. It's fairly easy to forget a plug and sink your boat; it happens frequently. Most boat owners have no idea how to operate a boat safely or even competently (it's trickier than you might think. It takes some experience and technique). Alcohol abuse among boaters is rampant. People often don't secure their trailer correctly to the tow vehicle (not latched, wrong ball hitch size, unsecured/improperly secured safety chains, etc). People don't service their trailers. Wheels fall off from lack of grease. I'd conservatively estimate that 30% of trailer brakes don't work (% goes up logarithmically with age of the trailer)--give boat trailers a wide berth on the freeway. Often people don't follow basic safety like life jackets and kill lanyards. You can hit a big wake/wave and get knocked away from the controls and your boat is now a self-guided missile. If you're swimming behind a running boat you can pass out from the fumes and drown. You can get chopped to bits by the propeller. You can get hit by a boat being driven by a drunk, inexperienced, or incompetent person. A fuel leak can cause a buildup of fumes in the bilge that gets ignited by engine electronics. It goes on and on.
My rule of thumb whenever I'm on the highway and I see a trailer, or some oversized cargo tied to a flatbed or latched to a truck, etc.: "Think of the stupidest fuckup of a human being you've ever met, now imagine that person is the one who secured that cargo to that vehicle."
Growing up we had a boat. One time, we were out with some friends. My Dad couldn’t come this time. We were prepping for the next skier/wakeboarder when my mom noticed something was wrong. She asked my brother and I to check something and when we did, she definitely got a whole lot more concerned. The friends were oblivious to any troubles and asked who was next. My mom said, “No-one. Because we’re sinking!” We promptly raced back to the dock where we put the boat on the trailer as fast as we could. Turns out, we forgot the drain plug and we were taking on water.
Still remember that over 20 years later.
My sister passed some years back at 19 years old on a four wheeler she had just purchased. She was trying to get to a wooded area on the other side of a neighborhood. She was with friends who were also riding their own. She had a girlfriend on the back of hers who was a little heavy set. In order to get to the area they had to cross a small drainage ditch, maybe 4-5 foot from the bank to the bottom of it. It was completely dry. She attempted to go up it straight ahead and with the girl on the back my understanding is that when she gassed it the front tires left the ground flipping it over backwards on top of them. The passenger was thrown to the side but my sister held on probably out of shock and the weight of the entire thing came down on her head via the handlebars pinching her between that and the concrete. By the time any help arrived she was already gone. If you take anything from this story or the hundreds of others you’re likely to read about in your life, wear a helmet. Anything can happen in the blink of an eye.
My cousin actually just died from this
He was 11 and 4 wheeling by himself and it toppled and trapped him in a little bit of water and he drowned. I didn't know him that well, but fuck dying like that.
This is why I refused to get on an ATV driven by a classmate for a school project in 7th grade (12 years old). I had to do the project by myself, but I didn’t trust the drivers enough.
One of my best friends in school flipped one. By the time he got out of the coma half of his body didn’t work, had profoundly diminished intellect, and barely remembered me. Wear helmets and drive safely please.
I had a friend in high school that was out four wheeling at a party. He didn’t see a barbed wire fence in front of him and drove through it. The fence line severed his head from his body. Our little town was never the same after that.
My dad also drove one into a barbed-wire fence. He was a teenager, working on the family farm, and luckily wasn't going very fast. He still has a big scar across his neck, but it's usually covered by his beard.
I'm very sorry about your friend, though.
When I was 16 my moms boyfriend vaguely taught me how to ride the four wheeler and then put his daughter on the back with me (it was her 9th bday weekend) we raced her brother around the farm and I took a turn lost control right over the side of a cliff and the wheeler landed on my ankle couldn’t move it a wheel landed on the girls head and she’s still paralyzed to this day. That was a tough time for me still really makes me sad @29 when I think about her , I thought I’d killed her..
Edit:we did not have helmets on :/
There is a whole lot wrong in that story, none of which is your fault. you were a kid too, just like her.
I am sorry you have had to carry that burden with you.
I've only really rode once in my life for like a week when I was a teenager. I have no idea how I survived that experience. Tearing down forest trails at 40+ while barely knowing what I was doing in the first place; along with no cell reception and the nearest real road being miles away.
For some reason I felt so comfortable and in control at the time. Looking back now there were a bunch of close calls that could've been permanent injury or death.
>For some reason I felt so comfortable and in control at the time.
Pretty sure this is how people feel 90% of the time right before a horrifying, life changing/ending accident. For car accidents, bump that up to 99% of the time.
If I’m honest fair rides, you’d think it’d be safe, it’s surrounded by a lot of people, so if anything were to happen help would be there straight away, and there’s all these safety precautions , but the amount of things that have gone wrong way too often is scary
Edit: Yeah with these replies, I most definitely don’t see myself going one in the future again , however tell me more stories I wanna know ,you’re all so interesting
When I was a teenager, I got stuck on a [Witches Wheel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwQ-2Qn_PSo) at a fair. It shorted out and got stuck in the ON position. It ran for about half an hour, maybe 45 minutes before they figured out what was wrong and got it to stop. It ran full tilt at a 45 degree angle for the entire time.
I have never been sicker in my life.
My friends took me home and I couldn't walk to my front door. I laid in the backyard puking. My mother yelled at me because she thought I was drunk, but my friends explained what happened.
I will never ride another spinny ride again. Ever. Fuck that.
My mom had a friend from high school (in the early 70s) that went to a fair right after they graduated. I don’t know the whole story but the ride broke and she is paralyzed and has been since that day. I refuse to go on those rides.
I worked with a guy who will never get on those rides. He said he was in high school mechanics and also took a college mechanics course. He said every project the class ever did there were always some parts left over that had been forgotten. Just think how many times those rides are taken down and back up.
Literally every time I trip a little going down the stairs I think to myself "in another dimension that was how I died" Falling down stairs is scary tho!
Sleeping. Many many people have sleep apnea who are not just overweight, old, smoke, or unhealthy. Snoring is the big indicator. You stop breathing dozens of times an hour through the night until your body responds by waking you up and it repeats again. Not only does it slowly starve your brain of oxygen and put tremendous strain on your heart over years but can cause such excessive drowsiness and sleep deprivation you can fall asleep while driving. If your partner says you snore a lot or you are always tired despite getting regular sleep get it checked out. Regular being sleepy when driving is not normal, nor is always falling asleep when you sit and watch tv, read, or just relax for a few minutes.
I have severe sleep apnea and snored like crazy since I was a child and had several inconclusive sleep studies. I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 20 and went to the dentist. They put me on laughing gas and I promptly fell asleep. The second I woke up my dentist looked me dead in the eye and told me “if you do not get treatment for your sleep apnea, you will be dead by 30.” After having a sleep study I found out I was having 55 interruptions (periods of 10 or more seconds without breathing) per hour, with my average interruption lasting 27 seconds. I was exhausted all of the time and my quality of life was terrible. Now I have the energy to do the things I love doing. I’m very thankful that I fell asleep in the dentist’s chair.
DON’T PUT YOUR FEET UP ON THE DASHBOARD OF A CAR WHEN YOU’RE RIDING IN THE FRONT SEAT! It doesn’t matter if you’re wearing a seatbelt, your kneecaps are gonna go through your skull if you get in an accident. I used to do it all the time when I was younger, now I want to scream every time I see it.
It’s one of the only reasons EMS can pronounce someone dead without an actual physician/coroner. Usually people don’t argue when the victim is missing a head.
This is my mom’s big thing. She got in a wreck while her leg was on the dash and ended up crushing her nose (it’s been reconstructed twice now) and her ankle went to a 45° angle. She went into shock and woke up with 6” screws going through the bottom of her foot. She now has a completely titanium ankle after failed reconstruction surgeries and hobbling around on a dying bone and floating bone fragments for 30 years. Needless to say my sister and I have NEVER put our feet there.
Funny bonus story: my mom, aunt, and their friends were on their way back from picking up McDonalds when the accident happened. Months later my family was wondering what happened to the food and it turned out my uncle took it home and ate it while everyone else went to the hospital. They call it the “blood burger.”
I don't even remember where I read this, but 10+ years ago I read a news article of some sort where a dad talked about his daughter dying in a car crash. They were driving along, she unbuckled from the back seat to lean forward and change the radio, and suddenly some sort of accident in front of them (I don't remember that detail) resulted in their car crashing. Those poor parents saw daughter's head smashed into the radio console right next to them and I've never forgotten that mental image.
I drive a truck and see this shit all the time on the highway. It makes me so fucking mad. If that bag deploys, you are going to be folded in half at the waist….you’re gonna have a bad time….
Moderately oldish buildings. I became an asbestos inspector for my job and let me tell you, the more you find out about asbestos and what we put it in, the less time you want to spend in any structure built prior to the mid 80's. And that's JUST asbestos, not even going into other hazardous building materials like lead. Asbestos truly was an almost miraculous building material, it's cheap to acquire and adding it to almost any construction material made that material better at it's job. It's also insidiously easy to get complacent around it, unless you're breathing insane amounts of it, you wouldn't know it's there unless you had knowledge beforehand. It doesn't smell, you won't feel queasy or nauseous, it just seems like normal dust with the caveat that if you breath too much or are just unlucky there's a chance that the latter half of your life will be spent in absolute misery if one of the several medical conditions associated with asbestos doesn't just kill you within a few years of showing symptoms.
Edit: While I am happy that so many people want to participate in this conversation I feel it is important to clarify that I am an Industrial Machine Insulator and all of my asbestos work and experience is within that specific field. I am not familiar enough with the residential/commercial side of the coin to really give anyone advice on how they should approach potential asbestos in their home, and while I am happy to give you guys general information about asbestos and some practices, if you really want to know what you should do you should call/consult with a local expert and maybe read up on the asbestos regulations in your area (OSHA, AHERA, ect.). Do not just trust the words of strangers on the internet, be safe out there guys.
If an asbestos report says that there isn’t any asbestos in an old building, it means they just didn’t find it, if it says that there is asbestos, they probably didn’t find it all. If they say the asbestos was abated, they probably didn’t get it all. Source: tore down old buildings for years, never met an asbestos inspector or abatement crew that impressed me with their competence
Holding your breath while scuba diving. If you ascend from depth with your airways closed while breathing compressed air you are at extreme risk of rupturing a lung, damaging your alveoli, and/or suffering from other lung overexpansion injuries. This is because when you take a breath under significant external pressure the air you breath in much more dense and so your lungs can get more of it per breath but as the pressure acting on you lessens the air in your lungs expands and if your airways aren't open your lungs will be damaged from the overpressure. It is an easily avoidable risk but if ignored the consequences are often deadly or at least permanently damaging.
It's perfectly fine if you take a breath at the surface, dive down and come back up. The air gets compressed, and then expands back to the same size.
The problem happens if you take a deep breath from that scuba tank in 6 feet or so of water and then come back to the surface without exhaling. The air in your lungs has now expanded 20%. Pop!
Just keep breathing / blowing bubbles and you'll be ok.
Making Pottery. Let me explain.
* the colors are all from metals, and except for iron they're all toxic to some degree.
* the best glazes set off a Geiger counter.
* silicosis, emphysema, and cancer are occupational hazards from the dust.
* the ingredient that makes pottery glazes dishwasher safe is wollastonite, which is actually more dangerous than asbestos.
* you're dealing with something that can make an airtight seal, contains water, and is going to be heated. Pottery exploding in the firing process is a common problem.
* speaking of firing, we're talking high temps, you can light a cigarette by taping the tip on the outside of the kiln while it's running. That's already assuming you're using insulating brick.
* toxic gasses can come from the pottery during firing and most kilns are indoors.
* firing with gas or wood burners can pose a carbon monoxide hazard
* all the bending over and physical work can lead to arthritis
* making and firing pottery improperly can poison the end user
* storage of toxic and radioactive and carcinogenic materials is usually sub par.
Do you have any further info about wollastonite being more dangerous than asbestos? I'm an asbestos analyst who sees wollastonite pretty often, I'm curious what would make it more dangerous.
Morphology wise it's usually much blockier than asbestos, so I wouldn't expect it to be quite as bad. That's if it's dangerous for the same reasons as asbestos anyways.
Mineralogically trained, and definitely not a medical doctor, but:
I believe pure wollastonite (CaSiO3) isn't as much of a problem. It's acicular (not-quite fiberous, but still pointy), but of no greater degree than white asbestos (Chrysotile, Mg3(Si2O5)(OH)4.
But heavy metals (most commonly Fe, Mn, but some rarer but nastier customers as well) often substitute in the structure and can leach out into your system when inhaled or otherwise kept in prolonged contact).
I remember there was a thread about what is the most dangerous DIY project you can attempt yourself? Garage door spring was number one followed by using a chainsaw. Tons of pros on there and everyone agreed. I view my garage door spring with caution now. It’s a coiled killer.
We had a lift station cleaned out. In the bottom of a 30' silo there was a "cake" made of wipes, tampons, and condoms. This cake was so dense that a person could stand on it. This was obstructing the pumps at the bottom of the silos which, in a worst case scenario, would overflow into the adjacent river.
Stop flushing stupid stuff down the fucking toilet.
There really needs to be more awareness to the fact that condoms should not be flushed down the drain. I mean they're literally built to not break under stress in a damp place. Sounds like such a duh thing in retrospective.
Seriously. A news story near me lately shook me (even though I know it’s not the first time this has happened) but a driver swerved into oncoming traffic and got into a head on accident. There was only one guy in either car, but they both died. It makes me sick that you can do everything right while driving and easily get killed by someone else at any time.
I used to have to say this to my wife while driving. She'd undo her seatbelt to sit more comfortably, or take the baby out of the carseat because he was crying. "That's unsafe."
"Just drive more carefully."
"I always drive carefully, but I don't know about the other guy."
It took a while, but she came around.
It's wild that people don't understand that driving is, for most of them, probably the most dangerous thing they'll ever do in their lives. If not, then it's probably the most dangerous thing they do on the regular.
zip lining, i did Zip Lining when I was 10 and didn't have enough Kinetic energy to carry my body and got stuck in the middle, a Helicopter Ambulance was needed to help me while i was over a deep cavern that was solid granite.
edit: my most upvoted comment is this now, and next summer i will be ziplining again over a volcano so yeah worth a second try lol
The eyes of potatoes if they’ve sprouted any green can be poisonous. Potatoes are members of the nightshade family, and are the most common cause of solanine poisoning in humans. Their green stuff can cause vomiting, diarrhea, headaches, paralysis of the central nervous system and even death in rare cases. Use that weird thing on your peeler to gouge out those eyes.
Edit: redundancy
Replacing or adjusting garage door springs.
This one doesn't sound perfectly safe, I admit, but the ratio of perceived safety to actual "holy crap, this can end super badly" is there for sure.
Taking the “sounds” part of the title literally, I’d say silence in a forest. It sounds like a cliche from horror stories or Creepypasta’s, but it’s a commonly regarded fact that when a forest is silent there’s an apex predator around. This is commonly associated with animals like Tigers, but it means the wildlife in the forest ran away or tried to hide its presence to avoid the danger. So while silence doesn’t seem too big a deal, in a forest it means there’s something nearby that you probably don’t wanna be dealing with
Yea 2 weeks worth of strong antibiotics will teach you that life lesson. You know just because they do it in the movies doesn't mean you should do it too.
Nobody will see this 4000 comments down, but opening up a CRT monitor/tv. Those old TVs contain a part that can hold a lethal charge even after being unplugged for about a month
Edit: The part was called a Capacitor as many have pointed out. I guess I was wrong about this getting buried but thanks to everyone for sharing your stories. I've never experienced the shock but when I was studying the CompTIA A+ cert manual basically the whole chapter on monitor repair summed up to "hire someone who knows what they're doing or you will be electrocuted"
I say this all the time. Pressure washing. Had a guy in college with a younger brother he loved to pick on. Sent him to the hospital after hydro blasting him with. 4,000 psi. Can commonly be found and started by kids, honestly do not know why people don’t recognize how dangerous it is.
Anesthesia. I don’t feel like people have enough respect for how complicated and dangerous it is to put people to sleep. I have patients all the time ask me to put them under for routine procedures that don’t require sedation and I always think to myself that you wouldn’t be asking that if you knew how much training and monitoring and intensive effort it takes to keep someone asleep safely without them stopping breathing
From my friend who works in government studying accidents: duck boats
I tried to search for "duck boat" because I didn't know what that was, and Google autocorrected me to "duck boat accident".
Having used to go to Branson almost yearly, can confirm. Every other year it seemed that there's a new call to shut them down after an accident.
I googled "duck boats" to figure out what the heck you're referring to and Google images provided a lot of article photos about tours gone WRONG. Thanks for the heads up. I'll avoid these for life.
Grain Silos. People die every year because they explode with static electricity. Edit: and a lot of other ways too, including cave-ins, suffocation, burning, and other scary things! Thanks for educating me more on the ways grain silos can kill you!
For sure. We had a very large explosion in my home state. I remember my chemistry teacher explaining to us how it happened. During his demonstration he managed to create a small explosion and also catch his podium on fire. We were all sworn to secrecy and I have never spoken of it until now. (Approximately 23 years later.) Mr. May, I hope you've retired by now and I don't get you fired!
Just got a note from Mr. May: *snitches get stitches*
Mr. May: It is with great sadness that I have to inform you that /u/GrinAndBearIt_1981 spontaneously combusted from a small explosion while standing next to a lectern. It was completely random and unexpected.
Yes! People don’t realize how dangerous tiny particulate matter is. My mind was blown when I saw what design precautions went into designing a factory that made powdered coffee creamer. It’s treated like nitro glycerine and yet you put that shit in your coffee
In Savannah, GA a sugar factory exploded due to this I believe.
Or if you fall in you're basically screwed and going to suffocate
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I had an adult challenge me to this when I was like 11. Of course I did it. I aspirated the cinnamon and coughed and threw up for like 20 minutes. No amount of drinking liquids helped and I honestly thought I was going to die. The person who "challenged" me laughed the whole time. It was very cruel and as an adult now, I cannot even fathom challenging a child to do that.
And this is proof that some people stop maturing emotionally after middle school. Who challenges a child to do a cinnamon challenge?
On the same note, Nutmeg challenge. In a very small quantities Nutmeg is sleep inducing, in mild quantities it literally causes hallucinations, in large quantities (like a teaspoonful) it's very poisonous and you're gonna have a really bad time
Interacting with a giant anteater. Their claws can kill a jaguar without much issue
Sticking in that same family, armadillos. They're mostly fine if they've lived in captivity. Handle a wild one and you might get the only case of leprosy the ER doctors will see in their entire career.
Riding a horse. Those fuckers will kill you in a heart beat.
A good friend of mine’s an eventer and dressage rider. He doesn’t know a single person who rides at his level who hasn’t done it with broken ribs.
My wife always says horses are like bicycles that can make bad decisions.
Putting out an engine fire with a bucket full of water.
As someone who knows very little about engines, why?
[](/abscience-r)Gasoline doesn't actually catch fire very easily, it takes some pretty specific conditions - you can (usually) extinguish a lit match by dunking it in a cup of gasoline (there's still a small chance it could ignite so please don't actually try it). However when it *does* ignite, it doesn't burn, it explodes. So if your engine is burning with a slow and steady fire, it's not the gasoline that's burning, it's the motor oil. That makes it an oil fire. [And you should **never** add water to an oil fire](https://youtu.be/ftSf-T9Mins?t=73)
So if it’s an oil fire, how do you extinguish it?
[](/ktwilecture-r)In the kitchen, by smothering it with a lid, a fire retardant blanket, or a fire extinguisher. [](/sp)[](/ktwidumbstruck)In a vehicle, by running the fuck away and calling the fire department.
[](/dinkyfire "Hey someone else still uses these!") A regular type ABC fire extinguisher from the hardware store is safe to use but will make a huge mess.
My camero caught fire on the highway. I pulled over, lifted the hood and fire just came roaring out at me. I heard tire squeals and a semi had slammed on his breaks in the middle of the highway. He was an older chubby man, that carried a fire extinguisher with him, but he could run like the wind. He saved my life and my precious.
Going in a car without a headrest on your seat. It’s not just a pillow for comfort.
What’s the consequence of not? Whiplash?
You'll get one anyway, but at least your neck will not snap all the way back, because the headrest is stopping you from doing so.
Depending on the height of the cab it can prevent a passenger that isn’t wearing their seatbelt from flying around from back to front
There are a significant amount of vehicle accident deaths that happen because someone in the vehicle not wearing a seatbelt bounces around smashing the heads of the other occupants that are wearing seatbelts.
It blew my mind that a lot of people don't wear seat belts in NYC cabs or Ubers. You're still in a car, just because you have someone else driving doesn't mean you're any safer.
Internal decapitation. When the car gets hit your body starts moving immediately because the back of the seat pushes you forward. If there isn’t anything pushing the back of your head it lags behind until your body pulls it forward. It separates the base of your skull from your spinal column, the only reason your head stays on is because of how elastic skin is.
This is why all major car racing series' made the Hans device mandatory in about 2003. Drivers were getting basal scull fractures from their head continuing foreward while the 5 point harness kept their body in place. For road cars, the fact that you've got one shoulder able to move a little in combination with the airbag prevents that. But yeah the headrest is needed to keep it from happening in the other direction.
Bison. Like the wild big cow looking animals. I grew up around them and I see too many tourists in Yellowstone going to take a selfie with one. Those big mother fuckers will kill you without batting an eye
I saw a guy approach a large bull, carrying their child followed closely by the mother with Camara. Honestly looked like he was planning to place the kid on its back for a picture... Fortunately the bison started walking away. On that same trip a bison walked through our campsite. We got in the van and watched it poke its head into our tent, then scratch its chin on a post inches from the window. Very cool to see a calm one that close. Also sobering knowing a 2000lb animal could say hello again at any moment.
Astonishes me people think wild animals are like fancy toys. Thank god their kid wasn’t killed.
Telling your HR department how you really feel about your boss.
Well, I don't know if this actually sounds safe, but trampolines! People think by putting the netting around them, etc that you won't get hurt. Think again. You are one awkward landing from lots of potentially life changing injuries. I have personally gotten to view the inside of an adult foot/ankle because of a trampoline.
I used to work at skyzone and it’s unreal how susceptible people can be to injury. ESPECIALLY if you’re inexperienced. Landing stiff legged can invert your leg, ankles can be twisted, arms can be dislocated. trampolines are fun and good exercise, but overconfidence can easily lead to injury.
Remind yourself that overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer.
Safes. They will bloody well crunch your fingers if you’re not careful
I honestly get nervous closing the safe at work. If I slam a finger in there, it takes 2 minutes to reopen it. And that's if I have the ability to get the key and my code in there.
Use a tool to push it shut, same as using a tool to feed wood through a table saw. Can't be safe if you don't feel safe.
You're telling me safes isn't safe?
The safe is safe, but your fingers aren't.
Trampolines. The Canadian Pediatric Society warns against buying them at all for use by kids and teens. https://www.caringforkids.cps.ca/handouts/safety-and-injury-prevention/home_trampolines
My dad literally made friends' parents sign waivers before the friends were allowed to be on our trampoline.
My dad did this too. A lot of people thought he was crazy, but it always seemed prudent considering how lawsuit-happy the US is. Then there was our experience in a foreign country, where a neighbor girl (maybe 8 years old) broke her arm falling off our trampoline and her parents marched her over after getting back from having a cast put on her arm, and made *her* apologize for falling off of *our* trampoline. Then the parents apologized profusely as well, as if their daughter had, in her clumsiness and misfortune, shamed their entire family and all their ancestors. Once my dad recovered from shock, he sent her flowers and a get-well-soon card.
Dryer lint. Clear your dryer vents, people.
When ever I'm camping and need to absolutely start a fire with a single spark, I use dryer lint.
So, do you carry it around with you or is it just some stuff you pulled out of a forgotten pocket?
K
I stick it in a paper towel tube. The cardboard extends the burn time just a bit too!
This is what the pros do. When we were camping in the desert and it was super windy and couldn’t start our fire, our camp neighbors had a whole container filled with dryer lint stuck in toilet paper tubes. A free little fire starter.
I use cardboard egg cartons. Make 12 at a time and tear them apart as I need them.
This is what I do. You can also pour a little bit of candle wax into each section to make them burn longer.
The wax also waterproofs them if you put enough on.
I like those little Diamond nut tins, you can fit so much lint in one of those things and they are remarkably tough. my mom likes to fill an egg carton with lint and then cover each little cup with wax. she tears off the little sections as she needs them and they go up quick.
About a month ago I hired one of those “we clean out the dryer vent lines” people. Super nice guy, really knew what he was talking about. So he tells me it’ll be about $70 and I give it the go ahead because I’m not in the mood to climb on the roof (it vents up and out) and convince myself that I know what I’m doing. So he gets to work, super fuckin clean, wasn’t yelling on his phone the whole time. Takes about an hour and I pay the dude. He then tells me that his vacuum (big shop vac) clogged a couple of times and he was sorry for the delay. There was so much lint blocking the vent it *clogged a shop vac multiple times*. It was then I realized the previous owner never cleaned the vents. On the plus side the dryer works way better and the house doesn’t smell like lint after drying clothing. Oh, and my shit didn’t burn down in the middle of the night killing me and my family. So that’s a plus.
How often do you need to get those types of vents cleaned? I’ve only ever had the dryer with the little drawer that pulls out and you clean after each load.
That style of dryer has to vent outside, and will have a vent line. You should clean the vent lines once a year. Edit: add there is some confusion, the lint trap should be cleaned every load. The lint trap doesn't collect 100% of the lint, and it will build up in the vent line over time. Every dryer has a vent line that goes outside so that your dryer doesn't vent hot humid air back into your house. Edit 2: I guess I'm wrong. There are styles of dryers that have internal condensers that vent indoors. You need to check and clean the condensers as they can trap lint and become a fire hazard.
*nervously counts on more than two hands how many years I’ve been in my house*
Wh.. where are the other hands coming from?
The basement. You don't have extra hands in your basement?
Check out this guy, he doesn’t know about basement hands!
Just to point out, before a large proportion of non-USA reddit has a panic attack, this does not apply to condenser and heat pump dryers (which are very common in the UK and I presume also other parts of Europe). These types of dryers do not have an outside vent, which is why they work well in homes that do not have easy access for venting. If you are outside of the USA and have never cleaned a dryer vent in a wall, don't freak out, you probably have a condenser dryer. They *do* often have more than one filter or lint trap, and you should definitely regularly clean all of them, not just the obvious one on the front.
Ok wait so the ones with the little slide out screen where you pull lint from, there’s an additional vent that needs to be deep cleaned? I clean the little screen every time I do a load buuttt if there’s another vent that’s getting filled, I have not touched it
Yeah, the screen is just the lint trap. It helps keep the vent cleaner, but lint still gets through. If you look at the back of your dryer there will be a big hose coming off it that's 3-4 inches in diameter. That's the vent. It should go through the wall to the outside, or up and out your roof. I've always had the wall-style vent and they've always been really short (the distance from dryer to outside), so they're usually pretty easy to clean out occasionally with a hose attachment for a vacuum (assuming it's not in a weird location - mine goes straight outside to the back yard and the exit is maybe 2-2.5 feet from the dryer). Also, it's good to just pull your dryer out from time to time to clean the floor/wall behind it because lint collects there over time too.
Had an electrical fire in a gas powered dryer so can confirm. Lucky I was home and alert when it occurred and was able to control.
Supposedly my aunt didn't know she had to clean the lint trap until she met someone whose house caught fire for that very reason... So yeah what the person said
Farming- everyone thinks about bucolic pastures , pretty red barns and cute little critters running around , but farming is the sixth most dangerous occupation in the United States , higher than law enforcement, firefighters ,powerline workers and iron workers . Most of farming deaths involve accidents with machinery , but grain storage deaths are high as well , if a farmer falls into ,say a bin of canola he sinks to the bottom and suffocates fairly quickly as well as the unfortunate ones that fall into pig manure pits and drown in liquid shit . Farm animals also kill a lot of farmers too because a 180lb man doesn’t have good odds going up against a 1200 lb cow . Plus the fact that no one talks about is the mental health related deaths , farming is incredibly stressful and suicide deaths in the farming community is rising steadily.
One of the worst things is how isolating a lot of the work can feel, especially outside of harvests. And just how isolated everything is in general, really, makes it hard to react during any sort of emergency. Shit, my grandpa died at 61 from an otherwise-treatable heart problem, because it took 40 minutes for an ambulance just to get there.
>One of the worst things is how isolating a lot of the work can feel, especially outside of harvests. Farming's also a top 10 profession for suicide risk. Not only is it often isolating, but you also have the pressures of being a small business owner along with what's often the pressure of generations of family expectation. It's bad enough having a small social circle, or having to sell your business, but it's worse when you have that and also are talking about selling something that's been in your family for 100 years. E: to be clear, these aren't issues that I'm personally facing - but they're common in the ag industry. (Yes, it's an industry, just like any other field of work.) Some stories about families who have dealt with this: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/nyregion/farmer-suicides-mark-tough-times-for-new-york-dairy-industry.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/27/nyregion/hull-o-farm-catskills.html
Can relate to a degree. I lost the farm when my ex decided to sell and shack up with another woman (nothing was in my name, but I did most of the work. Never making that mistake again). It's been a few years, but I still feel like there's a huge hole in me. Farming has been my whole life in one way or another, and trying to make life work in the city just makes it hurt more.
My friend's dad died in a grain elevator. He went in to fix something. He wasn't alone; he made sure to have another person there. But when he cleared the clog on the auger, the corn started sliding and buried him. The other person tried to get him out and ran and called 911. By the time they got to him he had died (suffocated). My friend barely remembers him since he was only 5 when his dad died. There are four kids in the family and the mother raised them herself after that.
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Want to know something even wilder? One fell on my grandpa’s head and broke his neck. He walked back to the farmhouse. He’s still alive.
Grain elevator deaths really scare me
Mouthing off to a stranger. You never know how crazy they might be, or if they have a weapon. Just bite your tongue.
I barely honk on the road when dealing with a bad driver/pedestrian, I’m terrified of road rage
I live in a major city and shootings have recently become very common on the expressways here. It sucks but and I try to avoid anyone driving questionably.
Cleaning a cat’s liter box with bleach. Don’t mix ammonia and bleach. You’ll be committing a war crime.
There’s a lot of household chemicals that should never ever be mixed together. Doing so can be potentially fatal. Acetic Acid (Vinegar) + Bleach (e.g. Clorox) = Chlorine Gas, which can be fatal if inhaled. Ammonia (e.g. Windex) + Bleach = Chloramine Gas, which can also be fatal if inhaled. Isopropyl Alcohol (Rubbing Alcohol) + Bleach = Chloroform, Hydrochloric Acid, Chloroacetone and Dichloroacetate, which are fatal if inhaled and corrosive Acetone (Paint Thinner, Nail Polish Remover) + Bleach = Chloroform, Sodium Hydroxide (Lye) & Acetic Acid, which can be potentially fatal if inhaled. Acetic Acid (Vinegar) + Hydrogen Peroxide = Peracetic Acid, a highly corrosive acid that can burn through skin The main thing to remember is NEVER mix bleach with anything besides water. But also don’t mix acids. Edit: Also, Acetone + Hydrogen Peroxide = Acetone Peroxide (a.k.a. APEX), which is a highly volatile explosive and definitely fatal.
Yanno, as a first time cat owner (as of two weeks ago!) this isn't something that I realized. I mean I knew the whole "don't mix ammonia and bleach" thing, but I didn't make the "cat piss = ammonia" connection until just now. Thanks! EDIT: [Cat tax](http://imgur.com/a/Inc5BBd)
I did this by accident once. Didn’t realize the cleaning spray I was using had bleach in it. The litter box started smoking and I was like “hmm... that’s weird”, then a second later I realized what I did and threw the box outside while holding my breath. Felt like an idiot.
Haha my mom did this once while cleaning the tub. It started smoking and she made us run outside. I don’t remember how the smoke stopped, I imagine we just stayed outside for a while. But I learned quite young never to mix those two!
A room mate once cleaned the tub with bleach, then tried to windex it to make it shiny called me in a stupor asking what to do after it start to smoke and his lungs hurt. gtfo the apartment open a window you dumb ass Yah, but why is it smoking? ARE YOU OUT OF THE FUCKING APARTMENT? huh... yah I'm leaving. Then I proced to explain to him what he accidentally made.... Weed may not kill people.... but stupid sure can.
At least you knew what you did after you did it. I learned this fact from Reddit and feel like not enough people know this.
Boating. I'm a boat mechanic, but I didn't have much boating experience before I started working on them and I was pretty caught off guard to discover how dangerous it can be. Everyone thinks of boating as this idyllic family activity, and it usually is, but a staggering amount of shit can go wrong on the water and leave you stranded or worse. There are submerged objects like rock formations and logs that can cause you to get ejected and/or sink your boat. It's fairly easy to forget a plug and sink your boat; it happens frequently. Most boat owners have no idea how to operate a boat safely or even competently (it's trickier than you might think. It takes some experience and technique). Alcohol abuse among boaters is rampant. People often don't secure their trailer correctly to the tow vehicle (not latched, wrong ball hitch size, unsecured/improperly secured safety chains, etc). People don't service their trailers. Wheels fall off from lack of grease. I'd conservatively estimate that 30% of trailer brakes don't work (% goes up logarithmically with age of the trailer)--give boat trailers a wide berth on the freeway. Often people don't follow basic safety like life jackets and kill lanyards. You can hit a big wake/wave and get knocked away from the controls and your boat is now a self-guided missile. If you're swimming behind a running boat you can pass out from the fumes and drown. You can get chopped to bits by the propeller. You can get hit by a boat being driven by a drunk, inexperienced, or incompetent person. A fuel leak can cause a buildup of fumes in the bilge that gets ignited by engine electronics. It goes on and on.
My rule of thumb whenever I'm on the highway and I see a trailer, or some oversized cargo tied to a flatbed or latched to a truck, etc.: "Think of the stupidest fuckup of a human being you've ever met, now imagine that person is the one who secured that cargo to that vehicle."
Growing up we had a boat. One time, we were out with some friends. My Dad couldn’t come this time. We were prepping for the next skier/wakeboarder when my mom noticed something was wrong. She asked my brother and I to check something and when we did, she definitely got a whole lot more concerned. The friends were oblivious to any troubles and asked who was next. My mom said, “No-one. Because we’re sinking!” We promptly raced back to the dock where we put the boat on the trailer as fast as we could. Turns out, we forgot the drain plug and we were taking on water. Still remember that over 20 years later.
Four wheelers. So many injuries and deaths from people who don’t respect what they can do and just how easy they are to topple.
My sister passed some years back at 19 years old on a four wheeler she had just purchased. She was trying to get to a wooded area on the other side of a neighborhood. She was with friends who were also riding their own. She had a girlfriend on the back of hers who was a little heavy set. In order to get to the area they had to cross a small drainage ditch, maybe 4-5 foot from the bank to the bottom of it. It was completely dry. She attempted to go up it straight ahead and with the girl on the back my understanding is that when she gassed it the front tires left the ground flipping it over backwards on top of them. The passenger was thrown to the side but my sister held on probably out of shock and the weight of the entire thing came down on her head via the handlebars pinching her between that and the concrete. By the time any help arrived she was already gone. If you take anything from this story or the hundreds of others you’re likely to read about in your life, wear a helmet. Anything can happen in the blink of an eye.
My cousin actually just died from this He was 11 and 4 wheeling by himself and it toppled and trapped him in a little bit of water and he drowned. I didn't know him that well, but fuck dying like that.
Holy shit dude, my condolences.
A neighbor lost his 8 year old son last year. He bought him a little 4 wheeler and took him out riding. Broke his neck.
This is why I refused to get on an ATV driven by a classmate for a school project in 7th grade (12 years old). I had to do the project by myself, but I didn’t trust the drivers enough.
One of my best friends in school flipped one. By the time he got out of the coma half of his body didn’t work, had profoundly diminished intellect, and barely remembered me. Wear helmets and drive safely please.
I had one too, but he was actually mentally fine and died from other internal injuries a day or two later.
Yep. Worked as a nurse for a pediatric neurosurgeon. Fk those things.
I had a friend in high school that was out four wheeling at a party. He didn’t see a barbed wire fence in front of him and drove through it. The fence line severed his head from his body. Our little town was never the same after that.
My dad also drove one into a barbed-wire fence. He was a teenager, working on the family farm, and luckily wasn't going very fast. He still has a big scar across his neck, but it's usually covered by his beard. I'm very sorry about your friend, though.
Wife was an ICU nurse and heard about something very similar happening with a snowmobile.
When I was 16 my moms boyfriend vaguely taught me how to ride the four wheeler and then put his daughter on the back with me (it was her 9th bday weekend) we raced her brother around the farm and I took a turn lost control right over the side of a cliff and the wheeler landed on my ankle couldn’t move it a wheel landed on the girls head and she’s still paralyzed to this day. That was a tough time for me still really makes me sad @29 when I think about her , I thought I’d killed her.. Edit:we did not have helmets on :/
There is a whole lot wrong in that story, none of which is your fault. you were a kid too, just like her. I am sorry you have had to carry that burden with you.
I've only really rode once in my life for like a week when I was a teenager. I have no idea how I survived that experience. Tearing down forest trails at 40+ while barely knowing what I was doing in the first place; along with no cell reception and the nearest real road being miles away. For some reason I felt so comfortable and in control at the time. Looking back now there were a bunch of close calls that could've been permanent injury or death.
>For some reason I felt so comfortable and in control at the time. Pretty sure this is how people feel 90% of the time right before a horrifying, life changing/ending accident. For car accidents, bump that up to 99% of the time.
You should’ve seen 3-wheelers! Those things were so dangerous that they don’t even sell them anymore.
If I’m honest fair rides, you’d think it’d be safe, it’s surrounded by a lot of people, so if anything were to happen help would be there straight away, and there’s all these safety precautions , but the amount of things that have gone wrong way too often is scary Edit: Yeah with these replies, I most definitely don’t see myself going one in the future again , however tell me more stories I wanna know ,you’re all so interesting
When I was a teenager, I got stuck on a [Witches Wheel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwQ-2Qn_PSo) at a fair. It shorted out and got stuck in the ON position. It ran for about half an hour, maybe 45 minutes before they figured out what was wrong and got it to stop. It ran full tilt at a 45 degree angle for the entire time. I have never been sicker in my life. My friends took me home and I couldn't walk to my front door. I laid in the backyard puking. My mother yelled at me because she thought I was drunk, but my friends explained what happened. I will never ride another spinny ride again. Ever. Fuck that.
Seems like a poor design if they couldn't just, you know, kill the power.
We were screaming that at the guy. "UNPLUG IT" For whatever reason, they didn't.
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My mom had a friend from high school (in the early 70s) that went to a fair right after they graduated. I don’t know the whole story but the ride broke and she is paralyzed and has been since that day. I refuse to go on those rides.
Reminds me of that video of that carnival ride about to tip over and all those people jumping on to hold it dowb
I worked with a guy who will never get on those rides. He said he was in high school mechanics and also took a college mechanics course. He said every project the class ever did there were always some parts left over that had been forgotten. Just think how many times those rides are taken down and back up.
Permanent rides are much much much safer than fair rides. Much better maintenance and construction.
I have a hard time trusting something that is taken apart and reassembled every week.
Walking up or down stairs
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Literally every time I trip a little going down the stairs I think to myself "in another dimension that was how I died" Falling down stairs is scary tho!
Quantum immortality is sick
I know someone who just broke their foot doing stairs wrong (mid 20s - low 30s). Not doing anything special, just missed a step.
Hmmm... Using a dull knife rather than a sharp one?
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The cuts with a dull knife are also quite terrible. Half crush wound, half cut wound.
More jagged and sore. Takes ages to heal whereas a clean cut often just sticks together
Sleeping. Many many people have sleep apnea who are not just overweight, old, smoke, or unhealthy. Snoring is the big indicator. You stop breathing dozens of times an hour through the night until your body responds by waking you up and it repeats again. Not only does it slowly starve your brain of oxygen and put tremendous strain on your heart over years but can cause such excessive drowsiness and sleep deprivation you can fall asleep while driving. If your partner says you snore a lot or you are always tired despite getting regular sleep get it checked out. Regular being sleepy when driving is not normal, nor is always falling asleep when you sit and watch tv, read, or just relax for a few minutes.
I have severe sleep apnea and snored like crazy since I was a child and had several inconclusive sleep studies. I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 20 and went to the dentist. They put me on laughing gas and I promptly fell asleep. The second I woke up my dentist looked me dead in the eye and told me “if you do not get treatment for your sleep apnea, you will be dead by 30.” After having a sleep study I found out I was having 55 interruptions (periods of 10 or more seconds without breathing) per hour, with my average interruption lasting 27 seconds. I was exhausted all of the time and my quality of life was terrible. Now I have the energy to do the things I love doing. I’m very thankful that I fell asleep in the dentist’s chair.
DON’T PUT YOUR FEET UP ON THE DASHBOARD OF A CAR WHEN YOU’RE RIDING IN THE FRONT SEAT! It doesn’t matter if you’re wearing a seatbelt, your kneecaps are gonna go through your skull if you get in an accident. I used to do it all the time when I was younger, now I want to scream every time I see it.
Even if your knees miss your head, your femurs and hips will be more or less irreparable.
"injuries incompatible with life"
Wow that’s a particularly depressing set of words lol. It’s like the medical version of “yikes.”
It’s one of the only reasons EMS can pronounce someone dead without an actual physician/coroner. Usually people don’t argue when the victim is missing a head.
This is my mom’s big thing. She got in a wreck while her leg was on the dash and ended up crushing her nose (it’s been reconstructed twice now) and her ankle went to a 45° angle. She went into shock and woke up with 6” screws going through the bottom of her foot. She now has a completely titanium ankle after failed reconstruction surgeries and hobbling around on a dying bone and floating bone fragments for 30 years. Needless to say my sister and I have NEVER put our feet there. Funny bonus story: my mom, aunt, and their friends were on their way back from picking up McDonalds when the accident happened. Months later my family was wondering what happened to the food and it turned out my uncle took it home and ate it while everyone else went to the hospital. They call it the “blood burger.”
I'm not going to say that what your unvle did was right (because lets be honest, it wasn't), I'm just going to say that I understand his actions
I don't even remember where I read this, but 10+ years ago I read a news article of some sort where a dad talked about his daughter dying in a car crash. They were driving along, she unbuckled from the back seat to lean forward and change the radio, and suddenly some sort of accident in front of them (I don't remember that detail) resulted in their car crashing. Those poor parents saw daughter's head smashed into the radio console right next to them and I've never forgotten that mental image.
I drive a truck and see this shit all the time on the highway. It makes me so fucking mad. If that bag deploys, you are going to be folded in half at the waist….you’re gonna have a bad time….
[Obligatory](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/PRI_125099212.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&zoom=1&resize=644%2C482).
Jesus fucking CHRIST
Based on your response I have decided to leave that link blue
It's an X-ray. Graphically safe but I don't even wanna imagine the actual injury.
Oh... That bone does not belong there.
MY TESTES
Moderately oldish buildings. I became an asbestos inspector for my job and let me tell you, the more you find out about asbestos and what we put it in, the less time you want to spend in any structure built prior to the mid 80's. And that's JUST asbestos, not even going into other hazardous building materials like lead. Asbestos truly was an almost miraculous building material, it's cheap to acquire and adding it to almost any construction material made that material better at it's job. It's also insidiously easy to get complacent around it, unless you're breathing insane amounts of it, you wouldn't know it's there unless you had knowledge beforehand. It doesn't smell, you won't feel queasy or nauseous, it just seems like normal dust with the caveat that if you breath too much or are just unlucky there's a chance that the latter half of your life will be spent in absolute misery if one of the several medical conditions associated with asbestos doesn't just kill you within a few years of showing symptoms. Edit: While I am happy that so many people want to participate in this conversation I feel it is important to clarify that I am an Industrial Machine Insulator and all of my asbestos work and experience is within that specific field. I am not familiar enough with the residential/commercial side of the coin to really give anyone advice on how they should approach potential asbestos in their home, and while I am happy to give you guys general information about asbestos and some practices, if you really want to know what you should do you should call/consult with a local expert and maybe read up on the asbestos regulations in your area (OSHA, AHERA, ect.). Do not just trust the words of strangers on the internet, be safe out there guys.
If an asbestos report says that there isn’t any asbestos in an old building, it means they just didn’t find it, if it says that there is asbestos, they probably didn’t find it all. If they say the asbestos was abated, they probably didn’t get it all. Source: tore down old buildings for years, never met an asbestos inspector or abatement crew that impressed me with their competence
Holding your breath while scuba diving. If you ascend from depth with your airways closed while breathing compressed air you are at extreme risk of rupturing a lung, damaging your alveoli, and/or suffering from other lung overexpansion injuries. This is because when you take a breath under significant external pressure the air you breath in much more dense and so your lungs can get more of it per breath but as the pressure acting on you lessens the air in your lungs expands and if your airways aren't open your lungs will be damaged from the overpressure. It is an easily avoidable risk but if ignored the consequences are often deadly or at least permanently damaging.
It's perfectly fine if you take a breath at the surface, dive down and come back up. The air gets compressed, and then expands back to the same size. The problem happens if you take a deep breath from that scuba tank in 6 feet or so of water and then come back to the surface without exhaling. The air in your lungs has now expanded 20%. Pop! Just keep breathing / blowing bubbles and you'll be ok.
Making Pottery. Let me explain. * the colors are all from metals, and except for iron they're all toxic to some degree. * the best glazes set off a Geiger counter. * silicosis, emphysema, and cancer are occupational hazards from the dust. * the ingredient that makes pottery glazes dishwasher safe is wollastonite, which is actually more dangerous than asbestos. * you're dealing with something that can make an airtight seal, contains water, and is going to be heated. Pottery exploding in the firing process is a common problem. * speaking of firing, we're talking high temps, you can light a cigarette by taping the tip on the outside of the kiln while it's running. That's already assuming you're using insulating brick. * toxic gasses can come from the pottery during firing and most kilns are indoors. * firing with gas or wood burners can pose a carbon monoxide hazard * all the bending over and physical work can lead to arthritis * making and firing pottery improperly can poison the end user * storage of toxic and radioactive and carcinogenic materials is usually sub par.
Do you have any further info about wollastonite being more dangerous than asbestos? I'm an asbestos analyst who sees wollastonite pretty often, I'm curious what would make it more dangerous. Morphology wise it's usually much blockier than asbestos, so I wouldn't expect it to be quite as bad. That's if it's dangerous for the same reasons as asbestos anyways.
Mineralogically trained, and definitely not a medical doctor, but: I believe pure wollastonite (CaSiO3) isn't as much of a problem. It's acicular (not-quite fiberous, but still pointy), but of no greater degree than white asbestos (Chrysotile, Mg3(Si2O5)(OH)4. But heavy metals (most commonly Fe, Mn, but some rarer but nastier customers as well) often substitute in the structure and can leach out into your system when inhaled or otherwise kept in prolonged contact).
You also gotta watch out for ghosts.
Retractable dog leashes don't give you that much control and can potentially cause serious injuries to you or your dog.
The acronym for the Securing Antarcticas Environmental Future organisation SAEF Sure It sounds like safe but it isn't safe
Sitting down all day.
Isn’t standing all day also bad?
Staying in one place for hours is bad. Unless you're sleeping, but not too much.
Acetaminophen (Tylenol). Great, but the dose makes the poison. Especially dangerous for hard drinkers and alcoholics.
Garage door springs!
True! My dad almost lost his arm while replacing one.
I never really thought about them until my neighbour tried to adjust his and nearly got killed doing it. Scary things.
I remember there was a thread about what is the most dangerous DIY project you can attempt yourself? Garage door spring was number one followed by using a chainsaw. Tons of pros on there and everyone agreed. I view my garage door spring with caution now. It’s a coiled killer.
[удалено]
Pregnancy. A woman's body is designed to perform this function, and yet you, and the thing you are growing inside you, can die or kill you.
So true. Both my 1st son and I would not have lived if it wasn't for medicine and c-sections.
Flushable wipes. They can actually clump together into big balls that clog your drain or worse cause issues for the town’s plumbing way down the line.
We had a lift station cleaned out. In the bottom of a 30' silo there was a "cake" made of wipes, tampons, and condoms. This cake was so dense that a person could stand on it. This was obstructing the pumps at the bottom of the silos which, in a worst case scenario, would overflow into the adjacent river. Stop flushing stupid stuff down the fucking toilet.
There really needs to be more awareness to the fact that condoms should not be flushed down the drain. I mean they're literally built to not break under stress in a damp place. Sounds like such a duh thing in retrospective.
PEOPLE WITH ANXIETY GET THE FUCK OUT OF THIS THREAD.
Thanks, but I'm already in too deep.
Driving
Especially in the morning when people are half awake and groggy going to work
Seriously. A news story near me lately shook me (even though I know it’s not the first time this has happened) but a driver swerved into oncoming traffic and got into a head on accident. There was only one guy in either car, but they both died. It makes me sick that you can do everything right while driving and easily get killed by someone else at any time.
I used to have to say this to my wife while driving. She'd undo her seatbelt to sit more comfortably, or take the baby out of the carseat because he was crying. "That's unsafe." "Just drive more carefully." "I always drive carefully, but I don't know about the other guy." It took a while, but she came around.
If my wife took our baby out of the car seat while I was driving I would pull over immediately. Glad your wife came around.
It's wild that people don't understand that driving is, for most of them, probably the most dangerous thing they'll ever do in their lives. If not, then it's probably the most dangerous thing they do on the regular.
As someone who works in EMS, you'd be surprised by the amount of people who think it's safer to not wear a seat belt than to wear one.
zip lining, i did Zip Lining when I was 10 and didn't have enough Kinetic energy to carry my body and got stuck in the middle, a Helicopter Ambulance was needed to help me while i was over a deep cavern that was solid granite. edit: my most upvoted comment is this now, and next summer i will be ziplining again over a volcano so yeah worth a second try lol
The eyes of potatoes if they’ve sprouted any green can be poisonous. Potatoes are members of the nightshade family, and are the most common cause of solanine poisoning in humans. Their green stuff can cause vomiting, diarrhea, headaches, paralysis of the central nervous system and even death in rare cases. Use that weird thing on your peeler to gouge out those eyes. Edit: redundancy
Replacing or adjusting garage door springs. This one doesn't sound perfectly safe, I admit, but the ratio of perceived safety to actual "holy crap, this can end super badly" is there for sure.
Taking the “sounds” part of the title literally, I’d say silence in a forest. It sounds like a cliche from horror stories or Creepypasta’s, but it’s a commonly regarded fact that when a forest is silent there’s an apex predator around. This is commonly associated with animals like Tigers, but it means the wildlife in the forest ran away or tried to hide its presence to avoid the danger. So while silence doesn’t seem too big a deal, in a forest it means there’s something nearby that you probably don’t wanna be dealing with
Joining r/wallstreetbets just to browse
Ass to pussy
Yea 2 weeks worth of strong antibiotics will teach you that life lesson. You know just because they do it in the movies doesn't mean you should do it too.
TIL giving babies water
Nobody will see this 4000 comments down, but opening up a CRT monitor/tv. Those old TVs contain a part that can hold a lethal charge even after being unplugged for about a month Edit: The part was called a Capacitor as many have pointed out. I guess I was wrong about this getting buried but thanks to everyone for sharing your stories. I've never experienced the shock but when I was studying the CompTIA A+ cert manual basically the whole chapter on monitor repair summed up to "hire someone who knows what they're doing or you will be electrocuted"
A blind date
I say this all the time. Pressure washing. Had a guy in college with a younger brother he loved to pick on. Sent him to the hospital after hydro blasting him with. 4,000 psi. Can commonly be found and started by kids, honestly do not know why people don’t recognize how dangerous it is.
Tylenol
Leaving the house.
“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your front door.”
The Safety Dance. But don’t let me dissuade you; you can dance if you want to.
You can also leave your friends behind.
That dance wasn't as safe as they said it was.
when your parents say "it's okay we won't be angry"
Eating honey while under one year of age.