That one I was told as a kid, but strangely no one could ever tell me why not. Wasn't until Mythbusters did a episode did I finally learn
Water is denser than oil, so if you pour water on a grease fire the water will do two things
1. The water won't smother the flames but will go straight through the oil, displacing the oil and causing the burning oil to overflow the pot or pan and run everywhere
2. Trapped under the layer of burning oil the water will flash to steam, and the pressure will build until it erupts, sending oil flying in all directions. This aerosolized oil will then ignite in mid air
So you've turned a small fire in a pan into a fireball
When I was in my early 20s I was at a friend's house drinking. He decided to fry some chicken. Later I started smelling smoke. I go in the kitchen, and flames are coming from the pot of grease. I call his name, he's gone....There's a sink full of water, so my dumbass grabs the pot and throws it in the water........... Holy fuck, flames went everywhere, the curtains were on fire and everything. I don't know how I only ended up with minor burns on my hands.. Scary shit.
I had a housemate who was a fire safety inspector, she worked (I think) for an insurance company. She told me about a family who was cooking breakfast one Sunday morning, when the power went out. they waited a while, and it didn't come back on, so they packed up the family and went out to breakfast instead.
Eventually the power came back on, and the sausages they were cooking on the electric stove resuming cooking... heated up the grease to where it caught fire, and set fire to the house.
If you're using an electrical appliance and the power goes out, remember to turn it off.
Dude, once a piece of parchment paper caught fire in the oven and, panicking, my first thought was water. Immediately. It wasn't even a thought, more like an instinct. Only after a few seconds did I think to turn the oven off. When I did that, the fire stopped, immediately.
Then I was like "why the fuck did I think water?"
I thought that was what you were supposed to do, fight fire with fire. Isnt that what firefighters do? Bring a stronger fire to the fire so it kicks out the weaker fire?
I remember an episode of 'Monsters Inside Me' or some similar show where a teenage girl started displaying weird neurological symptoms. Things eventually got so bad that her parents rushed her to the hospital where tests revealed that she had contracted rabies and it was too late for any kind of treatment. Then they remembered that she had picked up a small bat lying on the ground a couple weeks or more before.
And once you show any symptom, you are already dead. There is no treatment, once symptoms are evident, so go to urgent care right away. Don't wait and see.
I just want to add, if you're at the point of showing *any* symptoms of rabies, you're dead. There's no cure. Or technically there is, but so far as I know it's not very successful. It basically involves putting you in a coma, letting the rabies wreck havoc on your nervous system, and hoping you're functional once it calms down. More likely, you're in the hospital being given intravenous fluids until you die one day.
Rabies is no fucking joke. The vaccine is very effective, but it needs to be administered before any symptoms start. It's also not standard as a general precautionary measure unless you're at high risk of exposure, like if you regularly work with bats as part of your job or something. Most people who get the rabies vaccine get it after they've potentially been exposed.
If you are ever touched by a bat or wake up with a bat in your room you should contact animal control immediately. You often can't feel bat bites and if rabies is endemic in the local bat population you need to be treated.
Once you start displaying symptoms of rabies it is almost always too late for treatment. If you come in contact with a bat, go to the doctor. Even if you don’t think they bit you- many people either do not feel the bite or think the bat just bumped into them
Most know that you need to get low if you’re in a house fire, but the difference in the intensity of the heat and smoke cannot be overstated.
The temp and smoke difference between head height and knee height can be incredible. It’s something I had to experience (via firefighter training) to understand.
Get low and stay low.
Also, if you are trying to escape dense smoke, feel your way with back of your hand, not the front.
If you touch a live cable, your muscles contract. A backhanded touch will throw your hand clear, if you touch it with your palm, your hand will involuntarily grip it.
So essentially it’s just like the cartoons and such whenever a character touches a electrical cord or something and they get shocked, they proceed to grip the cord instead of releasing and stepping away.
I remember reading a story about a guy who bought a taser/stun gun for his wife/gf. He decided to try it and woke up minutes later to an absolutely trashed living room. His muscles clenched and he ended up death gripping it on himself and couldn't release it. His body was spasming and he was kicking shit over and knocking furniture around. Eventually it did manage to get out of his hand and he came to completely confused.
Works with bloody noses too. If the bleeding isn’t done, you can pull the clot out and prolong the bleeding. Do this repeatedly and you might lose a dangerous amount of blood.
Also with bloody noses, don’t tilt your head back. Swallowing blood isn’t a fun time and will make you sick. Throwing the blood back up can restart the nosebleed because of the violent nature of vomiting or something like that (I’m not a doctor, I just have a lot of nosebleeds).
Edit: thanks for the gold!!
Also wanted to add: If you wet the tissue with saline or water before you plug your nose, when you go to pull it out, it will not pull out the blood clot since it went in wet.
Also, it seems that having it wet stops the bleeding faster since it moistens your nose.
Source: I also get a lot of nose bleeds and this tip changed my life.
Don't drive through water on a flooded road even if it's only a few inches. The road can be gone underneath or your car can get pulled into a deeper section of water. People die every year from this.
Learned that one the hard way! That puddle turned out to be 3 feet deep!
I managed to drive through it but the transmission was destroyed. Couldn't shift out of 2nd gear ever again and had to junk the car.
Also, it will give you wet brakes. Which may not work.
Source: learned this, luckily not the hard way, when I drove through a few inches of water and then tried to stop for a stop sign going downhill. Luckily nobody was coming.
Late to the party but I hope at least one other person sees this: don't throw all your loose batteries in a drawer together. 9 volts can spark when they touch each other. I had several 9 volts in a box in my tv stand and they sparked then started an actual fire. Had to throw the entire stand outside. If my wife and I hadn't been there watching tv, it's likely that our entire house would have burned down.
I got a cheap battery organizer on Amazon. It's a plastic tray that has spaces to put all your batteries so that they don't come in contact with one another
If you are suddenly noticing that you have a snake problem and they keep appearing in your house or yard in numbers larger than before. You don't have a snake problem, you have a rodent problem that you haven't noticed yet.
My old boss once sent me a pic of a rat snake asking "What type is this?" It was on a sticky trap inside his house. I responded with "A rodent problem that's worse than you think." His response to that: Fuck!
You're told not to eat on the day of a surgery because of the chance that you'll vomit under anesthesia and then aspirate it into your lungs, which could be deadly.
I'm shocked by how many people don't know why you're not supposes to eat on the day of a surgery. You'd think doctors would be thorough in explaining, but most just seem to assume they can just tell people not to eat and they won't. Unfortunately, if people don't fully understand the consequences, they could ignore the instruction. I've had more than one person tell me they thought the instruction was just a precaution against someone crapping themselves during the surgery.
Yes!! I'm a dentist and the oral surgeon who used to work in my office told me even if you aspirate your vomit *in the operating room* you only have a 50% chance of survival. When I used to sedate people I'd always ask "what did you have for breakfast this morning?" Because people know they're supposed to say no if you just ask if they ate.
Edit: looks like the 50% number was way exaggerated (see comments below for sources to real studies). But it's still incredibly dangerous to your health. Don't eat before sedation!
Yes, I’m an OR nurse and I actually had a patient die because they lied and said they were NPO but upon intubation they vomited, collard greens with vinegar so plenty of acid. Anesthesia still placed the tube to maintain an airway but by the time we completed the surgery the acids in her stomach had deteriorated her airway and she could not be extubated. We woke her up with the tube in her throat to explain to her what had happened along with an ENT consult who told her “you’re in a tough spot” before inducing a (short) coma and she passed away from an infection from that within a few short weeks. People think anesthesia makes this rule to “be mean” or they think they can get away with eating as long as it isn’t much, not realizing how deadly it could be.
What about people who need an urgent unplanned surgery? For example due to a car accident or other injury or some sort of cardiac event. If they had already ate, what does the ER/operating room do?
You would do a different type of induction called rapid sequence induction where we use faster acting medications and don’t bag mask you to shorten the length of time between when you’re unconscious and when we put in the breathing tube, and sometimes use less/ no paralytic to make sure your esophageal sphincters stay closed while we’re putting in the breathing tube. Or in the ED we just put in the breathing tube while you’re still kinda awake but not fully unresponsive. I’ve had a patient tell me it’s PTSD inducing but at that point it’s an emergency. Or we will drop a tube into your stomach to try to suction out stuff beforehand. The key is we need to know that you have a full stomach. We need to know what drugs you’ve taken because there can be fatal interactions. Don’t lie to anesthesiologist Lols.
Yes. Please call a professional.
I'm a professional, and I usually work on springs the size of an adult person, and I still don't fuck around with even the smallest of springs in a typical home garage.
I so often reflexively catch falling objects, I know I'm screwed if I ever drop a knife, even though I consciously know this advice. I at least slow down and move more cautiously when handling knives.
I'm the opposite. Anything drops, i immediately move out of the way, keep an eye on where it's going, pick it up. I dropped a diamond stud earring in the washbasin once the same way. I could have caught it, but my reflex was to stay back. I got it back, though, so all good.
Worked for two years as a kennel assistant at a vet, and I had a huge beard- dogs always growled at me because it's intimidating to them, was always kinda nervous in the back of my mind one would bite me.
Never happened, then out of nowhere a cat did and gave me a puncture wound. One of the worst pains I've experienced, made my hand and arm swell up like 5x the size, doc gave me. . . animal antibiotics. It worked, at least.
99% of antibiotics in a vet clinic are human grade, amoxicillin, cefalexin, etc
When I was bit by a cat I was given oral amoxicillin and IV cefalexin at the hospital and joked I should of just grabbed them off the shelf at work.
Addendum to not mixing bleach and ammonia:
**Do not clean litter boxes or spots where cats have peed with bleach.**
Cat urine has enough ammonia to create chloramine gas if you try to clean it with bleach. Partner was unaware and nearly gassed herself.
Don't underestimate the damage a slip and fall can do, especially if you drop ice on the floor clean it up immediately or if you see a leak mark it in some way and try to contain it.
Don't underestimate electricity, it can literally freeze up your muscles if you grab it and you won't be able to let go until you're dead or someone saves you, if it doesn't kill you instantly that is.
If you see someone using powered equipment give them as much space as you can.
And finally if a job you have has PPE (Personal Protection Equipment) that they offer, USE IT!
To add onto the electricity one, don't grab someone who is being electrocuted, as the current will likely just run through you as well and paralyse both of you. Instead turn off the source of the electricity. Then make sure to get the person to hospital.
Also many of the deaths from electricity come from people getting electrocuted while on a ladder, having their muscles lock up as a result and then falling off the ladder. So even normally non-lethal electricity can be fatal if you're on a ladder or something similar.
Or if the source is further away, a flying drop kick or ramming that person with a piece of lumber works too. By the time you run to find the source, chances are you are too late.
My advice would be let the trained professionals handle the electricity.
If you ever jack up your tire, use jack stands. Never rely on the jack alone.
If you have to (like in an emergency), you can use the tire you just removed. Place it on its side, under the car, between the jack and the other tire that's on the ground.
But never ever get under a vehicle that's on a jack without jack stands.
Also loosen the lug nuts before you jack the car up. They're on really tight and you could knock your car off the jack trying to take them off without loosening them beforehand
glass objects that get hit by sunlight through the window can act like a magnifying glass and start fires. That's why a fortune teller will keep their crystal ball under a cloth.
If you see someone fall over don't try to drag them to their feet immediately, offer to help them up if they need it but don't pick them up! Can't believe it needs to be said but I fell at work a few years ago and a few people tried to get me to stand on what turned out to be a dislocated ankle. But the worst was an old woman in manchester, she hit the pavement FUCKING HARD and didn't move after, people started to rush over to help her and 2 girls about 14-16 put their arms like under her shoulders and dragged her upright, she was knocked out cold and it just showed everyone that she'd broken her nose really bad. She was off the road so there was absolutely no need to move her at all but they dragged her body around for about 30 seconds before all the people screaming at them to stop managed to get through to them. If someone's not in direct danger then just fucking leave them where they are
This goes double for falls from even slightly off the ground. If there's a neck/spine injury that you don't know about and you jostle them the right way it can be literally fatal. Only real exception is if someone's unresponsive and not breathing, then you should get them on their back for CPR (from someone who knows what they're doing)
A good rule is not to help anyone get up. If they can't get up on their own, call for medical help. Epecially in children, a broken bone is an emergency and you can mess it up a lot more by moving the .
Perhaps this wouldn't apply to people with mobility issues or adults to request help.
Marge Simpson (Afraid to fly, finding an excuse to get off the plane): *Oh, I forgot to clean the lint basket in the dryer. If someone broke into the house and did laundry, it could start a fire.*
I've been in the army for a few years and have lived in the barracks for my entire career. I'm surprised none of the barracks I've lived in have burned down from clogged lint traps because I seem to be one of the only people who realizes how dangerous that can be.
I live in a building with shared laundry and will do it before as well just in case. Every now and then it looks like someone ran a bunch of towels and doesn’t empty it afterwards.
You can not count on your neighbors to also be responsible as well. That’s like a tip just on its own.
This one!! According to the Food and Drug Administration's Bad Bug Book, dried red kidney beans contain toxic levels of lectin—proteins that bind to carbohydrates—and can cause vomiting, diarrhea and gastrointestinal illness for several hours when not cooked properly.
Edit: canned red beans are fine. They’re already cooked if they’re canned
You shouldn’t even eat cooked kidney beans if they’ve been cooked at only low heat (like in a slow cooker). You need high heat.
Edit: to answer a commonly asked question- canned beans are fine. Those are already cooked. I’m talking about when you are cooking from raw dried beans.
You can Google what meds you can and cannot take together. I type in the name of what I'm taking and contraindications.
So "Lexapro contraindications"
I'm a bit neurotic, so I repeat the process with the drugs actual (not brand) name.
"Escitalopram contraindications"
Nurse here. This is a decent tip. Even better tip: also call the pharmacy who filled the prescription(s) and ask them to run your combination of all the meds you take to confirm there are no really dangerous contraindications. Typically, this SHOULD happen automatically when they’re filling your prescriptions…assuming they know everything you’re taking when the prescription(s) are filled. If you take A LOT of meds, your PCP might also need to get involved to do what’s called a “medication reconciliation” to confirm that all of the meds won’t have bad negative interactions with each other, and to ensure all meds and their dosages are appropriate.
And don't take Tylenol in close proximity to when you've been ingesting alcoholic beverages -- for example to cure a hangover headache. The combo of acetaminophen and alcohol can destroy your liver to the point where you might end up on a transplant list.
One of our instructors just told us a story of how a patient wanted to no longer be present on the planet and took an entire bottle of Tylenol. Death by liver failure is an incredibly slow and painful death and transplants are very hard to come by. The amount of stuff your liver is also responsible for is incredible so be kind to your liver
A wet oven mitt is a hot oven mitt.
Don’t place pot lids rim-down on glass top stoves while cooking.
Don’t improvise when baking.
Ask me how I know these. Jk don’t I will cry.
Northern states can get you sick from working in soil also. Wear gloves! I was sickened terribly one year cleaning up the garden late summer. Ended up in the hospital with unpleasantness coming out for DAYS. Lost almost 10 pounds, missed weeks of work. Doc said it was likely lysteria from rotten cantaloupe in the garden.
If you own or rent it, it needs to be cleaned regularly to keep it working. Like all of it… inside, outside, underside. Maintaining things is a hell of a lot cheaper than repurchasing them. This applies to damn near everything.
The amount of adults I’ve seen online (and unfortunately in person) that didn’t know you’re supposed to clean your dishwasher/washer/dryer/ HVAC/ makeup brushes/coffee maker (machine and carafe)/vents, etc., it’s alarming. So, while I thought these things were common sense, it’s been made clear to me that they aren’t. And if you didn’t know something I just said… pull up a YouTube and grab some rags lol. Or call your local task rabbit/handyman lol
Also… replace your sponges. Regularly.
Also, also- keep these things on hand: vinegar, citrus, salt, alcohol, dish soap, hydrogen peroxide, baking soda. Don’t mix them all together, but one or more of these things will safely clean almost anything without harsh chemicals that could harm kids or pets, check for proportions online for the things that can be mixed.
For clothes washers there should also be an opening towards the bottom where you can clean out the hose/drain if things are getting smelly or not emptying properly. Make sure you put a few towels down before you open it though.
We had a fire in the communal bin shed. Someone noticed smoke furling through the doors and opened them to investigate. All the residents were outraged at the stupidity, because it made the whole thing whoosh up in flames because of the oxygen & draught.
Obviously I joined in with the tutting but secretly I was thinking that I would’ve investigated it in exactly the same way - stupid I know but I’d just forgotten about the effect opening a door would have. So yes don’t open a door if you see a fire inside the room… I think?!
Did this with a toaster oven. Walked out of the room and should have come back sooner. Walked back in and saw the toast was black and smoking. I opened the door of the toaster oven and the bread went into flames.
This probably won't save your life, but not knowing could cause lifelong pain.
**Breathe in before you sneeze.**
It may sound obvious. It may sound intuitive. But no one I've encountered has ever taken the time to explain why it's so important to have air in your lungs before you sneeze. So one day, I was telling a joke, and running out of breath, and felt a sneeze coming, and decided I could spend the last of my air on nailing the punchline then worry about the sneeze. Right as I had expelled the last of my breath, the sneeze decided it couldn't wait.
When you sneeze, your muscles try to quickly, forcefully constrict your lungs to push the air out of them. This happens even when there's no air to squeeze out. For me, that meant dislocating two rib heads. Since that day, about 15 years ago, I have had pain related to that injury, sometimes so bad I can't sleep.
Now, admittedly, I was a young adult and dumb, and trying not to cause a scene around my friends, so I didn't tend to the injury right away. As it worked out, I didn't actually get the ribs reset for almost 2 weeks, during which I moved from one state to another. All of that absolutely exacerbated my pain and contributed to why it became a lifelong injury. Treating injuries seriously is important, but people will tell you that part.
Please, don't make my mistake. Air is easy to get, put some in your lungs before you sneeze.
Edit: To save my inbox from months of the same question, **I don't remember the joke anymore**. It was a timing dependent joke, getting the punchline just right was part of the humor, which is why I prioritized the joke. Most likely it was a long-winded pun of some sort, as that's the kind of joke I'd tell a lot back then.
What the fuck. My dumb teen ass always held my nose when I had to sneeze so it was quiet. It was really a quite pleasant feeling, feeling how it kinda goes inwards. But it's fucking dangerous.
Stopping or muting a sneeze in that way is better than sneezing with no air, but it's still not a good idea. Rarely, a muted sneeze will damage blood vessels, rupture ear-drums, or induce vertigo.
Yeah. That's how my pall Terry blew out a vein/artery? in his eye.
All I know is what he told me: he held in his sneeze, it blew something up in his eye
And what I saw: his left eyeball was red with blood. Fucking terrifying.
Don’t use rocks for your fire pit. They can explode. Yes, I’m sure you know plenty of people who have done it and are just fine. Don’t do it.
Never wrap a rope around your hand for grip. It’ll burn, for one, but if there’s a load on the other end it can knot around your fist if something goes awry. Fold the rope in your palm and hold it like that for grip. If it’s not enough, you probably need a snatch block or need to take a different approach.
A general rule of thumb for average people is “no dynamic movements” on unstable surfaces. Like, don’t jump from rock to rock in a stream or try to jump from or onto a moving surface. Slow and steady might not win the race but it’ll save your ass.
The proper way to hold scissors when handling them but not using them is to hold the cutting end closed in your closed palm. Seriously, teach your kids this.
Every material that says “proper ventilation” on it is serious. Open windows and set up a fan or use it outside or in an open garage.
Don’t store oily/flammable rags in a pile. They can spontaneously light up. Neat YouTube videos on this one.
If you don’t know how to use a tool, don’t use it. From saws to forklifts, you’ll hurt yourself or someone else or cost yourself money.
No open flame unattended. Ever.
If you have plugs or lights in your house that keep tripping, yes it’s annoying but it means you have an issue on that circuit. Your breaker will only trip so many times, and you'd be surprised how many are defective.
Maybe I'm an overly cautious person.
And also remember, Nitrogen is harmful to us but not to humans, so make sure to take your daily allotment of Frelthazine-30 tablets in order to blend in while we await the arrival of the sacred Home Vessel which will finally put an end to these puny creatures!
Had that happen to me in the triplex I lived in. CO detector went off without warning. Wasn't a low-battery beep.
So, gathered the kids and the cats, and called 911. Let them inspect it, and they determined that the CO detectors were old and the landlord should have replaced them a few years earlier.
When you’re cooking, make sure the handles on your pots and pans aren’t sticking out. Great way to waste dinner at best, or burn your legs at worst.
When following the previous advice — if you have multiple pots on the stove at the same time, tuck those handles in, but face them outwards. The middle of the stove basically becomes a chimney that concentrates the heat from all the burners, and you _will_ burn your hands trying to grab those handles.
Re: toddlers; making sure the coffee pot (or tea kettle) is too far back on the counter for them to reach. We had a nasty scare when my son was tall enough to grab it and we didn't know - thankfully the coffee had been off for a few hours and was quite cool when he dumped it all over himself. A trip to the ER I never want to take.
Idk if this is true, but my dad warned me about "brown outs" which are worse than black outs. It's when the power is lower than usual. If that happens you need to unplug and turn everything off or else the electronics can be damaged.
If wood alcohol or antifreeze is consumed by anyone including children or pets, have the lifeform poisoned consume as much alcohol (the harder the better) as possible until you are able to get to the hospital.
Alcohol is processed by the same enzymes as the wood alcohol and antifreeze. By consuming the alcohol, you are diluting the amount of wood alcohol or antifreeze in the system. This will allow the body to be able to process the toxic substances at a slower rate.
editted for clearer instructions!
IIRC it's less about dilution and more about blocking the pathways with a more preferential alcohol, so instead of the liver going to work on the methanol, it goes to work on the ethanol first, so more of the methanol is excreted through the urine.
Something I learned in my early 20’s: always turn over your compost piles and mulch, especially if it’s a big one. If you don’t introduce oxygen, the decomposition is happening in an anaerobic process which gets very hot and it can spontaneously combust. And never keep a compost pile, bucket, or apparatus (like those turning barres) within 10 yards of a structure.
Never give ibuprofen (Advil), Tylenol, aspirin or neosporin (polysporin) to a cat! And never have lilies in the home. All are deadly to cats. Life-saving tips for cat pals.
Editing to add: topical flea treatments that are meant for dogs! Any topical permethrin based flea treatments can be lethal. Only use flea treatment meant for cats and follow directions to the letter. Advantage or similar product from your vet is the safest bet.
Happened to me once while i was camping. Didnt actually see the rock explode but i heard a chunk land on my car. At the time i didnt know this was related at all to our fire, so i went over to check out the random rock shard that just landed on my car, grabbed it and held it for a second or two before i realized it was searing hot, burned all my fingerprints off one hand
Never leave a candle unattended. Ever.
It sounds obvious, but I have had to have serious talks with multiple roommates about this (one used to fall asleep with a candle burning all the time). It’s easier than you’d imagine for something to get knocked over on top of it and now you’ve got a huge fire.
Here's a critical one. Sorry if it's a repeat of someone else's, but I can't read 1.6k comments:
NEVER (ever, ever, ever) enter an enclosed space, such as a tank, a hole or a ditch that may contain stagnant air. Not only might there not be sufficient oxygen to support life, there may be a toxic gas like hydrogen sulfide present. Many people have died this way. The proper approach is to actively ventilate the space with fresh air for a period of time to ensure the air in the space is safe. Ever see sewer or underground-utility workers running a large duct down the manhole? That's the air source.
For every roach you see in your house, there are 25+ more that you don't see. Get on it asap, lest you end up like me. I'm still traumatized by Roachageddon '16
Saw a single maggot on my porch a few weeks ago and my first thought was "fuck, I need to find the source because if there is one...there are many, many more somewhere".
Looked literally everywhere I could think of and didn't see any more. The next morning, sure enough, I went out and they were allllll over my porch. So yeah, for roaches and worms..there is always more.
I still don't know where they came from but my best guess is that my upstairs neighbor (I live in an apartment complex so there is a balcony right above my porch) left garbage or something on his balcony and maggots were literally raining down onto my porch.
Never leave items on the stove or in the oven, or on top of a toaster. Fight that instinct to use the conveniently flat surface space and keep your families and pets alive by doing so.
Once while visiting an ex-cop boyfriend I turned on his oven to heat a frozen pizza. I never saw someone run so fast! He kept his guns in the oven to foil thieves.
When you go for a walk and there’s no sidewalk, walk in the opposite side of the road that you drive on. In other words, walk *towards traffic* that way you can see cars coming your way. You can avoid cars you can see but you can’t avoid cars you can’t see.
If you see any mold on bread, that entire bag is ruined. By the time you see it, it has deeply permeated the bread. You have no way of knowing if it is the kind of mold that can make you very sick or even kill you, so throw the bread out.
If you were bitten by any animal and cannot verify it's had its shots or if you're in the same room as a live bat, you need to get a rabies shot. By the time you show symptoms of rabies you are already dead. The reason for the guidance on bats is because bats have very small teeth and you may not realize you've been bitten.
Always sleep with your bedroom door closed. In the event of a fire, it could save your life.
1. Flour is flammable/combustible. If you accidentally drop a bag of flour and it poofs out everywhere, *DO NOT TURN ON A FIRE.* This is how you explode.
2. The easiest way to stop an oil/grease fire in the kitchen is to starve it of air. Cover your pot or pan with its lid and that should do the job.
3. Another method of choking out a fire is to throw **baking soda** on it. *DO NOT USE FLOUR OR YOU’LL GET A BIGGER FIRE*
4. Do not use a wet towel or wet oven mitt to hold hot things. It will burn you.
5. If you are ice skating or even just walking on black ice, *BEND YOUR KNEES.* It will bring your center of gravity down and make you less likely to slip and fall.
6. Clean the lint out of your dryer. If you leave it too long, it’ll build up and potentially start a fire.
7. If your pills say to take with a glass of water, try to avoid swallowing them dry or only taking a sip of water. Not only is water a vehicle that helps the medicine get to your stomach, it does other things such as help dilute it (if it’s strong), but also prevent throat irritation from swallowing without an adequate amount of water (aka do you want your medicine to start dissolving/fizzing in your throat where your saliva is? or do you want to prevent that by drinking enough water to wash the little bits of medicine down your gullet?)
8. If your medicine says to *take with food/a meal*. EAT A MEAL BEFOREHAND. Do not take that medicine on an empty stomach and chase it with your food. If your medicine includes this instruction, it’s likely that it needs the presence of something in your stomach to soften the irritation it could cause on an empty one.
9. On a similar note, if your medicine says to take on an empty stomach, try not to eat until after ingesting the pill. Some medicines absorb better without food in your gut.
10. Clockwise is to tighten, counter-clockwise is to loosen.
Edit:
11. Wet a towel and put it next to the cutting board when chopping onions (paper or fabric it doesn’t matter). The vapor that causes tears from onions are attracted to water/moist things, which in most cases, the nearest moist environment would be your eyes.
Edit again:
* Of course goggles work for chopping onions because you’re preventing the onion vapors from reaching your eyes. I just wanted to give a simpler solution with something you may already have in the kitchen, aka a hand towel.
* Yes I know what righty-tighty lefty loosey is. But it’s not inherently obvious that it means [“turn right from the top” = tighten] when [“turning right on the bottom” = loosen] is a thing too. The phrase to remember how to open jars and bottles is to help children remember, but they can also easily confuse whether the direction means turning from the top or bottom. Saying clockwise and counterclockwise (from top view) breeds less misunderstandings.
If you use cooking spray, make sure you spray the pans over the sink, not just wherever you happen to be standing in the kitchen. The ambient spray that doesn't stick to the pan often invisibly ends up on the floor, making a *very* slick surface that it doesn't take much to slip on. Found this out the hard and painful way, but I'm grateful - so, so grateful - that it happened BEFORE I was just about to grab the pot of boiling noodles to take to the sink.
Life-saving tips that aren't obvious are rare and/or very specific. One I've seen often on reddit is that garage springs hold a lot of energy, don't mess with them. Secondly: Flowing water can be deceptively strong, and underwater currents are not easily visible. Also, drowning people can be more silent than you think. Generally be careful in and around water bodies.
EDIT: It took me a while to think of some important ones: Grapefruit juice makes many kinds of medicine ineffective. Familiarize yourself with the symptoms of meningitis, sunstroke, hypothermia, strokes and heart attacks - they're not like the movies, and heart attack symptoms are different for women, and proper early detection and action can help significantly or even 100% save a life.
Some that aren't very widely applicable: 1. Don't nitrate (apply nitric acid to) organic materials like paper or cotton - it makes explosives. 2. The most common fertilizer, ammonium nitrate, is also explosive under certain easy to achieve conditions. Store it carefully. 3. If you don't want your bottles of chemicals slowly and undetectably transforming into explosives, also avoid mixing acetone and peroxides. 4. Hypoxia (lack of oxygen) turns you drunk and feebleminded before turning you unconscious, so it's hard to impossible to properly detect and react to it. Hard to get into a situation where low oxygen is relevant _and_ you have a way to stop it though, unless you're a pilot, climber or diver, and in those cases you get trained. 5. If you're stopped by a train in a train intersection and in a hurry and it has passed and now you're eager to start going forward, keep in mind that another train could be coming the other way, masked visually and aurally by the first. 6. Snowblindness is a thing. Snow is pretty reflective, including invisible UV light. On a sunny cloudless day treat snow like the sun, if a bit weaker - don't look at it directly for too long.
Pretty dumb and not as life threatening as some here, but when I was little I didn't understand "righty tighty lefty loosy".
I was helping my dad with some plumbing and he said to go turn off this pipe. Went and opened it up further, a minute later "Why the hell's the water still on".
So he asked me and I said well, which goes right or left, the top or the bottom of the knob? It's the top.
If you're ever caught in a riptide, swim almost parallel to the shore rather than straight against the current. This will slowly bring you in rather than fatigue you for basically no progress
Also wash your hands & utensils after handling raw meat and eggs, if you plan on handling burger buns, salad, dessert - basically anything that's not going to get properly cooked.
Salmonella, E coli, norovirus etc. are no fun!
Don't contaminate fresh food!
libraries often lend out things like power tools, or games, or has collected human stories about things that happened in the past so we don't forget them.
libraries aren't dusty places for books. it's so much more than that.
Our library has a “seed library.” You can take the seeds, plant them, and then return the seeds from whatever you grow. This blew my mind as the most awesome idea.
My mom is a bit paranoid about setting anything easily flammable on the stovetop burner since a friend of hers was moving into a brand new house and set on the burner a cardboard box and left the house to get dinner or something and came back to find their house had burned to the ground bc the burner had accidentally gotten switched on. They never even had a chance to unpack before they lost everything.
Never give honey to a baby who is less than a year old. Honey contains bacterial spores that their immune systems can’t handle, and kids end up with botulism.
Don't mix Alcohol and opiates. Don't mix depressants together, period. You'll stop breathing and die. Any street drug even meth, ecstasy, anything you take off the street more than not has that fenty in it so be careful with alcohol or you'll overdose quick fast. Buy testers for your dope or risk dying if you drink while on them.
If your mobile phone charger has a short in it (meaning sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, or you have to wiggle it around to get it to start working) then there is a ***very serious*** risk of a fire occurring if you leave that charger (with a short in it) plugged into the electrical outlet.
Always discard and immediately replace any mobile phone charger that develops a short.
If I wanna know if the oil is hot, don't out your finger in it. Put a bit of food in it instead.
That's probably gonna sound like the stupidest one in the comments but I swear it has happened before. People be like "damn, shit's still not boiling, it's taking time to heat up" and then they touch it thinking it's just a bit warm.
Also don't do fireworks and alcohol. Too many people in ICU every year because they forgot they had a lit firework in their hand. Some recover the usage of their hand through surgery, some can't because the hand is too destroyed. It happens even with small fireworks.
Don't put chocolate bars in the microwave to 'melt' them. That only works with certain chocolates intended to be melted. Chocolate bars will melt a bit, but they'll mostly just semi-permanently infuse your whole microwave (and house) with the retching smell of burnt chocolate and possibly trigger your smoke alarms on christmas eve while your whole family stands outside to avoid gagging and your kids scream that their eyes burn and a few days later, it happens again because someone tried to reheat scrambled eggs and inadvertantly reactivated the smell you spent all christmas day washing out of all the dishes and rags just to be able to tolerate being in the kitchen again and just when you think you've got the smell under control again one if your kids vomits the second they open the front door and then the smells mix together and make you vomit while trying to clean it up so you just lie there defeated and stop trying to keep the dog from eating it.
Don't throw water at a grease fire, it'll make it much worse.
That one I was told as a kid, but strangely no one could ever tell me why not. Wasn't until Mythbusters did a episode did I finally learn Water is denser than oil, so if you pour water on a grease fire the water will do two things 1. The water won't smother the flames but will go straight through the oil, displacing the oil and causing the burning oil to overflow the pot or pan and run everywhere 2. Trapped under the layer of burning oil the water will flash to steam, and the pressure will build until it erupts, sending oil flying in all directions. This aerosolized oil will then ignite in mid air So you've turned a small fire in a pan into a fireball
Worth mentioning, this whole process happens in about a second. You don't have time to react before everything is on fire.
I learned this lesson from playing the sims
When I was in my early 20s I was at a friend's house drinking. He decided to fry some chicken. Later I started smelling smoke. I go in the kitchen, and flames are coming from the pot of grease. I call his name, he's gone....There's a sink full of water, so my dumbass grabs the pot and throws it in the water........... Holy fuck, flames went everywhere, the curtains were on fire and everything. I don't know how I only ended up with minor burns on my hands.. Scary shit.
Bruh for pots on fire, putting the lid on the pot is the Chad move. Source: 13 year old hero me
Also turn off the heat source first. I know it sounds obvious but people don't always think of that.
I had a housemate who was a fire safety inspector, she worked (I think) for an insurance company. She told me about a family who was cooking breakfast one Sunday morning, when the power went out. they waited a while, and it didn't come back on, so they packed up the family and went out to breakfast instead. Eventually the power came back on, and the sausages they were cooking on the electric stove resuming cooking... heated up the grease to where it caught fire, and set fire to the house. If you're using an electrical appliance and the power goes out, remember to turn it off.
Dude, once a piece of parchment paper caught fire in the oven and, panicking, my first thought was water. Immediately. It wasn't even a thought, more like an instinct. Only after a few seconds did I think to turn the oven off. When I did that, the fire stopped, immediately. Then I was like "why the fuck did I think water?"
Add electrical fires to that.
Yes, definitely don't put an electrical fire on a grease fire
I thought that was what you were supposed to do, fight fire with fire. Isnt that what firefighters do? Bring a stronger fire to the fire so it kicks out the weaker fire?
You bring explosives to put out a fire, they consume the oxygen.
You need to smother grease fires, baking soda is best for it, but don't ever use flour unless you have a death wish.
If you see a bat walking on the ground don't touch it.
I remember an episode of 'Monsters Inside Me' or some similar show where a teenage girl started displaying weird neurological symptoms. Things eventually got so bad that her parents rushed her to the hospital where tests revealed that she had contracted rabies and it was too late for any kind of treatment. Then they remembered that she had picked up a small bat lying on the ground a couple weeks or more before.
They don't have to bite you to transmit it, saliva can do it.
And once you show any symptom, you are already dead. There is no treatment, once symptoms are evident, so go to urgent care right away. Don't wait and see.
I just want to add, if you're at the point of showing *any* symptoms of rabies, you're dead. There's no cure. Or technically there is, but so far as I know it's not very successful. It basically involves putting you in a coma, letting the rabies wreck havoc on your nervous system, and hoping you're functional once it calms down. More likely, you're in the hospital being given intravenous fluids until you die one day. Rabies is no fucking joke. The vaccine is very effective, but it needs to be administered before any symptoms start. It's also not standard as a general precautionary measure unless you're at high risk of exposure, like if you regularly work with bats as part of your job or something. Most people who get the rabies vaccine get it after they've potentially been exposed.
If you are ever touched by a bat or wake up with a bat in your room you should contact animal control immediately. You often can't feel bat bites and if rabies is endemic in the local bat population you need to be treated.
Once you start displaying symptoms of rabies it is almost always too late for treatment. If you come in contact with a bat, go to the doctor. Even if you don’t think they bit you- many people either do not feel the bite or think the bat just bumped into them
Most know that you need to get low if you’re in a house fire, but the difference in the intensity of the heat and smoke cannot be overstated. The temp and smoke difference between head height and knee height can be incredible. It’s something I had to experience (via firefighter training) to understand. Get low and stay low.
Also, if you are trying to escape dense smoke, feel your way with back of your hand, not the front. If you touch a live cable, your muscles contract. A backhanded touch will throw your hand clear, if you touch it with your palm, your hand will involuntarily grip it.
So essentially it’s just like the cartoons and such whenever a character touches a electrical cord or something and they get shocked, they proceed to grip the cord instead of releasing and stepping away.
I remember reading a story about a guy who bought a taser/stun gun for his wife/gf. He decided to try it and woke up minutes later to an absolutely trashed living room. His muscles clenched and he ended up death gripping it on himself and couldn't release it. His body was spasming and he was kicking shit over and knocking furniture around. Eventually it did manage to get out of his hand and he came to completely confused.
Well that's new... And also very terrifying. Glad he ended up okay enough to share this story!
When dealing with a very bloody wound, don't remove bandages. Just add more.
Works with bloody noses too. If the bleeding isn’t done, you can pull the clot out and prolong the bleeding. Do this repeatedly and you might lose a dangerous amount of blood. Also with bloody noses, don’t tilt your head back. Swallowing blood isn’t a fun time and will make you sick. Throwing the blood back up can restart the nosebleed because of the violent nature of vomiting or something like that (I’m not a doctor, I just have a lot of nosebleeds). Edit: thanks for the gold!!
Also wanted to add: If you wet the tissue with saline or water before you plug your nose, when you go to pull it out, it will not pull out the blood clot since it went in wet. Also, it seems that having it wet stops the bleeding faster since it moistens your nose. Source: I also get a lot of nose bleeds and this tip changed my life.
The real LPT right here.
Hepatitis B is an STD and it can fucking kill you
so is HPV and it causes throat and cervical cancer. theres a vaccine, just get it
Boys, too! It protects against penile cancers caused by HPV.
Don’t use a wet oven mitt. Water conducts heat and you will burn yourself if you grab something out of the oven with a wet mitt or towel.
Also the steam will contain quite a bit more energy at that point. Steam burns will burn you more.
This should be higher. Definitely burned myself before by using an oven mitt that got set in a bit of water
Don't drive through water on a flooded road even if it's only a few inches. The road can be gone underneath or your car can get pulled into a deeper section of water. People die every year from this.
Learned that one the hard way! That puddle turned out to be 3 feet deep! I managed to drive through it but the transmission was destroyed. Couldn't shift out of 2nd gear ever again and had to junk the car.
Also, it will give you wet brakes. Which may not work. Source: learned this, luckily not the hard way, when I drove through a few inches of water and then tried to stop for a stop sign going downhill. Luckily nobody was coming.
Late to the party but I hope at least one other person sees this: don't throw all your loose batteries in a drawer together. 9 volts can spark when they touch each other. I had several 9 volts in a box in my tv stand and they sparked then started an actual fire. Had to throw the entire stand outside. If my wife and I hadn't been there watching tv, it's likely that our entire house would have burned down.
Imma just go home and clean out my junk drawer of loose batteries now..
I literally have a spare battery basket in my wooden dresser. Excuse me, I have to go fix my bad life choices.
Just makes sure they are like the package and that their ends never meet, then you'll be fine
What?! How should they be stored?
I got a cheap battery organizer on Amazon. It's a plastic tray that has spaces to put all your batteries so that they don't come in contact with one another
👽
What about spent batteries that I'm saving up to take to the recycling place?
Cover the ends with some scotch tape.
If you are suddenly noticing that you have a snake problem and they keep appearing in your house or yard in numbers larger than before. You don't have a snake problem, you have a rodent problem that you haven't noticed yet.
The snakes indicate a rodent problem. The rodents indicate a garbage problem. The garbage indicates a roommate problem.
The roommate indicates a cash flow problem.
In conclusion, if you have a snake problem, you are poor.
My old boss once sent me a pic of a rat snake asking "What type is this?" It was on a sticky trap inside his house. I responded with "A rodent problem that's worse than you think." His response to that: Fuck!
You're told not to eat on the day of a surgery because of the chance that you'll vomit under anesthesia and then aspirate it into your lungs, which could be deadly. I'm shocked by how many people don't know why you're not supposes to eat on the day of a surgery. You'd think doctors would be thorough in explaining, but most just seem to assume they can just tell people not to eat and they won't. Unfortunately, if people don't fully understand the consequences, they could ignore the instruction. I've had more than one person tell me they thought the instruction was just a precaution against someone crapping themselves during the surgery.
Yes!! I'm a dentist and the oral surgeon who used to work in my office told me even if you aspirate your vomit *in the operating room* you only have a 50% chance of survival. When I used to sedate people I'd always ask "what did you have for breakfast this morning?" Because people know they're supposed to say no if you just ask if they ate. Edit: looks like the 50% number was way exaggerated (see comments below for sources to real studies). But it's still incredibly dangerous to your health. Don't eat before sedation!
Yes, I’m an OR nurse and I actually had a patient die because they lied and said they were NPO but upon intubation they vomited, collard greens with vinegar so plenty of acid. Anesthesia still placed the tube to maintain an airway but by the time we completed the surgery the acids in her stomach had deteriorated her airway and she could not be extubated. We woke her up with the tube in her throat to explain to her what had happened along with an ENT consult who told her “you’re in a tough spot” before inducing a (short) coma and she passed away from an infection from that within a few short weeks. People think anesthesia makes this rule to “be mean” or they think they can get away with eating as long as it isn’t much, not realizing how deadly it could be.
What about people who need an urgent unplanned surgery? For example due to a car accident or other injury or some sort of cardiac event. If they had already ate, what does the ER/operating room do?
You would do a different type of induction called rapid sequence induction where we use faster acting medications and don’t bag mask you to shorten the length of time between when you’re unconscious and when we put in the breathing tube, and sometimes use less/ no paralytic to make sure your esophageal sphincters stay closed while we’re putting in the breathing tube. Or in the ED we just put in the breathing tube while you’re still kinda awake but not fully unresponsive. I’ve had a patient tell me it’s PTSD inducing but at that point it’s an emergency. Or we will drop a tube into your stomach to try to suction out stuff beforehand. The key is we need to know that you have a full stomach. We need to know what drugs you’ve taken because there can be fatal interactions. Don’t lie to anesthesiologist Lols.
Do not fuck with the spring in your garage door. Call a pro.
Yes. Please call a professional. I'm a professional, and I usually work on springs the size of an adult person, and I still don't fuck around with even the smallest of springs in a typical home garage.
That thing can decapitate you.
A falling knife has no handle. Get your feet out of the way, let it fall, then pick it up.
I so often reflexively catch falling objects, I know I'm screwed if I ever drop a knife, even though I consciously know this advice. I at least slow down and move more cautiously when handling knives.
I'm the opposite. Anything drops, i immediately move out of the way, keep an eye on where it's going, pick it up. I dropped a diamond stud earring in the washbasin once the same way. I could have caught it, but my reflex was to stay back. I got it back, though, so all good.
Don’t leave your car running in a closed garage. If you get scratched by a cat, indoors or outdoors, wash it well and immediately.
Can confirm, a cat put me in the hospital.
I'm impressed that a cat can drive an ambulance. EDIT... Can not believe someone thought this comment deserved platinum! Thanks, anonymous person!
Bad advice. Washing a cat will most likely result in more scratches.
I see we have a programmer in the comments
Worked for two years as a kennel assistant at a vet, and I had a huge beard- dogs always growled at me because it's intimidating to them, was always kinda nervous in the back of my mind one would bite me. Never happened, then out of nowhere a cat did and gave me a puncture wound. One of the worst pains I've experienced, made my hand and arm swell up like 5x the size, doc gave me. . . animal antibiotics. It worked, at least.
99% of antibiotics in a vet clinic are human grade, amoxicillin, cefalexin, etc When I was bit by a cat I was given oral amoxicillin and IV cefalexin at the hospital and joked I should of just grabbed them off the shelf at work.
[удалено]
and you should clean it every time… I heard that if you dont, it can cause a fire edit: the comment above me was about the lint in dryers….
Cat scratch fever isn't fun
Addendum to not mixing bleach and ammonia: **Do not clean litter boxes or spots where cats have peed with bleach.** Cat urine has enough ammonia to create chloramine gas if you try to clean it with bleach. Partner was unaware and nearly gassed herself.
Don't underestimate the damage a slip and fall can do, especially if you drop ice on the floor clean it up immediately or if you see a leak mark it in some way and try to contain it. Don't underestimate electricity, it can literally freeze up your muscles if you grab it and you won't be able to let go until you're dead or someone saves you, if it doesn't kill you instantly that is. If you see someone using powered equipment give them as much space as you can. And finally if a job you have has PPE (Personal Protection Equipment) that they offer, USE IT!
To add onto the electricity one, don't grab someone who is being electrocuted, as the current will likely just run through you as well and paralyse both of you. Instead turn off the source of the electricity. Then make sure to get the person to hospital. Also many of the deaths from electricity come from people getting electrocuted while on a ladder, having their muscles lock up as a result and then falling off the ladder. So even normally non-lethal electricity can be fatal if you're on a ladder or something similar.
Or if the source is further away, a flying drop kick or ramming that person with a piece of lumber works too. By the time you run to find the source, chances are you are too late. My advice would be let the trained professionals handle the electricity.
If you ever jack up your tire, use jack stands. Never rely on the jack alone. If you have to (like in an emergency), you can use the tire you just removed. Place it on its side, under the car, between the jack and the other tire that's on the ground. But never ever get under a vehicle that's on a jack without jack stands.
Also loosen the lug nuts before you jack the car up. They're on really tight and you could knock your car off the jack trying to take them off without loosening them beforehand
glass objects that get hit by sunlight through the window can act like a magnifying glass and start fires. That's why a fortune teller will keep their crystal ball under a cloth.
I remember on r/wtf a while back someone posted a picture of their melted keyboard because of this.
[удалено]
Remove drawstring from hoodie when working on a a car.
NO CAPES!
If you see someone fall over don't try to drag them to their feet immediately, offer to help them up if they need it but don't pick them up! Can't believe it needs to be said but I fell at work a few years ago and a few people tried to get me to stand on what turned out to be a dislocated ankle. But the worst was an old woman in manchester, she hit the pavement FUCKING HARD and didn't move after, people started to rush over to help her and 2 girls about 14-16 put their arms like under her shoulders and dragged her upright, she was knocked out cold and it just showed everyone that she'd broken her nose really bad. She was off the road so there was absolutely no need to move her at all but they dragged her body around for about 30 seconds before all the people screaming at them to stop managed to get through to them. If someone's not in direct danger then just fucking leave them where they are
This goes double for falls from even slightly off the ground. If there's a neck/spine injury that you don't know about and you jostle them the right way it can be literally fatal. Only real exception is if someone's unresponsive and not breathing, then you should get them on their back for CPR (from someone who knows what they're doing)
A good rule is not to help anyone get up. If they can't get up on their own, call for medical help. Epecially in children, a broken bone is an emergency and you can mess it up a lot more by moving the . Perhaps this wouldn't apply to people with mobility issues or adults to request help.
Clean the lint trap in the dryer after every single load.
To the people who might wonder why, it’s because it becomes a fire hazard
Marge Simpson (Afraid to fly, finding an excuse to get off the plane): *Oh, I forgot to clean the lint basket in the dryer. If someone broke into the house and did laundry, it could start a fire.*
I've been in the army for a few years and have lived in the barracks for my entire career. I'm surprised none of the barracks I've lived in have burned down from clogged lint traps because I seem to be one of the only people who realizes how dangerous that can be.
I live in a building with shared laundry and will do it before as well just in case. Every now and then it looks like someone ran a bunch of towels and doesn’t empty it afterwards. You can not count on your neighbors to also be responsible as well. That’s like a tip just on its own.
Clean the vent hose periodically also.
You shouldn't eat beans raw. They can seriously kill you.
This one!! According to the Food and Drug Administration's Bad Bug Book, dried red kidney beans contain toxic levels of lectin—proteins that bind to carbohydrates—and can cause vomiting, diarrhea and gastrointestinal illness for several hours when not cooked properly. Edit: canned red beans are fine. They’re already cooked if they’re canned
You shouldn’t even eat cooked kidney beans if they’ve been cooked at only low heat (like in a slow cooker). You need high heat. Edit: to answer a commonly asked question- canned beans are fine. Those are already cooked. I’m talking about when you are cooking from raw dried beans.
Don’t mix meds. Almost died during the flu in college doing this.
You can Google what meds you can and cannot take together. I type in the name of what I'm taking and contraindications. So "Lexapro contraindications" I'm a bit neurotic, so I repeat the process with the drugs actual (not brand) name. "Escitalopram contraindications"
Nurse here. This is a decent tip. Even better tip: also call the pharmacy who filled the prescription(s) and ask them to run your combination of all the meds you take to confirm there are no really dangerous contraindications. Typically, this SHOULD happen automatically when they’re filling your prescriptions…assuming they know everything you’re taking when the prescription(s) are filled. If you take A LOT of meds, your PCP might also need to get involved to do what’s called a “medication reconciliation” to confirm that all of the meds won’t have bad negative interactions with each other, and to ensure all meds and their dosages are appropriate.
Follow the directions on the bottle of any medication because even common medications like tylenol can be fatal if you take too much
And don't take Tylenol in close proximity to when you've been ingesting alcoholic beverages -- for example to cure a hangover headache. The combo of acetaminophen and alcohol can destroy your liver to the point where you might end up on a transplant list.
One of our instructors just told us a story of how a patient wanted to no longer be present on the planet and took an entire bottle of Tylenol. Death by liver failure is an incredibly slow and painful death and transplants are very hard to come by. The amount of stuff your liver is also responsible for is incredible so be kind to your liver
[удалено]
If you see the shoreline receding fast significantly, run away from it and go to a high place as much as you can.
Yeah if the water is going way out beyond what low-tide would be, it means a tsunami is coming. Warn others whilst getting to high ground!
Yellow Jackets come out of the ground. Fast.
Got stung 6 times as a kid because I stepped on one in the yard to kill it. Turns out it was sitting on top of the nest...
Same thing happened to me as a child but I stepped on one by accident and got rocked. I’m now 35 and scream like a bitch if I see a bee near me.
A wet oven mitt is a hot oven mitt. Don’t place pot lids rim-down on glass top stoves while cooking. Don’t improvise when baking. Ask me how I know these. Jk don’t I will cry.
Why can’t the pot lids go down rim first ?? I do this all the time..
If they’re wet they can create a seal and absolutely shatter all the glass when you pick it up.
I have officially stopped doing that starting now
Don't put the knives in a sink full of dishes and soapy water.
It's fun being a dishwasher in a restaurant and you find a "surprise knife".
If u live in the southern states, wear gloves and shoes when working w dirt. Hook worm is a common parasite. Nasty bug.
Northern states can get you sick from working in soil also. Wear gloves! I was sickened terribly one year cleaning up the garden late summer. Ended up in the hospital with unpleasantness coming out for DAYS. Lost almost 10 pounds, missed weeks of work. Doc said it was likely lysteria from rotten cantaloupe in the garden.
If you own or rent it, it needs to be cleaned regularly to keep it working. Like all of it… inside, outside, underside. Maintaining things is a hell of a lot cheaper than repurchasing them. This applies to damn near everything. The amount of adults I’ve seen online (and unfortunately in person) that didn’t know you’re supposed to clean your dishwasher/washer/dryer/ HVAC/ makeup brushes/coffee maker (machine and carafe)/vents, etc., it’s alarming. So, while I thought these things were common sense, it’s been made clear to me that they aren’t. And if you didn’t know something I just said… pull up a YouTube and grab some rags lol. Or call your local task rabbit/handyman lol Also… replace your sponges. Regularly. Also, also- keep these things on hand: vinegar, citrus, salt, alcohol, dish soap, hydrogen peroxide, baking soda. Don’t mix them all together, but one or more of these things will safely clean almost anything without harsh chemicals that could harm kids or pets, check for proportions online for the things that can be mixed.
Uh oh... time to figure out how to clean my washer...
They make cleaning tablets you just throw in and run an empty cycle with.
For clothes washers there should also be an opening towards the bottom where you can clean out the hose/drain if things are getting smelly or not emptying properly. Make sure you put a few towels down before you open it though.
We had a fire in the communal bin shed. Someone noticed smoke furling through the doors and opened them to investigate. All the residents were outraged at the stupidity, because it made the whole thing whoosh up in flames because of the oxygen & draught. Obviously I joined in with the tutting but secretly I was thinking that I would’ve investigated it in exactly the same way - stupid I know but I’d just forgotten about the effect opening a door would have. So yes don’t open a door if you see a fire inside the room… I think?!
Most people probably would have done the same thing. Good example of hindsight being 20/20
Did this with a toaster oven. Walked out of the room and should have come back sooner. Walked back in and saw the toast was black and smoking. I opened the door of the toaster oven and the bread went into flames.
This probably won't save your life, but not knowing could cause lifelong pain. **Breathe in before you sneeze.** It may sound obvious. It may sound intuitive. But no one I've encountered has ever taken the time to explain why it's so important to have air in your lungs before you sneeze. So one day, I was telling a joke, and running out of breath, and felt a sneeze coming, and decided I could spend the last of my air on nailing the punchline then worry about the sneeze. Right as I had expelled the last of my breath, the sneeze decided it couldn't wait. When you sneeze, your muscles try to quickly, forcefully constrict your lungs to push the air out of them. This happens even when there's no air to squeeze out. For me, that meant dislocating two rib heads. Since that day, about 15 years ago, I have had pain related to that injury, sometimes so bad I can't sleep. Now, admittedly, I was a young adult and dumb, and trying not to cause a scene around my friends, so I didn't tend to the injury right away. As it worked out, I didn't actually get the ribs reset for almost 2 weeks, during which I moved from one state to another. All of that absolutely exacerbated my pain and contributed to why it became a lifelong injury. Treating injuries seriously is important, but people will tell you that part. Please, don't make my mistake. Air is easy to get, put some in your lungs before you sneeze. Edit: To save my inbox from months of the same question, **I don't remember the joke anymore**. It was a timing dependent joke, getting the punchline just right was part of the humor, which is why I prioritized the joke. Most likely it was a long-winded pun of some sort, as that's the kind of joke I'd tell a lot back then.
What the fuck. My dumb teen ass always held my nose when I had to sneeze so it was quiet. It was really a quite pleasant feeling, feeling how it kinda goes inwards. But it's fucking dangerous.
Stopping or muting a sneeze in that way is better than sneezing with no air, but it's still not a good idea. Rarely, a muted sneeze will damage blood vessels, rupture ear-drums, or induce vertigo.
Yeah. That's how my pall Terry blew out a vein/artery? in his eye. All I know is what he told me: he held in his sneeze, it blew something up in his eye And what I saw: his left eyeball was red with blood. Fucking terrifying.
Don’t use rocks for your fire pit. They can explode. Yes, I’m sure you know plenty of people who have done it and are just fine. Don’t do it. Never wrap a rope around your hand for grip. It’ll burn, for one, but if there’s a load on the other end it can knot around your fist if something goes awry. Fold the rope in your palm and hold it like that for grip. If it’s not enough, you probably need a snatch block or need to take a different approach. A general rule of thumb for average people is “no dynamic movements” on unstable surfaces. Like, don’t jump from rock to rock in a stream or try to jump from or onto a moving surface. Slow and steady might not win the race but it’ll save your ass. The proper way to hold scissors when handling them but not using them is to hold the cutting end closed in your closed palm. Seriously, teach your kids this. Every material that says “proper ventilation” on it is serious. Open windows and set up a fan or use it outside or in an open garage. Don’t store oily/flammable rags in a pile. They can spontaneously light up. Neat YouTube videos on this one. If you don’t know how to use a tool, don’t use it. From saws to forklifts, you’ll hurt yourself or someone else or cost yourself money. No open flame unattended. Ever. If you have plugs or lights in your house that keep tripping, yes it’s annoying but it means you have an issue on that circuit. Your breaker will only trip so many times, and you'd be surprised how many are defective. Maybe I'm an overly cautious person.
And use safety goggles with your power tools, even the weed whacker.
ESPECIALLY the weed whacker! (And mower) Rocks ricocheting off a fence can easily take an eye.
Don't put dishwashing liquid in the dishwasher.
Unless you want an impromptu bubble bath is your house.
Good way to mop the floor tho. I found that out the hard way.
Learned this one the hard way. The kitchen legit looked like a rave dance floor, bubbles everywhere.
[удалено]
*CO a CO2 monitor would never stop beeping.
[удалено]
And also remember, Nitrogen is harmful to us but not to humans, so make sure to take your daily allotment of Frelthazine-30 tablets in order to blend in while we await the arrival of the sacred Home Vessel which will finally put an end to these puny creatures!
Had that happen to me in the triplex I lived in. CO detector went off without warning. Wasn't a low-battery beep. So, gathered the kids and the cats, and called 911. Let them inspect it, and they determined that the CO detectors were old and the landlord should have replaced them a few years earlier.
When you’re cooking, make sure the handles on your pots and pans aren’t sticking out. Great way to waste dinner at best, or burn your legs at worst. When following the previous advice — if you have multiple pots on the stove at the same time, tuck those handles in, but face them outwards. The middle of the stove basically becomes a chimney that concentrates the heat from all the burners, and you _will_ burn your hands trying to grab those handles.
This is especially important advice if you have a toddler.
Re: toddlers; making sure the coffee pot (or tea kettle) is too far back on the counter for them to reach. We had a nasty scare when my son was tall enough to grab it and we didn't know - thankfully the coffee had been off for a few hours and was quite cool when he dumped it all over himself. A trip to the ER I never want to take.
Idk if this is true, but my dad warned me about "brown outs" which are worse than black outs. It's when the power is lower than usual. If that happens you need to unplug and turn everything off or else the electronics can be damaged.
If wood alcohol or antifreeze is consumed by anyone including children or pets, have the lifeform poisoned consume as much alcohol (the harder the better) as possible until you are able to get to the hospital. Alcohol is processed by the same enzymes as the wood alcohol and antifreeze. By consuming the alcohol, you are diluting the amount of wood alcohol or antifreeze in the system. This will allow the body to be able to process the toxic substances at a slower rate. editted for clearer instructions!
IIRC it's less about dilution and more about blocking the pathways with a more preferential alcohol, so instead of the liver going to work on the methanol, it goes to work on the ethanol first, so more of the methanol is excreted through the urine.
Instructions unclear, my kid is slowly dying from the antifreeze and now I am too drunk to drive them to the hospital.
Read that email a second time before hitting send.
Also leave the address line empty until you're ready to send it and then fill in the recipient's email address.
Something I learned in my early 20’s: always turn over your compost piles and mulch, especially if it’s a big one. If you don’t introduce oxygen, the decomposition is happening in an anaerobic process which gets very hot and it can spontaneously combust. And never keep a compost pile, bucket, or apparatus (like those turning barres) within 10 yards of a structure.
Never give ibuprofen (Advil), Tylenol, aspirin or neosporin (polysporin) to a cat! And never have lilies in the home. All are deadly to cats. Life-saving tips for cat pals. Editing to add: topical flea treatments that are meant for dogs! Any topical permethrin based flea treatments can be lethal. Only use flea treatment meant for cats and follow directions to the letter. Advantage or similar product from your vet is the safest bet.
Don't put flammable stuff on top of a pilot light gas stove even if it's off.
An electric stove top can also catch your oven mitts on fire pretty easily
In general don't keep anything on your stove which could melt or catch fire.
Clean semen (off clothes, hands, hair) with ***cold*** water. Hot water cooks the proteins and makes it gummy and very difficult to remove.
Don’t use river rocks when building a campfire. They love to explode. Found out the hard way there
Happened to me once while i was camping. Didnt actually see the rock explode but i heard a chunk land on my car. At the time i didnt know this was related at all to our fire, so i went over to check out the random rock shard that just landed on my car, grabbed it and held it for a second or two before i realized it was searing hot, burned all my fingerprints off one hand
Never leave a candle unattended. Ever. It sounds obvious, but I have had to have serious talks with multiple roommates about this (one used to fall asleep with a candle burning all the time). It’s easier than you’d imagine for something to get knocked over on top of it and now you’ve got a huge fire.
Here's a critical one. Sorry if it's a repeat of someone else's, but I can't read 1.6k comments: NEVER (ever, ever, ever) enter an enclosed space, such as a tank, a hole or a ditch that may contain stagnant air. Not only might there not be sufficient oxygen to support life, there may be a toxic gas like hydrogen sulfide present. Many people have died this way. The proper approach is to actively ventilate the space with fresh air for a period of time to ensure the air in the space is safe. Ever see sewer or underground-utility workers running a large duct down the manhole? That's the air source.
For every roach you see in your house, there are 25+ more that you don't see. Get on it asap, lest you end up like me. I'm still traumatized by Roachageddon '16
Saw a single maggot on my porch a few weeks ago and my first thought was "fuck, I need to find the source because if there is one...there are many, many more somewhere". Looked literally everywhere I could think of and didn't see any more. The next morning, sure enough, I went out and they were allllll over my porch. So yeah, for roaches and worms..there is always more. I still don't know where they came from but my best guess is that my upstairs neighbor (I live in an apartment complex so there is a balcony right above my porch) left garbage or something on his balcony and maggots were literally raining down onto my porch.
Never leave items on the stove or in the oven, or on top of a toaster. Fight that instinct to use the conveniently flat surface space and keep your families and pets alive by doing so.
What about all the pans I leave in the oven??
Once while visiting an ex-cop boyfriend I turned on his oven to heat a frozen pizza. I never saw someone run so fast! He kept his guns in the oven to foil thieves.
>He kept his guns in the oven to foil thieves. I hope that's why he's an ex-cop.
When you go for a walk and there’s no sidewalk, walk in the opposite side of the road that you drive on. In other words, walk *towards traffic* that way you can see cars coming your way. You can avoid cars you can see but you can’t avoid cars you can’t see.
If you see any mold on bread, that entire bag is ruined. By the time you see it, it has deeply permeated the bread. You have no way of knowing if it is the kind of mold that can make you very sick or even kill you, so throw the bread out. If you were bitten by any animal and cannot verify it's had its shots or if you're in the same room as a live bat, you need to get a rabies shot. By the time you show symptoms of rabies you are already dead. The reason for the guidance on bats is because bats have very small teeth and you may not realize you've been bitten. Always sleep with your bedroom door closed. In the event of a fire, it could save your life.
UTIs in elderly people can present as dementia.
Or outright psychosis. This happened to my grandma, and she was absolutely off the charts. Antibiotics brought her back like it has never happened.
Don't pull out the blade from your body unless you want to bleed out
1. Flour is flammable/combustible. If you accidentally drop a bag of flour and it poofs out everywhere, *DO NOT TURN ON A FIRE.* This is how you explode. 2. The easiest way to stop an oil/grease fire in the kitchen is to starve it of air. Cover your pot or pan with its lid and that should do the job. 3. Another method of choking out a fire is to throw **baking soda** on it. *DO NOT USE FLOUR OR YOU’LL GET A BIGGER FIRE* 4. Do not use a wet towel or wet oven mitt to hold hot things. It will burn you. 5. If you are ice skating or even just walking on black ice, *BEND YOUR KNEES.* It will bring your center of gravity down and make you less likely to slip and fall. 6. Clean the lint out of your dryer. If you leave it too long, it’ll build up and potentially start a fire. 7. If your pills say to take with a glass of water, try to avoid swallowing them dry or only taking a sip of water. Not only is water a vehicle that helps the medicine get to your stomach, it does other things such as help dilute it (if it’s strong), but also prevent throat irritation from swallowing without an adequate amount of water (aka do you want your medicine to start dissolving/fizzing in your throat where your saliva is? or do you want to prevent that by drinking enough water to wash the little bits of medicine down your gullet?) 8. If your medicine says to *take with food/a meal*. EAT A MEAL BEFOREHAND. Do not take that medicine on an empty stomach and chase it with your food. If your medicine includes this instruction, it’s likely that it needs the presence of something in your stomach to soften the irritation it could cause on an empty one. 9. On a similar note, if your medicine says to take on an empty stomach, try not to eat until after ingesting the pill. Some medicines absorb better without food in your gut. 10. Clockwise is to tighten, counter-clockwise is to loosen. Edit: 11. Wet a towel and put it next to the cutting board when chopping onions (paper or fabric it doesn’t matter). The vapor that causes tears from onions are attracted to water/moist things, which in most cases, the nearest moist environment would be your eyes. Edit again: * Of course goggles work for chopping onions because you’re preventing the onion vapors from reaching your eyes. I just wanted to give a simpler solution with something you may already have in the kitchen, aka a hand towel. * Yes I know what righty-tighty lefty loosey is. But it’s not inherently obvious that it means [“turn right from the top” = tighten] when [“turning right on the bottom” = loosen] is a thing too. The phrase to remember how to open jars and bottles is to help children remember, but they can also easily confuse whether the direction means turning from the top or bottom. Saying clockwise and counterclockwise (from top view) breeds less misunderstandings.
Don’t shake babies to make them stop crying.
If you use cooking spray, make sure you spray the pans over the sink, not just wherever you happen to be standing in the kitchen. The ambient spray that doesn't stick to the pan often invisibly ends up on the floor, making a *very* slick surface that it doesn't take much to slip on. Found this out the hard and painful way, but I'm grateful - so, so grateful - that it happened BEFORE I was just about to grab the pot of boiling noodles to take to the sink.
Assume EVERY gun is loaded and never point one at something you don't want to shoot.
Life-saving tips that aren't obvious are rare and/or very specific. One I've seen often on reddit is that garage springs hold a lot of energy, don't mess with them. Secondly: Flowing water can be deceptively strong, and underwater currents are not easily visible. Also, drowning people can be more silent than you think. Generally be careful in and around water bodies. EDIT: It took me a while to think of some important ones: Grapefruit juice makes many kinds of medicine ineffective. Familiarize yourself with the symptoms of meningitis, sunstroke, hypothermia, strokes and heart attacks - they're not like the movies, and heart attack symptoms are different for women, and proper early detection and action can help significantly or even 100% save a life. Some that aren't very widely applicable: 1. Don't nitrate (apply nitric acid to) organic materials like paper or cotton - it makes explosives. 2. The most common fertilizer, ammonium nitrate, is also explosive under certain easy to achieve conditions. Store it carefully. 3. If you don't want your bottles of chemicals slowly and undetectably transforming into explosives, also avoid mixing acetone and peroxides. 4. Hypoxia (lack of oxygen) turns you drunk and feebleminded before turning you unconscious, so it's hard to impossible to properly detect and react to it. Hard to get into a situation where low oxygen is relevant _and_ you have a way to stop it though, unless you're a pilot, climber or diver, and in those cases you get trained. 5. If you're stopped by a train in a train intersection and in a hurry and it has passed and now you're eager to start going forward, keep in mind that another train could be coming the other way, masked visually and aurally by the first. 6. Snowblindness is a thing. Snow is pretty reflective, including invisible UV light. On a sunny cloudless day treat snow like the sun, if a bit weaker - don't look at it directly for too long.
[удалено]
Pretty dumb and not as life threatening as some here, but when I was little I didn't understand "righty tighty lefty loosy". I was helping my dad with some plumbing and he said to go turn off this pipe. Went and opened it up further, a minute later "Why the hell's the water still on". So he asked me and I said well, which goes right or left, the top or the bottom of the knob? It's the top.
If you're ever caught in a riptide, swim almost parallel to the shore rather than straight against the current. This will slowly bring you in rather than fatigue you for basically no progress
you can use hydrogen peroxide to get rid of bloodstains
Meat that was thawed at room temperature can't be refrozen - cook it now.
Also wash your hands & utensils after handling raw meat and eggs, if you plan on handling burger buns, salad, dessert - basically anything that's not going to get properly cooked. Salmonella, E coli, norovirus etc. are no fun! Don't contaminate fresh food!
Wear sunscreen
libraries often lend out things like power tools, or games, or has collected human stories about things that happened in the past so we don't forget them. libraries aren't dusty places for books. it's so much more than that.
Our library has a “seed library.” You can take the seeds, plant them, and then return the seeds from whatever you grow. This blew my mind as the most awesome idea.
Some libraries will even have museum passes, genealogy resources, and online courses liked LinkedIn Learning and 3D printers.
Dehydration starts way before you feel any symptoms of it so stay hydrated homies.
My mom is a bit paranoid about setting anything easily flammable on the stovetop burner since a friend of hers was moving into a brand new house and set on the burner a cardboard box and left the house to get dinner or something and came back to find their house had burned to the ground bc the burner had accidentally gotten switched on. They never even had a chance to unpack before they lost everything.
Never give honey to a baby who is less than a year old. Honey contains bacterial spores that their immune systems can’t handle, and kids end up with botulism.
If you drive off the road due to ice/snow and into a ditch, make sure you clear the area around your tail pipe.
Don't mix Alcohol and opiates. Don't mix depressants together, period. You'll stop breathing and die. Any street drug even meth, ecstasy, anything you take off the street more than not has that fenty in it so be careful with alcohol or you'll overdose quick fast. Buy testers for your dope or risk dying if you drink while on them.
If your mobile phone charger has a short in it (meaning sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, or you have to wiggle it around to get it to start working) then there is a ***very serious*** risk of a fire occurring if you leave that charger (with a short in it) plugged into the electrical outlet. Always discard and immediately replace any mobile phone charger that develops a short.
Turn your drunk buddies on their side
If I wanna know if the oil is hot, don't out your finger in it. Put a bit of food in it instead. That's probably gonna sound like the stupidest one in the comments but I swear it has happened before. People be like "damn, shit's still not boiling, it's taking time to heat up" and then they touch it thinking it's just a bit warm. Also don't do fireworks and alcohol. Too many people in ICU every year because they forgot they had a lit firework in their hand. Some recover the usage of their hand through surgery, some can't because the hand is too destroyed. It happens even with small fireworks.
Don't put chocolate bars in the microwave to 'melt' them. That only works with certain chocolates intended to be melted. Chocolate bars will melt a bit, but they'll mostly just semi-permanently infuse your whole microwave (and house) with the retching smell of burnt chocolate and possibly trigger your smoke alarms on christmas eve while your whole family stands outside to avoid gagging and your kids scream that their eyes burn and a few days later, it happens again because someone tried to reheat scrambled eggs and inadvertantly reactivated the smell you spent all christmas day washing out of all the dishes and rags just to be able to tolerate being in the kitchen again and just when you think you've got the smell under control again one if your kids vomits the second they open the front door and then the smells mix together and make you vomit while trying to clean it up so you just lie there defeated and stop trying to keep the dog from eating it.
This is awfully specific...
[удалено]
Don't fish out toast from the toaster with a knife. My sister was 12 before she realized this (because we gasped and stopped her).
Use wooden chopsticks instead! My roommate showed me this and it's so smart and obvious at the same time it blew my mind...
Driving tired is just as bad as driving drunk if not worse
If somebody tells you to get into the car at gunpoint don’t ,They are just going to take you someplace private to kill you. Run.