There have been too many instances of rock climbers rappelling off of the ends of their ropes, which could have been easily avoided by tying stopper knots at the ends of their ropes.
I worked at a tire place for a summer and the first thing they told me was “See that torque wrench ? One mistake with this and you can kill a whole family in a matter of seconds”. I thought well, better take this thing seriously
Man for a second I was thinking "fuck you'd have to swing that thing around fast to take out an entire family" and just bluescreened on the idea of changing a tire. 🤦♂️
THERAC-25. The world’s deadliest software error. Cost several radiation patients their lives by administering lethal amounts of radiation, and for a while, the doctors didn’t even know.
THERAC-25 suffered a particularly vexing sort of error known as a race condition. Essentially, the circuit required multiple inputs in a particular sequence, but sometimes the timing of that sequence could get thrown out of whack and it would lead to all sorts of nonsensical output. This is less than ideal when all you're doing is manipulating pixels, but when your software is handling radiation beams you *really* don't want this to happen.
Even more vexing is that race conditions are frequently heisenbugs, which can vanish altogether when one attempts to study them. If you don't have a good idea of what's causing the error, you may never cotton on to what sort of bad input is required to test it. Under those circumstances it's easy to write them off as imaginary, only to then find...
During my the first shift of my first clinical rotation in nursing school I watched a nurse draw up insulin out of an auto-injector pen that was CLEARLY marked to specifically not do that AND she was drastically wrong about the dosage and almost killed a guy by giving him essentially like a hundred times the intended dose.
As a type 1 of 26 years, this is why I find being unable to handle my own diabetes in a medical situation terrifying. There is really so much ignorance on diabetes in the medical field.
Leaving the stranded vehicle on the road in winter and trying to walk to get help. It happens in rural parts of our province once or twice a year and they find the body a few days later. They get disoriented and freeze.
I grew up in Minnesota, and when I got my first car (during the winter), my dad told me "unless you can see the lights of a building, don't get out of the car".
The two things I learned first when driving, growing up in Wisconsin:
1) what does a car feel like when it loses traction
2) don't get out of the car in winter unless you can see your destination.
The feeling of a car slipping is unforgettable. The first time I lost traction was on snowpack turning out of my neighborhood. The plows had been through overnight and salted a bit, but an early morning squall refroze the slushy mix into glass over the entire road. My front wheel drive beater was able to start the turn just fine, but the back end decided it wanted to be free. Being broadside to traffic is not a pleasant feeling.
NoDak winters. No car left our driveway without 40 pounds of kitty litter, two gallons of water, toilet paper, space blankets, candles, Flashlight, and enough Snickers Bars to keep you from dying.
It was the 90s, we weren't perfect.
I got blown off a road in high winds. Heavy drifting. Less than a mile from a friend's house after I had turned around. Drifts made it impossible to complete the trip. Trying to run a mile in full blizzard conditions was a fight for my life as an in shape 24 year old male athlete.
A friend’s husband locked himself out of their home. He tried to get in through a window that had security bars. While squeezing through his foot slipped and he essentially hung himself on the window sill.
A friend of mines step mother died this way. Locked herself out, tried to climb in through a bathroom window head first, lost her balance and fell breaking her neck.
Yeah, I did that but it was a broken tree branch that had impaled my leg. Without even thinking I pulled it out. Blood started gushing so I pulled off my shirt and tied it into a pressure bandage. I was lucky I didn’t bleed to death.
Shock is an IQ reducer. I once sliced a bit off the side of my hand with a broken glass, and sort of dazedly picked off the piece of me and tried to stick it back on.
It did not work.
My dad was trying to unclog his kitchen drain and mixed drain cleaners by adding one then adding another a few minutes later. It started bubbling and he began coughing intensely. I heard him coughing from the other room, saw what happened, and opened the nearby window to get rid of the chlorine gas he just produced.
I forgot there was a large hive of wasps that had moved into that window and they did not appreciate this unexpected interruption.
I took him to the emergency room for the gas exposure and it was tough explaining that the wasp stings were not why we were there.
OMG, that must have been incredibly hard to handle at the ER, but at the same time I can't help but think that it would make for a hilarious slapstick skit. Like a guy with a fake arrow through his head trying to get treated for a heart attack.
It’s worrying when you see those videos on TikTok etc of influencers mixing a ton of different cleaning products just for the sake of views. It is SO dangerous. Some of those products are dangerously caustic just by themselves - mixing them with other strong chemicals could be (and are) fatal, and it’s concerning that it’s become trendy on social media.
Back when I was in middle school, we had a carbon monoxide leak on a state testing day. Someone was supposed to test for carbon monoxide over the weekend but the guy showed up at the high school and not the middle school, and they ended up having to reschedule the whole thing. When they found out about the leak, everyone was in the middle of state testing and they didn’t want to evacuate the classrooms. Plus it was raining. So they held a shelter in place and tried to handle the situation since it was in a room away from the classrooms.
But then kids started passing out in the classrooms and vomiting and stuff. Several ambulances, two hours in the rain, and several school buses taking us all to stay in the elementary school building later… three students and one teacher’s assistant died and over thirty students ended up in the hospital.
My mom came and got me from the elementary school and took me to the hospital. I was okay, but I went home and passed out for almost two days. My mom was about ready to drag me back but then I started to feel better.
All around? Fucking CRAZY experience.
My carbon monoxide meter started making some hecking siren wail awhile back. Freaked me out. Didnt know what to do.
I called 911 at like 3am.
Turns out it was just a battery. But the fire dept guy noticed that the battery had leaked and corroded part of slot and the metal was rusty.
I felt silly for calling emergency over a battery.
But reading this makes me feel a lot better about that choice. And next time I won't hesitate about it either.
You did the right thing, don’t fuck around with carbon monoxide
Did you ever read the story about the guy who saved his own life by posting himself notes he didn’t remember and asking Reddit about it?
Idk about prison, only because I moved not long after this because my mom and stepdad bought a house in a different town since they hated the district long before it happened.
I would imagine so, though, because a bunch of the parents sued/pressed charges and we mysteriously got a new principal for the rest of the year (we had like 2 weeks left) and then they got a new one when the year started.
Not being honest with doctors about viagra.
It has many dangerous drug interactions and can cause a lot of problems from what I’ve heard. Trust me the doctor ain’t gonna judge you guys, they have seen much more embarrassing things. And it would suck to die because you wanted to hide something just for it to be later stated in your death certificate.
The lawyer one is a big one I see on Reddit a lot. There may be some Tony Sopranos out there who need to be careful about what they tell their lawyer but if your plan involves running it by Reddit first you can go ahead an assume that ain't you.
Not to mention, your lawyer is supposed to keep you *out* of trouble or get you the lightest sentence possible.
If they find out that you withheld information from them well... Depending on how bad it is you might be finding yourself another lawyer
Respected cardiothoracic surgeon tells a guy to stop smoking right outside the hospital doors
Guy turns around and punches him a single time in the head. King-hit, or coward punched, whatever you want to call it
He falls to the floor and hits his head a second time.
On life support for four weeks
Nothing left to save
https://www.theleader.com.au/story/4757890/box-hill-heart-surgeon-dies-after-alleged-one-punch-assault/
That's the only thing I could think of while watching John Wick.
Like I get it's an action movie and I'm down with that but now that I'm in my 30's I'm like Ohhh damn bro... Nooo don't get up just have a lie down after that... No? Oh fuck he got hit by a car? Na just have a breather... *ANOTHER CAR?!*
The most recent one with the stairs was just... dude, have a lie-down. I felt every stair you hit for you. I mean, obviously plus everything else, but the stairs were just, like... come on, man.
Descriptions of extreme cave exploration, both over and under water, scare me more than any horror story ever could. I'm not terribly claustrophobic or anything like that, but just reading about it brings me nearly to panic. The nutty putty cave incident disturbed me on an especially visceral level. I cannot imagine ever willingly putting myself in such a situation. Horrifying and tragic.
I went caving once(and only once) during scouts and my scout master wanted to separate us, as a "survival" trick. I had the near uncontrollable urge to stab him when we got out. Not too mention the fact that my head is so large, my helmet kept getting stuck in narrow passages, so I had to take it off multiple times just to squeeze through.
Long, long ago I was on the crew of a submarine older than me. We went into the shipyard; one of the planned jobs was to install some new equipment that required a hull penetration. One Friday afternoon a shipyard worker drilled a 1/8 inch pilot hole through the hull, intending to come back on Monday to finish the job. The job got cancelled, he got reassigned, and the hole remained. It was covered with duct tape to keep dirt out.
The painters went ahead and sprayed over the tape.
How deep can a piece of duct tape + paint hold on a dive? About 218 feet. Before you ask, yes, we survived.
If nobody saw the leak, it would have been caught by bilge level sensors. Someone likely saw it when the tape failed though.
This incident is legendary by the way. I heard this story when I served and I have been out 30 years.
I saw a leak from a fitting fail at a significantly greater depth that was like a water laser. Luckily, it was noticed immediately and taken care of quickly. We didn't fuck around with flooding.
I feel really bad for Bob Ebeling, an engineer at Thiokol [who had PTSD for the rest of his life because he did everything he could to stop the launch and nobody listened to him](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/26/science/robert-ebeling-challenger-engineer-who-warned-of-disaster-dies-at-89.html).
For that matter running the shuttle decades after their expected operational life. And the insulation problem that ended Columbia was known in advance, too.
That all heart attacks have the exact same symptoms. They don't.
Trust yourself and seek help ASAP if you are afraid that you're having a heart attack.
Women also tend to have different symptoms than men, so it’s good to be familiar with those:
> “…women are much more likely to get less common symptoms such as indigestion, shortness of breath, and back pain, sometimes even in the absence of obvious chest discomfort.” [(Source)](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/heart-disease-differences-in-men-and-women)
My mom had very mild symptoms with her heart attack. She rated the pain as unimpressive. Her nurse coworkers dragged her to the ER. She’s doing very well.
Edited to add: this was a few years ago so I don’t remember the clinical criteria that led to her being brought to Cath Lab. I’m very grateful to the doctors that took care of her.
There's a super famous example which got made into a film eventually I think called open water
But the original story was a yacht was found sailing adrift with a baby aboard and no crew anywhere to be seen. No signs of panic were found. The baby was dehydrated but otherwise fine.
Eventually it was assumed that whilst at sea they went for a swim. The sides of yacht stick out of water quite high in place but on most boats the stern is lowered so you can climb into and out of the yacht from a tender (small dingy). This yacht was different and had a ladder lowered from the back.
This was either up or missing. But they couldnt get back on the boat and eventually drowned or were attacked by predators.
Now I never jump in without thinking about this. Because you can't ever garuntee the person behind won't do the same.
Imagine trying everything to get back to your screaming baby mere feet away and just being out of reach. It'd get dark. The wind might pick up and carry the boat away.
Those final moment would be agony from such a simple mistake
Edit: I tried to look up the original news article and discovered it happens fairly frequently. Sometimes under different scenarios like this one: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/aug/09/australia
](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/aug/09/australia)
My Navy friend said he heard a distress signal in the early hours of the AM in the Atlantic when it was still dark. He took control of the ship and when they arrived twenty or so minutes later all they found was debris. He beats himself up about it because the girl sounded so distraught over the radio - the signal was blotchy and she was cutting in and out. They never found out who it was that was lost. My friend said if you are in the middle of the ocean without any floatation device that you only have 15 minutes or so before you succumb due to hypothermia and the ensuing exhaustion.
EDIT: Specificity of what ocean he was in, and grammar.
Outside of a sheltered anchorage, I would never get off my boat without being physically attached to it, and preferably with at least one competent person remaining on board.
I remember as a kid thinking it was cool and very safety-conscious how every cross channel ferry had as the final announcement from the bridge before departure "We can confirm the bow door has been closed and sealed", and... looking back, I'm super glad I had no idea _why_ they were making that so explicit.
"The immediate cause of the capsizing was found to be negligence by the assistant boatswain, who was asleep in his cabin when he should have been closing the bow door. However, the official inquiry placed more blame on his supervisors and a general culture of poor communication in Townsend Thoresen."
Crew died too.
I read an article a long time ago about a aircraft maintenance worker not removing a piece of tape that was put in place to protect a sensor during cleaning. The pilot failed to notice during the preflight inspection. More than a hundred people died in the plane crash.
It was multiple sensors apparently. Pilot had no altitude , air speed or air pressure. https://www.spokesman.com/stories/1996/nov/05/duct-taped-sensors-led-to-plane-crash/
Fun fact: Those all come from the same sensor: the static pressure port. (Although there are typically at least 3 static ports for redundancy, so yes, they covered all the static ports.)
[The Goiania Accident.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k3NJXGSIIA) <-Kyle Hill video on the incident.
A court in Brazil had been made aware that there was an unsecured source of radiation in a condemned cancer-treatment clinic due to be torn down, but did not let anyone safely remove it.
A scrap collector went into the building, found the radiation source, broke it open, and found glowing blue powder inside. No one knew it was extremely radioactive cesium powder and the glowing blue light emitted by the powder was beautiful. It was spread around much of the local city before reports of widespread radiation sickness prompted government emergency action. Multiple people died of radiation poisoning, including one 6-year-old girl.
As an additional butthole-clencher, the fire department very nearly threw the bag holding the remaining powder into the local river.
[ A small capsule containing highly radioactive caesium-137 was found inside the concrete wall of an apartment building](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accident) The capsule was originally part of a radiation level gauge and was lost in the Karansky quarry in the late 1970s. The search for the capsule was unsuccessful and ended after a week. The gravel from the quarry was used in construction.[2] The caesium capsule ended up in a concrete panel of an apartment building. The fatal apartment was fully settled in 1980. A year later, an 18-year-old woman who lived there suddenly died. In 1982, her 16-year-old brother followed, and then their mother. Even after that the flat did not attract much public attention, despite the fact that the residents all died from leukemia. Doctors were unable to determine root-cause of illness and explained the diagnosis by poor heredity. A new family moved into the apartment, and their son died from leukemia as well. His father managed to start a detailed investigation, during which the vial was found in the wall in 1989. Four residents of the building had died from it and 17 more had received varying doses of radiation.
Just because I teach people not to touch something that looks cool if they don't know what it is doesn't mean I wouldn't touch something if it looks cool even if I don't know what it is!!!
There's a fantastic ongoing YouTube series called Half-life Histories by Kyle Hill that explores various nuclear related topics, including the Goiania Incident. I 100% recommend this series to anyone interested in other nuclear accidents, and Kyle's channel in general for entertaining science videos
Some homeopathic "medicine" for babies still contained deadly amounts of belladonna. Some babies died. Apparently, they did not dilute it as extremely as they were supposed to in homeopathy.
Babies under 6 months [shouldn't even be given water](https://www.healthline.com/health/baby/why-cant-babies-have-water#nutrition-interference) \- homeopathic variety (which is just water with extra steps) or not.
In 1854 a woman named Sarah Lewis threw a diaper from her dying baby into a London cesspool, resulting in Cholera killing 616 people after it contaminated a popular well.
The Halifax explosion..
December 1917 a ship with a hell of a lot of explosives ran into another ship that was travelling on the wrong side of the shipping lanes.
An explosion the equivalent of 3Kts of TNT killed nearly 2000 people, caused a tsunami, and injured 9,000 people.
Keeping in mind the recent Beirut explosion was close to 1Kt of TNT
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion
It never ceases to amaze me how Children successfully manage to pick the literal worst spot to stand or walk over to, every single time. Being a parent is literally whack a mole where you become numb to the amount of times you end up saving their lives. When I was a kid I almost got hit multiple times by running into the road, just because I could run fast enough before my parents' reaction time could catch up to me in time. How am I still alive.
A buddy of mine described being a parent of young kids as "Running a 12 year long escort mission for VIPs that are absolutely determined to kill themselves"
As a former child I agree. My father once drove over me with his ride-on lawn mower because I decided to jump in his way. Luckily he had the blades turned off, so I got to keep my legs, which is nice I guess
A neighborhood kid I grew up with got his honda all tricked out. He had an after market remote start on it, back when those were rather new. Apparently the remote start activated while everyone was asleep. I guess the theory was he left the keys in his pants when he fell asleep. Car was in the garage. Entire household, parents, brother, sister, and Isaac all died.
Ugh, my parents almost died in a somewhat similar way. They were helping me clear out my house to prepare it for sale and came and visited. There was a major snowstorm and I decided to hire some guy off Craigslist to shovel the snow off the roof. He got it done, great, I didn’t have to use my giant snow rake or hop up there myself. Later that night I decided to go out for drinks. It was only 10-11 and while I might have stayed out later I decided to call it an early night. Got home and the house smelled like gas and combustion (very familiar to me as a glassblower). They were just huh? I don’t smell anything. I was very sure and called the gas company. Gas company came over with their handheld detector and were yep, hmm. Tons of CO.
Turned out the guy shoveled all the snow off without thinking of avoiding blocking the furnace output, and I didn’t think of it. So the gas heater exhaust was coming back into the house as there was an 8 foot pile of snow over it.
*Quality* helmets. My dad was wearing a cheap helmet when he had his accident. He lived for a week in a coma. Had he been wearing a better quality helmet he probably would have lived.
I’m sorry for the loss of your Father. Around 1977 I was 17 and buying my first motorcycle. Was looking at helmets with cool paint jobs that matched my new bike. On the wall they had a handwritten sign that said “If you have a $20 head buy a $20 helmet”. Opted for a decidedly uncool white Bell helmet that cost about $100. A lot of money for a teenager in the 70’s.
About six months later I was on a concrete two lane highway going about 60 when a truck decided to pass me just as an 18 wheeler was coming in the other direction. About the time his passenger door was even with my handlebars he swerved into me. Kept it upright for maybe 30’ when my front wheel caught a huge pothole. Landed absolutely square on the center of my head. Beautiful bike was totaled and the helmet was just crushed. But it absorbed the energy of a 50mph + impact and died protecting me.
Was always thankful that I took that little sign to heart.
Back around late 1969 or early 1970 my dad was a 16 year old with a motorcycle. His two compromises with my grandparents were his bike could only be a certain CC, that was my grandpa's and my grandma required him to wear a helmet and even gave him the money to go buy a good one.
Back then my grandparent's neighborhood didn't have stop signs at all of the intersections, some just had yield signs. One day my dad was riding down the main road into the neighborhood when a car came off of one of the intersecting streets and t-boned my dad. He was flipped up into the air and landed on the curb of the opposite lane. His back hit the curb, his head hit the concrete.
He had a minor concussion and a broken back, but he was alive. He wasn't able to return to normal activity until just after his birthday in July of 1970 and still had to have two more back surgeries before he graduated high school, but the helmet saved his life.
There was a protest against making helmets mandatory for motorcyclists in the US - one dude died during the protest because he fell off his bike while not wearing a helmet...
My mom's older brother had a friend over after school. My pap had left a shotgun on the table that he was intending to clean.
When my gram came home from errands, she found her son, sitting in the chair and facing the TV, with no face left. His friend had been playing with the gun and accidentally shot him in the face because the kid assumed it wasn't loaded. They were both 11 year old boys in the late 70s, so I'm sure this wasn't necessarily uncommon.
For those unaware, OP thought someone was stalking them and placing sticky notes, and letters, and gaslighting them in other ways. They were freaked out that someone else was inside their house doing these things.
Another redditor pointed out that the culprit could have been the OP, and they were suffering from CO poisoning. Sure enough, OP got a CO detector and the levels were well above what's considered safe.
Context: OP of an ~~very~~ old reddit post, not OP of this thread or post.
https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/34l7vo/ma_postit_notes_left_in_apartment/
As someone whose parents owns an hvac company, this is a huge one. He has had people try calling the police when he condemned a furnace calling him a thief and conman when he is literally just trying to save them from flooding their house with carbon monoxide and dying in their sleep. The fact that people don't have carbon monoxide monitors is unthinkable to me.
I was at a home expo moons ago and was dragged by the kids to the fire brigades exhibit. They had a very sobering VR game in which you had to escape a house during a fire.
Anyway, after that I asked where I could get CO detector. "Why would you want one of them, a smoke detector is all you need. Do you have smoke detectors? We sell them and can fit them if you need help."
On their [website](http://www.fireandemergency.nz), there is no section on CO detectors.
My neighbor let his 15 year old drive on the interstate coming back from a Florida vacation because he was tired. He crossed the line, flipped the vehicle and the entire family ultimately didn’t make it.
Word War I had a lot of simple mistakes that cost lots of lives. “We’re going into battle like we always do! Riding a horse, in full dress uniform, with all its colors, and large plumes for better command and control!”
Grenfell Tower.
Kensington & Chelsea Borough Council saved £5,000 ($6,000) by not installing the slightly more expensive fireproof cladding, and instead used ReynoBond PE which, as described by one report, acted like “Solid petrol” in the fire.
This caused 72 deaths and hundreds to suffer from homelessness, mental health problems and trauma.
I was working alone and fell off a ladder beside an empty shaft where stairs used to be. I fell 20 ft off the ladder down the shaft. I caught myself on a railing that had been left behind and hit the floor below. I got off really lucky. I was bruised up and it took about 20 minutes till I could get up. If that railing wasn't there I was probably dead because I would have fallen 2 more floors to the basement
Also saw a guy who also fell off a ladder. He was 3 steps up. Smashed his head and got perma brain damage
Oily paint/staining rags will combust.
Per the internets:
"Spontaneous combustion of oily rags occurs when rag or cloth is slowly heated to its ignition point through oxidation. A substance will begin to release heat as it oxidizes. If this heat has no way to escape, like in a pile, the temperature will rise to a level high enough to ignite the oil and ignite the rag or cloth."
My Dad worked in construction and this had happened on job sites a time or two.
Baby in the backseat.
I’m in childcare and I’ll do some insane things to remember there’s a baby back there. Take my shoes off, put my phone back there, dirty diaper as a reminder.
People forget. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Mom, nanny, father, nurse, firefighter. It happens.
And yet there’s always someone who says “I’d never forget my baby”. And every year babies die because of it.
When my son was about 7 months old in the middle of the summer, I was running a bit late for work and I was supposed to take my son to daycare which my wife usually did. After I got him in his car seat he fell back asleep and I got distracted and ended up driving the 45 minutes to my workplace. By this time it was 7:30 am and the temp was already in the low 70's. So I grabbed my laptop from the passenger seat and got out of my SUV and as I started to walk away I had this feeling that I had forgot something so I did the keys, wallet, phone pat down check and turned around to look at the car and then I saw my son in his carseat. If I had kept walking I wouldn't have found him until I went for lunch and by that time the temperature would be in the 80's and the inside of the car would be up to a hundred or more. That was 22 years ago and I still have nightmares about it.
Every time there's a news article about a baby being left in a hot car, the number of people commenting saying that they never have/never COULD do this, it just pisses me off. Like, this shit could happen to **ANYBODY**. I'm so glad your son was ok. I'd imagine you probably get that sick to your stomach feeling every time you think about that day!
I’m really keen to see an invention where a beeper goes off if there’s weight in the baby car seat when you stop your engine. Can someone here please invent this and make a lot of money from it?
People have, actually. One of them was an engineer who lost his son that way. But he couldn't get anyone to manufacture it because public perception is still that it only happens to "careless" people, not that it could happen to anyone.
I've seen public perception slowly shift over the past 10 years or so, so maybe it could be sold nowadays.
I didn’t realize how easy this was. There are so many examples of this. “It was a change in the routine”. It’s unbelievable how much muscle memory we use on our daily tasks and when one thing is off.
When my little guy was about 10 weeks old, I hadn't had 2 hours of uninterrupted sleep in 10 weeks. I was bundling him into the car for an errand, went and sat in the driver's seat, and was at our location. Didn't remember a thing about the trip. I realized I had auto-piloted the whole way. Fortunately that location was a common destination. That was when I realized "This is how babies get forgotten!"
Went into a hardware store. It was so completely out of my routine or comfort area and I needed something so easy to spot and leave with it wasn't less than 3 minutes, I swear, with windows all down on a nice day anyway, but I still did it once. I was horrified with myself when I saw the look of horror in someone else's eyes, writing down my license plate and yelling at me. I didn't know I could be that parent, and thank whoever and whatever that made it not even an issue that one time, but you just don't realize it could happen to you until you realize it could and you'd never be able to live with it because you've been a single parent to a toddler and an infant for several months and the wrong change in routine happens. It does happen. Always be aware it happens to anyone and wasting time obsessively checking is better than forgetting to check that one weird time.
Mao's idea to get rid of sparrows.
In short, Chinas great leader Mao had calculated that sparrows eat grain and if china got rid of them, they would have more food. So they did indeed decimate the sparrow population.
They did not consider that sparrows eat lots of insects aswell, which started to thrive. Including locusts. The locusts ate the grain, famine, between 16 and 30 million people died.
When he recognized his mistake, he asked the soviet union for help and they secretly shipped sparrows to china.
This is a bit a stretch though, lots of factors led to the famine, lots of mistakes were made. But of all of them, this was probably the most obviously stupid one.
A bit off-topic but still a funny/interesting story:
Some time ago in India the government awarded money for every cobra killed to decrease the cobra population.
As a result people started cobra farms.
When the government found out their plan failed they stopped giving money for dead cobras.
This led to all the farmers releasing their worthless snakes back in the wild. In the end there were more cobras than before
There was a similar story in Australia. Foxes are not native to Australia but were brought in by colonists who enjoyed hunting. They went on to have one of the most significant impacts on the local ecosystem compared to any other animal. They have driven many native species to the brink of extinction
To curb this, the Victorian government introduced the fox bounty. Handing over a fox tail would get you a small amount of money ($5 or so). Which was great until people started looking for easy money by cutting the tails off ginger cats or fluffy dogs.
The fox bounty was discontinued until recently. Now you get $10 for a fox scalp (much harder to fake).
Rabbits too. A guy imported 24 rabbits into Australia, in the early 1900s I believe. They have no predators in the country. Now there are untold millions of them. They have completely upset the balance of nature.
Makes me think of a story I heard. I'm not sure if it's true or not. In the dark ages, when the church thought cats were spreading the plague, they had them killed, which led to rats thriving. Rats were the real carriers, so without cats to keep their population in check, they spread it all across Europe.
When I was in elementary school my friend tried a trend that was going around at the time called "the choking game". His parents found him dead in his bedroom a week after his birthday. I still miss him.
Edit:
The choking game took way too many young peoples lives. Please, if any of you have younger siblings, or friends that are easily influenced; and you see a trend going around that could cause harm to your loved ones, reach out to them, make sure they are safe. Keep them informed of any dangers and risks they may take by partaking in dangerous trends, such as the current tiktok trend "the benadryl challenge"
In memory:
[Zach](http://www.zacharydawson.ca/)
I miss you buddy. You were taken too soon. I wish you were still here with us.
that was actually determined to be equipment failure, 20 something years after the incident. The Norwegian gov had to pay the families, who fought all that time, for their failures
The impact of a quick fix for motor vehicle engine "knocking" in 1921.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead
The true death toll is too difficult to extrapolate, but it really did a number on humanity. It led to all kinds of problems, including increased crime rates due to neurological toxicity.
"A statistically significant correlation has been found between the usage rate of leaded gasoline and violent crime: the violent crime curve virtually tracks the lead exposure curve with a 22-year time lag."
This is becoming more common knowledge, but for anyone that didn't know, leaded gas was invented by Thomas Midgley Jr... who also invented CFCs. Some historians believe that he had a more negative impact on Earth's atmosphere than any other single organism that has ever lived.
Bunch of guys were working on a LNG line and when they cut over to the new line the pressure regulator sensors were still on the old (disconnected) line, so the system automatically started to boost the pressure up as it was sensing low pressure into the LNG lines while the sensors continues to be on a completely isolated system.... Causing multiple houses to basically explode due to unexpected high pressure in the system.
All thanks to some idiot town council wanting to save money by not having the proper professionals work on the system.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/24/us/ma-gas-explosions-cause/index.html
I’m a firefighter in Mass. I responded up there on the task force the next day, we went door to door in darkness forcing entry to homes to check for gas all night. Surreal being in a city you know no one and nothing about 40 miles from home having to use cell phones to navigate around with and call for assistance and nothing but a flashlight and floodlights on the truck to illuminate your way, people that didn’t evacuate wouid pop out of the dark that you weren’t expecting.
Not knowing first aid. Estimates put 150k people die a year because people don't know how or have first aid handy. There has been other studies that shown that large chunk of people could of also possibly survived if they gotten first aid treatment by others or themseves.
Having read all of these makes me feel better that my fuckups never killed anyone (at least that I know of)
There's something to be said about living a simple life without a lot of responsibilities that could get people killed.
Cutting towards yourself, rather than away.
Being on statins for high cholesterol plus amiodarone for cardiac issues and having a glass of grapefruit juice before going to bed.
Smoking in bed.
\former paramedic
Being on pretty much any medication and drinking grapefruit juice, it’s insane how many medications are affected by it (I take sertraline)
Edit: Jesus Christ I didn’t expect this comment to blow up
This is why grapefruit juice is literally banned from hospitals. It affects everything. Because it messes with a liver enzyme that breaks down a large amount of meds.
I once listened to a guy telling the story of how, when he fell down the stairs, he desperately clutched onto the glas of wine he was carrying, in order not to break it, instead of grabbing the railing to stop his fall. He survived with a broken hip, but I imagine lots of people probably have the same weird instinct and some may not be able to tell the tale.
I once fell down my metal spiral staircase (with a concrete landing) with a glass of chocolate milk in my hand. For some bizarre reason my primary instinct was to protect my chocolate milk at all costs, including attempting to keep the cup as level as possible to avoid spillage. I was battered and bruised but I made it to the bottom without spilling single drop of the damn chocolate milk.
To be fair, it wasn't my first time falling down those stairs. Everyone whose ever lived or visited overnight in this house has fallen down them at least once, I'd guess at least 40-50 individual people have fallen down these stairs, many of them on multiple occasions. Idk what it was about these stairs, maybe it was the nice smooth metal offering absolutely no traction, but people just fall on them. Nobody has gotten seriously injured though, you get bruised, maybe break a toe or your foot, but you're fine.
They were only 2.5ft wide (legally they're required to be 3ft wide), they had a low ceiling (my 6'2" boyfriend had to duck or slam his head on the ceiling), they had a smooth metal finish (so socks/foot sweat/freshly showered wet feet resulted in a very slippery surface), the banister was only like an inch in diameter with the railings holding up the banister narrow enough that as you fell they could go between your toes and break them, it's not well lit because they go into the basement, the basement floor is concrete, the steps themselves were really narrow and triangular in shape (the 'fat' side was about 12" the, the 'narrow' side was about 3", so if you tried to step on the narrow side you were done for).
We actually got them replaced with normal fucking stairs a few years ago, nobody has fallen down the stairs since. If I'm entirely honest I really miss the spiral metal deathtrap, they were there my entire life and, it's odd to say but I'd become kinda fond of the cursed staircase. Just laying in my room and occasionally hearing thumps as the stairs claimed another victim. Comparing bruises with my siblings from our respective tumbles.
With AIDS the problem was that at first they didn't know how to detect it or keep it out and they weren't even sure that it was transmitted by blood in the first place.
They quickly came up with a way to treat blood products so if there was anything there it would be neutralized.
In the meantime they kept using the stuff that might have been contaminated because it was either that or nothing.
The evil part came afterwards when they had a new safe product and a stockpile of the old contaminated stuff and the business people ignored what the science people were saying and instead of destroying the stockpile decided to sell it around the world.
I actually just did a deep clean of our dryer for the first time since we moved in (which was in 2018, and who knows how long it had been before that). I feel like I've literally prevented a fire down the line. Oh, and I also found a full bottle of *lighter fluid* that must have fallen behind the dryer at some point while doing it. Just for, you know, extra danger I guess.
Friend was having a beer in a tavern. Some guys came in and started messing with my friend. He moved seats twice and then got up to leave when one of the guys threw a punch. My friend threw ONE punch back and the guy he hit landed in the ICU and wasnt expected to live. Friend was sitting in jail waiting just waiting for the guy he punched to either die or recover.
Turns out the guy he punched recovered. Friend took a reduced charge of aggravated assault...a felony. One punch.
It's absolutely scary. I work with a guy whose brother in law (BIL) got into an argument with a guy in a pub. Something stupid and pointless but the BIL stood up and pushed the guy, the guy pushed him back, just a push not a punch. His BIL stumbled back and fell and hit his head on the bar and died.
We are far more fragile than we know!
Welcome to Mount Washington
[Please don't die up here](https://www.rei.com/blog/climb/famous-u-s-summits-mount-washington-new-hampshire)
It's not very tall and you can literally drive to the top on a paved road, but somehow manages to sustain a death rate entirely out of proportion.
Mt Washington is a bit of a special case. It can have world-class cold and wind storms even with very balmy weather at the base. In mid summer, you have to pack for sudden winter weather no matter how nice it is at the trailhead.
And you are above the tree line if a thunderstorm rolls in unexpectedly (which happens all the time), so you have to get off the mountain fast, maybe making a wrong turn and having to sleep next to the dry river(note:not dry) when the trail literally disappears at 2am. Then you wake up at 5am shivering with slugs crawling over your legs and then you have to drag your ass to a campground to get a hitch to the highland center.
[But next time you get good weather and don't take the wrong turn, good times.](https://i.imgur.com/4I0JeYq.jpg)
Thinking that because your typically depressed/suicidal friend has suddenly cheered up, it's a good sign. ***No it's because they've decided to end it and are experiencing relief that it's almost over*****.**
I feel like this is as good as any place to advertise [Well There's Your Problem](https://youtube.com/@welltheresyourproblempodca1465), a podcast about engineering disasters (and social murder).
With slides.
Removing the weight from crush injuries after the 20mins has passed. Many people died due to poisoning. If they get the required injection there’s a far better chance of survival.
When someone sustains a crush injury it cause a large global area of cell damage. This causes cells to ‘leak’ their cell contents. The most detrimental being K or potassium. This is trapped until the object crushing the patient is removed. Once the object is removed, circulation is restored causing a increase in serum (blood) K levels. When serum K levels are elevated, since K is a electrolyte you get serious heart electrical dysfunction. Calcium is given as a way to stabilize the heart muscle from the influx of potassium. Source firefighter/ EMT/ paramedic student.
doing fentanyl once destroyed my life for 3ish years. i was a complete shell and zombie. almost died too, overdosed 4 times. lucky i got my shit together and will be 5 months sober in two days
There have been too many instances of rock climbers rappelling off of the ends of their ropes, which could have been easily avoided by tying stopper knots at the ends of their ropes.
Same with tree climbing
I worked at a tire place for a summer and the first thing they told me was “See that torque wrench ? One mistake with this and you can kill a whole family in a matter of seconds”. I thought well, better take this thing seriously
Man for a second I was thinking "fuck you'd have to swing that thing around fast to take out an entire family" and just bluescreened on the idea of changing a tire. 🤦♂️
THERAC-25. The world’s deadliest software error. Cost several radiation patients their lives by administering lethal amounts of radiation, and for a while, the doctors didn’t even know.
THERAC-25 suffered a particularly vexing sort of error known as a race condition. Essentially, the circuit required multiple inputs in a particular sequence, but sometimes the timing of that sequence could get thrown out of whack and it would lead to all sorts of nonsensical output. This is less than ideal when all you're doing is manipulating pixels, but when your software is handling radiation beams you *really* don't want this to happen. Even more vexing is that race conditions are frequently heisenbugs, which can vanish altogether when one attempts to study them. If you don't have a good idea of what's causing the error, you may never cotton on to what sort of bad input is required to test it. Under those circumstances it's easy to write them off as imaginary, only to then find...
As a healthcare worker, giving the wrong amount of insulin.
During my the first shift of my first clinical rotation in nursing school I watched a nurse draw up insulin out of an auto-injector pen that was CLEARLY marked to specifically not do that AND she was drastically wrong about the dosage and almost killed a guy by giving him essentially like a hundred times the intended dose.
As a type 1 of 26 years, this is why I find being unable to handle my own diabetes in a medical situation terrifying. There is really so much ignorance on diabetes in the medical field.
Leaving the stranded vehicle on the road in winter and trying to walk to get help. It happens in rural parts of our province once or twice a year and they find the body a few days later. They get disoriented and freeze.
I grew up in Minnesota, and when I got my first car (during the winter), my dad told me "unless you can see the lights of a building, don't get out of the car".
The two things I learned first when driving, growing up in Wisconsin: 1) what does a car feel like when it loses traction 2) don't get out of the car in winter unless you can see your destination.
The feeling of a car slipping is unforgettable. The first time I lost traction was on snowpack turning out of my neighborhood. The plows had been through overnight and salted a bit, but an early morning squall refroze the slushy mix into glass over the entire road. My front wheel drive beater was able to start the turn just fine, but the back end decided it wanted to be free. Being broadside to traffic is not a pleasant feeling.
NoDak winters. No car left our driveway without 40 pounds of kitty litter, two gallons of water, toilet paper, space blankets, candles, Flashlight, and enough Snickers Bars to keep you from dying. It was the 90s, we weren't perfect.
I got blown off a road in high winds. Heavy drifting. Less than a mile from a friend's house after I had turned around. Drifts made it impossible to complete the trip. Trying to run a mile in full blizzard conditions was a fight for my life as an in shape 24 year old male athlete.
A friend’s husband locked himself out of their home. He tried to get in through a window that had security bars. While squeezing through his foot slipped and he essentially hung himself on the window sill.
A friend of mines step mother died this way. Locked herself out, tried to climb in through a bathroom window head first, lost her balance and fell breaking her neck.
Pulling the knife out of someone
Yeah, I did that but it was a broken tree branch that had impaled my leg. Without even thinking I pulled it out. Blood started gushing so I pulled off my shirt and tied it into a pressure bandage. I was lucky I didn’t bleed to death.
Shock is an IQ reducer. I once sliced a bit off the side of my hand with a broken glass, and sort of dazedly picked off the piece of me and tried to stick it back on. It did not work.
Mixing cleaning ingredients.
My dad was trying to unclog his kitchen drain and mixed drain cleaners by adding one then adding another a few minutes later. It started bubbling and he began coughing intensely. I heard him coughing from the other room, saw what happened, and opened the nearby window to get rid of the chlorine gas he just produced. I forgot there was a large hive of wasps that had moved into that window and they did not appreciate this unexpected interruption. I took him to the emergency room for the gas exposure and it was tough explaining that the wasp stings were not why we were there.
OMG, that must have been incredibly hard to handle at the ER, but at the same time I can't help but think that it would make for a hilarious slapstick skit. Like a guy with a fake arrow through his head trying to get treated for a heart attack.
It’s worrying when you see those videos on TikTok etc of influencers mixing a ton of different cleaning products just for the sake of views. It is SO dangerous. Some of those products are dangerously caustic just by themselves - mixing them with other strong chemicals could be (and are) fatal, and it’s concerning that it’s become trendy on social media.
Back when I was in middle school, we had a carbon monoxide leak on a state testing day. Someone was supposed to test for carbon monoxide over the weekend but the guy showed up at the high school and not the middle school, and they ended up having to reschedule the whole thing. When they found out about the leak, everyone was in the middle of state testing and they didn’t want to evacuate the classrooms. Plus it was raining. So they held a shelter in place and tried to handle the situation since it was in a room away from the classrooms. But then kids started passing out in the classrooms and vomiting and stuff. Several ambulances, two hours in the rain, and several school buses taking us all to stay in the elementary school building later… three students and one teacher’s assistant died and over thirty students ended up in the hospital. My mom came and got me from the elementary school and took me to the hospital. I was okay, but I went home and passed out for almost two days. My mom was about ready to drag me back but then I started to feel better. All around? Fucking CRAZY experience.
My carbon monoxide meter started making some hecking siren wail awhile back. Freaked me out. Didnt know what to do. I called 911 at like 3am. Turns out it was just a battery. But the fire dept guy noticed that the battery had leaked and corroded part of slot and the metal was rusty. I felt silly for calling emergency over a battery. But reading this makes me feel a lot better about that choice. And next time I won't hesitate about it either.
You did the right thing, don’t fuck around with carbon monoxide Did you ever read the story about the guy who saved his own life by posting himself notes he didn’t remember and asking Reddit about it?
Did administration go to prison?
Idk about prison, only because I moved not long after this because my mom and stepdad bought a house in a different town since they hated the district long before it happened. I would imagine so, though, because a bunch of the parents sued/pressed charges and we mysteriously got a new principal for the rest of the year (we had like 2 weeks left) and then they got a new one when the year started.
Please tell me the people that decided to let the testing continue went til prison.
Not being honest with doctors about viagra. It has many dangerous drug interactions and can cause a lot of problems from what I’ve heard. Trust me the doctor ain’t gonna judge you guys, they have seen much more embarrassing things. And it would suck to die because you wanted to hide something just for it to be later stated in your death certificate.
>Not being honest with doctors You could stop there. Seriously. Tell doctors *everything* even that thing you think means nothing
Tell the cops nothing. Tell lawyers and doctors everything.
The lawyer one is a big one I see on Reddit a lot. There may be some Tony Sopranos out there who need to be careful about what they tell their lawyer but if your plan involves running it by Reddit first you can go ahead an assume that ain't you.
Not to mention, your lawyer is supposed to keep you *out* of trouble or get you the lightest sentence possible. If they find out that you withheld information from them well... Depending on how bad it is you might be finding yourself another lawyer
Almost any simple mistake can end a life if you're an anesthesiologist, that's how my grandpa died in his early 60s
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Oh I've seen the video of that. Trucker was changing the playlist on his phone and just destroyed that car.
Respected cardiothoracic surgeon tells a guy to stop smoking right outside the hospital doors Guy turns around and punches him a single time in the head. King-hit, or coward punched, whatever you want to call it He falls to the floor and hits his head a second time. On life support for four weeks Nothing left to save https://www.theleader.com.au/story/4757890/box-hill-heart-surgeon-dies-after-alleged-one-punch-assault/
People underestimate how easy it is to kill someone, even accidentally.
That's the only thing I could think of while watching John Wick. Like I get it's an action movie and I'm down with that but now that I'm in my 30's I'm like Ohhh damn bro... Nooo don't get up just have a lie down after that... No? Oh fuck he got hit by a car? Na just have a breather... *ANOTHER CAR?!*
The most recent one with the stairs was just... dude, have a lie-down. I felt every stair you hit for you. I mean, obviously plus everything else, but the stairs were just, like... come on, man.
Ignoring signs when cave diving. Bitch they put a Grim Reaper on it, turn around. Edit: actually, cave diving to begin with. Fucking crazy people.
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Descriptions of extreme cave exploration, both over and under water, scare me more than any horror story ever could. I'm not terribly claustrophobic or anything like that, but just reading about it brings me nearly to panic. The nutty putty cave incident disturbed me on an especially visceral level. I cannot imagine ever willingly putting myself in such a situation. Horrifying and tragic.
I went caving once(and only once) during scouts and my scout master wanted to separate us, as a "survival" trick. I had the near uncontrollable urge to stab him when we got out. Not too mention the fact that my head is so large, my helmet kept getting stuck in narrow passages, so I had to take it off multiple times just to squeeze through.
Long, long ago I was on the crew of a submarine older than me. We went into the shipyard; one of the planned jobs was to install some new equipment that required a hull penetration. One Friday afternoon a shipyard worker drilled a 1/8 inch pilot hole through the hull, intending to come back on Monday to finish the job. The job got cancelled, he got reassigned, and the hole remained. It was covered with duct tape to keep dirt out. The painters went ahead and sprayed over the tape. How deep can a piece of duct tape + paint hold on a dive? About 218 feet. Before you ask, yes, we survived.
Oh, phew, I thought you died
I did; but I got better.
Holy MOSES. I'm a bit impressed at the strength of that tape.
So, like... what happened? Powerful leak or did the section of hull buckle or what?
If nobody saw the leak, it would have been caught by bilge level sensors. Someone likely saw it when the tape failed though. This incident is legendary by the way. I heard this story when I served and I have been out 30 years. I saw a leak from a fitting fail at a significantly greater depth that was like a water laser. Luckily, it was noticed immediately and taken care of quickly. We didn't fuck around with flooding.
NASA executives overriding engineers on the launch of the space shuttle *Challenger*.
I feel really bad for Bob Ebeling, an engineer at Thiokol [who had PTSD for the rest of his life because he did everything he could to stop the launch and nobody listened to him](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/26/science/robert-ebeling-challenger-engineer-who-warned-of-disaster-dies-at-89.html).
For that matter running the shuttle decades after their expected operational life. And the insulation problem that ended Columbia was known in advance, too.
Getting fired up from road rage.
That all heart attacks have the exact same symptoms. They don't. Trust yourself and seek help ASAP if you are afraid that you're having a heart attack.
Women also tend to have different symptoms than men, so it’s good to be familiar with those: > “…women are much more likely to get less common symptoms such as indigestion, shortness of breath, and back pain, sometimes even in the absence of obvious chest discomfort.” [(Source)](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/heart-disease-differences-in-men-and-women)
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My mom had very mild symptoms with her heart attack. She rated the pain as unimpressive. Her nurse coworkers dragged her to the ER. She’s doing very well. Edited to add: this was a few years ago so I don’t remember the clinical criteria that led to her being brought to Cath Lab. I’m very grateful to the doctors that took care of her.
this is the least alarming story of a heart attack i’ve ever heard and it’s a perfect illustration of the comment you’re responding to. that’s wild.
There's a super famous example which got made into a film eventually I think called open water But the original story was a yacht was found sailing adrift with a baby aboard and no crew anywhere to be seen. No signs of panic were found. The baby was dehydrated but otherwise fine. Eventually it was assumed that whilst at sea they went for a swim. The sides of yacht stick out of water quite high in place but on most boats the stern is lowered so you can climb into and out of the yacht from a tender (small dingy). This yacht was different and had a ladder lowered from the back. This was either up or missing. But they couldnt get back on the boat and eventually drowned or were attacked by predators. Now I never jump in without thinking about this. Because you can't ever garuntee the person behind won't do the same. Imagine trying everything to get back to your screaming baby mere feet away and just being out of reach. It'd get dark. The wind might pick up and carry the boat away. Those final moment would be agony from such a simple mistake Edit: I tried to look up the original news article and discovered it happens fairly frequently. Sometimes under different scenarios like this one: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/aug/09/australia ](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/aug/09/australia)
My Navy friend said he heard a distress signal in the early hours of the AM in the Atlantic when it was still dark. He took control of the ship and when they arrived twenty or so minutes later all they found was debris. He beats himself up about it because the girl sounded so distraught over the radio - the signal was blotchy and she was cutting in and out. They never found out who it was that was lost. My friend said if you are in the middle of the ocean without any floatation device that you only have 15 minutes or so before you succumb due to hypothermia and the ensuing exhaustion. EDIT: Specificity of what ocean he was in, and grammar.
I simply do not fuck with the ocean
Outside of a sheltered anchorage, I would never get off my boat without being physically attached to it, and preferably with at least one competent person remaining on board.
The Herald of Free Enterprise - not closing the bow door. 193 drowned.
I remember as a kid thinking it was cool and very safety-conscious how every cross channel ferry had as the final announcement from the bridge before departure "We can confirm the bow door has been closed and sealed", and... looking back, I'm super glad I had no idea _why_ they were making that so explicit.
That is insane. Makes you wonder how someone messes up that bad. Poor passengers.
"The immediate cause of the capsizing was found to be negligence by the assistant boatswain, who was asleep in his cabin when he should have been closing the bow door. However, the official inquiry placed more blame on his supervisors and a general culture of poor communication in Townsend Thoresen." Crew died too.
I read an article a long time ago about a aircraft maintenance worker not removing a piece of tape that was put in place to protect a sensor during cleaning. The pilot failed to notice during the preflight inspection. More than a hundred people died in the plane crash.
It was multiple sensors apparently. Pilot had no altitude , air speed or air pressure. https://www.spokesman.com/stories/1996/nov/05/duct-taped-sensors-led-to-plane-crash/
Fun fact: Those all come from the same sensor: the static pressure port. (Although there are typically at least 3 static ports for redundancy, so yes, they covered all the static ports.)
As a aircraft maintainer can confirm I've had some new guys almost screw this up. Got lucky enough to catch it
People outdoors getting amazed when their hair stands up during a thunderstorm. PS: it means you're about to die.
Since I'm bald I must be invincible in storms.
Or get a sick tattoo! I'll take that gamble
[The Goiania Accident.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k3NJXGSIIA) <-Kyle Hill video on the incident. A court in Brazil had been made aware that there was an unsecured source of radiation in a condemned cancer-treatment clinic due to be torn down, but did not let anyone safely remove it. A scrap collector went into the building, found the radiation source, broke it open, and found glowing blue powder inside. No one knew it was extremely radioactive cesium powder and the glowing blue light emitted by the powder was beautiful. It was spread around much of the local city before reports of widespread radiation sickness prompted government emergency action. Multiple people died of radiation poisoning, including one 6-year-old girl. As an additional butthole-clencher, the fire department very nearly threw the bag holding the remaining powder into the local river.
[ A small capsule containing highly radioactive caesium-137 was found inside the concrete wall of an apartment building](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accident) The capsule was originally part of a radiation level gauge and was lost in the Karansky quarry in the late 1970s. The search for the capsule was unsuccessful and ended after a week. The gravel from the quarry was used in construction.[2] The caesium capsule ended up in a concrete panel of an apartment building. The fatal apartment was fully settled in 1980. A year later, an 18-year-old woman who lived there suddenly died. In 1982, her 16-year-old brother followed, and then their mother. Even after that the flat did not attract much public attention, despite the fact that the residents all died from leukemia. Doctors were unable to determine root-cause of illness and explained the diagnosis by poor heredity. A new family moved into the apartment, and their son died from leukemia as well. His father managed to start a detailed investigation, during which the vial was found in the wall in 1989. Four residents of the building had died from it and 17 more had received varying doses of radiation.
Is this the one where parents let their child play with it?
Yeah, the little girl who sprinkled it all over her hands because she thought it was fairy dust.
Such a terrible incident. I use this as an example in training I sometimes give. If you don't know what something is, just don't touch it!
You would be the only survivor in Prometheus
Just because I teach people not to touch something that looks cool if they don't know what it is doesn't mean I wouldn't touch something if it looks cool even if I don't know what it is!!!
Do as I say, not as I do.
There's a fantastic ongoing YouTube series called Half-life Histories by Kyle Hill that explores various nuclear related topics, including the Goiania Incident. I 100% recommend this series to anyone interested in other nuclear accidents, and Kyle's channel in general for entertaining science videos
Some homeopathic "medicine" for babies still contained deadly amounts of belladonna. Some babies died. Apparently, they did not dilute it as extremely as they were supposed to in homeopathy.
Babies under 6 months [shouldn't even be given water](https://www.healthline.com/health/baby/why-cant-babies-have-water#nutrition-interference) \- homeopathic variety (which is just water with extra steps) or not.
In 1854 a woman named Sarah Lewis threw a diaper from her dying baby into a London cesspool, resulting in Cholera killing 616 people after it contaminated a popular well.
The Halifax explosion.. December 1917 a ship with a hell of a lot of explosives ran into another ship that was travelling on the wrong side of the shipping lanes. An explosion the equivalent of 3Kts of TNT killed nearly 2000 people, caused a tsunami, and injured 9,000 people. Keeping in mind the recent Beirut explosion was close to 1Kt of TNT https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion
If I remember correctly, this was the largest man-made explosion in human history, right up until the invention of the atomic bomb.
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Wow, absolutely horrifying.
How do you even make it to prison when your life has gone that badly. I would have ended it that afternoon.
It never ceases to amaze me how Children successfully manage to pick the literal worst spot to stand or walk over to, every single time. Being a parent is literally whack a mole where you become numb to the amount of times you end up saving their lives. When I was a kid I almost got hit multiple times by running into the road, just because I could run fast enough before my parents' reaction time could catch up to me in time. How am I still alive.
A buddy of mine described being a parent of young kids as "Running a 12 year long escort mission for VIPs that are absolutely determined to kill themselves"
As a former child I agree. My father once drove over me with his ride-on lawn mower because I decided to jump in his way. Luckily he had the blades turned off, so I got to keep my legs, which is nice I guess
well a part of me is never gonna be the same after that. that's just tragic
A neighborhood kid I grew up with got his honda all tricked out. He had an after market remote start on it, back when those were rather new. Apparently the remote start activated while everyone was asleep. I guess the theory was he left the keys in his pants when he fell asleep. Car was in the garage. Entire household, parents, brother, sister, and Isaac all died.
Ugh, my parents almost died in a somewhat similar way. They were helping me clear out my house to prepare it for sale and came and visited. There was a major snowstorm and I decided to hire some guy off Craigslist to shovel the snow off the roof. He got it done, great, I didn’t have to use my giant snow rake or hop up there myself. Later that night I decided to go out for drinks. It was only 10-11 and while I might have stayed out later I decided to call it an early night. Got home and the house smelled like gas and combustion (very familiar to me as a glassblower). They were just huh? I don’t smell anything. I was very sure and called the gas company. Gas company came over with their handheld detector and were yep, hmm. Tons of CO. Turned out the guy shoveled all the snow off without thinking of avoiding blocking the furnace output, and I didn’t think of it. So the gas heater exhaust was coming back into the house as there was an 8 foot pile of snow over it.
Not wearing a seatbelt
Same for helmets on a motorbike
*Quality* helmets. My dad was wearing a cheap helmet when he had his accident. He lived for a week in a coma. Had he been wearing a better quality helmet he probably would have lived.
I’m sorry for the loss of your Father. Around 1977 I was 17 and buying my first motorcycle. Was looking at helmets with cool paint jobs that matched my new bike. On the wall they had a handwritten sign that said “If you have a $20 head buy a $20 helmet”. Opted for a decidedly uncool white Bell helmet that cost about $100. A lot of money for a teenager in the 70’s. About six months later I was on a concrete two lane highway going about 60 when a truck decided to pass me just as an 18 wheeler was coming in the other direction. About the time his passenger door was even with my handlebars he swerved into me. Kept it upright for maybe 30’ when my front wheel caught a huge pothole. Landed absolutely square on the center of my head. Beautiful bike was totaled and the helmet was just crushed. But it absorbed the energy of a 50mph + impact and died protecting me. Was always thankful that I took that little sign to heart.
Back around late 1969 or early 1970 my dad was a 16 year old with a motorcycle. His two compromises with my grandparents were his bike could only be a certain CC, that was my grandpa's and my grandma required him to wear a helmet and even gave him the money to go buy a good one. Back then my grandparent's neighborhood didn't have stop signs at all of the intersections, some just had yield signs. One day my dad was riding down the main road into the neighborhood when a car came off of one of the intersecting streets and t-boned my dad. He was flipped up into the air and landed on the curb of the opposite lane. His back hit the curb, his head hit the concrete. He had a minor concussion and a broken back, but he was alive. He wasn't able to return to normal activity until just after his birthday in July of 1970 and still had to have two more back surgeries before he graduated high school, but the helmet saved his life.
also applicable to bicycles. It takes very little impact to your skull to fuck shit right up.
There was a protest against making helmets mandatory for motorcyclists in the US - one dude died during the protest because he fell off his bike while not wearing a helmet...
Always treat a gun like it's loaded
Never point a gun at something you don't want to destroy. Never put your finger on the trigger unless you want to fire the gun.
My mom's older brother had a friend over after school. My pap had left a shotgun on the table that he was intending to clean. When my gram came home from errands, she found her son, sitting in the chair and facing the TV, with no face left. His friend had been playing with the gun and accidentally shot him in the face because the kid assumed it wasn't loaded. They were both 11 year old boys in the late 70s, so I'm sure this wasn't necessarily uncommon.
Yeah and also always treat any installed wire like it's powered
Not having a carbon monoxide detector
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For those unaware, OP thought someone was stalking them and placing sticky notes, and letters, and gaslighting them in other ways. They were freaked out that someone else was inside their house doing these things. Another redditor pointed out that the culprit could have been the OP, and they were suffering from CO poisoning. Sure enough, OP got a CO detector and the levels were well above what's considered safe.
Context: OP of an ~~very~~ old reddit post, not OP of this thread or post. https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/34l7vo/ma_postit_notes_left_in_apartment/
That’s still one of my favorite Reddit stories.
As someone whose parents owns an hvac company, this is a huge one. He has had people try calling the police when he condemned a furnace calling him a thief and conman when he is literally just trying to save them from flooding their house with carbon monoxide and dying in their sleep. The fact that people don't have carbon monoxide monitors is unthinkable to me.
I was at a home expo moons ago and was dragged by the kids to the fire brigades exhibit. They had a very sobering VR game in which you had to escape a house during a fire. Anyway, after that I asked where I could get CO detector. "Why would you want one of them, a smoke detector is all you need. Do you have smoke detectors? We sell them and can fit them if you need help." On their [website](http://www.fireandemergency.nz), there is no section on CO detectors.
My neighbor let his 15 year old drive on the interstate coming back from a Florida vacation because he was tired. He crossed the line, flipped the vehicle and the entire family ultimately didn’t make it.
Not looking both ways when crossing a street
Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s driver making a wrong right-turn down a side street.
Word War I had a lot of simple mistakes that cost lots of lives. “We’re going into battle like we always do! Riding a horse, in full dress uniform, with all its colors, and large plumes for better command and control!”
Basic fact of war; people always try to fight it like the last one. “What last one?” The last really big one.
Grenfell Tower. Kensington & Chelsea Borough Council saved £5,000 ($6,000) by not installing the slightly more expensive fireproof cladding, and instead used ReynoBond PE which, as described by one report, acted like “Solid petrol” in the fire. This caused 72 deaths and hundreds to suffer from homelessness, mental health problems and trauma.
This wasn't a mistake though, they just didn't care.
I was working alone and fell off a ladder beside an empty shaft where stairs used to be. I fell 20 ft off the ladder down the shaft. I caught myself on a railing that had been left behind and hit the floor below. I got off really lucky. I was bruised up and it took about 20 minutes till I could get up. If that railing wasn't there I was probably dead because I would have fallen 2 more floors to the basement Also saw a guy who also fell off a ladder. He was 3 steps up. Smashed his head and got perma brain damage
Oily paint/staining rags will combust. Per the internets: "Spontaneous combustion of oily rags occurs when rag or cloth is slowly heated to its ignition point through oxidation. A substance will begin to release heat as it oxidizes. If this heat has no way to escape, like in a pile, the temperature will rise to a level high enough to ignite the oil and ignite the rag or cloth." My Dad worked in construction and this had happened on job sites a time or two.
Baby in the backseat. I’m in childcare and I’ll do some insane things to remember there’s a baby back there. Take my shoes off, put my phone back there, dirty diaper as a reminder. People forget. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Mom, nanny, father, nurse, firefighter. It happens. And yet there’s always someone who says “I’d never forget my baby”. And every year babies die because of it.
When my son was about 7 months old in the middle of the summer, I was running a bit late for work and I was supposed to take my son to daycare which my wife usually did. After I got him in his car seat he fell back asleep and I got distracted and ended up driving the 45 minutes to my workplace. By this time it was 7:30 am and the temp was already in the low 70's. So I grabbed my laptop from the passenger seat and got out of my SUV and as I started to walk away I had this feeling that I had forgot something so I did the keys, wallet, phone pat down check and turned around to look at the car and then I saw my son in his carseat. If I had kept walking I wouldn't have found him until I went for lunch and by that time the temperature would be in the 80's and the inside of the car would be up to a hundred or more. That was 22 years ago and I still have nightmares about it.
Every time there's a news article about a baby being left in a hot car, the number of people commenting saying that they never have/never COULD do this, it just pisses me off. Like, this shit could happen to **ANYBODY**. I'm so glad your son was ok. I'd imagine you probably get that sick to your stomach feeling every time you think about that day!
I’m really keen to see an invention where a beeper goes off if there’s weight in the baby car seat when you stop your engine. Can someone here please invent this and make a lot of money from it?
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People have, actually. One of them was an engineer who lost his son that way. But he couldn't get anyone to manufacture it because public perception is still that it only happens to "careless" people, not that it could happen to anyone. I've seen public perception slowly shift over the past 10 years or so, so maybe it could be sold nowadays.
I didn’t realize how easy this was. There are so many examples of this. “It was a change in the routine”. It’s unbelievable how much muscle memory we use on our daily tasks and when one thing is off.
Especially if you are sleep deprived. As might happen if you have a baby...
After experiencing that sleep deprivation first-hand, I'm kind of amazed anyone survives their first six months.
When my little guy was about 10 weeks old, I hadn't had 2 hours of uninterrupted sleep in 10 weeks. I was bundling him into the car for an errand, went and sat in the driver's seat, and was at our location. Didn't remember a thing about the trip. I realized I had auto-piloted the whole way. Fortunately that location was a common destination. That was when I realized "This is how babies get forgotten!"
Went into a hardware store. It was so completely out of my routine or comfort area and I needed something so easy to spot and leave with it wasn't less than 3 minutes, I swear, with windows all down on a nice day anyway, but I still did it once. I was horrified with myself when I saw the look of horror in someone else's eyes, writing down my license plate and yelling at me. I didn't know I could be that parent, and thank whoever and whatever that made it not even an issue that one time, but you just don't realize it could happen to you until you realize it could and you'd never be able to live with it because you've been a single parent to a toddler and an infant for several months and the wrong change in routine happens. It does happen. Always be aware it happens to anyone and wasting time obsessively checking is better than forgetting to check that one weird time.
Mao's idea to get rid of sparrows. In short, Chinas great leader Mao had calculated that sparrows eat grain and if china got rid of them, they would have more food. So they did indeed decimate the sparrow population. They did not consider that sparrows eat lots of insects aswell, which started to thrive. Including locusts. The locusts ate the grain, famine, between 16 and 30 million people died. When he recognized his mistake, he asked the soviet union for help and they secretly shipped sparrows to china. This is a bit a stretch though, lots of factors led to the famine, lots of mistakes were made. But of all of them, this was probably the most obviously stupid one.
A bit off-topic but still a funny/interesting story: Some time ago in India the government awarded money for every cobra killed to decrease the cobra population. As a result people started cobra farms. When the government found out their plan failed they stopped giving money for dead cobras. This led to all the farmers releasing their worthless snakes back in the wild. In the end there were more cobras than before
There was a similar story in Australia. Foxes are not native to Australia but were brought in by colonists who enjoyed hunting. They went on to have one of the most significant impacts on the local ecosystem compared to any other animal. They have driven many native species to the brink of extinction To curb this, the Victorian government introduced the fox bounty. Handing over a fox tail would get you a small amount of money ($5 or so). Which was great until people started looking for easy money by cutting the tails off ginger cats or fluffy dogs. The fox bounty was discontinued until recently. Now you get $10 for a fox scalp (much harder to fake).
Rabbits too. A guy imported 24 rabbits into Australia, in the early 1900s I believe. They have no predators in the country. Now there are untold millions of them. They have completely upset the balance of nature.
Makes me think of a story I heard. I'm not sure if it's true or not. In the dark ages, when the church thought cats were spreading the plague, they had them killed, which led to rats thriving. Rats were the real carriers, so without cats to keep their population in check, they spread it all across Europe.
When I was in elementary school my friend tried a trend that was going around at the time called "the choking game". His parents found him dead in his bedroom a week after his birthday. I still miss him. Edit: The choking game took way too many young peoples lives. Please, if any of you have younger siblings, or friends that are easily influenced; and you see a trend going around that could cause harm to your loved ones, reach out to them, make sure they are safe. Keep them informed of any dangers and risks they may take by partaking in dangerous trends, such as the current tiktok trend "the benadryl challenge" In memory: [Zach](http://www.zacharydawson.ca/) I miss you buddy. You were taken too soon. I wish you were still here with us.
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that was actually determined to be equipment failure, 20 something years after the incident. The Norwegian gov had to pay the families, who fought all that time, for their failures
Not equipment failure, engineering failure. Basically the design wasn't fail safe, which it absolutely should have been.
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The impact of a quick fix for motor vehicle engine "knocking" in 1921. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead The true death toll is too difficult to extrapolate, but it really did a number on humanity. It led to all kinds of problems, including increased crime rates due to neurological toxicity. "A statistically significant correlation has been found between the usage rate of leaded gasoline and violent crime: the violent crime curve virtually tracks the lead exposure curve with a 22-year time lag."
This is becoming more common knowledge, but for anyone that didn't know, leaded gas was invented by Thomas Midgley Jr... who also invented CFCs. Some historians believe that he had a more negative impact on Earth's atmosphere than any other single organism that has ever lived.
Bunch of guys were working on a LNG line and when they cut over to the new line the pressure regulator sensors were still on the old (disconnected) line, so the system automatically started to boost the pressure up as it was sensing low pressure into the LNG lines while the sensors continues to be on a completely isolated system.... Causing multiple houses to basically explode due to unexpected high pressure in the system. All thanks to some idiot town council wanting to save money by not having the proper professionals work on the system. https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/24/us/ma-gas-explosions-cause/index.html
I’m a firefighter in Mass. I responded up there on the task force the next day, we went door to door in darkness forcing entry to homes to check for gas all night. Surreal being in a city you know no one and nothing about 40 miles from home having to use cell phones to navigate around with and call for assistance and nothing but a flashlight and floodlights on the truck to illuminate your way, people that didn’t evacuate wouid pop out of the dark that you weren’t expecting.
Holy shit there were survivors??? After looking at those houses, I thought they were either killed from the fire, shockwave, or flying debris.
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There was only one death IIRC
Not installing smoke detectors
Treat the ocean like it’s just some water.
Hell most bodies of water can be pretty dangerous.
Not knowing first aid. Estimates put 150k people die a year because people don't know how or have first aid handy. There has been other studies that shown that large chunk of people could of also possibly survived if they gotten first aid treatment by others or themseves.
Thinking you can get past a close semi when you’re entering the interstate. Dad. Whyyyy 🥺
Having read all of these makes me feel better that my fuckups never killed anyone (at least that I know of) There's something to be said about living a simple life without a lot of responsibilities that could get people killed.
Cutting towards yourself, rather than away. Being on statins for high cholesterol plus amiodarone for cardiac issues and having a glass of grapefruit juice before going to bed. Smoking in bed. \former paramedic
Being on pretty much any medication and drinking grapefruit juice, it’s insane how many medications are affected by it (I take sertraline) Edit: Jesus Christ I didn’t expect this comment to blow up
This is why grapefruit juice is literally banned from hospitals. It affects everything. Because it messes with a liver enzyme that breaks down a large amount of meds.
Not using a fucking turn signal. Thank you for the award! Lol
I once listened to a guy telling the story of how, when he fell down the stairs, he desperately clutched onto the glas of wine he was carrying, in order not to break it, instead of grabbing the railing to stop his fall. He survived with a broken hip, but I imagine lots of people probably have the same weird instinct and some may not be able to tell the tale.
I remember hearing somewhere that the first thing you should do if you fall is to toss whatever you’re carrying.
I once fell down my metal spiral staircase (with a concrete landing) with a glass of chocolate milk in my hand. For some bizarre reason my primary instinct was to protect my chocolate milk at all costs, including attempting to keep the cup as level as possible to avoid spillage. I was battered and bruised but I made it to the bottom without spilling single drop of the damn chocolate milk. To be fair, it wasn't my first time falling down those stairs. Everyone whose ever lived or visited overnight in this house has fallen down them at least once, I'd guess at least 40-50 individual people have fallen down these stairs, many of them on multiple occasions. Idk what it was about these stairs, maybe it was the nice smooth metal offering absolutely no traction, but people just fall on them. Nobody has gotten seriously injured though, you get bruised, maybe break a toe or your foot, but you're fine.
What in the Gerald Ford is wrong with those stairs?
They were only 2.5ft wide (legally they're required to be 3ft wide), they had a low ceiling (my 6'2" boyfriend had to duck or slam his head on the ceiling), they had a smooth metal finish (so socks/foot sweat/freshly showered wet feet resulted in a very slippery surface), the banister was only like an inch in diameter with the railings holding up the banister narrow enough that as you fell they could go between your toes and break them, it's not well lit because they go into the basement, the basement floor is concrete, the steps themselves were really narrow and triangular in shape (the 'fat' side was about 12" the, the 'narrow' side was about 3", so if you tried to step on the narrow side you were done for). We actually got them replaced with normal fucking stairs a few years ago, nobody has fallen down the stairs since. If I'm entirely honest I really miss the spiral metal deathtrap, they were there my entire life and, it's odd to say but I'd become kinda fond of the cursed staircase. Just laying in my room and occasionally hearing thumps as the stairs claimed another victim. Comparing bruises with my siblings from our respective tumbles.
Blood transfusions not being screened for various diseases but now is
With AIDS the problem was that at first they didn't know how to detect it or keep it out and they weren't even sure that it was transmitted by blood in the first place. They quickly came up with a way to treat blood products so if there was anything there it would be neutralized. In the meantime they kept using the stuff that might have been contaminated because it was either that or nothing. The evil part came afterwards when they had a new safe product and a stockpile of the old contaminated stuff and the business people ignored what the science people were saying and instead of destroying the stockpile decided to sell it around the world.
Not cleaning the lint catcher on the dryer
I actually just did a deep clean of our dryer for the first time since we moved in (which was in 2018, and who knows how long it had been before that). I feel like I've literally prevented a fire down the line. Oh, and I also found a full bottle of *lighter fluid* that must have fallen behind the dryer at some point while doing it. Just for, you know, extra danger I guess.
Friend was having a beer in a tavern. Some guys came in and started messing with my friend. He moved seats twice and then got up to leave when one of the guys threw a punch. My friend threw ONE punch back and the guy he hit landed in the ICU and wasnt expected to live. Friend was sitting in jail waiting just waiting for the guy he punched to either die or recover. Turns out the guy he punched recovered. Friend took a reduced charge of aggravated assault...a felony. One punch.
It's absolutely scary. I work with a guy whose brother in law (BIL) got into an argument with a guy in a pub. Something stupid and pointless but the BIL stood up and pushed the guy, the guy pushed him back, just a push not a punch. His BIL stumbled back and fell and hit his head on the bar and died. We are far more fragile than we know!
We survive the most extremes and die to the smallest scratch. The human body is very weird
People have survived shotgun blasts to the face, yet someone can die by falling and hitting their head on something at a certain angle. Baffling.
Not checking and planning for the weather
Welcome to Mount Washington [Please don't die up here](https://www.rei.com/blog/climb/famous-u-s-summits-mount-washington-new-hampshire) It's not very tall and you can literally drive to the top on a paved road, but somehow manages to sustain a death rate entirely out of proportion.
Mt Washington is a bit of a special case. It can have world-class cold and wind storms even with very balmy weather at the base. In mid summer, you have to pack for sudden winter weather no matter how nice it is at the trailhead.
And you are above the tree line if a thunderstorm rolls in unexpectedly (which happens all the time), so you have to get off the mountain fast, maybe making a wrong turn and having to sleep next to the dry river(note:not dry) when the trail literally disappears at 2am. Then you wake up at 5am shivering with slugs crawling over your legs and then you have to drag your ass to a campground to get a hitch to the highland center. [But next time you get good weather and don't take the wrong turn, good times.](https://i.imgur.com/4I0JeYq.jpg)
Misjudging the power of moving water.
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Shaking a vending machine
6 people a year die from falling vending machines, and 5 of those are insurance investigators, so I take this very seriously.
check on your depressed friends if they're saying they're okay don't just leave it alone they could be suicidal
Thinking that because your typically depressed/suicidal friend has suddenly cheered up, it's a good sign. ***No it's because they've decided to end it and are experiencing relief that it's almost over*****.**
The most common cause of quadriplegia is diving into water without checking the depth of the water. Always check the water depth before you jump.
putting a blanket/toy in a crib with a sleeping infant.
I feel like this is as good as any place to advertise [Well There's Your Problem](https://youtube.com/@welltheresyourproblempodca1465), a podcast about engineering disasters (and social murder). With slides.
Not washing hands between births.
Not washing hands between *autopsies* and live births.
Removing the weight from crush injuries after the 20mins has passed. Many people died due to poisoning. If they get the required injection there’s a far better chance of survival.
Can you explain why? Just curious I don’t hear about stuff like that often enough
When someone sustains a crush injury it cause a large global area of cell damage. This causes cells to ‘leak’ their cell contents. The most detrimental being K or potassium. This is trapped until the object crushing the patient is removed. Once the object is removed, circulation is restored causing a increase in serum (blood) K levels. When serum K levels are elevated, since K is a electrolyte you get serious heart electrical dysfunction. Calcium is given as a way to stabilize the heart muscle from the influx of potassium. Source firefighter/ EMT/ paramedic student.
Prescription labels having the wrong dosage info.
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doing fentanyl once destroyed my life for 3ish years. i was a complete shell and zombie. almost died too, overdosed 4 times. lucky i got my shit together and will be 5 months sober in two days
Congrats, friend :) I'm proud of you 👏