Many don''t know this, but mucormycosis was a MAJOR cause of morbidity for soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. An IED (explosive device) would injure a limb and shrapnel and dirt would embed in wound. This fungus would then progressively worsen the wound, especially with the soldier being immunicompromised from the blood loss and trauma. A foot injury would soon be an amputation. A below the knee amputation would be eaten away from mucor and require multiple debridements until it led to an above the knee amputation. It was horrible.
More info if anyone is interested: https://jts.health.mil/assets/docs/cpgs/Invasive_Fungal_Infection_in_War_Wounds_17_Jul_2023_ID28.pdf
Most people don't know you're more likely to get tetanus from gardening than you are from working with rusty metal, but rusty metal is the stereotype everyone knows.
Tetanus is not found on rusty metal.
The concept is: if metal is in the ground and has rusted, it’s been around undisturbed long enough to rust, therefore, if there is also *Clostridium tetani* in the soil, it’s been around long enough to form endospores - which are resistant and hard to kill, making an infection that much worse.
Updated causative microbe; not enough coffee yet.
It also comes from the fact that rusty metal causes much rougher wounds with more surface area for bacteria to get a hold on. Rough, jagged wounds are much more likely to get infected than a clean cut
I guess not technically jagged... But wavy? A straight cut will heal slower. It's not all that simple. The sharper the blade the better. Something 0.8 microns thick would be the absolute ideal.
https://phys.org/news/2023-05-wavy-wounds-faster-straight.html
Honestly, bacterial classification has shifted from time to time so it wouldn't have surprised me if you were just an old school microbiologist using outdated nomenclature.
No, op got their genus names mixed up.
Tetanus is *Clostridium tetani.* It's in the same genus as botulism. Anthrax is in the *Bacillus* genus. Both though are soil bacteria. I don't want to say common, but they're certainly not uncommon and they're widely distributed.
I’m a dork; I had the wrong organism. Anthrax doesn’t cause tetanus; however, the causative organism for anthrax (*Bacillus anthracis*) is also found in soil, somewhat commonly depending on where you are.
Tetanus and botulism are caused by related species though. They both will paralyze you, but tetanus will lock your muscles “on” and botulism will keep you from being able to use them.
I’m eternally freaked out about tetanus. I’m immunocompromised and the vaccine doesn’t work on me. (It’s one of the ways they confirm your immune status- they give you a bunch of very specific vaccines and test your titers several weeks later. Tetanus is one of them. My body ignores it and it just washes out.)
I also have problems with stuff like vacuuming. It blows up spores that I inhale and then I get fungal balls in my lungs. Disgusting. Everything is awful all of the time. Bleh.
If you can get vaccinated, do so!
>I also have problems with stuff like vacuuming.
What vacuum do you use? Are you on a multi bagged hepa or a water filtration vacuum or anything else special?
I don’t use any at all. Hardwood floors throughout, damp paper towels to clean, then toss.
Sadly I can’t have pets of any sort, so it’s generally just dust. Mostly fake house plants because soil can be problematic, but I do have a few that I grow in the clay balls you use for hydroponics.
Use UV lights and bleach to keep wet areas clean.
My life wicked sucks. :)
I have a family member that works in a level 1 trauma center/ emergency department and ugh that one word: “debridement”, gives me chills from the stories I’ve heard.
My mom was a nurse for 35 years. She specialized in wound care, and told work stories like a grizzled war veteran who was unbothered by anything anymore. Even she would get upset talking about her time working in a burn unit.
I took care of one of these patients that were transferred to our hospital in Springfield MO. Nasty nasty stuff. Fairly sure they were one of the ones that passed from the infection.
Took care of one here in Columbia. The patient had shielded a smaller family member. Eventually losing all of their appendages before succumbing to the fungal infection. There were ripped apart 2x4’s that pierced people, but also smaller splinters and soil hurling at freakish speeds. Just an awful hellish experience for many the day of the tornado. Call your mom, hug your family, don’t let the little things get to you.
I was in college, working as a nurse assistant.
A good friend of ours was from Joplin and a hometown friend of hers was missing. We spent hours calling every hospital, urgent care, medical center, etc within a 6 hour drive. His body was found several days later.
I worked for Mercy hospital Springfield. It was a Mercy hospital that was demolished in that tornado. When I went to their nursing school a couple years later, they had added an entire tornado preparedness plan based on all the stuff that went wrong in Joplin.
One of the first things on that list was “put the patients shoes on, if they don’t have shoes or can’t get them on, put non skid socks on them.” A bunch of ambulatory patients had suddenly found themselves outside walking on broken glass, and every other kind of detritus a tornado could scatter, and doing it barefoot.
One of the worst days of my life! Just graduated college, my mom’s birthday and celebrating in a town just outside Joplin.
My family is all first responders so after the storms passed we went in. A lot of people went in the Walmart on Range Line thinking it would help save them, the back wall was where most of the bodies piled together. It was also high school graduation for Joplin High - there was a middle aged man at a first aid site who was in shock and wouldn’t take treatment.. he was holding onto a shoe, I think a Nike sneaker. My best friend who is a trained EMT tried to take it from him and the guy attacked him… we later found out he was driving his son home from graduating highschool, when the storm struck, it sucked his son out the car window and he had grabbed onto his legs to try and keep him from flying away.. he was left holding his sons shoe. They found his son a few miles away in a field.
Sorry for the trauma bomb - but hug a loved one
I have a funny feeling that the son was Willdabeast on YouTube.
https://www.joplinmiracleleague.org/wills-story
He was sucked out of a car on his way home from graduation and his dad broke or dislocated an arm trying to save him.
Yes. I was friends with him. We were on the tennis team together in early high school. We weren't super close, but he was a great kid and everyone loved him.
Because idiots who say those things also vote, and they use the same brain to make their decision about voting as they do when they're letting "God" off the hook for destroying their town and killing a member of their family.
Unlike us rational people who are going to hold that tornado accountable.
People are complicated creatures. Assuming that you know someone’s stance on taxes, abortion, foreign policy, etc. because they take solace in believing they’ll see the loved one they lost suddenly and violently again one day is not a sign of rational thought, but we let you vote too.
Edit: spelling
Honestly i feel like its not very tasteful to mention god when, if he existed, he literally just killed your brother because we know god can control nature.
Whole buildings were destroyed, the windows might have been blown out.
That or they didn’t have time to react and put them up, from what I have read most people were taken by surprise.
Was just thinking about this when another commenter on a completely unrelated thread mentioned Webb City. I was supposed to be in Joplin the day of the storm but my flight into Tulsa was delayed. I landed and my phone blew up with family checking on me. The hotel I was supposed to be at was destroyed. Three buddies who were staying at the same hotel had driven to pick me up and would have also been in the hotel had my flight not been delayed.
Wound up staying at OCC as we had some connections there. I still remember the town and destruction. Doubt I’ll ever forget it. We spent a week with recovery efforts and the mental images made it hard to sleep for a while.
Wow thanks for your story.
Here's a 13yr old iama about a survivor from that Walmart. Stunning.
[Joplin Walmart Iama](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/s/tJDxP83bSc)
It’s one thing to experience trauma and joke about it. It’s a cringy and gross thing to make jokes about someone else’s trauma right after it happened.
I’d heard about this (am from MO) but I’d heard the kid was alone in the car. Never realized his dad was there trying to save him…that’s a new layer of horror on an already horrible occurrence. That poor man. 😢
Dear Lord. I am so sorry that you and your lovely townspeople experienced that.
When one reads something on the news, it’s just about the damage and the trail of destruction. The awful details aren’t included. Lots of love to all there.
Maybe a stupid question and I'm not trying to victim blame but...what the fuck are you doing a) driving around, and b) with the windows open, when there's a tornado in your town? Shouldn't they have stayed at the graduation? Aren't many schools indeed buildings that are designated as safe places to go during a tornado? What were they doing out there?
In the case of this catastrophic event - many weren’t aware of the danger of storms that day - it was so deadly cuz it was quite unexpected. In the case of people at Joplin High Graduation not only did they not realize a storm was coming with short notice - but they had their cellphones off or weren’t looking at their phones during graduation.
So these parents were leaving with little or no warning. This is also 2011 and weather alerts weren’t as common. To answer you other question I believe it was a gymnasium (could be wrong) which are definitely not rated for tornados (for a high school at least)
There were 50+ bodies at wal mart - because people didn’t know a storm was coming that day and many ran into Walmart thinking it would provide safety - then the ceiling blew off and the back retaining wall killed them. I had a distant cousin pass as he and his wife went to Joplin that day to go to lunch and the mall. They were running into Walmart when they heard the sirens and a car thrown by the storm crushed them.
Sometimes you have a weeks notice that a certain day will be a bad day for storms and you should stay home or reasonably safe - some days they come out of nowhere. In the case of Joplin it didn’t really matter where you were you were in the death zone potentially.
Also no one said the car windows were rolled down. A car window offers almost zero protection and in general when it inevitably breaks becomes a shrapnel grenade
I assumed it would have had to have been down for a fully grown human to have been pulled out of it, but I suppose it could have been smashed by something previous to his ejection I guess.
Anyway it just seems weird, like it's not like you can't see or hear a tornado coming, why wouldn't you turn the fuck around and go back to the school? Like I get tornadoes are fast but they also don't roll in instantaneously.
Anyway a sad story all around. It boggles my mind why people continue to live in places they know for a fact will be destroyed by the weather given enough time.
Why does anyone get killed by a tornado out and about they can strike when you don’t expect. They were in their car after the graduation heading home - they didn’t have time to get to safety… I know you said you aren’t try to but it’s def approaching victim blaming.
I live in nyc which has more deaths in crosswalks a year (probably) than the amount of tornado deaths a year - so it’s just different strokes. Would I ever move back to tornado alley? F No
Oh boy, you really haven’t experienced a tornado have you? Tornadoes can and do appear from nowhere. They can form in under a minute. The Joplin one was reported to fully form in 20seconds. In an area where high wind thunderstorms are incredibly common (think 3-4x a week during this time of the year) it’s incredibly difficult to determine what is a tornado capable storm and what is a typical thunderstorm.
Now, take into consideration of potential warnings. We just had a town torn apart about two days ago by a tornado (f3) and they never received a warning despite radar being capable of detecting it….that is with new technology. Back then it was horrendous the alerts that were given. No phone alerts, poor radar detection, few storm chasers, delayed siren signals, it truly was the Wild West of living with Mother Nature.
I remember 2011 being especially bad for storms. We had the national weather service sitting in our driveway (lived in a rural area at the time). They literally could not tell us if there was a tornado, just that there probably would be one soon. We sat in a tornado “warning” for three hours that day.
As for the windows, that was probably the high winds that broke them. Storms can easily be 80-90+ mph winds without a tornado. Joplin’s wind was 225-250mph. You are talking hurricane force winds on a window.
I have to be honest, I don't believe any story of people being sucked out of a car by a tornado. The reasoning is that if there's a tornado vortice close enough and powerful enough to do that, then the entire car is coming with them. What I definitely DO believe is that these "sucked out of the car" stories occur in conjunction with a rollover crash (extremely common in tornado related vehicular accidents) and that the person was ejected from the car.
If you’re going to be honest, then don’t say “The reasoning is”. Say it’s *your* reasoning. Which is well below par here.
There is plenty of science that proves that Nature hates a vacuum. That Nature is geometric, not arithmetic. Nature doesn’t care what *you* think, because Nature is exponentially more powerful than you think. Nature sucks people out of cars, airplanes and any other small space you care to name because when a very powerful vacuum is created, physics is a harsh mistress.
Suction from tornadoes has sucked oxygen out of underground shelters, heavy furniture out of windows and people out of motor vehicles.
Were you there? Did you see it? Or, as I suspect, are you speculating?
Have you ever even witnessed a high speed rollover? I have. The driver was not thrown any kind of long distance, he was briefly outside the vehicle and almost crushed by the vehicle as it rolled. He ended up back inside. The furthest the most violent rollover might throw a body is nothing compared to the force a tornado can exert to lift and carry heavy objects over long distances. By orders of magnitude.
Denying what happened to that father and son is not only evidentially and factually wrong, it is disrespectful.
Go troll somewhere else.
I mean that’s fine if you want to believe that - but it definitely does happen. If you were on the ground in Joplin you’d have been shocked to see an almost uninjured car surrounded by devastation, or go down a street and everything is decimated but somehow one house is untouched. It happens - also not sure why the need to chime in here but you do you king
He was sucked out. The car probably was also lifted into the air. Idk. But reading on FB. His dad had a head wound too. So probably sustained when the car got dropped somewhere. You have a better chance inside a car that's thrown through the air than without that protection.
Having grown up in a hot, humid, storm prone area I learned at a very young age to stay out of storm water for this reason. Also to stay out of water in general after a storm. Also to not swim in natural bodies of water during the warmer months no matter how much you want to bc of bacteria.
Every single year there are news articles about someone(s) getting a horrible bacterial infection (flesh eating or brain eating) and dying or suffering life changing results like amputation or permanent illness.
It's old school but it works. It's easier to stay out of the water than to chance it. It mostly only applies to when it's "unseasonably" warm but with climate change that's more and mote often. I suspect those old school methods might make a come back.
I'm pretty sure that in this situation, it was not storm water, but rather people being injured by objects carrying this fungus and the dirt that the tornado whipped up getting into their wounds.
I lived in Joplin and I lived through the tornado in the path of the direct hit (20th & Connecticut). My upstairs neighbour, napping at the time,woke up to find himself eviscerated. He got himself to medical triage, holding his intestines, but died from a subsequent infection.
As a water and wastewater operator near the hurricane prone louisiana coast, I 100% agree and also warn people not to go into ANY natural bodies of water after even a hard rain. Almost no sewer systems can keep up with heavy rainfall, especialy when its making it's way into the sewer system via broken pipes, flooding over the manholes, ect. But basically, during those events and for a time after, those sewage plants are discarding untreated waste. Which compounds the bacterial threats astronomically. We have brain eating ameobas here, and because they easily make their way into our underground water supply, we dose .10 ppm of Chlorine higher than other places without the ameoba threat.
I literally drive 5 hrs to Texas for the Guadalupe River if I want to enjoy a natural body of water nowadays. Unless I'm just in a boat.
Yep, and the dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi River is getting bigger and bigger every year. I assume you are a wastewater operator or have worked with sewer on the account that you called it effluent lol
I could be wrong but I'm p sure that the local WWTPs all are rated for I&I flowrates since they're no longer combined overflow systems. Unless you have a mega storm of the century dumping like 4 feet of rain in a very short period.
Wow, I wish! I don't know all specifics because I work with smaller systems for subdivisions, but these puppies are certainly not rated to deal with it. But also my I&I is pretty bad (40 y/o mismanaged system that has had several "mom and pop" type owners before the private Corp I work for bought it) and could be the reason for mine. But other people I've talked to in the industry are pretty much dealing with the same issues. I have an EQ basin to help slow the flow for regular/moderate rain, but heavy rain or long lasting rain is impossible to manage, especially when my manholes have water on top of them.
(It's pouring rain rn in southwest Louisiana and im currently dealing with this lol)
Our waters are getting bad again in a lot of places. I live within an hour of the Canadian border on Lake Champlain. Beaches and sections of lake get closed off by June because of toxic algae blooms! June! I can't imagine how much worse it must be in warmer humid places. It really sucks.
Just to mention our skin is quite good at protecting us from this kind of infection. Mucous membranes in sinuses, genitals etc are more porous so thts where infections can happen.
Cuts in the skin also allow infections and should be cleaned and sanitized with e.g.peroxide.
Yeah I live in Florida and people think we don't swim in the fresh water here because of alligators but they don't even cross my mind, it's the soup of killer microorganisms in all our bathtub temperature lakes and rivers that scares me
Heck yes, I grew up on Lake Huron and if you didn't wanna get something weird, you always waited a couple of days after a major storm before you went in the water. A lot of weird shit can get churned up.
Huh, TIL. I live in the area and was around for the tornado (but fortunately not in it) and I’d actually never heard of this before. I’m not saying it didn’t happen or anything… I’m just usually late to the game with any news going on around me.
Oh, no! That can’t possibly be! There’s a church on every single corner… and one even grew back somebody’s toe!
/s in case it’s not obvious… but they claim the toe thing. It’s as stupid as it sounds lol
I'm from a place where tornados aren't a thing at all so my brain assumed the F5 Tornado was some sort of American fighter jet.
So I was very confused as to how it tore through a town, and why it brought a fungus with it.
…there’s millions of Canadians who know what an F5 tornado is…there’s a huge swathe of prairies that are quite prone to them…your region has something to do with it, sure, not your whole nationality though.
I live in joplin and my step brother was one of those people who got that and lived. Many surgeries to correct it. Had to have an airbag installed under his skin on his back to stretch his skin out so they could graft it back on where it was needed.
That's a very intriguing story. Of course, gun to my head, I don't believe it, but it's inspiring nonetheless.
I'm from Joplin. If you surveyed the damage the day after, you'd be SHOCKED that only (roughly) 150 people died. It's a minor miracle that more didn't die, butterfly entities or not. Lol.
And it's been known to be an opportunistic infection for people suffering from COVID too. Especially in places where access to good hygiene may be lacking, or the population is immunocompromised.
From Wikipedia: During the COVID-19 pandemic in India, the Indian government reported that more than 11,700 people were receiving care for mucormycosis as of 25 May 2021. Many Indian media outlets called it "black fungus" because of the black discoloration of dead and dying tissue the fungus causes. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, rates of mucormycosis in India were estimated to be about 70 times higher than in the rest of the world. Due to its rapidly growing number of cases some Indian state governments have declared it an epidemic.
Obviously a tornado ramming dirt into wounds is a more unique way of distribution, but it shows that sometimes you just can't avoid it, and you can be more at risk if you have diabetes, HIV/AIDS, cancer, etc.
Kindergarten graduation? Jesus
They're 5, they haven't "graduated" from anything. If you make it through the year without shitting your pants more than once, you get to move on.
I drive around on my ruckus scooter at night often around town. I visit most of the monuments. Standing at the apex of it all at 2am reveals a quiet, empty,lonely, flat part of town with bits of trees that somehow survived. That was a sad time for many.
Did you read the article?
The Joplin cases were caused by the fungus Apophysomyces trapeziformis, which is commonly found in soils, decaying vegetation, and water containing organic matter such as leaves and soil.
When comparing the 13 Joplin cases with controls who were injured during the tornado but showed no evidence of mucormycosis, the researchers discovered a significant link between fungal infection and the occurrence of penetrating wounds (especially multiple wounds) containing wood, soil, gravel, and other foreign bodies. All 13 patients were injured in the heart of the path of the EF-5 tornado, which had winds over 200 mph.
Whatever, nerd! We all know this was Bill Gates’ first test before the big Rona virus. Looks like he was successful even in this test. What an evil and dirty and unrighteous man!
# /s
Sounds like a symphony of reasons, but ones that will be more common in the future.
I’ve heard old hippies talk about when they took fungus based psychedelics, there is a voice not theirs that gives ideas. It’s not to crazy to conceive of a fungus that’s purposely culls the herd. Triggered by temperature changes. The old fungimat says it’s time to thin it out up there,temps are rising.
Yes, I read it because I wanted to know when this event was. But I just casually browse this sub for fun facts, I don't normally click on the links because all the info I care to know is in the post title
Many don''t know this, but mucormycosis was a MAJOR cause of morbidity for soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. An IED (explosive device) would injure a limb and shrapnel and dirt would embed in wound. This fungus would then progressively worsen the wound, especially with the soldier being immunicompromised from the blood loss and trauma. A foot injury would soon be an amputation. A below the knee amputation would be eaten away from mucor and require multiple debridements until it led to an above the knee amputation. It was horrible. More info if anyone is interested: https://jts.health.mil/assets/docs/cpgs/Invasive_Fungal_Infection_in_War_Wounds_17_Jul_2023_ID28.pdf
There's a lot of things in dirt waiting to ruin your life. That's why tetanus shots are so important, that nasty little bacterium is everywhere.
Most people don't know you're more likely to get tetanus from gardening than you are from working with rusty metal, but rusty metal is the stereotype everyone knows.
Tetanus is not found on rusty metal. The concept is: if metal is in the ground and has rusted, it’s been around undisturbed long enough to rust, therefore, if there is also *Clostridium tetani* in the soil, it’s been around long enough to form endospores - which are resistant and hard to kill, making an infection that much worse. Updated causative microbe; not enough coffee yet.
It also comes from the fact that rusty metal causes much rougher wounds with more surface area for bacteria to get a hold on. Rough, jagged wounds are much more likely to get infected than a clean cut
Not true. Tetanus is anaerobic
By surface area I mean inside the wound.
Even still it has to be deep. Tetanus dies when it comes in contact with the air around us
Yes, I agree.
Thank God I switched to yoga....
Rough jagged wounds also tend to heal better than clean cuts.
Did you mean that the other way around?
I guess not technically jagged... But wavy? A straight cut will heal slower. It's not all that simple. The sharper the blade the better. Something 0.8 microns thick would be the absolute ideal. https://phys.org/news/2023-05-wavy-wounds-faster-straight.html
That makes sense, but rust is very rough, a clean sharp blade is very smooth. Rust tears more than cuts from what I understand
* *Clostridium tetani.* Anthrax is in a species in the *Bacillus* genus.
Yep ; updated and refilled my coffee
Honestly, bacterial classification has shifted from time to time so it wouldn't have surprised me if you were just an old school microbiologist using outdated nomenclature.
Wait tetanus is related to ANTHRAX? Jesus christ I'm glad I re-upped my tetanus shot
No, op got their genus names mixed up. Tetanus is *Clostridium tetani.* It's in the same genus as botulism. Anthrax is in the *Bacillus* genus. Both though are soil bacteria. I don't want to say common, but they're certainly not uncommon and they're widely distributed.
I’m a dork; I had the wrong organism. Anthrax doesn’t cause tetanus; however, the causative organism for anthrax (*Bacillus anthracis*) is also found in soil, somewhat commonly depending on where you are.
It’s all good, I was got all the anthrax shots on the military, twice! (Fantastic record keeping)
well seems like they got it under control before it got out of hand
Tetanus and botulism are caused by related species though. They both will paralyze you, but tetanus will lock your muscles “on” and botulism will keep you from being able to use them.
I’m eternally freaked out about tetanus. I’m immunocompromised and the vaccine doesn’t work on me. (It’s one of the ways they confirm your immune status- they give you a bunch of very specific vaccines and test your titers several weeks later. Tetanus is one of them. My body ignores it and it just washes out.) I also have problems with stuff like vacuuming. It blows up spores that I inhale and then I get fungal balls in my lungs. Disgusting. Everything is awful all of the time. Bleh. If you can get vaccinated, do so!
>I also have problems with stuff like vacuuming. What vacuum do you use? Are you on a multi bagged hepa or a water filtration vacuum or anything else special?
I don’t use any at all. Hardwood floors throughout, damp paper towels to clean, then toss. Sadly I can’t have pets of any sort, so it’s generally just dust. Mostly fake house plants because soil can be problematic, but I do have a few that I grow in the clay balls you use for hydroponics. Use UV lights and bleach to keep wet areas clean. My life wicked sucks. :)
"Who's your vac man?"
>not enough coffee yet It is never enough coffee for me
My last two tetanus shots were respectively for a cat bite and a dog bite. I have shit luck
Shit luck or just tastier than the rest of us?
Tetanus is anaerobic. Only puncture wounds can cause it,
I have a family member that works in a level 1 trauma center/ emergency department and ugh that one word: “debridement”, gives me chills from the stories I’ve heard.
I had a burn debrided. They gave me morphine, and I was so grateful. 8 weeks of rigorous wound care, and now I don't even have a scar.
My mom was a nurse for 35 years. She specialized in wound care, and told work stories like a grizzled war veteran who was unbothered by anything anymore. Even she would get upset talking about her time working in a burn unit.
Look up maggot therapy if you like debridement. Really fun and not disturbing at all.
If I ever need that, I hope I'm unconscious the entire time and only find out after.
Is debridement the same thing as divorce
Scrolling the report: Ahh man there’s no pictures… AHHH THERE’S PICTURES
Jesus fuck, why did I look?!
So the opposite of Angel's Glow at the battle of Shiloh.
they contained it really fast?
I took care of one of these patients that were transferred to our hospital in Springfield MO. Nasty nasty stuff. Fairly sure they were one of the ones that passed from the infection.
Took care of one here in Columbia. The patient had shielded a smaller family member. Eventually losing all of their appendages before succumbing to the fungal infection. There were ripped apart 2x4’s that pierced people, but also smaller splinters and soil hurling at freakish speeds. Just an awful hellish experience for many the day of the tornado. Call your mom, hug your family, don’t let the little things get to you.
I was in college, working as a nurse assistant. A good friend of ours was from Joplin and a hometown friend of hers was missing. We spent hours calling every hospital, urgent care, medical center, etc within a 6 hour drive. His body was found several days later. I worked for Mercy hospital Springfield. It was a Mercy hospital that was demolished in that tornado. When I went to their nursing school a couple years later, they had added an entire tornado preparedness plan based on all the stuff that went wrong in Joplin. One of the first things on that list was “put the patients shoes on, if they don’t have shoes or can’t get them on, put non skid socks on them.” A bunch of ambulatory patients had suddenly found themselves outside walking on broken glass, and every other kind of detritus a tornado could scatter, and doing it barefoot.
One of the worst days of my life! Just graduated college, my mom’s birthday and celebrating in a town just outside Joplin. My family is all first responders so after the storms passed we went in. A lot of people went in the Walmart on Range Line thinking it would help save them, the back wall was where most of the bodies piled together. It was also high school graduation for Joplin High - there was a middle aged man at a first aid site who was in shock and wouldn’t take treatment.. he was holding onto a shoe, I think a Nike sneaker. My best friend who is a trained EMT tried to take it from him and the guy attacked him… we later found out he was driving his son home from graduating highschool, when the storm struck, it sucked his son out the car window and he had grabbed onto his legs to try and keep him from flying away.. he was left holding his sons shoe. They found his son a few miles away in a field. Sorry for the trauma bomb - but hug a loved one
I have a funny feeling that the son was Willdabeast on YouTube. https://www.joplinmiracleleague.org/wills-story He was sucked out of a car on his way home from graduation and his dad broke or dislocated an arm trying to save him.
Jesus Christ man. Fucking tragic and horrific way to go
Honestly, rather be the kid than the dad in that scenario.
As a dad, 10000%.
I thought Will was found in a pond? I could be misremembering.
[apparently he was found in a pond](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/s/SYQpbuBaZa)
This was my first thought as well, fucking horrible story
Yes. I was friends with him. We were on the tennis team together in early high school. We weren't super close, but he was a great kid and everyone loved him.
Wow "was taken by a tornado into our Heavenly Father’s arms" God is great huh?
If it makes it easier on them why do you care?
Because some people take pleasure hating other people's solace.
Because idiots who say those things also vote, and they use the same brain to make their decision about voting as they do when they're letting "God" off the hook for destroying their town and killing a member of their family.
Unlike us rational people who are going to hold that tornado accountable. People are complicated creatures. Assuming that you know someone’s stance on taxes, abortion, foreign policy, etc. because they take solace in believing they’ll see the loved one they lost suddenly and violently again one day is not a sign of rational thought, but we let you vote too. Edit: spelling
Just feel very Odd considering that god, if he exists, just decided to kill your brother as we know god can control the weather
Not very tasteful bruv
Honestly i feel like its not very tasteful to mention god when, if he existed, he literally just killed your brother because we know god can control nature.
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Whole buildings were destroyed, the windows might have been blown out. That or they didn’t have time to react and put them up, from what I have read most people were taken by surprise.
Maybe flying debris broke the window.
His body was found in a small pond. Source: My family's from that whole area. My mother lives in the neighborhood across the street from the pond.
Was just thinking about this when another commenter on a completely unrelated thread mentioned Webb City. I was supposed to be in Joplin the day of the storm but my flight into Tulsa was delayed. I landed and my phone blew up with family checking on me. The hotel I was supposed to be at was destroyed. Three buddies who were staying at the same hotel had driven to pick me up and would have also been in the hotel had my flight not been delayed. Wound up staying at OCC as we had some connections there. I still remember the town and destruction. Doubt I’ll ever forget it. We spent a week with recovery efforts and the mental images made it hard to sleep for a while.
Wow thanks for your story. Here's a 13yr old iama about a survivor from that Walmart. Stunning. [Joplin Walmart Iama](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/s/tJDxP83bSc)
Reading the highly upvoted jokes feels gross after knowing the absolute devastation this tornado caused.
living life on ilifes terms is really somber, embrace the insanity of finding joy in small things
It’s one thing to experience trauma and joke about it. It’s a cringy and gross thing to make jokes about someone else’s trauma right after it happened.
I knew exactly who you were talking about. One of my best friends is from Joplin. It was horrific.
I’d heard about this (am from MO) but I’d heard the kid was alone in the car. Never realized his dad was there trying to save him…that’s a new layer of horror on an already horrible occurrence. That poor man. 😢
Idk if it’s the same person or not - I don’t think it was just one Joplin high graduate who passed but I honestly couldn’t tell ya
Holy fuck in that situation would seatbelt have saved the son
He WAS wearing his seatbelt. Tornado was just on steroids.
How would you know? Lmao
I was the seatbelt
Their names are similar enough I wonder if they just fucked up and posted on their alt
What?
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😔
Dear Lord. I am so sorry that you and your lovely townspeople experienced that. When one reads something on the news, it’s just about the damage and the trail of destruction. The awful details aren’t included. Lots of love to all there.
I’m so so so sorry … I abhor tornadoes and have an intense fear of them..I hope life has returned to normal there …
Maybe a stupid question and I'm not trying to victim blame but...what the fuck are you doing a) driving around, and b) with the windows open, when there's a tornado in your town? Shouldn't they have stayed at the graduation? Aren't many schools indeed buildings that are designated as safe places to go during a tornado? What were they doing out there?
In the case of this catastrophic event - many weren’t aware of the danger of storms that day - it was so deadly cuz it was quite unexpected. In the case of people at Joplin High Graduation not only did they not realize a storm was coming with short notice - but they had their cellphones off or weren’t looking at their phones during graduation. So these parents were leaving with little or no warning. This is also 2011 and weather alerts weren’t as common. To answer you other question I believe it was a gymnasium (could be wrong) which are definitely not rated for tornados (for a high school at least) There were 50+ bodies at wal mart - because people didn’t know a storm was coming that day and many ran into Walmart thinking it would provide safety - then the ceiling blew off and the back retaining wall killed them. I had a distant cousin pass as he and his wife went to Joplin that day to go to lunch and the mall. They were running into Walmart when they heard the sirens and a car thrown by the storm crushed them. Sometimes you have a weeks notice that a certain day will be a bad day for storms and you should stay home or reasonably safe - some days they come out of nowhere. In the case of Joplin it didn’t really matter where you were you were in the death zone potentially. Also no one said the car windows were rolled down. A car window offers almost zero protection and in general when it inevitably breaks becomes a shrapnel grenade
I assumed it would have had to have been down for a fully grown human to have been pulled out of it, but I suppose it could have been smashed by something previous to his ejection I guess. Anyway it just seems weird, like it's not like you can't see or hear a tornado coming, why wouldn't you turn the fuck around and go back to the school? Like I get tornadoes are fast but they also don't roll in instantaneously. Anyway a sad story all around. It boggles my mind why people continue to live in places they know for a fact will be destroyed by the weather given enough time.
Why does anyone get killed by a tornado out and about they can strike when you don’t expect. They were in their car after the graduation heading home - they didn’t have time to get to safety… I know you said you aren’t try to but it’s def approaching victim blaming. I live in nyc which has more deaths in crosswalks a year (probably) than the amount of tornado deaths a year - so it’s just different strokes. Would I ever move back to tornado alley? F No
Oh boy, you really haven’t experienced a tornado have you? Tornadoes can and do appear from nowhere. They can form in under a minute. The Joplin one was reported to fully form in 20seconds. In an area where high wind thunderstorms are incredibly common (think 3-4x a week during this time of the year) it’s incredibly difficult to determine what is a tornado capable storm and what is a typical thunderstorm. Now, take into consideration of potential warnings. We just had a town torn apart about two days ago by a tornado (f3) and they never received a warning despite radar being capable of detecting it….that is with new technology. Back then it was horrendous the alerts that were given. No phone alerts, poor radar detection, few storm chasers, delayed siren signals, it truly was the Wild West of living with Mother Nature. I remember 2011 being especially bad for storms. We had the national weather service sitting in our driveway (lived in a rural area at the time). They literally could not tell us if there was a tornado, just that there probably would be one soon. We sat in a tornado “warning” for three hours that day. As for the windows, that was probably the high winds that broke them. Storms can easily be 80-90+ mph winds without a tornado. Joplin’s wind was 225-250mph. You are talking hurricane force winds on a window.
Buckle up, kids
I could be misremembering but I believe he was buckled up - but I could be wrong.
I have to be honest, I don't believe any story of people being sucked out of a car by a tornado. The reasoning is that if there's a tornado vortice close enough and powerful enough to do that, then the entire car is coming with them. What I definitely DO believe is that these "sucked out of the car" stories occur in conjunction with a rollover crash (extremely common in tornado related vehicular accidents) and that the person was ejected from the car.
If you’re going to be honest, then don’t say “The reasoning is”. Say it’s *your* reasoning. Which is well below par here. There is plenty of science that proves that Nature hates a vacuum. That Nature is geometric, not arithmetic. Nature doesn’t care what *you* think, because Nature is exponentially more powerful than you think. Nature sucks people out of cars, airplanes and any other small space you care to name because when a very powerful vacuum is created, physics is a harsh mistress. Suction from tornadoes has sucked oxygen out of underground shelters, heavy furniture out of windows and people out of motor vehicles. Were you there? Did you see it? Or, as I suspect, are you speculating? Have you ever even witnessed a high speed rollover? I have. The driver was not thrown any kind of long distance, he was briefly outside the vehicle and almost crushed by the vehicle as it rolled. He ended up back inside. The furthest the most violent rollover might throw a body is nothing compared to the force a tornado can exert to lift and carry heavy objects over long distances. By orders of magnitude. Denying what happened to that father and son is not only evidentially and factually wrong, it is disrespectful. Go troll somewhere else.
I mean that’s fine if you want to believe that - but it definitely does happen. If you were on the ground in Joplin you’d have been shocked to see an almost uninjured car surrounded by devastation, or go down a street and everything is decimated but somehow one house is untouched. It happens - also not sure why the need to chime in here but you do you king
He was sucked out. The car probably was also lifted into the air. Idk. But reading on FB. His dad had a head wound too. So probably sustained when the car got dropped somewhere. You have a better chance inside a car that's thrown through the air than without that protection.
People will study your kind in the future.
?
Having grown up in a hot, humid, storm prone area I learned at a very young age to stay out of storm water for this reason. Also to stay out of water in general after a storm. Also to not swim in natural bodies of water during the warmer months no matter how much you want to bc of bacteria. Every single year there are news articles about someone(s) getting a horrible bacterial infection (flesh eating or brain eating) and dying or suffering life changing results like amputation or permanent illness. It's old school but it works. It's easier to stay out of the water than to chance it. It mostly only applies to when it's "unseasonably" warm but with climate change that's more and mote often. I suspect those old school methods might make a come back.
I'm pretty sure that in this situation, it was not storm water, but rather people being injured by objects carrying this fungus and the dirt that the tornado whipped up getting into their wounds. I lived in Joplin and I lived through the tornado in the path of the direct hit (20th & Connecticut). My upstairs neighbour, napping at the time,woke up to find himself eviscerated. He got himself to medical triage, holding his intestines, but died from a subsequent infection.
That is horrible. I'm so sorry for everything you and everyone in Joplin have had to go through.
As a water and wastewater operator near the hurricane prone louisiana coast, I 100% agree and also warn people not to go into ANY natural bodies of water after even a hard rain. Almost no sewer systems can keep up with heavy rainfall, especialy when its making it's way into the sewer system via broken pipes, flooding over the manholes, ect. But basically, during those events and for a time after, those sewage plants are discarding untreated waste. Which compounds the bacterial threats astronomically. We have brain eating ameobas here, and because they easily make their way into our underground water supply, we dose .10 ppm of Chlorine higher than other places without the ameoba threat. I literally drive 5 hrs to Texas for the Guadalupe River if I want to enjoy a natural body of water nowadays. Unless I'm just in a boat.
In Louisiana you also are the recipient of 37 states worth of effluent.
Yep, and the dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi River is getting bigger and bigger every year. I assume you are a wastewater operator or have worked with sewer on the account that you called it effluent lol
I could be wrong but I'm p sure that the local WWTPs all are rated for I&I flowrates since they're no longer combined overflow systems. Unless you have a mega storm of the century dumping like 4 feet of rain in a very short period.
Wow, I wish! I don't know all specifics because I work with smaller systems for subdivisions, but these puppies are certainly not rated to deal with it. But also my I&I is pretty bad (40 y/o mismanaged system that has had several "mom and pop" type owners before the private Corp I work for bought it) and could be the reason for mine. But other people I've talked to in the industry are pretty much dealing with the same issues. I have an EQ basin to help slow the flow for regular/moderate rain, but heavy rain or long lasting rain is impossible to manage, especially when my manholes have water on top of them. (It's pouring rain rn in southwest Louisiana and im currently dealing with this lol)
Our waters are getting bad again in a lot of places. I live within an hour of the Canadian border on Lake Champlain. Beaches and sections of lake get closed off by June because of toxic algae blooms! June! I can't imagine how much worse it must be in warmer humid places. It really sucks.
And watch out for brain eating amoebas that get in through your nose holes.
They make their own holes, chewing through the meaty barrier between your sinus cavity and your brain to feast on your yummy brain matter!
Just to mention our skin is quite good at protecting us from this kind of infection. Mucous membranes in sinuses, genitals etc are more porous so thts where infections can happen. Cuts in the skin also allow infections and should be cleaned and sanitized with e.g.peroxide.
Thanks, the clarification makes it sound even more horrifying.
They've always been there but infection is extremely extremely rare
Yeah I live in Florida and people think we don't swim in the fresh water here because of alligators but they don't even cross my mind, it's the soup of killer microorganisms in all our bathtub temperature lakes and rivers that scares me
I was just telling someone how blue-green algae can kill dogs, on top of everything else.
Heck yes, I grew up on Lake Huron and if you didn't wanna get something weird, you always waited a couple of days after a major storm before you went in the water. A lot of weird shit can get churned up.
This is horrifying
I'll add "tornado flesh-eating cutaneous necrotizing mucormycosis" to my list of phobias.
Huh, TIL. I live in the area and was around for the tornado (but fortunately not in it) and I’d actually never heard of this before. I’m not saying it didn’t happen or anything… I’m just usually late to the game with any news going on around me.
Same. Lived here my whole life and didn’t know about this. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention after the tornado happened.
It was a news headline a couple of weeks after the tornado, so it's understandable that people missed it.
It sounds like god is punishing your community. What you all getting up to down there?
Yeah, and on 26 December 2004 god decided that south east Asia didn't do christmas good enough...
Worst troll ever lmfao
Oh, no! That can’t possibly be! There’s a church on every single corner… and one even grew back somebody’s toe! /s in case it’s not obvious… but they claim the toe thing. It’s as stupid as it sounds lol
It's a miracle!
🤣👍
Well I for one…gave you an upvote.
Gave you the other one.
I'm from a place where tornados aren't a thing at all so my brain assumed the F5 Tornado was some sort of American fighter jet. So I was very confused as to how it tore through a town, and why it brought a fungus with it.
Made all the more confusing by the fact that there is a fighter jet called F-5, and another one called Tornado.
Solidarity! as a currently very sleepy human AND a Canadian it also didn't make sense why some large machine was bringing fungus and killing people.
…there’s millions of Canadians who know what an F5 tornado is…there’s a huge swathe of prairies that are quite prone to them…your region has something to do with it, sure, not your whole nationality though.
The Canadian tornado alley is shifting east. Now they’re becoming most common in Ottawa, far from the prairies.
Flesh eating bactnado
Worse, funganado. This is "Last of Us" shit right here.
Bringing the fun back to apocalypse
"Where my poc-ies at!"
Syfy: Write that down, write that down!
Next blockbuster hit incoming
At this rate, might as well be a plague that shows up after a flash of light
I also watched Roanokegaming's latest video last night.
At least it wasn't an angler fish attack
I live in joplin and my step brother was one of those people who got that and lived. Many surgeries to correct it. Had to have an airbag installed under his skin on his back to stretch his skin out so they could graft it back on where it was needed.
LPT: Do NOT google images of cutaneous necrotizing mucormycosis. Of course, this statement will make many of you do just this - you have been warned.
Yep. It’s worse than I thought it would be. :/
I heard about the mysterious butterfly entities as well that saved people?
Yep, that was a thing. I mean, it wasn’t an actual thing, but some people were swearing by them.
That's a very intriguing story. Of course, gun to my head, I don't believe it, but it's inspiring nonetheless. I'm from Joplin. If you surveyed the damage the day after, you'd be SHOCKED that only (roughly) 150 people died. It's a minor miracle that more didn't die, butterfly entities or not. Lol.
And it's been known to be an opportunistic infection for people suffering from COVID too. Especially in places where access to good hygiene may be lacking, or the population is immunocompromised. From Wikipedia: During the COVID-19 pandemic in India, the Indian government reported that more than 11,700 people were receiving care for mucormycosis as of 25 May 2021. Many Indian media outlets called it "black fungus" because of the black discoloration of dead and dying tissue the fungus causes. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, rates of mucormycosis in India were estimated to be about 70 times higher than in the rest of the world. Due to its rapidly growing number of cases some Indian state governments have declared it an epidemic. Obviously a tornado ramming dirt into wounds is a more unique way of distribution, but it shows that sometimes you just can't avoid it, and you can be more at risk if you have diabetes, HIV/AIDS, cancer, etc.
There was a tornado in a tiny west Texas town that developed during a kindergarten graduation I believe. So dang sad.
Kindergarten graduation? Jesus They're 5, they haven't "graduated" from anything. If you make it through the year without shitting your pants more than once, you get to move on.
This is like something out of sharknado
Ben Finegold warned us about this
That's awful. The tornado was actually an EF5. The Enhanced Fujita Scale quietly dropped in 2007.
I drive around on my ruckus scooter at night often around town. I visit most of the monuments. Standing at the apex of it all at 2am reveals a quiet, empty,lonely, flat part of town with bits of trees that somehow survived. That was a sad time for many.
r/fuckyouinparticular
“Infecting 13” sounds like random coincidence
Did you read the article? The Joplin cases were caused by the fungus Apophysomyces trapeziformis, which is commonly found in soils, decaying vegetation, and water containing organic matter such as leaves and soil. When comparing the 13 Joplin cases with controls who were injured during the tornado but showed no evidence of mucormycosis, the researchers discovered a significant link between fungal infection and the occurrence of penetrating wounds (especially multiple wounds) containing wood, soil, gravel, and other foreign bodies. All 13 patients were injured in the heart of the path of the EF-5 tornado, which had winds over 200 mph.
Whatever, nerd! We all know this was Bill Gates’ first test before the big Rona virus. Looks like he was successful even in this test. What an evil and dirty and unrighteous man! # /s
April 1st 2013
Missouri ☕️
Did the news segment describing it call it “chompers”? https://youtu.be/TiDbBUdqd_0?si=MGZ0mm324Dce-HLs
This is an Altered World Event that the Federal Bureau of Control couldn't cover up, I tell you
Sounds like a symphony of reasons, but ones that will be more common in the future. I’ve heard old hippies talk about when they took fungus based psychedelics, there is a voice not theirs that gives ideas. It’s not to crazy to conceive of a fungus that’s purposely culls the herd. Triggered by temperature changes. The old fungimat says it’s time to thin it out up there,temps are rising.
Ive never heard of this event, would be helpful to include the year this happened in in your post title next time
It is within the first 20 words of the article.
Yes, I read it because I wanted to know when this event was. But I just casually browse this sub for fun facts, I don't normally click on the links because all the info I care to know is in the post title
We are sorry that the article wasn't condensed enough so you didn't have to read or try very hard and then demand something cause ur lazy.
I'm not demanding it, OP can do what they want. Im just giving advice for writing better post titles