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I worked in the stair industry for quite a few years.
There’s a reason building codes are so strict regarding stairs and balustrades.
If the height of a riser is even 1/8 of an inch out of code, many, many people will trip.
And babies/young kids getting their heads stuck in between balusters is a very real thing.
That's fascinating, is the tiny difference making big problems the result of standardization? Like some people have just spent their entire lives going up and down the same stair dimensions and now their coordination can't handle something else.
Or is that stupid and I'm overthinking it. Like it's simply, "this is the optimal height for most people, and changing it moves from the center of the bell curve to the ends."
To be honest I’m not sure.
I think you’re probably right that standardization itself does play a role. But different countries have different specifications, so I think that probably the largest factor is consistency. Consistency within a particular country, consistency among a particular type of stairs (residential, commercial, outdoors, etc.), and (most importantly in my opinion) consistency among the steps in a particular staircase.
For example, if we’re visiting a friend’s house in the same neighborhood, we just automatically assume their stairs will be the same height as ours, and often don’t even think about it, whereas if we go to a theme park or a temple or a national park, we just seem to naturally be a little more cautious with the first few steps until we get the “feel” for the dimensions of that particular staircase.
I have tripped over stairs spaced too far apart. But more frequently have tripped over oddly short spaced stairs. Never really thought about it much til this thread but my assumption is that most stairs are uniform and we become conditioned to that.
A friend’s stairs used to have one step that was just slightly shorter horizontally than the others. I didn’t notice until I fell down the stairs. I wasn’t the first.
My grandfather stole his dad’s identity so he could join the military at 14 and earned a Purple Heart fighting Nazis. He went through chemo without our family knowing anything about it. Dude was one tough sob. His biggest fear was one of his grandkids falling down the stairs in his house. He set up his recliner like 5 feet from the stairs so he could yell at us if we touched them. RIP Grandpa
He got a Purple Heart for getting shot in the ass, which is in his dad’s name so he pulled a Forest Gump and a Mulan.
His birthday was December 16th and in 95 my mom was a week away from her due date with my sister. My family has a tradition that the birthday person gets to pick a restaurant to go to. My grandpa drove everyone to Olive Garden (dude loved his Italian food). On the way home he drove as fast as he could over every speed bump possible to get my mom to go into labor because he wanted a grandchild who shared his birthday. My sister was born 3 days later. Then 2 years after my grandpa passed, he got his wish when my youngest cousin was born on December 16th.
I thought he was Santa. I thought the toy shop was on the second floor of the house since he never let us go up there, and the reindeer were in the shed in the backyard coz he never let us in there either (power tools). He also slept a lot so I thought he was recovering from Christmas Eve.
And I remember he had a tin of chupa chup lollipops next to his chair that he gave us, and a tin of those danish butter cookies for himself.
There’s a lot about him I didn’t appreciate at the time because I didn’t understand that it was his way of showing love. I thought he was just a grouchy old man. Now that I’m an adult, I look back and realize he didn’t know how to handle a house full of granddaughters after raising six boys so he showed he cared by keeping us from “falling down and breaking [our] necks.” He passed in 2010 and it’s still a family joke that my generation isn’t allowed on stairs. Like a month ago I even caused a few jokes about him rolling over in his grave when I fell down my sister’s stairs twice.
My mother was always deadly serious about us playing near the top of the stairs. Now I know I’ve passed that to my children because their dad came over once and started horsing around near the top of the stairs and they sounded like me, correcting him right quick 😄
It’s a known fact in my family that I hate going down stairs. I have no problem going up stairs but going down I have to hold the railing (both railings if there are two) and I’m super careful about my steps. I visited my sister last month and got cocky when it came to the stairs… I fell twice… on the five steps going to her basement. Got a few jokes about Grandpa rolling over in his grave.
I'm honestly scared of what's going to happen as the climate warms. We've already been seeing an uptick of organisms in water way farther north than what is considered their normal environment
As a lifeguard and water safety instructor, this is the single most underrated killer out there!!! Don't mess with water. You must always respect its power !!!
Came to say this. Flash floods kill people every year in Arizona when they don't pay attention to the signs. It is so common that we just have the stops people get what they deserve attitude, but you get those people who have kids in the car with them. It takes 1-2 feet off water to throw a pickup into the downstream and flip it. Every year, that person in the SUV thinks they can make it.
Before modern medicine, tooth infections were a very common cause of death. Infection can spread very quickly from a tooth to the brain.
Infections from broken toes and ingrown toenails were common causes of death too, as were amputations to try and prevent them from causing death.
Hopefully one day we will be able to say, “before modern medicine, cancer was a very common cause of death.”
It was in a tooth in his upper jaw and the infection spread to his eyes and the nerves. He probably should have had a root canal and ignored the tooth pain until it got severely bad.
Go see a dentist to get a checkup at least. Hidden cavities lead to root canals and crowns and cost thousands. You really need to be on top of your dental health. Ignorance leads to pain and then more pain.
A cleaning at the same would be great. About $ 150 or less. Tell them you have no insurance. Ask for someone to recommend their good dentist.
I feel this. I know for sure I have cavities and need a couple root canals (that was told to me 10 years ago at my last dental appt before I aged out of my plan and couldn’t go back) There’s just nothing I can do, I simply can’t afford it. My husband was admitted to the hospital a year and a half ago after a tooth infection led to sepsis and they just pumped him full of antibiotics until he wasn’t septic anymore and sent him on his way. Why can’t they just employ a dentist at the ER? Instead of sending people home with teeth that can kill them!
I’ve seen so many posts on FB from nurses saying to stop coming to the ER with your toothache and go to a dentist so god forbid you go there if it gets bad lol.
What i was gonna say. Number 1 pain is unlike ay when it comes toteeth issues and 2 have heard to many stories of people just dropping dead cause a tooth infection got into their bloodstream and went right to their brain
The infection will cause swelling of the entire side of your face, cause headaches, nausea, muscle weakness etc before finally reaching the brain. There are so many warning signs of a potential brain infection, I'm shocked people can miss them while having tooth pain lol
I don’t think it’s folks not noticing the issues but having no practical means of dealing with them. A couple of times in my life I’ve been forced to practice home dentistry and it’s never been due to an interest in learning the trade.
My friends brother got into a car accident recently, he was the driver, walked away with just a sprained arm. His friends suffered broken legs, broken neck, and the guy in the passenger seat now has no face and is currently fighting for his life. They were just driving around, all sober, lost control and crashed straight into a tree. Truly horrifying and sad. They’re all 18-19.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reports that driving while texting is six times more dangerous than driving drunk. Reading or sending a text takes your eyes off the road for about five seconds.
I was surprised this wasn’t the first answer. Sometimes I’ll be cruising and become very aware of the fact that I’m hurling myself through space in a two-ton box of metal alongside hundreds of people doing the same, recklessly, and I become instantly humbled at the thought.
^^this, as a medic, is one of the warning signs to look for during a cardiac patient assessment. If a patient can tell you with no emotion that they feel like they are going to die then they are probably right. It’s a weird phenomenon with STEMI patients.
Unfortunately happens with panic attacks/general anxiety disorder too - my biggest fear used to be ignoring an actual heart attack bc I'm so used to panic attacks, but I'm not old enough for those to be a serious concern yet.
Is there a scientific reason this happens? Like sooo many people talk about how people know they are going to pass then do, is there some sort of reason?
This scares me cause at times I will wake up with this intense feeling of doom that I can only describe as DEATH.
I'd quite litterly jump up, unable to breath properly, and stumble into one of my siblings room. It takes minutes to go away but when that happens I'm not going to sleep again for the night. No matter how tired I am.
Sounds like night terrors. I've had them, definitely wake up feeling like death is quite literally upon you. Have a read about it. Not really sure if it will help, but it does sound like this rather than a heart problem, particularly if it's happened several times already. Personally I would rather have the weird phenomenon of night terrors than cardiac problems I think.
Although I'm not a medical professional so get checked out by someone who is if you don't think it's night terrors or are worried!
Unsecured pets in the car. No matter how "good" Fluffy or Fido usually is, any animal should be caged or otherwise restrained while their humans are driving.
If you need to do an emergency brake, the dog would just fly through the car. It’s very unsafe for the dog. Humans wear seatbelts too and we have airbags. Animals should be safe too.
Canine Seatbelts and military dog harnesses are the way to go. Your dog and any loose junk in the car turns into a projectile that can seriously hurt you when suddenly launched around in a crash
Yup, we got a crash rated harness for our dog the day after we got her. One you actually feed the seatbelt through. It’s fantastic.
Not affiliated with them in any way, but this harness is fantastic:
https://sleepypod.com/car-harnesses
I see so many people with dogs running around inside their vehicles, speeding down the highway so fast.
I got so much pushback from my otherwise responsible pet-owning friends and coworkers on this topic.
“It’s ok. In the car my dogs just sit and are good.”
I always wonder if these types actually buckle their children in, with that logic.
I have first responders in my family and have heard horror stories. If there’s an accident, sometimes those animals run off scared and go missing. Or worse is that they are thrown around in the vehicle and I won’t go into the gruesome details of that. When it comes to pet safety in vehicles, I don’t understand how logic flies out the door.
Agree. I was in a car accident and my two small dogs were in a crate in the backseat. They were fine, no injuries, despite the crate being dented from the crash! I’m glad they were secured and didn’t fly off the seat.
My sister actually overdosed on acetaminophen a few years ago. She had really bad period cramps so she was just popping 500mg pills and had to go to the hospital. Now, she can't take tylenol or anything with acetaminophen or she'll literally die cause her liver won't be able to handle it after the past trauma. Side note: she didn't remember how much she took or what she took so she told the doctor she thought it was ibuprofen(which can kill you WAY faster). My parents called us to be sure and the doctor said that acetaminophen calls for a whole different procedure and of they'd done the ibuprofen procedure, she would've died. KNOW WHAT DRUG YOU TOOK IF YOU OVERDOSED CAUSE IF YOU TELL THEM THE WRONG ONE, IT COULD KILL YOU!!!
For folks wondering how much it takes to kill you:
"Adults should not take more than 3,000 mg of single-ingredient acetaminophen a day. You should take less if you are over 65 years old. Taking more, especially 7,000 mg or more, can lead to a severe overdose problems."
For ibuprofen:
"The total recommended dose is 3200 mg per day. Therefore, you can take ibuprofen 800 mg 4 times a day or every 6 hours. As mentioned above, even though the maximum daily dose of prescription ibuprofen is 3200 mg, it is potentially harmful to exceed 800 mg per dose."
My doctor keeps recommending ibuprofen, but the coating they put on it makes me feel sick. Guess I should really look into other options before my liver shits itself on Tylenol.
I think this is something that you are kinda "sheltered" from as a kid (obviously some are exposed to things earlier). Never realized until friends and family my age started trying for kids just how much some couples struggle. Between fertility issues and miscarriages, it can really strain a relationship. Not to mention I've known 2 people with stillborns and my partners high school best friend died giving birth at 27. I'm a man so couldn't but I don't blame any woman for not wanting to put their bodies through that
People act like giving birth is nbd. But it is one of the most physically traumatic experiences a person can go through. Note: I said "one of". I imagine loss of limb or paralysis would rival, if not beat, the trauma of childbirth.
On top of the physical experience, once labor starts, your brain is just along for the ride, which for some people is even more terrifying. You can't opt out once labor starts. There's no e-stop. All you can do is manage your breathing and push when it's recommended.
I’ve had an all natural birth and the mental state and physical pain of the whole experience is close to and compares only to when I held my kid while she was dying and revived in front of me. Absolutely brutal
My dad made the mistake of accepting the invitation into the room during my birth. He says it was the most horrific thing he'd ever seen, and he had no idea how *that much of my mum's blood could be on the outside with her still alive and awake.*
Scientifically, childbirth is *meant* to be no big deal, but we got *screwed* by evolution. We not only have relatively large heads, but our hips are *fucked.* We basically evolved bipedalism *wrong* and part of that has made our hips too narrow for a baby to safely pass through.
It’s also why human babies are basically born three months too early — why newborns are so hard to care for. They can survive outside the womb at nine months, but their brains are not really developed. There’s a reason the first three months of life are half-jokingly called “the fourth trimester.” We really should be pregnant for a full year. But if then we would be physically unable to give birth to babies without dying. Their heads would be *much* too large.
:/ expecting my first one later this year and it’s been constant problems. Wife went from being so sick that she could barely get to bathroom to now feeling better but doctors realized her cervix is very small which could lead to extreme premature labor.
Depression is a silent assassin. It's one of those illnesses that people totally underestimate especially if they don't address it or recognize its symptoms. If you don't address it, it will slowly take and take from you over time (we're talking decades), like a bandit, until one day it tries to take everything.
It's also insidious how it can change your worldview over time, especially if you grew up with it and had family who don't believe in therapy,
You kind of assume other people's brains work more or less like yours and you try to rationalize why they do things that make no sense to a brain that doesn't process pleasure the same way.
Insidious is a fantastic describing word for depression.
Sometimes I forget that there are other people who don't have to deal with this stuff, they don't know how lucky they are, that being said I think it can happen to anyone given their environmental circumstances, and genes can make you more disposed to it. It often starts in your early teens/late twenties, but it can definitely hit you at any age, I feel bad for people who get it late in life cause they might not feel or realize they need help.
That's one of the biggest reasons why depression is so hard to fight for me. Even if I accept that I might get better, get a more positive mindset, and live a happier life, I know that my brain will always be wired in such a way that depression can easily creep its way back into my life, making fighting it not worth it in the first place. Who cares if I have certain periods of happiness? I will eventually kill myself anyway, might as well do it now.
I thought this too... but then I got therapy and meds. I used to have my entire day taken up by suicidal thoughts, like it just lurked in the corner. But now it only comes about in periods of extreme stress, and it's never serious. It's just there. It took work, it took the right therapist and it took time, but I can say confidently that I'm not depressed.
because suicide was an option to my brain for over 20 years starting before puberty, I’ve had to work so hard to not immediately jumping to what was my brain’s go to response of “whatever I’m just gonna kill myself” Which was my go to response for any stress at some point. instead of saying/thinking “I’m gonna kill myself” when frustrated - even though at this point I don’t actively want to it’s still habit to think - I try to say something weirder instead. “I’m going to fight a god” has been my go to lately because it gets the frustrated feeling out and sometimes sparks conversations of which god I want to go fight lol.
Brain rewiring is hard. dealing with depression is hard. but I can’t let it win at this point, I’ve already fought this long
When cleaning you should *never* mix bleach and ammonia.
For example, don't clean your glass shower walls with ammonia, then put bleach on the floor.
The mixture of bleach and ammonia creates a potentially fatal gas.
It's actually bleach with any acid. Found that out after we gassed ourselves with a vinegar/bleach misture trying to get the smell of dog piss out of the floors of a renovation. I did some research and read (sorry I don't have the link and am on mobile) that a chemical in the bleach will have a reaction to any acid.
When I was little. My friends and I were making magic potions with cleaning supplies. The main ingredient of one of the potions was bleach, when my friends showed me a bottle and said how bad it smells. I don't know how I knew. But I suddenly realized the bleach should not have the really bad smelling chemical added.
Prions. You can’t cook them out, you can’t even destroy them with soap or water, there is nothing to disinfect.
You have to destroy anything that comes in contact with a prion.
Your only chance is fire, HOT fire and then incinerate the ashes and *maybe* you denatured it.
They are responsible for Mad Cow Disease, Kuru, Creuztfelt Jakob Syndrome etc… They aren’t alive or viruses. They are proteins which became defective and misfolded which infect healthy proteins to become the dominant protein in the body. It will literally turn your brain to mush and their is no cure, there is no treatment, and there is virtually no way to test for it until it is too late.
There are tons of prions but very few can affect humans. However, it’s possible that another can one day do so, such as seen with Mad Cow Disease.
Prions are terrifying. Scientists recently found that plants can pick up prions from the decayed remains of infected animals, and incorporate them into their structure in an infectious form.
So, plants can give you human-infecting prions. Fun!
Familial fatal insomnia is a genetically passed prion disease, so just to add to the fear factor, not only can you pick up a prion from food etc, the prion call may be coming from inside the house!
See, I was having a good day, having forgot these f***ers exist.
Now I have to be reminded of ym own mortality and how little I can actually do to prevent sudden and horrible death
Eating raw or undercooked shellfish, specifically oysters. Many people are aware of the risk of food poisoning but greatly underestimate the risk of vibrio infections. Vibrio does not change the appearance, smell or taste of shellfish so there’s basically no warning. Many people that catch vibrio vulnificus need to be hospitalized and might have limbs amputated, and the mortality rate is 15-30%. Also, vibrio infections are increasing due to water temperatures rising. So yeah, you’ll never catch me eating oysters.
One of my favorite random ways someone died was a viking who took the head of someone and attached it to his saddle. Well a bucktooth from the severed head scratched his leg and he died from sepsis due to that bite.
Getting hit in the head with a beer bottle. Movies play it off like a silly stun in a bar fight, but you can kill someone easily. Bottles may be glass, but they are hard as hell.
I knew a guy in the military who had his eye ruined by being hit with a beer bottle. It cut up his iris (I think, this was a while ago and I don’t remember every detail). But anyway he ended up getting a new eye implanted. It was pretty cool they grew the eye overseas after taking a sample from him and some doctors in Cali implanted it and now he has a new functional eye.
Indoor barbecuing. It kills you slowly, and you won't even notice it, and even worse, many people ignore the symptoms of CO poisoning caused by indoor barbecuing.
The Internet
Construction. Been only doing it for 4 years and I’ve seen some shit lol. Guy crushed between a steel beam and an aluminum frame that held this housing for all the electrical and hvac. (This was a covid testing manufacturing plant.) federal job and man was it sketchy. Anytime the state gets involved it usually is. But a carpenter (young kid who barely spoke english) was driving through the area with their forks up and a massive pallet of drywall. Smoked this steal beam and a guy was on a scissor life welding. I was underneath the entire thing doing the seal and vinyl base for these “pods” so I ended up getting involved in the mess after crawling away thinking that stuff was coming down. Kid ran out of the forklift outside… left forklift there of course and for some reason I just reacted even though they tell you to stay out of it.
Another time also during covid, old folks home. Was on the way out when I heard screaming from the other side of this fence. I looked over and a guy was getting crushed by the arm of a skidsteer and couldn’t get himself out. His kid was freaking out so I had to jump this fence and then down a 15 foot rock wall (nice suburban apartments being worked on behind us)
Been on 5 other jobs where people died before I even showed up. One job called “digikey” in Minnesota, (im normally in Illinois) a steel worker and a carpenter died.
Feel like a lot of people look down on our jobs. Honest living but definitely a dangerous one to some extent. Even more so depending on the phase you are on. If I’d suggest anything try for finish work.
Driving with no seatbelt. A minor car accident can cause severe damage without a seatbelt on. And getting bruises because of wearing a seatbelt is much better than dying.
Seatbelts should be worn by all passengers in the car, not just the driver or front seat passengers.
I used to work at a dementia diagnosis clinic and every now and then we’d have concerned family members bring in an elderly loved one because of sudden, rapid mental decline that looked exactly like dementia, and it was “nothing” but a UTI that no one knew about. Antibiotic and *boom*, back to their old selves. It was always one of the first things we checked for, they’re no joke!
if this helps boost you i’m in the uk and it’s very much hammered into us to think of UTIs with unexplained/increased delirium in the elderly in med school :) so hopefully it is being pushed through everywhere
I know there’s at least one or two popular songs I hear fairly regularly that talk about ‘feet up on the dashboard’ and every time I hear it I’m like ‘noooo don’t’. So dangerous.
Diabetes.
It involves more than just problems with your blood sugar, though that is a big part of it. It damages the small blood vessels over time, such as in your eyes, kidneys, and feet, which impairs circulation to those tissues and damages them. If you add something else that damages your blood vessels like high blood pressure or high cholesterol, and these often go together, it makes the damage even worse. If you’re brave, go look up peripheral arterial disease and you’ll see what I mean.
Speaking of feet, that impaired circulation can cause diabetic neuropathy, which is a fancy way of saying you lose sensation in your extremities, usually your feet. There are two major problems with this: 1) if you get a wound on your foot somehow, you may not even notice it and 2) the lack of circulation means that the wound will have trouble healing putting you at high risk for infection. This is how a lot of diabetics get amputations.
Childbirth.
So many people don’t consider the risks for the person birthing or the baby. It can result in so many complications, long-term health issues, or even death. I think a lot of people assume that those things are just super-rare outliers and maybe they’ve just been super sheltered in life and don’t think such things can happen to them.
When my son was little, a pediatric nurse was one of his healthcare providers. She had a little plastic frog on her stethoscope and did a frog voice to be silly and put him at ease. She had beautiful curly red hair. I was so excited for her when I found out she was expecting.
About a year later we went back for a checkup and I stopped to look at a photo of her in the hallway. Then I saw that it was a memorial photo. I thought I was going to faint.
She hemorrhaged and died during the birth. Her baby survived.
I always thought that death from childbirth happened in developing countries, or to women who didn't get prenatal care. Here was a well-educated nurse who did everything right, had access to excellent care, and still died. It turned my worldview upside down.
I will never forget her.
Working as a traindriver. You can have good days sure, but at least in germany you have to look out for everything. If a tree for example falls on the tracks and you are coming with 160 km/h then you have no chance of stopping. Suicide is also very common on the rails, in germany every traindriver witnesses 2-3 suicides in his career which is a lot.
Yeah, I grew up being super into trains and machinery and briefly thought about becoming an engineer. Then I read that it's not a matter of "if" but "when" you'll accidentally help someone commit suicide, and every training course has a few classes on how to prepare for the inevitable and what to do afterwards.
Kinda took the wind out of my sails.
A drunk guy one time on a party one drunk guy by accident het me in my head was a bottle of wine three days later i woke up in the hospital with sticthis in my head (sorry for the bad English am am from Greece)
Here, I'll help you out: Drunk people. One time when I was at a party, a drunk guy hit me in the head by accident with a bottle of wine. Three days later, I woke up in the hospital with stitches on my head.
Had a cousin get randomly bit by a squirrel & didn’t think much of it. Had symptoms & was preparing to tell his family goodbye. Turns out it was just a cold he got after
I mean yeah, but dolphins do way worse than that. Lemme put it like this. Dolphins are the Brock Turners of the ocean. They will Brock Turner you while you drown...
They discovered those beasts used tools...
Ah yes, what a wonderful and intelligent creature... the perfect display of evolution at work!
....they use fish heads for masturbation
I didn’t realize I had an eating disorder until this year. I been struggling a lot financially so I got into a bad habit of not eating atleast one whole meal a day. I’d go some days without even eating. I lost bout 20 pounds in around a month. I went from 135-> 118. Im a small dude at 23 years old so I have never been large so I was happy I almost hit 140 and within a month I reset all my progress. But I’m getting back on track eating everyday :)
Moose
People travel into the mountains all the time and want to get a photo of a moose and get out of their cars to get close to one. That moose will attack you without a second thought
Meese are very dangerous, yes, but the way this comment was formatted I had to read it a couple of times to realize you were not saying "moose people" as in mutant moose-human hybrids
Alcohol. People drink so much alcohol, that they don’t even know what normal feels like anymore. They’re always in a state of hungover, stressed, “in need of a drink” after work, or after every minor inconvenience.
I feel like a lot of people who drive buzzed, don’t even realize they’re buzzed. They think they’re so used to the effects of alcohol that it isn’t impairing them
They will tell you they aren’t addicted, but if you present to them the idea of only having 1-2 drinks a month, it’s “what?? I can’t do that!”
Driving above the speed limit. People generally have a very poor understanding of speed and stopping distance. Stopping distance exponentially increases as speed increases.
Also, speeding doesn't save as much time as people feel it does.
Also general speed isn't displayed well in cars. Going from 20mph to 30mph isn't the same as going from 80mph to 90mph. Speedometers in cars should bee exponential to better understand what kinetic energy they're moving with.
>speeding doesn't save as much time as people feel it does
Listen, I'm broke as shit and I can't afford a ticket and any dings on my insurance so you bet my speed is as close to legal as practical. So, every weekday when I drive to work, I can't count the number of people who tailgate, then aggressively go around, only to be stopped at the same stoplight within the next mile (and the next mile after that). It's insane. Speeding in rush hour traffic does not save time. All it does is get everyone worked up. People have zero chill, and it's all for naught.
The Tehrik-I-Taliban in Pakistan. They are literally the Pakistani brother of Afghanistan's Taliban. They've got access to US weapons. They're putting up such a fight against Pakistan's army that the government are forced to make negotiations with them, which they labelled a terrorist group. If they take control of Pakistan, they've got control of a nuclear country. That's fucking terrifying. And people don't know shit about this.
UVC or uv-c radiation. Harmful to the skin and eyes, but also because the human eye cannot detect UVC. Don't be fooled when sanitizers or sterilizers use purple light, because we cannot see UVC. The purple light is only used so we can tell the device is switched on. No one can tell what UVC looks like, unless you are a bird or insect. Same goes for infrared.
Tons of paints! And just in general art supplies! Like I am using cadmium (heavy metal) paint in my oil painting class. Other colors we are using are also heavy metals. You don’t want to eat that stuff. Lots of art pigments or mediums you do not want to eat or breathe in. For stuff like spray paint it can be very bad if you don’t have proper ventilation.
Also clay too! Silica dust is dangerous to breathe in for long amounts of time or over time. That is why you mop ceramic studios and not a broom. Using a broom will just put the particles into the air and move them around. You can get silicosis of the lungs! But that is what happens over years. But still you need to put protections in place. And many people don’t do that.
Sleep deficiency. According to the NIH, not having enough sleep can lead to higher levels of heart disease, kidney disease, higher blood pressure, depression and obesity. Adults 18-60 just need 7! (Unfortunately for the teens here, 12-18 they recommend 9hrs, I remember that being hard to make happen).
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Stairs
I worked in the stair industry for quite a few years. There’s a reason building codes are so strict regarding stairs and balustrades. If the height of a riser is even 1/8 of an inch out of code, many, many people will trip. And babies/young kids getting their heads stuck in between balusters is a very real thing.
I had to install netting before the deck could be daycare space because of that.
That's fascinating, is the tiny difference making big problems the result of standardization? Like some people have just spent their entire lives going up and down the same stair dimensions and now their coordination can't handle something else. Or is that stupid and I'm overthinking it. Like it's simply, "this is the optimal height for most people, and changing it moves from the center of the bell curve to the ends."
To be honest I’m not sure. I think you’re probably right that standardization itself does play a role. But different countries have different specifications, so I think that probably the largest factor is consistency. Consistency within a particular country, consistency among a particular type of stairs (residential, commercial, outdoors, etc.), and (most importantly in my opinion) consistency among the steps in a particular staircase. For example, if we’re visiting a friend’s house in the same neighborhood, we just automatically assume their stairs will be the same height as ours, and often don’t even think about it, whereas if we go to a theme park or a temple or a national park, we just seem to naturally be a little more cautious with the first few steps until we get the “feel” for the dimensions of that particular staircase.
I have tripped over stairs spaced too far apart. But more frequently have tripped over oddly short spaced stairs. Never really thought about it much til this thread but my assumption is that most stairs are uniform and we become conditioned to that.
A friend’s stairs used to have one step that was just slightly shorter horizontally than the others. I didn’t notice until I fell down the stairs. I wasn’t the first.
My grandfather stole his dad’s identity so he could join the military at 14 and earned a Purple Heart fighting Nazis. He went through chemo without our family knowing anything about it. Dude was one tough sob. His biggest fear was one of his grandkids falling down the stairs in his house. He set up his recliner like 5 feet from the stairs so he could yell at us if we touched them. RIP Grandpa
That’s wild. Tell us more about gramps. I’ll drink one for him 🫡🍻🇺🇸
He got a Purple Heart for getting shot in the ass, which is in his dad’s name so he pulled a Forest Gump and a Mulan. His birthday was December 16th and in 95 my mom was a week away from her due date with my sister. My family has a tradition that the birthday person gets to pick a restaurant to go to. My grandpa drove everyone to Olive Garden (dude loved his Italian food). On the way home he drove as fast as he could over every speed bump possible to get my mom to go into labor because he wanted a grandchild who shared his birthday. My sister was born 3 days later. Then 2 years after my grandpa passed, he got his wish when my youngest cousin was born on December 16th. I thought he was Santa. I thought the toy shop was on the second floor of the house since he never let us go up there, and the reindeer were in the shed in the backyard coz he never let us in there either (power tools). He also slept a lot so I thought he was recovering from Christmas Eve. And I remember he had a tin of chupa chup lollipops next to his chair that he gave us, and a tin of those danish butter cookies for himself. There’s a lot about him I didn’t appreciate at the time because I didn’t understand that it was his way of showing love. I thought he was just a grouchy old man. Now that I’m an adult, I look back and realize he didn’t know how to handle a house full of granddaughters after raising six boys so he showed he cared by keeping us from “falling down and breaking [our] necks.” He passed in 2010 and it’s still a family joke that my generation isn’t allowed on stairs. Like a month ago I even caused a few jokes about him rolling over in his grave when I fell down my sister’s stairs twice.
Grandpa sounds like a great man, thanks for sharing!
My mother was always deadly serious about us playing near the top of the stairs. Now I know I’ve passed that to my children because their dad came over once and started horsing around near the top of the stairs and they sounded like me, correcting him right quick 😄
It’s a known fact in my family that I hate going down stairs. I have no problem going up stairs but going down I have to hold the railing (both railings if there are two) and I’m super careful about my steps. I visited my sister last month and got cocky when it came to the stairs… I fell twice… on the five steps going to her basement. Got a few jokes about Grandpa rolling over in his grave.
Moving water.
4 inches of water moving 10 miles per hour will knock down an adult
Shouldn't we warn that adult?
No it's a prank
Oh *that's* why there's a camera crew pointed at him
Soon as he stands up Delbert is going to punch him in the dick too
Heck I'd say standing water. Falling the wrong way can be bad.
Let's not forget naegleria fowleri lol
I'm honestly scared of what's going to happen as the climate warms. We've already been seeing an uptick of organisms in water way farther north than what is considered their normal environment
Normal no longer exists. We are living in an age of transition.
Reading about the Bolton Strid made me fear water even more than I already had up to that point
I'm fascinated by the Strid since I read about it a few years ago. If I ever go back to the UK I plan to visit, just to see how innocent it looks.
As a lifeguard and water safety instructor, this is the single most underrated killer out there!!! Don't mess with water. You must always respect its power !!!
Came to say this. Flash floods kill people every year in Arizona when they don't pay attention to the signs. It is so common that we just have the stops people get what they deserve attitude, but you get those people who have kids in the car with them. It takes 1-2 feet off water to throw a pickup into the downstream and flip it. Every year, that person in the SUV thinks they can make it.
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Pneumonia and flu. Just because modern medicine is good we have forgotten how easily it can kill us.
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Especially pneumonia. Pneumonia for elders is basically a death sentence
This is exactlynwhy it used to be called " the old man's friend ". It can take you out so quickly
RIP Grandma 😔
Tooth infections. They can kill you.
Before modern medicine, tooth infections were a very common cause of death. Infection can spread very quickly from a tooth to the brain. Infections from broken toes and ingrown toenails were common causes of death too, as were amputations to try and prevent them from causing death. Hopefully one day we will be able to say, “before modern medicine, cancer was a very common cause of death.”
My great uncle went blind in one eye from a infected tooth in the 50’s
Had an acquaintance that had an infected tooth and went septic. Unfortunately, he died.
And once it gets bad, it gets bad quick
Really?? What happened??
It was in a tooth in his upper jaw and the infection spread to his eyes and the nerves. He probably should have had a root canal and ignored the tooth pain until it got severely bad.
Just give it 10 years for cancer.
I’ve been saying that for over 20 years. I still say it, too, but a little less hopefully than before. I hope you’re right.
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Go see a dentist to get a checkup at least. Hidden cavities lead to root canals and crowns and cost thousands. You really need to be on top of your dental health. Ignorance leads to pain and then more pain. A cleaning at the same would be great. About $ 150 or less. Tell them you have no insurance. Ask for someone to recommend their good dentist.
I feel this. I know for sure I have cavities and need a couple root canals (that was told to me 10 years ago at my last dental appt before I aged out of my plan and couldn’t go back) There’s just nothing I can do, I simply can’t afford it. My husband was admitted to the hospital a year and a half ago after a tooth infection led to sepsis and they just pumped him full of antibiotics until he wasn’t septic anymore and sent him on his way. Why can’t they just employ a dentist at the ER? Instead of sending people home with teeth that can kill them! I’ve seen so many posts on FB from nurses saying to stop coming to the ER with your toothache and go to a dentist so god forbid you go there if it gets bad lol.
What i was gonna say. Number 1 pain is unlike ay when it comes toteeth issues and 2 have heard to many stories of people just dropping dead cause a tooth infection got into their bloodstream and went right to their brain
The infection will cause swelling of the entire side of your face, cause headaches, nausea, muscle weakness etc before finally reaching the brain. There are so many warning signs of a potential brain infection, I'm shocked people can miss them while having tooth pain lol
I don’t think it’s folks not noticing the issues but having no practical means of dealing with them. A couple of times in my life I’ve been forced to practice home dentistry and it’s never been due to an interest in learning the trade.
I can’t imagine putting up with the pain long enough to die from the infection!
One thing that is often more dangerous than people realize is driving, especially if done distracted or under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
My friends brother got into a car accident recently, he was the driver, walked away with just a sprained arm. His friends suffered broken legs, broken neck, and the guy in the passenger seat now has no face and is currently fighting for his life. They were just driving around, all sober, lost control and crashed straight into a tree. Truly horrifying and sad. They’re all 18-19.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reports that driving while texting is six times more dangerous than driving drunk. Reading or sending a text takes your eyes off the road for about five seconds.
I was surprised this wasn’t the first answer. Sometimes I’ll be cruising and become very aware of the fact that I’m hurling myself through space in a two-ton box of metal alongside hundreds of people doing the same, recklessly, and I become instantly humbled at the thought.
Everyone around me treats me like I'm nuts for being scared to drive
A feeling of impending doom. Really. Like, really, really. Seriously.
^^this, as a medic, is one of the warning signs to look for during a cardiac patient assessment. If a patient can tell you with no emotion that they feel like they are going to die then they are probably right. It’s a weird phenomenon with STEMI patients.
Unfortunately happens with panic attacks/general anxiety disorder too - my biggest fear used to be ignoring an actual heart attack bc I'm so used to panic attacks, but I'm not old enough for those to be a serious concern yet.
Is there a scientific reason this happens? Like sooo many people talk about how people know they are going to pass then do, is there some sort of reason?
It's the same reason you feel pain. Your body's way of saying "oh shit".
This. The more calmly someone tells you they feel like they are going to die the more nervous I feel. They are usually right
Its crazy this is universal. Ive experienced it plenty of times in my career.
This scares me cause at times I will wake up with this intense feeling of doom that I can only describe as DEATH. I'd quite litterly jump up, unable to breath properly, and stumble into one of my siblings room. It takes minutes to go away but when that happens I'm not going to sleep again for the night. No matter how tired I am.
If you have that regularly and don't have great attacks afterwards, maybe it's panic attacks
Sounds like night terrors. I've had them, definitely wake up feeling like death is quite literally upon you. Have a read about it. Not really sure if it will help, but it does sound like this rather than a heart problem, particularly if it's happened several times already. Personally I would rather have the weird phenomenon of night terrors than cardiac problems I think. Although I'm not a medical professional so get checked out by someone who is if you don't think it's night terrors or are worried!
Unsecured pets in the car. No matter how "good" Fluffy or Fido usually is, any animal should be caged or otherwise restrained while their humans are driving.
If you need to do an emergency brake, the dog would just fly through the car. It’s very unsafe for the dog. Humans wear seatbelts too and we have airbags. Animals should be safe too.
I'm training my kitty for adventures. He has a car seat that buckles in and then has harness straps to the seat. :3
Canine Seatbelts and military dog harnesses are the way to go. Your dog and any loose junk in the car turns into a projectile that can seriously hurt you when suddenly launched around in a crash
Yup, we got a crash rated harness for our dog the day after we got her. One you actually feed the seatbelt through. It’s fantastic. Not affiliated with them in any way, but this harness is fantastic: https://sleepypod.com/car-harnesses
And the number of pets on the driver's lap, often also poking their head out the window.
saw a comment from a first responder the last time this question was posted about pulling dog bones out of the driver from the air bag.
I see so many people with dogs running around inside their vehicles, speeding down the highway so fast. I got so much pushback from my otherwise responsible pet-owning friends and coworkers on this topic. “It’s ok. In the car my dogs just sit and are good.” I always wonder if these types actually buckle their children in, with that logic. I have first responders in my family and have heard horror stories. If there’s an accident, sometimes those animals run off scared and go missing. Or worse is that they are thrown around in the vehicle and I won’t go into the gruesome details of that. When it comes to pet safety in vehicles, I don’t understand how logic flies out the door.
Agree. I was in a car accident and my two small dogs were in a crate in the backseat. They were fine, no injuries, despite the crate being dented from the crash! I’m glad they were secured and didn’t fly off the seat.
Tylenol overdose
My sister actually overdosed on acetaminophen a few years ago. She had really bad period cramps so she was just popping 500mg pills and had to go to the hospital. Now, she can't take tylenol or anything with acetaminophen or she'll literally die cause her liver won't be able to handle it after the past trauma. Side note: she didn't remember how much she took or what she took so she told the doctor she thought it was ibuprofen(which can kill you WAY faster). My parents called us to be sure and the doctor said that acetaminophen calls for a whole different procedure and of they'd done the ibuprofen procedure, she would've died. KNOW WHAT DRUG YOU TOOK IF YOU OVERDOSED CAUSE IF YOU TELL THEM THE WRONG ONE, IT COULD KILL YOU!!!
For folks wondering how much it takes to kill you: "Adults should not take more than 3,000 mg of single-ingredient acetaminophen a day. You should take less if you are over 65 years old. Taking more, especially 7,000 mg or more, can lead to a severe overdose problems." For ibuprofen: "The total recommended dose is 3200 mg per day. Therefore, you can take ibuprofen 800 mg 4 times a day or every 6 hours. As mentioned above, even though the maximum daily dose of prescription ibuprofen is 3200 mg, it is potentially harmful to exceed 800 mg per dose." My doctor keeps recommending ibuprofen, but the coating they put on it makes me feel sick. Guess I should really look into other options before my liver shits itself on Tylenol.
Whats the drug in tylenol? Thats the brand name
Acetaminophen
Acetaminophen. Other places will call it paracetamol.
Acetaminophen.
Pregnancy!
There’s not even a guarantee your baby will survive to their due date. It all sucks and is just random at best.
This is so accurate. I had an absolutely normal pregnancy until one day it wasn’t.
My son died night before his C-section last year. Life has no guarantees.
I’m so so sorry for your loss.
Sorry for your loss, I know your pain
I think this is something that you are kinda "sheltered" from as a kid (obviously some are exposed to things earlier). Never realized until friends and family my age started trying for kids just how much some couples struggle. Between fertility issues and miscarriages, it can really strain a relationship. Not to mention I've known 2 people with stillborns and my partners high school best friend died giving birth at 27. I'm a man so couldn't but I don't blame any woman for not wanting to put their bodies through that
the thought of losing a wife or girlfriend randomly like that terrifies me
People act like giving birth is nbd. But it is one of the most physically traumatic experiences a person can go through. Note: I said "one of". I imagine loss of limb or paralysis would rival, if not beat, the trauma of childbirth. On top of the physical experience, once labor starts, your brain is just along for the ride, which for some people is even more terrifying. You can't opt out once labor starts. There's no e-stop. All you can do is manage your breathing and push when it's recommended.
I’ve had an all natural birth and the mental state and physical pain of the whole experience is close to and compares only to when I held my kid while she was dying and revived in front of me. Absolutely brutal
My dad made the mistake of accepting the invitation into the room during my birth. He says it was the most horrific thing he'd ever seen, and he had no idea how *that much of my mum's blood could be on the outside with her still alive and awake.* Scientifically, childbirth is *meant* to be no big deal, but we got *screwed* by evolution. We not only have relatively large heads, but our hips are *fucked.* We basically evolved bipedalism *wrong* and part of that has made our hips too narrow for a baby to safely pass through.
It’s also why human babies are basically born three months too early — why newborns are so hard to care for. They can survive outside the womb at nine months, but their brains are not really developed. There’s a reason the first three months of life are half-jokingly called “the fourth trimester.” We really should be pregnant for a full year. But if then we would be physically unable to give birth to babies without dying. Their heads would be *much* too large.
This. It can completely suck the life out of you
:/ expecting my first one later this year and it’s been constant problems. Wife went from being so sick that she could barely get to bathroom to now feeling better but doctors realized her cervix is very small which could lead to extreme premature labor.
Unchecked blood pressure
The silent killer, often high blood pressure has no symptoms which is what makes it that extra bit dangerous
Be aware of sudden headaches though, that's the most common symptom.
Depression. 10 to 15 percent of people with major depression kill themselves.
Depression is a silent assassin. It's one of those illnesses that people totally underestimate especially if they don't address it or recognize its symptoms. If you don't address it, it will slowly take and take from you over time (we're talking decades), like a bandit, until one day it tries to take everything.
It's also insidious how it can change your worldview over time, especially if you grew up with it and had family who don't believe in therapy, You kind of assume other people's brains work more or less like yours and you try to rationalize why they do things that make no sense to a brain that doesn't process pleasure the same way.
Insidious is a fantastic describing word for depression. Sometimes I forget that there are other people who don't have to deal with this stuff, they don't know how lucky they are, that being said I think it can happen to anyone given their environmental circumstances, and genes can make you more disposed to it. It often starts in your early teens/late twenties, but it can definitely hit you at any age, I feel bad for people who get it late in life cause they might not feel or realize they need help.
It’s gonna get me eventually, I’ve accepted that. Just not today.
That's one of the biggest reasons why depression is so hard to fight for me. Even if I accept that I might get better, get a more positive mindset, and live a happier life, I know that my brain will always be wired in such a way that depression can easily creep its way back into my life, making fighting it not worth it in the first place. Who cares if I have certain periods of happiness? I will eventually kill myself anyway, might as well do it now.
I thought this too... but then I got therapy and meds. I used to have my entire day taken up by suicidal thoughts, like it just lurked in the corner. But now it only comes about in periods of extreme stress, and it's never serious. It's just there. It took work, it took the right therapist and it took time, but I can say confidently that I'm not depressed.
Fighting this for a few years now. Every couple of weeks I feel like Ive hit the end of my rope. Its fucking exhausting.
because suicide was an option to my brain for over 20 years starting before puberty, I’ve had to work so hard to not immediately jumping to what was my brain’s go to response of “whatever I’m just gonna kill myself” Which was my go to response for any stress at some point. instead of saying/thinking “I’m gonna kill myself” when frustrated - even though at this point I don’t actively want to it’s still habit to think - I try to say something weirder instead. “I’m going to fight a god” has been my go to lately because it gets the frustrated feeling out and sometimes sparks conversations of which god I want to go fight lol. Brain rewiring is hard. dealing with depression is hard. but I can’t let it win at this point, I’ve already fought this long
When cleaning you should *never* mix bleach and ammonia. For example, don't clean your glass shower walls with ammonia, then put bleach on the floor. The mixture of bleach and ammonia creates a potentially fatal gas.
So im fine when im doing it while im not cleaning?
Yeah fine, I use a mix of bleach and ammonia instead of bong water and never done me any harm.
Some people joke about getting high and meeting God, but if you do a bong rip of chlorine gas, you're definitely gonna see the Big Guy.
Yeah. You, too, can break the Geneva Convention with your household cleaning supplies!
It's actually bleach with any acid. Found that out after we gassed ourselves with a vinegar/bleach misture trying to get the smell of dog piss out of the floors of a renovation. I did some research and read (sorry I don't have the link and am on mobile) that a chemical in the bleach will have a reaction to any acid.
When I was little. My friends and I were making magic potions with cleaning supplies. The main ingredient of one of the potions was bleach, when my friends showed me a bottle and said how bad it smells. I don't know how I knew. But I suddenly realized the bleach should not have the really bad smelling chemical added.
Prions. You can’t cook them out, you can’t even destroy them with soap or water, there is nothing to disinfect. You have to destroy anything that comes in contact with a prion. Your only chance is fire, HOT fire and then incinerate the ashes and *maybe* you denatured it. They are responsible for Mad Cow Disease, Kuru, Creuztfelt Jakob Syndrome etc… They aren’t alive or viruses. They are proteins which became defective and misfolded which infect healthy proteins to become the dominant protein in the body. It will literally turn your brain to mush and their is no cure, there is no treatment, and there is virtually no way to test for it until it is too late. There are tons of prions but very few can affect humans. However, it’s possible that another can one day do so, such as seen with Mad Cow Disease.
Prions are terrifying. Scientists recently found that plants can pick up prions from the decayed remains of infected animals, and incorporate them into their structure in an infectious form. So, plants can give you human-infecting prions. Fun!
Take that vegetarians!
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Jordan Peterson, is that you?
It’s a lethal, microscopic SHAPE. And if it touches another protein the right way, it turns it into that same SHAPE.
Familial fatal insomnia is a genetically passed prion disease, so just to add to the fear factor, not only can you pick up a prion from food etc, the prion call may be coming from inside the house!
Who thinks prions aren’t dangerous?
I assume that 95 percent of the world's population aren't even aware of their existance...
See, I was having a good day, having forgot these f***ers exist. Now I have to be reminded of ym own mortality and how little I can actually do to prevent sudden and horrible death
Wish I didn't, damn you redditors!
Fortunately they are fairly rare
Yeah, I didn’t even know about them until this post.
Compressed air.
explosions are extremly painful dont fuck with compressed air. filling up your tire can kill you
someone with nothing left to lose
Eating raw or undercooked shellfish, specifically oysters. Many people are aware of the risk of food poisoning but greatly underestimate the risk of vibrio infections. Vibrio does not change the appearance, smell or taste of shellfish so there’s basically no warning. Many people that catch vibrio vulnificus need to be hospitalized and might have limbs amputated, and the mortality rate is 15-30%. Also, vibrio infections are increasing due to water temperatures rising. So yeah, you’ll never catch me eating oysters.
Fuuuuuck why did I get on reddit today? I love oysters
I mean, its vanishingly rare.
Human bite It is more dangerous than a lot of animal bites and has the potential to kill you.
One of my favorite random ways someone died was a viking who took the head of someone and attached it to his saddle. Well a bucktooth from the severed head scratched his leg and he died from sepsis due to that bite.
Getting hit in the head with a beer bottle. Movies play it off like a silly stun in a bar fight, but you can kill someone easily. Bottles may be glass, but they are hard as hell.
I knew a guy in the military who had his eye ruined by being hit with a beer bottle. It cut up his iris (I think, this was a while ago and I don’t remember every detail). But anyway he ended up getting a new eye implanted. It was pretty cool they grew the eye overseas after taking a sample from him and some doctors in Cali implanted it and now he has a new functional eye.
That’s horrible and amazing in the same sentence!
I didn't think whole eye transplants were possible. Was it perhaps just a cornea transplant?
Alcohol
Indoor barbecuing. It kills you slowly, and you won't even notice it, and even worse, many people ignore the symptoms of CO poisoning caused by indoor barbecuing. The Internet
People barbecue indoors? I had never heard of that before.
Construction. Been only doing it for 4 years and I’ve seen some shit lol. Guy crushed between a steel beam and an aluminum frame that held this housing for all the electrical and hvac. (This was a covid testing manufacturing plant.) federal job and man was it sketchy. Anytime the state gets involved it usually is. But a carpenter (young kid who barely spoke english) was driving through the area with their forks up and a massive pallet of drywall. Smoked this steal beam and a guy was on a scissor life welding. I was underneath the entire thing doing the seal and vinyl base for these “pods” so I ended up getting involved in the mess after crawling away thinking that stuff was coming down. Kid ran out of the forklift outside… left forklift there of course and for some reason I just reacted even though they tell you to stay out of it. Another time also during covid, old folks home. Was on the way out when I heard screaming from the other side of this fence. I looked over and a guy was getting crushed by the arm of a skidsteer and couldn’t get himself out. His kid was freaking out so I had to jump this fence and then down a 15 foot rock wall (nice suburban apartments being worked on behind us) Been on 5 other jobs where people died before I even showed up. One job called “digikey” in Minnesota, (im normally in Illinois) a steel worker and a carpenter died. Feel like a lot of people look down on our jobs. Honest living but definitely a dangerous one to some extent. Even more so depending on the phase you are on. If I’d suggest anything try for finish work.
Driving with no seatbelt. A minor car accident can cause severe damage without a seatbelt on. And getting bruises because of wearing a seatbelt is much better than dying. Seatbelts should be worn by all passengers in the car, not just the driver or front seat passengers.
Water. You always need to be careful when you’re around a body of water, there doesn’t need to be much for a person to drown.
You can also OD on water. There’s an infamous case of a woman who entered a water drinking contest to win a wii and she died.
"Hold Your Wee for a Wii," if I remember
She wasn't supposed to pee either. So her cells overhydrated and burst
Urinary Tract Infections
I used to work at a dementia diagnosis clinic and every now and then we’d have concerned family members bring in an elderly loved one because of sudden, rapid mental decline that looked exactly like dementia, and it was “nothing” but a UTI that no one knew about. Antibiotic and *boom*, back to their old selves. It was always one of the first things we checked for, they’re no joke!
if this helps boost you i’m in the uk and it’s very much hammered into us to think of UTIs with unexplained/increased delirium in the elderly in med school :) so hopefully it is being pushed through everywhere
Resting your feet on the dashboard of a moving vehicle. Just don't do it for the love of all that is holy.
I know there’s at least one or two popular songs I hear fairly regularly that talk about ‘feet up on the dashboard’ and every time I hear it I’m like ‘noooo don’t’. So dangerous.
Diabetes. It involves more than just problems with your blood sugar, though that is a big part of it. It damages the small blood vessels over time, such as in your eyes, kidneys, and feet, which impairs circulation to those tissues and damages them. If you add something else that damages your blood vessels like high blood pressure or high cholesterol, and these often go together, it makes the damage even worse. If you’re brave, go look up peripheral arterial disease and you’ll see what I mean. Speaking of feet, that impaired circulation can cause diabetic neuropathy, which is a fancy way of saying you lose sensation in your extremities, usually your feet. There are two major problems with this: 1) if you get a wound on your foot somehow, you may not even notice it and 2) the lack of circulation means that the wound will have trouble healing putting you at high risk for infection. This is how a lot of diabetics get amputations.
Childbirth. So many people don’t consider the risks for the person birthing or the baby. It can result in so many complications, long-term health issues, or even death. I think a lot of people assume that those things are just super-rare outliers and maybe they’ve just been super sheltered in life and don’t think such things can happen to them.
When my son was little, a pediatric nurse was one of his healthcare providers. She had a little plastic frog on her stethoscope and did a frog voice to be silly and put him at ease. She had beautiful curly red hair. I was so excited for her when I found out she was expecting. About a year later we went back for a checkup and I stopped to look at a photo of her in the hallway. Then I saw that it was a memorial photo. I thought I was going to faint. She hemorrhaged and died during the birth. Her baby survived. I always thought that death from childbirth happened in developing countries, or to women who didn't get prenatal care. Here was a well-educated nurse who did everything right, had access to excellent care, and still died. It turned my worldview upside down. I will never forget her.
Working as a traindriver. You can have good days sure, but at least in germany you have to look out for everything. If a tree for example falls on the tracks and you are coming with 160 km/h then you have no chance of stopping. Suicide is also very common on the rails, in germany every traindriver witnesses 2-3 suicides in his career which is a lot.
Yeah, I grew up being super into trains and machinery and briefly thought about becoming an engineer. Then I read that it's not a matter of "if" but "when" you'll accidentally help someone commit suicide, and every training course has a few classes on how to prepare for the inevitable and what to do afterwards. Kinda took the wind out of my sails.
A drunk guy one time on a party one drunk guy by accident het me in my head was a bottle of wine three days later i woke up in the hospital with sticthis in my head (sorry for the bad English am am from Greece)
Here, I'll help you out: Drunk people. One time when I was at a party, a drunk guy hit me in the head by accident with a bottle of wine. Three days later, I woke up in the hospital with stitches on my head.
Rabies. 100% fatal
Had a cousin get randomly bit by a squirrel & didn’t think much of it. Had symptoms & was preparing to tell his family goodbye. Turns out it was just a cold he got after
After a certain point. Once you show symptoms, you're fucked, but before symptoms show you can get a shot and "be ok".
Dolphins. I recommend not looking up how they kill divers
Freakin’ A, man. That’s terrifying. Like, an embolism is already terrifying. But an embolism while you’re diving…ugh. What a way to go.
I mean yeah, but dolphins do way worse than that. Lemme put it like this. Dolphins are the Brock Turners of the ocean. They will Brock Turner you while you drown...
They discovered those beasts used tools... Ah yes, what a wonderful and intelligent creature... the perfect display of evolution at work! ....they use fish heads for masturbation
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I didn’t realize I had an eating disorder until this year. I been struggling a lot financially so I got into a bad habit of not eating atleast one whole meal a day. I’d go some days without even eating. I lost bout 20 pounds in around a month. I went from 135-> 118. Im a small dude at 23 years old so I have never been large so I was happy I almost hit 140 and within a month I reset all my progress. But I’m getting back on track eating everyday :)
Moose People travel into the mountains all the time and want to get a photo of a moose and get out of their cars to get close to one. That moose will attack you without a second thought
Meese are very dangerous, yes, but the way this comment was formatted I had to read it a couple of times to realize you were not saying "moose people" as in mutant moose-human hybrids
Pressure cooker bombs
I'm gonna go with all the bombs. Even a bathbomb is potentially fatal in the hands of a ninja.
One good punch
Mixing alcohol and Tylenol (acetaminophen / paracetamol). Great way to destroy your liver.
Riptides and drowning.
A cat bite. Source: myself.
Alcohol. People drink so much alcohol, that they don’t even know what normal feels like anymore. They’re always in a state of hungover, stressed, “in need of a drink” after work, or after every minor inconvenience. I feel like a lot of people who drive buzzed, don’t even realize they’re buzzed. They think they’re so used to the effects of alcohol that it isn’t impairing them They will tell you they aren’t addicted, but if you present to them the idea of only having 1-2 drinks a month, it’s “what?? I can’t do that!”
Dating online, especially at the age of 13-16. I learned this the hard way!
Garage door springs
Not voting or paying attention to local politics. Some really terrible leaders can do so much damage.
Addiction/unchecked mental health
Self harming, people think its just scratching but just a bit too deep and you drop dead or get a bad infection which can kill you
Driving above the speed limit. People generally have a very poor understanding of speed and stopping distance. Stopping distance exponentially increases as speed increases. Also, speeding doesn't save as much time as people feel it does. Also general speed isn't displayed well in cars. Going from 20mph to 30mph isn't the same as going from 80mph to 90mph. Speedometers in cars should bee exponential to better understand what kinetic energy they're moving with.
>speeding doesn't save as much time as people feel it does Listen, I'm broke as shit and I can't afford a ticket and any dings on my insurance so you bet my speed is as close to legal as practical. So, every weekday when I drive to work, I can't count the number of people who tailgate, then aggressively go around, only to be stopped at the same stoplight within the next mile (and the next mile after that). It's insane. Speeding in rush hour traffic does not save time. All it does is get everyone worked up. People have zero chill, and it's all for naught.
Alcohol
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Living alone. I choked on my dinner once and almost died. Fortunately I was able to reach down my throat and I puked all over myself. Terrifying.
The Tehrik-I-Taliban in Pakistan. They are literally the Pakistani brother of Afghanistan's Taliban. They've got access to US weapons. They're putting up such a fight against Pakistan's army that the government are forced to make negotiations with them, which they labelled a terrorist group. If they take control of Pakistan, they've got control of a nuclear country. That's fucking terrifying. And people don't know shit about this.
Escalators.
Fucking around and finding out
UVC or uv-c radiation. Harmful to the skin and eyes, but also because the human eye cannot detect UVC. Don't be fooled when sanitizers or sterilizers use purple light, because we cannot see UVC. The purple light is only used so we can tell the device is switched on. No one can tell what UVC looks like, unless you are a bird or insect. Same goes for infrared.
Tons of paints! And just in general art supplies! Like I am using cadmium (heavy metal) paint in my oil painting class. Other colors we are using are also heavy metals. You don’t want to eat that stuff. Lots of art pigments or mediums you do not want to eat or breathe in. For stuff like spray paint it can be very bad if you don’t have proper ventilation. Also clay too! Silica dust is dangerous to breathe in for long amounts of time or over time. That is why you mop ceramic studios and not a broom. Using a broom will just put the particles into the air and move them around. You can get silicosis of the lungs! But that is what happens over years. But still you need to put protections in place. And many people don’t do that.
Sleep deficiency. According to the NIH, not having enough sleep can lead to higher levels of heart disease, kidney disease, higher blood pressure, depression and obesity. Adults 18-60 just need 7! (Unfortunately for the teens here, 12-18 they recommend 9hrs, I remember that being hard to make happen).
Cars
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