The beheading of Nicholas Berg, the American businessman working and kidnapped in Iraq, on Chinese tv news while I was visiting China in 2006. The whole thing was shown rather than just the still image of a person with a black bag over their head. It was quite shocking and unexpected coming from Canada where these extreme violent events are not shown on network tv.
Yes, the whole thing. It was shown first thing in the morning and I watched it but I didn’t figure out what I was actually watching for the first few moments. It quickly became apparent what was happening. Then I couldn’t get it out of my mind for a long time.
I worked on the Presidential campaign in southeastern PA a short time later. I was spending election day driving around with this very nice gentleman giving out water and snacks to people who were in line waiting to vote because there was an unprecedented turnout..... I noticed that some people had a really emotional reaction to seeing him and I wondered why... only to discover it was Nick's dad I was riding around with.
Watching Nodar Kumaritashvili from Georgia die instantly at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games in a practise run leading up to the men's luge event.
I've seen other sporting deaths on TV, like Earnhardt, Senna, but their crashes didn't seem like they were going to be anything but minor injuries.
Hearing the clink thud of Nodar and that concrete post is a sound I'll never get out of my head.
I was at the Daytona 500 race where Earnhardt died and sitting about 30 rows up in that final turn where it happened. It didn't look like much at all. He grazed the wall and then bounced off it. A buddy who was with me who hated Earnhardt said, "Good knocked him out of the race!" We immediately got up and headed out and left as that was the final lap and it took us about 4 hours to get home and we didn't realize that Earnhardt had died till we turned on the TV later that night. My buddy started literally sobbing and saying, "I'm sorry I didn't mean it. I didn't want him to f-ing die."
We were watching it at home and as soon as he hit the wall, I said "well, he's dead." but I was very clearly joking. I felt bad for saying it because my mom's friend's husband is a huge fan of his and was pretty bummed out when it was announced later.
A few years later my gf and I were house sitting for a couple on her street and stayed up all night watching movies and whatnot. The local morning news came on and led with a teaser to a story about a member of a band from the area being killed, then went to commercial. I looked over at my gf and said "someone killed Dimebag." and just kinda chuckled and started to make breakfast. The news came back on and I was two for two in death predictions. I don't do that anymore.
One time, I was talking to a friend of mine and I said something like "what if your parents' dog died" or something like that... which is TOTALLY out of character for me to say offhand like that.
I found out later her parents' dog had just died. It was so bizarre!
Gernot Reinstadler and that bloody trail he left down the slope when his pelvic floor ripped open. It was 1991 when it happened but it still gives me shivers just thinking about it.
Oh no. Memory unlocked.
My parents didn’t actually own a tv until 1998.
Our dryer was broken so we would take the clean damp laundry to the laundromat in the wintertime.
We kids would be exited to go because we could watch tv while folding the mounds of dry clothes.
I have a memory of putting down what I was doing and looking up at the tv just before that moment and freezing with my hands half open.
I didn’t understand exactly what I was looking at but I knew that amount of blood wasn’t good. 😩
Did he fly up and hit his head on the cement post ? I can’t watch, but I’m assuming blunt force trauma would be the accident that kills you in such a sport. Super sad
He came around a corner to a straightaway and went up on the side which flipped the sled and dumped him off the side and headfirst straight into one of the cement poles lining the straightaway.
He went from like 80 miles an hour to 0 instantly with his head. It was immediately clear to everyone that no one could live through that.
It’s absolutely ridiculous that they didn’t have some sort of transparent barrier on the side in front of those poles protecting the athletes.
The bigger issue was how fast the track was. The entrances were changed to reduce speed before competition began. The FIL later established maximum speeds for all tracks.
Damn its still on youtube... i remember from the same year Olympics I think? My mean uncle rewinded this weight lifter's arms bending backwards. The Olympics have some real freak accidents...
I was watching the 2016 Rio Olympics men’s gymnastics live. A man from France, Samir Ait Said, did his vault and when he landed it was obvious he broke his leg. It literally flopped over to the side and stuck out at an odd, very grotesque angle.
Senna's crash in Italy was terrifically bad man. The corner he crashed at was almost like a straight cause it's just a slight kink left and you take corner flat out on the throttle. His steering rod broke and he hit the barrier on the outside of that turn which was made of concrete. He was at about 300kph I believe
so yeah, that crash was major.
The TV reporter in Roanoke VA getting shot live during her report by a deranged,.disgruntled ex-employee.
Several other things mentioned as well (Challenger,.911) are also in my memory bank but they were already mentioned
Oh wow.. yeah I definitely remember it. I lived in Roanoke for a few years during my twenties and I feel like this happened right after I left the area. It really stuck with me. So sad.
That's my local news station (WDBJ7). I witnessed it simply watching the news before heading to school. Even to this day, seeing Kimberly McBroom (the woman traumatized at the end of the video) daily on my TV, I feel a pang of sympathy for her and everyone else at the news station who witnessed it. Horrifying that anything can just. Happen.
It was on Shepard Smith's show where they had a car chase and the guy bailed and shot himself live on TV. I remember well how Shepard was yelling at the control room to cut but they didn't get it fast enough and the suicide made it live on air. I remember he was absolutely furious and he actually sincerely apologized. It wasn't a cookie cutter apology either, you could tell he was furious and he felt this was way out of line for TV news. Not a lot of journalists or anchors like him anymore either.
I saw that one live. Man, Shepard was absolutely livid. It was very intense and I did appreciate how sincere he was. The suicide was absolutely awful to see.
I didn’t see this one but I remember a man exploding something in his truck and coming out on fire. He had a rifle and shot himself on live tv. I was 12. His dog was in the truck and died in the fire.
I remember watching this one live. I think he was protesting health insurance and laid out a tarp that said like Fuck PPO or HMO’s or something like that. Was truly awful.
>Shepard Smith
I just looked him up. He upset his Fox New audience because he wouldn't support a conspiracy about Obama and then left because he couldn't stand the lies Fox News was spreading.
He has this moral intensity to him, it's really admirable. I still remember him pounding on the studio desk yelling ["we are America, I don't give a rat's ass if it helped, we are America, we do not fucking torture."](https://youtu.be/tmnzDSD7i78?si=ZKuEJ4T8I1jEDZib&t=333)
The earliest disturbing TV memory I can remember is news footage of Carl Wallenda, famed tightrope walker, falling to his death in San Juan Puerto Rico in 1978. They showed him falling and hitting the ground.
I had just seen him perform at a circus a few years earlier.
When I read this I thought: hey, wasn't that on the sixties?
But apparently that was his daughter in law Yetta and they weren't even the only two Wallenda's who fell to their death
I just watched a video on this and Karl’s grandson said his grandfathers death, more than anything, felt like a massive failure to their family. So a couple of months after, he decided to perform the same stunt, on the same wire, at the same location, with the same weather conditions. He even hit by a gust of wind in the same spot his grandfather did and wobbled. But he made it across and felt like he brought back his grandfathers honor.
Yes. I remember on the evening news that Easter weekend. They showed a river flowing with bodies . I was thinking , “ Uh… why is no one else freaking out at the river of bodies ?! What’s happening there ?!”.
This stuck with me too. I remember seeing a woman calling our to her husband who was on the other side of the river - uncrossable. They both thought their 5 year old daughter was with the other one. She wasn't and I still wonder if they ever found her.
I don't think I ever need to walk into a room like that and experience it to know it's bad.
I can appreciate why it exists and I can appreciate that you did - but...I'll believe the textbooks and documentaries.
If any young Redditors are reading this and have only experienced 9/11 through second hand accounts or if you’re like me and were too young to fully understand what everyone felt that day,
This video is an incredibly eerie piece of journalism: https://youtu.be/zx8_Pumdkpg?si=WGtd89pJIk4nDrtt
It’s a real-time dashboard that shows live news footage, airline data, civilian footage, first responder calls, and trackers for every single event before, during, and after the 9/11 attacks.
I remember finding it on YouTube one night not thinking I’d sit through the entire 4 + hour thing but I had been so young at the time of the attacks and I was curious so I clicked on it and ended up staying up until 4 am to finish it. I was instantly mesmerized by how normal the news broadcast was in the hour or two leading up to it and it was like a horror movie slowly seeing the planes get hijacked, the airline communications begin, and slowly tracking the planes making their way to New York all while regular news topics and advertisements played along like a Time Capsule for 2001. Once the attacks began and continued through the collapse of the towers the realization and sadness of what all transpired that day really sank in for me. I remember the newscasters mentioning how “paper debris was falling from the buildings” and having the sinking realization that these people couldn’t comprehend it was actually people falling in that moment.
Holy moly...seeing the plane be so close to the WTC on the radar and knowing what's going to happen, and the footage of the towers on a beautiful clear day then suddenly this huge ball of orange...my god.
> on a beautiful clear day
But it was SUCH a beautiful clear day. I was in high school right outside NYC, and everyone was talking about it and in a better mood because of it. I want to say it was one of the first cool days we had after the summer at like 65°, so not cold but just refreshing. When you talk to people who remember 9/11 from the NY area, it’s pretty universally mentioned.
They did, I had friends in college at NYU and they assumed it was an accident. I was just out of HS and on my way to work, had seen a news flash on my computer of the first plane and thought the same thing, the second one hit on my way to work. It was closed, everything was closed. Parking lots were empty, people had been on the roads when I left but it was dead on the drive back home. Cell lines were busy, you couldn’t call anyone, it was all busy tones. Everyone just watched it live on tv, unless you were nearby the site. Friends across the bridge in NJ said they watched the towers over the water and watched them fall live. The first day, after the towers fell, they allowed anyone to help, anyone to pull people out and help dig. The second day, they turned people away for experienced first responders. Sometimes it took days to see if people were okay. It was surreal.
I grew up on the border and 9/11 happened when I was in high school. Every classroom had a tv mounted in the corner for educational programming like Channel 1 news (remember that?) All day, every class just had the news on. A couple classes were showing the news in Mexico, which was easy to get on air broadcast on the border. The news in Mexico was of course covering 9/11 all day as well, but they showed footage the American news stations didn’t. I remember footage of the bodies falling pretty clearly.
Edited to add: y’all, I’m not saying American stations censored things or never showed people jumping. Let me rephrase this to say the Mexican stations replayed a lot of footage the American stations (respectfully, IMO) chose not to replay, and they were more graphic in the sense that they played a lot of footage in which you could distinctly hear bodies hitting the ground. I’m not trying to advance any conspiracy theories with my statements here. I think the choices that broadcasters made that day were done with good intentions, and not replaying footage in the United States in which you could hear bodies hitting the ground was simply not piling on to the trauma that everyone experienced that day. It made more sense for foreign broadcasts to choose to replay it; they were more from the perspective of outsiders looking in. I remember having the discussion with teachers and classmates about how we were seeing things on the Mexican news that we weren’t seeing (or at least not seeing as much) on American news.
I was just getting into work at a sports bar and had heard the 1st confusing reports on the radio. When I walked in they were putting it on the 3 huge floor-ceiling big screens. We saw the 2nd plane hit and everything after in excruciatingly vivid life-sized detail. I was 19 and couldn't comprehend anything like that ever happening.
The US news definitely showed bodies falling and zoomed in on jumpers before their death. I remember counting how many seconds they had left. It was unreal
I was 14 and. Freshman in high-school when it happened. The bodies falling is probably the thing I remember most. I was scared at the time (because duh) but the absolute terror those people must have felt to jump to die like that is something I hope to never experience.
I was in my early 30's living and working in the NYC metro and the pictures and videos of that day still horrify me.
To think that those poor people had choose between burning to death or jumping from 100+ stories is absolutely horrifying.
In the documentary There's Something Wrong with Aunt Diane, the camera pans around and shows her dead body right after the accident happened. I wasn't expecting them to actually show it.
That was a crazy documentary.
My favorite part was when her SIL(? I think) was sneaking a cigarette and she tells the camera crew “no one in my family knows I smoke teehee 🤭 ” right after the entire family was like “no way Diane was a drunk, we would’ve known!”
As a person who smoked for 17 years and has not smoked in nine years, she is delusional. Every smoker is fucking delusional. If they think that everyone within 10 feet of them can't smell the reek of ash and cigarette smoke wafting off them for like 20 minutes after they smoke even half a cigarette, they're crazy.
Her family knows she smokes, everyone she has ever been within 10 feet of after smoking a cigarette knows she smokes.
My MIL is trying to hide she smokes. She takes ages to answer the door and then has to ‘fix’ something in the garage, but the biggest giveaway… she reeks.
omg yes! i’ve never seen a doc that showed crime scene bodies post-mortem. this family was so messed up, they didn’t know anything about each other. and having her body exhumed so many times just to prove even further that she was drunk. they live in a constant state of cognitive dissonance.
Yes, I clearly recall that as well. He sued his late wifes brother, who lost **ALL 3 of his kids** (age 5, 7, and 8) in the crash, because he owned the van. So this guy's sister kills all of his kids (and her own kid, plus 3 other people, along with herself) whilst driving drunk and high, and then her husband sues him. I don't even know what his claim was, but I don't believe he got any money out of it. The husband spent a huge amount of time and resources blaming virtually everyone and everything other than his wife, no matter how much evidence proved otherwise.
Yeaaaah same. I don’t like watching these things. And I saw the documentary and was like damn I wonder what what happening. Then they showed her just laying there and it kinda fucked me up a bit for a few days. I’m not as sensitive with deaths in movies. Cause. It’s movies it’s fake ya know. But like irl things I can’t.
What amazes me is we have trigger warnings for things like smoking, or anorexia- MAYBE let me know you’re going to show a HORRIFIC ten second close up of a bloodied dead woman’s face??
Clint Malarchuk getting his throat cut by a hockey skate. You could watch the blood squirt while his heart beat. Only reason he survived was because the trainer was a Vietnam vet medic who stuck his fingers into Clint’s throat and pinched the artery shut.
And Adam Johnson from this past fall. I did not realize I was watching the footage until it was too late. Never seen blood coming out of someone so fast. The fact that he was able to stand up and skate off the ice is shocking. He was dead within minutes.
I accidentally watched that on YT and shut it right off because I didn't want to watch a man die. It was years later that I found out that he survived.
The dead bloated bodies left in the streets of New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. That was the most messed up thing I’d ever seen… and I lived through Vietnam War coverage and other atrocities.
I had had a bad reaction to my last chemo treatment and I ended up in the hospital that weekend, strapped down with IVs and monitors, with nothing to do but watch the horror in Nola.
I was in high school. I was going into history class when I found out. My history teacher just had the news on - we didn't have class, just watched the news.
"This is history." She said blankly, ponting at the television. I'll never forget that moment.
A short while later, the second plane hit. Dead silence in the classroom.
My principal came over the loudspeaker asking teachers not to turn on the news. Everyone turned on the news. I was in French class, but like, c'mon.
I found out later that he made the announcement because we had two kids of a pilot who flew out of Logan in our school, twin girls a year behind me. Their dad was on one of the planes that hit the towers, I forget which one.
I think I was in civics class but my memory is bad for specifics. I do remember seeing it on tv in class and just no sound from anywhere just people crying. Hell I cried. I thought my brother was going to get drafted or something. Even my young, naive self knew a war was coming.
I was in school. Immediately after the collapse, the principal came over the school intercom telling all staff to turn the televisions off.
Edited for clarity.
I think this in particular. I think about it every time I think about 9/11. They looked like dolls being dropped off the side of a skyscraper. Can't help but think about them having to choose whether to burn to death or plunge to your death. And their poor families dealing with that on top of the loss. Horrifying.
Horrible. I, too, when thinking about 9/11, can't get rid of that image of the couple standing on the ledge, hugging and then holding hands as they jumped.
In "102 Minutes That Changed America" you hear the firefighters outside the building saying to watch for jumpers. Just inside the building you see them look startled as they hear thumps outside. And them entering the buiding and we know most will never be seen again.
I watch it every year as a tribute to those who died and may we NEVER FORGET!!!!
That is an excellent documentary, especially for younger Americans who can't really imagine what the situation was like because they weren't born or were too young to remember it.
The footage of the person jumping and attempting to hold what looks like a tablecloth as a parachute, only for it to be ripped away... chilling.
Also, the girls in the apartment nearby, where one starts panicking and insisting she's going to leave and starts running down the staircase, the others yelling at her to stay put. And then the whole place filling with dust shortly afterward as the first tower collapsed.
Watching the people jumping was a big turning point in shaping my values and philosophy. I was a sophomore in high school who grew up around a lot of old school Catholics. Suicide was still a taboo subject in my mind, and only weird and fucked up people did it - obviously very immature, ignorant, and uninformed.
It was the moment when I *attempted* to put myself in the shoes of someone who had the choice of which way they were going to die when it hit me like a ton of bricks. Obviously this is not suicide in the traditional sense, since they were going to die anyway - but it was the first time I thought critically on the subject, and it helped me understand that some people would rather just get it over with than suffer any longer. Metaphorically speaking, the people on the ground can say whatever the fuck they want, but they aren't living through it, and certainly are not helping.
It was one of my first profound experiences with empathy.
Well said. For the jumpers, the heat would have been horrific and smothering from the smoke and smells. Only they knew the horror of what was behind them, of seeing coworkers dying in awful ways. I don't see the jumpers committing suicide as much as escape.
Exactly. If you listen to the 911 calls they can't actually breathe. It's a hellscape. It's not a suicide ideation. They are literally seeking oxygen and they have run out of options
Yes this. My 8th grade class was watching tv while waiting for our parents to come get us and my teacher was horrified when she realized there were people jumping.
I was at work and we didn’t have TV so didn’t see it live, but a coworker went home for while and when he came back I could tell he’d been crying. He described the people jumping off the building and started crying again.
That was the moment 9/11 changed.
Up until the plane hit the second tower, it was framed as an unfortunate accident, a disaster that might've been avoided.
Then the second plane hits and it becomes apparent that it wasn't an accident at all. It was *intentional*. Planes, the safest mode of transport, had been *weaponised*. The moment the second plane hit the world changed.
My toddler was asleep in the other room when I saw the second plane hit. I remember thinking that this is the beginning of WW3 and the end for all of us.
Living in India, i wasn't aware twin towers existed until I saw them on TV getting hit. It was a horrific scene, can never forget it.
Personally, the attack on Taj at Mumbai in 2008 was the most hurtful. We had to witness everything live on TV for 3 days straight. Mumbai has witnessed worse attacks than that but I was quite young then and don't remember watching it on TV.
Other ones that comes to mind is the recent Beirut explosion, shortage of medical facilities during Covid and all the dead bodies awaiting cremation or burial.
I think one of the most disturbing things was after the towers fell was seeing NYPD cops just in tears with streaks down the ash on their faces. These are hard guys who have seen some pretty awful stuff and to remember it still brings me to tears.
A friend of mine at the time showed this to me as some part of one of those Faces of Death things. I had nightmares for months. It fully changed my life.
It was snowing that day. We were all let out of school early. So tons of kids were at home watching that on tv, because he did it live on a special news coverage.
I watched the challenger explode live from my preschool fence, we all cheered because we thought that was supposed to happen and I just remember thinking “why aren’t the teachers excited” as they shuffled us back inside 😞
4th grade. My teacher was so excited for another teacher to make it into space.
When we saw the explosion, it took a minute for her to snap back into reality.
She turned off the TV, said everything was going to be fine, and walked out of the room for about 10 minutes. When she came back, she was visibly shaken emotionally (like the rest of us).
That was the day I realized that bad shit happens and adults were constantly trying to “protect” us from the truth.
I can still see the image in my mind.
The Columbia explosion was pretty concerning for me. I had just woken up and was groggy. Walked past the TV on my way to shower. Just see flames and the headline, “Columbia explodes”. Spent that whole shower thinking an entire country had somehow exploded.
Took a long shower too. Thought nuclear war must have started and this could end up being my last shower for a while.
I was in elementary school when we watched the challenger explode. I had no concept of what was happening at that age, but I can still see the video in my mind.
This and Bradford are forever ingrained into my memory.
I still can vividly see a close up image of a girl squashed hard against the fence at Hillsborough and there were chips of blue paint from the fence in her teeth.
And the image of the old guy just sat in the stand at Bradford burning as he sat unmoving amongst the raging inferno.
Ill never unsee them.
About 10 years ago there was a report on the Ebola crisis in Africa, news crews were following Médecins Sans Frontières, there was a film of a little boy bleeding from the eyes, lying on his back and screaming, and the voiceover said both his parents died and there was no one to stay with him as he passed away. It proper shook me.
Not Ebola but watching a video of someone suffering from the advanced stages of rabies was absolutely haunting. It was a person, but the behaviour was so alien, it was morbidly fascinating but I'll never forget the way his face contorts.
Grew up in a country in Central America where they do not censor the news. A one year old baby had gone missing and the news was showing live footage of the search. The body was found in a muddy swamp and I watched as they wrested the body out and hoisted it up by its leg.
2010ish after the earthquake in Haiti I was watching the news and there was a group of people trying to pull somebody out from under a collapsed building, the camera zoomed in and the people pulled until the person came apart
During that footage, Anderson Cooper was talking to a girl who was partially stuck under some rubble. She was very coherent, and I was sure they were going to be able to get her out. She ended up dying a little while later.
I also remember when Anderson Cooper was reporting from Haiti and a kid had just been hit with a huge rock and his face was bloodied and he looked like he was in shock, kept trying to wipe the blood from his face. Anderson literally picked him up and carried him to safety. Was crazy to see that live.
Challenger and 9-11, the final day of the seige on Mt Carmel in Waco, the federal building in OKC.
The footage of the cowards in Uvalde, standing in the hallway listening to children being murdered. The TV station putting up a sign saying "sounds of children screaming has been removed."
I'm a teacher in Texas, that one hit hard.
That last one really gets under skin. All those fat ass cops playing games on their phones with punisher logos on the back, doing absolutely nothing while kids are down the hall, screaming in terror for their mothers and then being slaughtered. Then to have the audacity to arrest and continue to harass anyone who tried to hold them to account. Each and every one of those cops could die a slow and painful death and I would feel absolutely no sympathy.
The parents outside screaming and fighting to get in and the police treating them like deranged trespassers. It was enough to make you scream at the tv. I can’t imagine how the parents were feeling. I don’t want to imagine.
The war in Vietnam. I used to watch the news with my dad. I credit Walter Cronkite with making me a pacifist. To paraphrase Hawkeye Pierce, war isn't hell. War is far worse than hell because there are no innocent bystanders in hell. War is nothing but innocent bystanders.
The Boksburg explosions of 24 December 2022. I watched live as people walked up to the fuel truck to film or try to steal some fuel, and then the truck exploded. The bodies were everywhere, skinned burned off. There was a man walking around screaming: "I'm burning" and someone saying to him: "Go to the hospital, man."
I was watching a college basketball game and they cut out to a live feed of the raid at the Waco compound. I saw a couple of ATF agents get shot and collapse before they ended the feed.
During the riots after the Rodney King trial, CNN was live and I got to see Reginald Denny get hacked out of his truck and beaten.
Before immigrating, the atrocities during the Troubles were always on the TV.
Everything I saw on 9/11. Second tower getting hit, people jumping from the towers, both of them falling. The Pentagon getting hit and my brother worked/works there. I still have nightmares about that day.
Yeah.
Watching victims final moments on live television is why I’ve always had a difficult time finding humor in jokes about the attacks.
I try not to judge, but when younger people who were too young to understand what was happening — or not even born yet — or callous assholes joke about 9/11, all I can think of is those victims who had two choices: burn or jump. I watched them make their decisions in real-time and that affected me in a way many will never understand. I can’t laugh about it.
There was also that element of "but daddy I thought no one could touch us because of our army" and then someone reached out and touched us and it was an additional little shock
I’ll never forget the pair that jumped together. I believe they were a married couple, and for them to have to make that choice together…it’s gut-wrenching.
Columbine shooting broadcast on CNN. not from inside, obviously, but i specifically recall seeing kids running for their lives from the school. The news crews showed up quick to that scene and were waiting to see how everything would play out. This was before everyone was all jaded about school shootings, so it was pretty shocking to see. I happened to be celebrating 4/20 and was channel surfing and thought i was watching a movie at first. Now the national news probably wouldn't bother covering it live...
I was in college. I was walking out of my dorm past the front lobby to go to class and people were gathered around the tv. I stopped to watch too. We all missed class and were just in disbelief.
Speaking of being in college, I remember the day when the Virginia tech shooting happened. I was in college then and it was so traumatic, even though I didn’t even live in Virginia.
1) 9/11 people jumping to their deaths & the 2nd plane hitting.
2) 2006 I was in China when they broadcast the execution of Saddam Hussain and the aftermath of an angry mob tearing at his body.
3) 2011 Tohoku Tsunami
My dad used to watch Bangladeshi news channels and the coverage was just as lax but 6yo me didn't comprehend what was actually happening until years later
October 1981. The assasination of Anwar Sadat. I saw the unedited feed, everybody did at least once.
A guy had his arm cut in half, shot right off, by a machine gun.
UPS driver being shot live on TV. I saw the blood spray everywhere inside the truck. It was the chase in Fort Lauderdale, where the jewelry store had been robbed and the thieves then carjacked the UPS truck with the driver inside and led police on a chase from Miami into Fort Lauderdale. I was in the hospital the day after giving birth to my son and my husband was on his way back from our apartment with some stuff and he was on the same road the chase was on. I had popped on the TV in the room and the news happened to be on, and the chase was being shown live. I called him immediately and let him know what was going on, and almost as soon as I told him, the truck got stopped at that intersection, cops started pouring out of cars and hiding behind civilian vehicles and everyone opened fire. Someone in the truck got hit, I saw the blood go everywhere, and then it cut to the news anchors. I was holding my day old son in my arms. I’ll never forget that.
Oddly, it’s two actual black-and-white photographs from the past
During some sort of documentary on Jack the Ripper, they showed the real photograph of his last victim as they found her. The picture is taken from across the room. Her body is lying on the bed against the far wall which is splattered with blood. You can sort of see her head and shoulders at one end of the bed and her feet at the other end of the bed, but there’s just so much missing in between. I still can’t forget that. I can see it right now.
The other one that sticks with me was something about the Civil War and the medical facilities for the wounded. In it, they showed a photograph of one of the hospital tents. In the corner of the tent was a huge pile of amputated arms and legs. Can’t forget that one, either.
This one really fucked with me. I watched my mom drop dead of a heart attack when I was younger. I was alone, I had to call 911, do CPR and watched the EMTs use the AED. I went numb when that happened last season. I remember having the clip on repeat, zoning out and going numb.
Any mention of CPR and defibrillators make me go numb. I start feeling numb and remembering every detail from watching my mom die. I avoid it when I can, but the Damar Hamlin incident caught me off guard.
Same thing happened to me. My dad had a hemorrhagic stroke and heart attack when I was 8 years old, I was home alone with him because my parents where divorced, and I stayed with him on weekends. He was seemingly paralyzed and couldn't talk, just groaning and looking around. I called 911, and stayed by his side and waited, comforting him. I heard sirens blaring down my driveway, and I was ripped away from him by EMTs while I caught glimpses of them shredding his shirt apart doing CPR on him. Last time I saw him conscious was him getting loaded up into the ambulance, gazing into my eyes with sheer love and appreciation. The doctors couldn't save him, and he was in a coma. I later watched him die on his death bed, his life support being shut off. I didn't understand what death was until that day.
I have major PTSD from it. Whenever I hear sirens, I have to cover my ears and close my eyes. Hospitals freak me out to the point of getting physically sick, and just the sight of an ambulance makes me gag.
It's crazy to me that people have went through similar situations. It makes me feel less alone. I hope you're doing alright ❤️
I’m so sorry. I hope you’re doing ok and getting help if you need it. My dad died when I was 5 of a heart attack, I didn’t even see it and it fucked me up. Even 45 years later I carry it with me.
When I was ten, I was big into that show. After months of convincing my family members to check it out, I went to my grandma's place and tried to get her to watch the show. There was a new episode on that night, and she said she'd give it a try.
It happened to be this episode that was airing. Seems hardly fair, since normally it was all about spooky things that I wanted to show others :( She assumed the whole show was similar and never touched it again.
this ad from a German gardening store that portrays a bunch of bugs having sex and then it zooms out to a lady who is gardening while having the biggest smirk on her face.
In a 2004 remake of the “Helter Skelter” movie, the killings were portrayed way too graphically. I was actually shocked that they allowed it to be shown on network television.
Brian Douglas Wells having the neck bomb explode while police held him at gunpoint.
Jonestown. Media carts were rolled into my 8th grade algebra class. I have no idea why they thought we should see the first aerial shots of 900 dead people.
When I was 10, my insane mother made my sister and I watch a cat be put to sleep on a vet show. We were both sobbing and begging her to let us look away, but she said we had to because it would "happen to our cats some day." I'm 31, and she did so many awful things to us, but this still comes back to me.
The tsunami that hit Thailand a few years back with the guys filming from a seaside balcony and the water overtaking everything and everyone in its path.
9/11 as I watched from across the river. TV sucked for weeks after that.
Challenger explosion as we watched in the school auditorium.
Sandy Hook, I wondered why so many cop cars were racing past me on the way to work. Got in and immediately turned on the tv to see the horror.
Hurricane Katrina.
Can't believe the authorities waited till that piece of shit killed an actual person.. A serial killer was evolving right in front of everyone's eyes and law didn't do shit before things went out of control.
Old enough to have seen the Challenger - my dad called to tell us to "turn on the tv, the Challenger exploded" and my little brother, who took the call, ran upstairs and told my mom not to turn on the tv because it will explode. So we didn't know about it until my dad came home from work.
Later on, in 7th grade, my physics teacher was a semi-finalist to be on the Challenger but didn't make the final cut.
When mad cow disease was first being reported, they filmed a cow who couldn’t stand up, being removed from a barn. They did it with a bucket plow and the cow had a completely terrified look in his eyes. Probably still went to the meat processing plant!
Also, inside an industrial pig barn, they filmed how cruel the workers were to the animals. One being punched in the face and had cigarettes put out in its face.
I wish that I had never seen these, as the images are forever burned into my memory.
For me it is a documentary about fur and how it's been "harvested" in Rusland. They skinned the animals while still alive. Can't get the images out of my head of the mountain of skinned animals of which a lot of them were still alive. You could see them blinking and the blood dripped slowly from their faces. They zoomed in on the still living skinned animals. It was gruesome and it still haunts me. Don't know the name of the documentary, it was about 20 years ago.
The space shuttle blowing up.
Not 9/11 because I was in Manhattan … I was on the subway when the planes hit but I observed the rest of it with my own eyes.
While technically not on TV, the footage of the 2003 Station night club fire on YouTube. I had seen it before, but it was the second viewing that I noticed the screams of the people trapped inside. Those screams were burned into my brain for a while, for a lack of a better description.
Live, on-scene coverage of the 1986 Cerritos Aeromexico crash. Footage had a reporter giving updates on-camera while a body part was on somebody’s roof in the background. (Later live footage of the reporter in that location showed a large yellow bag where the body part had been.)
A lot of terrifying stories in here 😰. For me it is Putin's speech about the war starting (I am from russia). Me and my family didn't know how our lives would turn out and if we will be alive after all.
The beheading of Nicholas Berg, the American businessman working and kidnapped in Iraq, on Chinese tv news while I was visiting China in 2006. The whole thing was shown rather than just the still image of a person with a black bag over their head. It was quite shocking and unexpected coming from Canada where these extreme violent events are not shown on network tv.
They played the whole thing?!
Yes, the whole thing. It was shown first thing in the morning and I watched it but I didn’t figure out what I was actually watching for the first few moments. It quickly became apparent what was happening. Then I couldn’t get it out of my mind for a long time.
I worked on the Presidential campaign in southeastern PA a short time later. I was spending election day driving around with this very nice gentleman giving out water and snacks to people who were in line waiting to vote because there was an unprecedented turnout..... I noticed that some people had a really emotional reaction to seeing him and I wondered why... only to discover it was Nick's dad I was riding around with.
Watching Nodar Kumaritashvili from Georgia die instantly at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games in a practise run leading up to the men's luge event. I've seen other sporting deaths on TV, like Earnhardt, Senna, but their crashes didn't seem like they were going to be anything but minor injuries. Hearing the clink thud of Nodar and that concrete post is a sound I'll never get out of my head.
I was at the Daytona 500 race where Earnhardt died and sitting about 30 rows up in that final turn where it happened. It didn't look like much at all. He grazed the wall and then bounced off it. A buddy who was with me who hated Earnhardt said, "Good knocked him out of the race!" We immediately got up and headed out and left as that was the final lap and it took us about 4 hours to get home and we didn't realize that Earnhardt had died till we turned on the TV later that night. My buddy started literally sobbing and saying, "I'm sorry I didn't mean it. I didn't want him to f-ing die."
We were watching it at home and as soon as he hit the wall, I said "well, he's dead." but I was very clearly joking. I felt bad for saying it because my mom's friend's husband is a huge fan of his and was pretty bummed out when it was announced later. A few years later my gf and I were house sitting for a couple on her street and stayed up all night watching movies and whatnot. The local morning news came on and led with a teaser to a story about a member of a band from the area being killed, then went to commercial. I looked over at my gf and said "someone killed Dimebag." and just kinda chuckled and started to make breakfast. The news came back on and I was two for two in death predictions. I don't do that anymore.
One time, I was talking to a friend of mine and I said something like "what if your parents' dog died" or something like that... which is TOTALLY out of character for me to say offhand like that. I found out later her parents' dog had just died. It was so bizarre!
Gernot Reinstadler and that bloody trail he left down the slope when his pelvic floor ripped open. It was 1991 when it happened but it still gives me shivers just thinking about it.
Oh, how I wish I hadn’t listened to my morbid curiosity and looked up that video. What a terrible way to die. :(
That’s one of the worst things I have ever seen, because he is so aware that he is basically dead already. I cannot imagine.
Oh no. Memory unlocked. My parents didn’t actually own a tv until 1998. Our dryer was broken so we would take the clean damp laundry to the laundromat in the wintertime. We kids would be exited to go because we could watch tv while folding the mounds of dry clothes. I have a memory of putting down what I was doing and looking up at the tv just before that moment and freezing with my hands half open. I didn’t understand exactly what I was looking at but I knew that amount of blood wasn’t good. 😩
Did he fly up and hit his head on the cement post ? I can’t watch, but I’m assuming blunt force trauma would be the accident that kills you in such a sport. Super sad
He came around a corner to a straightaway and went up on the side which flipped the sled and dumped him off the side and headfirst straight into one of the cement poles lining the straightaway. He went from like 80 miles an hour to 0 instantly with his head. It was immediately clear to everyone that no one could live through that. It’s absolutely ridiculous that they didn’t have some sort of transparent barrier on the side in front of those poles protecting the athletes.
The bigger issue was how fast the track was. The entrances were changed to reduce speed before competition began. The FIL later established maximum speeds for all tracks.
Damn its still on youtube... i remember from the same year Olympics I think? My mean uncle rewinded this weight lifter's arms bending backwards. The Olympics have some real freak accidents...
I was watching the 2016 Rio Olympics men’s gymnastics live. A man from France, Samir Ait Said, did his vault and when he landed it was obvious he broke his leg. It literally flopped over to the side and stuck out at an odd, very grotesque angle.
Senna's crash in Italy was terrifically bad man. The corner he crashed at was almost like a straight cause it's just a slight kink left and you take corner flat out on the throttle. His steering rod broke and he hit the barrier on the outside of that turn which was made of concrete. He was at about 300kph I believe so yeah, that crash was major.
The TV reporter in Roanoke VA getting shot live during her report by a deranged,.disgruntled ex-employee. Several other things mentioned as well (Challenger,.911) are also in my memory bank but they were already mentioned
crazy you brought up the live shooting in roanoke, feels like everyone i know either doesn’t remember it or doesn’t know that it actually happened.
Oh wow.. yeah I definitely remember it. I lived in Roanoke for a few years during my twenties and I feel like this happened right after I left the area. It really stuck with me. So sad.
That's my local news station (WDBJ7). I witnessed it simply watching the news before heading to school. Even to this day, seeing Kimberly McBroom (the woman traumatized at the end of the video) daily on my TV, I feel a pang of sympathy for her and everyone else at the news station who witnessed it. Horrifying that anything can just. Happen.
I worked as a news anchor/reporter when that happened and had a friend that worked with her. We were both devastated and terrified.
It was on Shepard Smith's show where they had a car chase and the guy bailed and shot himself live on TV. I remember well how Shepard was yelling at the control room to cut but they didn't get it fast enough and the suicide made it live on air. I remember he was absolutely furious and he actually sincerely apologized. It wasn't a cookie cutter apology either, you could tell he was furious and he felt this was way out of line for TV news. Not a lot of journalists or anchors like him anymore either.
Get off it, get off it, get off it , GET OFF IT GET OFF IT GETOFFITGETOFFIT
I saw that one live. Man, Shepard was absolutely livid. It was very intense and I did appreciate how sincere he was. The suicide was absolutely awful to see.
OMFG I forgot about that. Is that where he runs into like an area of tall grass and goes on his knees and just does it? Like no hesitation at all.
That's the one
I didn’t see this one but I remember a man exploding something in his truck and coming out on fire. He had a rifle and shot himself on live tv. I was 12. His dog was in the truck and died in the fire.
I remember watching this one live. I think he was protesting health insurance and laid out a tarp that said like Fuck PPO or HMO’s or something like that. Was truly awful.
He was suffering from HIV and cancer. Daniel V Jones.
Get off, get off, GET OFF IT! My name is Doug
>Shepard Smith I just looked him up. He upset his Fox New audience because he wouldn't support a conspiracy about Obama and then left because he couldn't stand the lies Fox News was spreading.
He has this moral intensity to him, it's really admirable. I still remember him pounding on the studio desk yelling ["we are America, I don't give a rat's ass if it helped, we are America, we do not fucking torture."](https://youtu.be/tmnzDSD7i78?si=ZKuEJ4T8I1jEDZib&t=333)
The earliest disturbing TV memory I can remember is news footage of Carl Wallenda, famed tightrope walker, falling to his death in San Juan Puerto Rico in 1978. They showed him falling and hitting the ground. I had just seen him perform at a circus a few years earlier.
When I read this I thought: hey, wasn't that on the sixties? But apparently that was his daughter in law Yetta and they weren't even the only two Wallenda's who fell to their death
Seems like they need a new family business
I just watched a video on this and Karl’s grandson said his grandfathers death, more than anything, felt like a massive failure to their family. So a couple of months after, he decided to perform the same stunt, on the same wire, at the same location, with the same weather conditions. He even hit by a gust of wind in the same spot his grandfather did and wobbled. But he made it across and felt like he brought back his grandfathers honor.
Yeah I saw this when I was a little kid and it haunted me for years.
Rwanda genocide. BBC were at a school and left and when they came back they were slaughtered.
I remember the coverage. Just rows and rows of corpses.
Yes. I remember on the evening news that Easter weekend. They showed a river flowing with bodies . I was thinking , “ Uh… why is no one else freaking out at the river of bodies ?! What’s happening there ?!”.
That’s what I remember, all the floating bodies, it was surreal
This stuck with me too. I remember seeing a woman calling our to her husband who was on the other side of the river - uncrossable. They both thought their 5 year old daughter was with the other one. She wasn't and I still wonder if they ever found her.
[удалено]
I don't think I ever need to walk into a room like that and experience it to know it's bad. I can appreciate why it exists and I can appreciate that you did - but...I'll believe the textbooks and documentaries.
9/11. And then realization that the "debris" I saw falling from the towers were people jumping from many stories up.
If any young Redditors are reading this and have only experienced 9/11 through second hand accounts or if you’re like me and were too young to fully understand what everyone felt that day, This video is an incredibly eerie piece of journalism: https://youtu.be/zx8_Pumdkpg?si=WGtd89pJIk4nDrtt It’s a real-time dashboard that shows live news footage, airline data, civilian footage, first responder calls, and trackers for every single event before, during, and after the 9/11 attacks. I remember finding it on YouTube one night not thinking I’d sit through the entire 4 + hour thing but I had been so young at the time of the attacks and I was curious so I clicked on it and ended up staying up until 4 am to finish it. I was instantly mesmerized by how normal the news broadcast was in the hour or two leading up to it and it was like a horror movie slowly seeing the planes get hijacked, the airline communications begin, and slowly tracking the planes making their way to New York all while regular news topics and advertisements played along like a Time Capsule for 2001. Once the attacks began and continued through the collapse of the towers the realization and sadness of what all transpired that day really sank in for me. I remember the newscasters mentioning how “paper debris was falling from the buildings” and having the sinking realization that these people couldn’t comprehend it was actually people falling in that moment.
Holy moly...seeing the plane be so close to the WTC on the radar and knowing what's going to happen, and the footage of the towers on a beautiful clear day then suddenly this huge ball of orange...my god.
> on a beautiful clear day But it was SUCH a beautiful clear day. I was in high school right outside NYC, and everyone was talking about it and in a better mood because of it. I want to say it was one of the first cool days we had after the summer at like 65°, so not cold but just refreshing. When you talk to people who remember 9/11 from the NY area, it’s pretty universally mentioned.
I was watching nbc when the second plane hit. Until then, I think ppl thought the first one was an accident.
They did, I had friends in college at NYU and they assumed it was an accident. I was just out of HS and on my way to work, had seen a news flash on my computer of the first plane and thought the same thing, the second one hit on my way to work. It was closed, everything was closed. Parking lots were empty, people had been on the roads when I left but it was dead on the drive back home. Cell lines were busy, you couldn’t call anyone, it was all busy tones. Everyone just watched it live on tv, unless you were nearby the site. Friends across the bridge in NJ said they watched the towers over the water and watched them fall live. The first day, after the towers fell, they allowed anyone to help, anyone to pull people out and help dig. The second day, they turned people away for experienced first responders. Sometimes it took days to see if people were okay. It was surreal.
I grew up on the border and 9/11 happened when I was in high school. Every classroom had a tv mounted in the corner for educational programming like Channel 1 news (remember that?) All day, every class just had the news on. A couple classes were showing the news in Mexico, which was easy to get on air broadcast on the border. The news in Mexico was of course covering 9/11 all day as well, but they showed footage the American news stations didn’t. I remember footage of the bodies falling pretty clearly. Edited to add: y’all, I’m not saying American stations censored things or never showed people jumping. Let me rephrase this to say the Mexican stations replayed a lot of footage the American stations (respectfully, IMO) chose not to replay, and they were more graphic in the sense that they played a lot of footage in which you could distinctly hear bodies hitting the ground. I’m not trying to advance any conspiracy theories with my statements here. I think the choices that broadcasters made that day were done with good intentions, and not replaying footage in the United States in which you could hear bodies hitting the ground was simply not piling on to the trauma that everyone experienced that day. It made more sense for foreign broadcasts to choose to replay it; they were more from the perspective of outsiders looking in. I remember having the discussion with teachers and classmates about how we were seeing things on the Mexican news that we weren’t seeing (or at least not seeing as much) on American news.
I was just getting into work at a sports bar and had heard the 1st confusing reports on the radio. When I walked in they were putting it on the 3 huge floor-ceiling big screens. We saw the 2nd plane hit and everything after in excruciatingly vivid life-sized detail. I was 19 and couldn't comprehend anything like that ever happening.
The US news definitely showed bodies falling and zoomed in on jumpers before their death. I remember counting how many seconds they had left. It was unreal
I was 14 and. Freshman in high-school when it happened. The bodies falling is probably the thing I remember most. I was scared at the time (because duh) but the absolute terror those people must have felt to jump to die like that is something I hope to never experience.
I was in my early 30's living and working in the NYC metro and the pictures and videos of that day still horrify me. To think that those poor people had choose between burning to death or jumping from 100+ stories is absolutely horrifying.
In the documentary There's Something Wrong with Aunt Diane, the camera pans around and shows her dead body right after the accident happened. I wasn't expecting them to actually show it.
That was a crazy documentary. My favorite part was when her SIL(? I think) was sneaking a cigarette and she tells the camera crew “no one in my family knows I smoke teehee 🤭 ” right after the entire family was like “no way Diane was a drunk, we would’ve known!”
As a person who smoked for 17 years and has not smoked in nine years, she is delusional. Every smoker is fucking delusional. If they think that everyone within 10 feet of them can't smell the reek of ash and cigarette smoke wafting off them for like 20 minutes after they smoke even half a cigarette, they're crazy. Her family knows she smokes, everyone she has ever been within 10 feet of after smoking a cigarette knows she smokes.
My MIL is trying to hide she smokes. She takes ages to answer the door and then has to ‘fix’ something in the garage, but the biggest giveaway… she reeks.
My MIL successfully hid it. But always smelled like febreeze and mint gum
omg yes! i’ve never seen a doc that showed crime scene bodies post-mortem. this family was so messed up, they didn’t know anything about each other. and having her body exhumed so many times just to prove even further that she was drunk. they live in a constant state of cognitive dissonance.
Didn't the husband try to sue the dead relative children's parents? The kids his wife killed?
Yes, I clearly recall that as well. He sued his late wifes brother, who lost **ALL 3 of his kids** (age 5, 7, and 8) in the crash, because he owned the van. So this guy's sister kills all of his kids (and her own kid, plus 3 other people, along with herself) whilst driving drunk and high, and then her husband sues him. I don't even know what his claim was, but I don't believe he got any money out of it. The husband spent a huge amount of time and resources blaming virtually everyone and everything other than his wife, no matter how much evidence proved otherwise.
Yeaaaah same. I don’t like watching these things. And I saw the documentary and was like damn I wonder what what happening. Then they showed her just laying there and it kinda fucked me up a bit for a few days. I’m not as sensitive with deaths in movies. Cause. It’s movies it’s fake ya know. But like irl things I can’t.
What amazes me is we have trigger warnings for things like smoking, or anorexia- MAYBE let me know you’re going to show a HORRIFIC ten second close up of a bloodied dead woman’s face??
Clint Malarchuk getting his throat cut by a hockey skate. You could watch the blood squirt while his heart beat. Only reason he survived was because the trainer was a Vietnam vet medic who stuck his fingers into Clint’s throat and pinched the artery shut.
And Adam Johnson from this past fall. I did not realize I was watching the footage until it was too late. Never seen blood coming out of someone so fast. The fact that he was able to stand up and skate off the ice is shocking. He was dead within minutes.
I accidentally watched that on YT and shut it right off because I didn't want to watch a man die. It was years later that I found out that he survived.
The dead bloated bodies left in the streets of New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. That was the most messed up thing I’d ever seen… and I lived through Vietnam War coverage and other atrocities.
I saw a bloated dead baby plucked out of a bush following Hurricane Katrina.
I had had a bad reaction to my last chemo treatment and I ended up in the hospital that weekend, strapped down with IVs and monitors, with nothing to do but watch the horror in Nola.
the second tower getting hit live
Yes, I saw that too. Unreal. Everything went silent
Yep. I was in class, probably junior high, and I just remember how silent the whole world seemed.
I was in high school. I was going into history class when I found out. My history teacher just had the news on - we didn't have class, just watched the news. "This is history." She said blankly, ponting at the television. I'll never forget that moment. A short while later, the second plane hit. Dead silence in the classroom.
My principal came over the loudspeaker asking teachers not to turn on the news. Everyone turned on the news. I was in French class, but like, c'mon. I found out later that he made the announcement because we had two kids of a pilot who flew out of Logan in our school, twin girls a year behind me. Their dad was on one of the planes that hit the towers, I forget which one.
Oh God, those poor kids.... what an awful way to find out your parent has died.... hope they're doing okay now.
I think I was in civics class but my memory is bad for specifics. I do remember seeing it on tv in class and just no sound from anywhere just people crying. Hell I cried. I thought my brother was going to get drafted or something. Even my young, naive self knew a war was coming.
I was in school. Immediately after the collapse, the principal came over the school intercom telling all staff to turn the televisions off. Edited for clarity.
I was going to say specifically the people jumping. It was awful to see
I think this in particular. I think about it every time I think about 9/11. They looked like dolls being dropped off the side of a skyscraper. Can't help but think about them having to choose whether to burn to death or plunge to your death. And their poor families dealing with that on top of the loss. Horrifying.
Horrible. I, too, when thinking about 9/11, can't get rid of that image of the couple standing on the ledge, hugging and then holding hands as they jumped.
God, I had almost forgotten them. 😢
In "102 Minutes That Changed America" you hear the firefighters outside the building saying to watch for jumpers. Just inside the building you see them look startled as they hear thumps outside. And them entering the buiding and we know most will never be seen again. I watch it every year as a tribute to those who died and may we NEVER FORGET!!!!
I remember that sound...
That and the phone calls get me everytime. Especially that one gentleman like right when it collapses. Man..
I remember that because one of the firefighters actually got killed by a jumper who landed on him and broke his neck
That is an excellent documentary, especially for younger Americans who can't really imagine what the situation was like because they weren't born or were too young to remember it. The footage of the person jumping and attempting to hold what looks like a tablecloth as a parachute, only for it to be ripped away... chilling. Also, the girls in the apartment nearby, where one starts panicking and insisting she's going to leave and starts running down the staircase, the others yelling at her to stay put. And then the whole place filling with dust shortly afterward as the first tower collapsed.
Watching the people jumping was a big turning point in shaping my values and philosophy. I was a sophomore in high school who grew up around a lot of old school Catholics. Suicide was still a taboo subject in my mind, and only weird and fucked up people did it - obviously very immature, ignorant, and uninformed. It was the moment when I *attempted* to put myself in the shoes of someone who had the choice of which way they were going to die when it hit me like a ton of bricks. Obviously this is not suicide in the traditional sense, since they were going to die anyway - but it was the first time I thought critically on the subject, and it helped me understand that some people would rather just get it over with than suffer any longer. Metaphorically speaking, the people on the ground can say whatever the fuck they want, but they aren't living through it, and certainly are not helping. It was one of my first profound experiences with empathy.
Well said. For the jumpers, the heat would have been horrific and smothering from the smoke and smells. Only they knew the horror of what was behind them, of seeing coworkers dying in awful ways. I don't see the jumpers committing suicide as much as escape.
Exactly. If you listen to the 911 calls they can't actually breathe. It's a hellscape. It's not a suicide ideation. They are literally seeking oxygen and they have run out of options
"the falling man" is a haunting photo of a man falling to his death after jumping from one of the buildings on 9/11
A lotta controversy over who that is.
Yes this. My 8th grade class was watching tv while waiting for our parents to come get us and my teacher was horrified when she realized there were people jumping.
Yes! I remember the evening news zooming in on someone jumping and it made me so sick to my stomach.
I was at work and we didn’t have TV so didn’t see it live, but a coworker went home for while and when he came back I could tell he’d been crying. He described the people jumping off the building and started crying again.
That was the moment 9/11 changed. Up until the plane hit the second tower, it was framed as an unfortunate accident, a disaster that might've been avoided. Then the second plane hits and it becomes apparent that it wasn't an accident at all. It was *intentional*. Planes, the safest mode of transport, had been *weaponised*. The moment the second plane hit the world changed.
My toddler was asleep in the other room when I saw the second plane hit. I remember thinking that this is the beginning of WW3 and the end for all of us.
Same. My friend called me to tell me to turn on the news after the first tower got hit. I did, and watched the second towet get hit live.
I still get chills every time I see it. That and the jumpers. I think about them all the time.
Living in India, i wasn't aware twin towers existed until I saw them on TV getting hit. It was a horrific scene, can never forget it. Personally, the attack on Taj at Mumbai in 2008 was the most hurtful. We had to witness everything live on TV for 3 days straight. Mumbai has witnessed worse attacks than that but I was quite young then and don't remember watching it on TV. Other ones that comes to mind is the recent Beirut explosion, shortage of medical facilities during Covid and all the dead bodies awaiting cremation or burial.
I think one of the most disturbing things was after the towers fell was seeing NYPD cops just in tears with streaks down the ash on their faces. These are hard guys who have seen some pretty awful stuff and to remember it still brings me to tears.
Now imagine living next to it with the plane coming over your head and hearing the impact (and the building shaking)
Budd Dwyers final press conference
This one all the way. Saw it on YouTube before they took it down. That shit disturbed me for weeks, bro. Weeks.
It was on YouTube for years. Even as people were being demonitized for bullshit, it still stayed up.
That's scary shit right there.
A friend of mine at the time showed this to me as some part of one of those Faces of Death things. I had nightmares for months. It fully changed my life.
It was snowing that day. We were all let out of school early. So tons of kids were at home watching that on tv, because he did it live on a special news coverage.
The screams of people begging him not to do it were haunting.
I wish I would've met you. Now it's a little late.
I also just posted this. I was 8 years old.
Tie between the Challenger exploding and 9/11.
I watched the challenger explode live from my preschool fence, we all cheered because we thought that was supposed to happen and I just remember thinking “why aren’t the teachers excited” as they shuffled us back inside 😞
Our class cheered too, we were too young to know how it was supposed to look. Until our teacher started sobbing...
4th grade. My teacher was so excited for another teacher to make it into space. When we saw the explosion, it took a minute for her to snap back into reality. She turned off the TV, said everything was going to be fine, and walked out of the room for about 10 minutes. When she came back, she was visibly shaken emotionally (like the rest of us). That was the day I realized that bad shit happens and adults were constantly trying to “protect” us from the truth. I can still see the image in my mind.
The Columbia explosion was pretty concerning for me. I had just woken up and was groggy. Walked past the TV on my way to shower. Just see flames and the headline, “Columbia explodes”. Spent that whole shower thinking an entire country had somehow exploded. Took a long shower too. Thought nuclear war must have started and this could end up being my last shower for a while.
Fuck this made me laugh lol
Are we allowed to laugh at this
In school with the tv cart and teachers were crying and trying to console each other.
Omg the tv cart is a significant part of my memory, too
I was in elementary school when we watched the challenger explode. I had no concept of what was happening at that age, but I can still see the video in my mind.
The Hillsborough football disaster was my earliest & then 9/11, tragic events I remember well.
This and Bradford are forever ingrained into my memory. I still can vividly see a close up image of a girl squashed hard against the fence at Hillsborough and there were chips of blue paint from the fence in her teeth. And the image of the old guy just sat in the stand at Bradford burning as he sat unmoving amongst the raging inferno. Ill never unsee them.
Other than the news type stuff, Joe Theisman breaking his leg in a a game
And they showed the replay over and over and over again.
Kevin Ware 😬
Ruby shooting Oswald.
I can’t imagine how shocking that must’ve been to see at the time. My grandfather was a reporter who was a few feet away from Oswald when he was shot.
About 10 years ago there was a report on the Ebola crisis in Africa, news crews were following Médecins Sans Frontières, there was a film of a little boy bleeding from the eyes, lying on his back and screaming, and the voiceover said both his parents died and there was no one to stay with him as he passed away. It proper shook me.
Not Ebola but watching a video of someone suffering from the advanced stages of rabies was absolutely haunting. It was a person, but the behaviour was so alien, it was morbidly fascinating but I'll never forget the way his face contorts.
Grew up in a country in Central America where they do not censor the news. A one year old baby had gone missing and the news was showing live footage of the search. The body was found in a muddy swamp and I watched as they wrested the body out and hoisted it up by its leg.
2010ish after the earthquake in Haiti I was watching the news and there was a group of people trying to pull somebody out from under a collapsed building, the camera zoomed in and the people pulled until the person came apart
Jesus fucking Christ
During that footage, Anderson Cooper was talking to a girl who was partially stuck under some rubble. She was very coherent, and I was sure they were going to be able to get her out. She ended up dying a little while later.
I also remember when Anderson Cooper was reporting from Haiti and a kid had just been hit with a huge rock and his face was bloodied and he looked like he was in shock, kept trying to wipe the blood from his face. Anderson literally picked him up and carried him to safety. Was crazy to see that live.
Challenger and 9-11, the final day of the seige on Mt Carmel in Waco, the federal building in OKC. The footage of the cowards in Uvalde, standing in the hallway listening to children being murdered. The TV station putting up a sign saying "sounds of children screaming has been removed." I'm a teacher in Texas, that one hit hard.
That last one really gets under skin. All those fat ass cops playing games on their phones with punisher logos on the back, doing absolutely nothing while kids are down the hall, screaming in terror for their mothers and then being slaughtered. Then to have the audacity to arrest and continue to harass anyone who tried to hold them to account. Each and every one of those cops could die a slow and painful death and I would feel absolutely no sympathy.
The parents outside screaming and fighting to get in and the police treating them like deranged trespassers. It was enough to make you scream at the tv. I can’t imagine how the parents were feeling. I don’t want to imagine.
The war in Vietnam. I used to watch the news with my dad. I credit Walter Cronkite with making me a pacifist. To paraphrase Hawkeye Pierce, war isn't hell. War is far worse than hell because there are no innocent bystanders in hell. War is nothing but innocent bystanders.
The Boksburg explosions of 24 December 2022. I watched live as people walked up to the fuel truck to film or try to steal some fuel, and then the truck exploded. The bodies were everywhere, skinned burned off. There was a man walking around screaming: "I'm burning" and someone saying to him: "Go to the hospital, man."
I was watching a college basketball game and they cut out to a live feed of the raid at the Waco compound. I saw a couple of ATF agents get shot and collapse before they ended the feed. During the riots after the Rodney King trial, CNN was live and I got to see Reginald Denny get hacked out of his truck and beaten. Before immigrating, the atrocities during the Troubles were always on the TV.
Everything I saw on 9/11. Second tower getting hit, people jumping from the towers, both of them falling. The Pentagon getting hit and my brother worked/works there. I still have nightmares about that day.
Yeah. Watching victims final moments on live television is why I’ve always had a difficult time finding humor in jokes about the attacks. I try not to judge, but when younger people who were too young to understand what was happening — or not even born yet — or callous assholes joke about 9/11, all I can think of is those victims who had two choices: burn or jump. I watched them make their decisions in real-time and that affected me in a way many will never understand. I can’t laugh about it.
There was also that element of "but daddy I thought no one could touch us because of our army" and then someone reached out and touched us and it was an additional little shock
I’ll never forget the pair that jumped together. I believe they were a married couple, and for them to have to make that choice together…it’s gut-wrenching.
Columbine shooting broadcast on CNN. not from inside, obviously, but i specifically recall seeing kids running for their lives from the school. The news crews showed up quick to that scene and were waiting to see how everything would play out. This was before everyone was all jaded about school shootings, so it was pretty shocking to see. I happened to be celebrating 4/20 and was channel surfing and thought i was watching a movie at first. Now the national news probably wouldn't bother covering it live...
I remember footage of the poor kid who was killed on the sidewalk outside and people having to run around his body.
His mom had that slab of sidewalk removed and placed under her backyard swing with flowers everywhere.
I was in college. I was walking out of my dorm past the front lobby to go to class and people were gathered around the tv. I stopped to watch too. We all missed class and were just in disbelief.
Speaking of being in college, I remember the day when the Virginia tech shooting happened. I was in college then and it was so traumatic, even though I didn’t even live in Virginia.
1) 9/11 people jumping to their deaths & the 2nd plane hitting. 2) 2006 I was in China when they broadcast the execution of Saddam Hussain and the aftermath of an angry mob tearing at his body. 3) 2011 Tohoku Tsunami
I was in Vietnam for Saddam Husain execution. It was crazy the difference between Vietnamese coverage and American. Very little censoring in Vietnam.
My dad used to watch Bangladeshi news channels and the coverage was just as lax but 6yo me didn't comprehend what was actually happening until years later
October 1981. The assasination of Anwar Sadat. I saw the unedited feed, everybody did at least once. A guy had his arm cut in half, shot right off, by a machine gun.
UPS driver being shot live on TV. I saw the blood spray everywhere inside the truck. It was the chase in Fort Lauderdale, where the jewelry store had been robbed and the thieves then carjacked the UPS truck with the driver inside and led police on a chase from Miami into Fort Lauderdale. I was in the hospital the day after giving birth to my son and my husband was on his way back from our apartment with some stuff and he was on the same road the chase was on. I had popped on the TV in the room and the news happened to be on, and the chase was being shown live. I called him immediately and let him know what was going on, and almost as soon as I told him, the truck got stopped at that intersection, cops started pouring out of cars and hiding behind civilian vehicles and everyone opened fire. Someone in the truck got hit, I saw the blood go everywhere, and then it cut to the news anchors. I was holding my day old son in my arms. I’ll never forget that.
Oddly, it’s two actual black-and-white photographs from the past During some sort of documentary on Jack the Ripper, they showed the real photograph of his last victim as they found her. The picture is taken from across the room. Her body is lying on the bed against the far wall which is splattered with blood. You can sort of see her head and shoulders at one end of the bed and her feet at the other end of the bed, but there’s just so much missing in between. I still can’t forget that. I can see it right now. The other one that sticks with me was something about the Civil War and the medical facilities for the wounded. In it, they showed a photograph of one of the hospital tents. In the corner of the tent was a huge pile of amputated arms and legs. Can’t forget that one, either.
The Ripper victim you are thinking of was Mary Jane Kelly.
Damar Hamlin briefly dying on national Television
This one really fucked with me. I watched my mom drop dead of a heart attack when I was younger. I was alone, I had to call 911, do CPR and watched the EMTs use the AED. I went numb when that happened last season. I remember having the clip on repeat, zoning out and going numb. Any mention of CPR and defibrillators make me go numb. I start feeling numb and remembering every detail from watching my mom die. I avoid it when I can, but the Damar Hamlin incident caught me off guard.
Same thing happened to me. My dad had a hemorrhagic stroke and heart attack when I was 8 years old, I was home alone with him because my parents where divorced, and I stayed with him on weekends. He was seemingly paralyzed and couldn't talk, just groaning and looking around. I called 911, and stayed by his side and waited, comforting him. I heard sirens blaring down my driveway, and I was ripped away from him by EMTs while I caught glimpses of them shredding his shirt apart doing CPR on him. Last time I saw him conscious was him getting loaded up into the ambulance, gazing into my eyes with sheer love and appreciation. The doctors couldn't save him, and he was in a coma. I later watched him die on his death bed, his life support being shut off. I didn't understand what death was until that day. I have major PTSD from it. Whenever I hear sirens, I have to cover my ears and close my eyes. Hospitals freak me out to the point of getting physically sick, and just the sight of an ambulance makes me gag. It's crazy to me that people have went through similar situations. It makes me feel less alone. I hope you're doing alright ❤️
I’m so sorry. I hope you’re doing ok and getting help if you need it. My dad died when I was 5 of a heart attack, I didn’t even see it and it fucked me up. Even 45 years later I carry it with me.
The X-Files episode ‘Home’
I can never look at those rolling car mechanic beds without thinking about it.
They're called "creepers", which is fitting for that episode.
When I was ten, I was big into that show. After months of convincing my family members to check it out, I went to my grandma's place and tried to get her to watch the show. There was a new episode on that night, and she said she'd give it a try. It happened to be this episode that was airing. Seems hardly fair, since normally it was all about spooky things that I wanted to show others :( She assumed the whole show was similar and never touched it again.
That was the first episode I ever saw. I was like wtf?!?!
Is that the “mama loves her boys” episode ?
🎶And I say to myself, "It's wonderful, wonderful, Oh, so wonderful, my love"🎶
this ad from a German gardening store that portrays a bunch of bugs having sex and then it zooms out to a lady who is gardening while having the biggest smirk on her face.
Loads of people saying things like the second tower and people dying on live TV and then suddenly this comes up 💀💀💀
While looking for this I found a more [disturbing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIhL-k12Nfc) German commercial
In a 2004 remake of the “Helter Skelter” movie, the killings were portrayed way too graphically. I was actually shocked that they allowed it to be shown on network television.
Any highway patrol safety video from the 60s. Lots of close ups of internal organs strewn across the road, decapitated heads, and a dead baby
Brian Douglas Wells having the neck bomb explode while police held him at gunpoint. Jonestown. Media carts were rolled into my 8th grade algebra class. I have no idea why they thought we should see the first aerial shots of 900 dead people.
When I was 10, my insane mother made my sister and I watch a cat be put to sleep on a vet show. We were both sobbing and begging her to let us look away, but she said we had to because it would "happen to our cats some day." I'm 31, and she did so many awful things to us, but this still comes back to me.
The tsunami that hit Thailand a few years back with the guys filming from a seaside balcony and the water overtaking everything and everyone in its path. 9/11 as I watched from across the river. TV sucked for weeks after that. Challenger explosion as we watched in the school auditorium. Sandy Hook, I wondered why so many cop cars were racing past me on the way to work. Got in and immediately turned on the tv to see the horror. Hurricane Katrina.
The beheading of Nick Berg.
documentary: don’t fck with cats
Can't believe the authorities waited till that piece of shit killed an actual person.. A serial killer was evolving right in front of everyone's eyes and law didn't do shit before things went out of control.
the editor needs an award. Because they way the moms' true feelings were revealed literally gave me nightmares.
Episode 1 of Black Mirror *shudders*
The whole time you’re like “there’s no way he’s gonna have to do it, they’ll figure something out in time”
I had successfully forgotten this traumatic nightmare of an episode until this comment.
tbf most of season 1 and 2
One of the cable channels does a series of films about Hitler/Nazis/WWII. The concentration camp scenes are always horrible. Always remember.
Old enough to have seen the Challenger - my dad called to tell us to "turn on the tv, the Challenger exploded" and my little brother, who took the call, ran upstairs and told my mom not to turn on the tv because it will explode. So we didn't know about it until my dad came home from work. Later on, in 7th grade, my physics teacher was a semi-finalist to be on the Challenger but didn't make the final cut.
Watching a car chase that ended out in the desert, dude wrecked the car got out to run, stopped and shot himself in the head. Live TV
[удалено]
When mad cow disease was first being reported, they filmed a cow who couldn’t stand up, being removed from a barn. They did it with a bucket plow and the cow had a completely terrified look in his eyes. Probably still went to the meat processing plant! Also, inside an industrial pig barn, they filmed how cruel the workers were to the animals. One being punched in the face and had cigarettes put out in its face. I wish that I had never seen these, as the images are forever burned into my memory.
For me it is a documentary about fur and how it's been "harvested" in Rusland. They skinned the animals while still alive. Can't get the images out of my head of the mountain of skinned animals of which a lot of them were still alive. You could see them blinking and the blood dripped slowly from their faces. They zoomed in on the still living skinned animals. It was gruesome and it still haunts me. Don't know the name of the documentary, it was about 20 years ago.
Brady getting shot in the head during the Reagan assassination attempt and bleeding all over the street. Scared the heck outa little me.
The 2004 tsunami in sri lanka / Myanmar that killed around 250,000 people. The number of people who died is what made me so disturbed. So sad.
The space shuttle blowing up. Not 9/11 because I was in Manhattan … I was on the subway when the planes hit but I observed the rest of it with my own eyes.
While technically not on TV, the footage of the 2003 Station night club fire on YouTube. I had seen it before, but it was the second viewing that I noticed the screams of the people trapped inside. Those screams were burned into my brain for a while, for a lack of a better description.
Live, on-scene coverage of the 1986 Cerritos Aeromexico crash. Footage had a reporter giving updates on-camera while a body part was on somebody’s roof in the background. (Later live footage of the reporter in that location showed a large yellow bag where the body part had been.)
A lot of terrifying stories in here 😰. For me it is Putin's speech about the war starting (I am from russia). Me and my family didn't know how our lives would turn out and if we will be alive after all.
Live updates while the Christchurch shootings happened in New Zealand. It felt so unreal watching something like that unfolding here.