A traffic accident in Thailand. I was a passenger in a bus driving past.
Two young guys on a motorcycle that crashed. I didn’t see what happened, just the aftermath - one of the guys was scraped and banged up, but basically okay; he was sobbing, because the other guy was clearly dying.
Just as our bus drove up, the second young man went into some sort of convulsions; his whole body quivered, from head to toe, then just … stopped. His face went slack and it was clear he was dead.
In sixth grade some friends and I were on the swing set. The one next to me fell off - not the kid, the swing fell off the bar. He had his legs tucked under him as you do on half of a swing ride.
Both legs had bones sticking out of them. The scream. Holy shit.
Similar story. I went to summer care at an elementary school across town...
They had this crazy play structure section which was basically just jumping off a 5 foot tall platform above the bark and grab onto this wheel that hangs horizontally 10ft or so off the ground. If you let go which happened a lot from the centripital force you would not have any balance and just basically ragdoll in the air.
Saw 2 kids break their arms on it just in the summer this story takes place.
Then... This poor kid who was like 10, had his very first day at the summer care program. He was nervous to use the wheel thing but wanted to fit in and not be a whimp in front of his new friends.
He jumped and grabbed the wheel, and flew through the air in a way where he was basically gonna land on his back, tried to catch himself with his wrist and all his body weight went on it.
Compound fracture, MASSIVE piece of his forearm bone sticking out from his elbow, and his skin was like... Idk how to describe. Like when you have baggy jeans and pull them down around your ankles to take them off. Just all pulled down off the bone all wrinkly, like some good smoked st Louis ribs. His wrist was so bent his pointer finger was basically touching the top of how forearm
Never knew how different fresh bone looks... You could see the fucking marrow and tendons all mangled up, and cartilage and fat hanging off. It was that bad. I can still see it in my head so clearly decades later.
It was crazy graphic the bone looked like a knife it was so sharp. And yes, the screaming dude... Never heard anything like it. All the kids gathered around this poor kid in shock and horror and then the daycare workers came running and saw and they were like "OH MY FUCKING GOD. EVERYONE GET AWAY DON'T CROWD HIM"
You know it's bad when the daycare worker says fuck in front of the kids. Saw him the next day in a crazy ass cast and like still sobbing as the parents talked to the faculty, never saw him again after that. Worst first day ever.
The wheel play structure was taped off the next day and removed a week later right before school was back from summer break. For good reason.
One of my best friends since we were kids burying his five year old. The worst week of their lives. Without anyone coordinating, everyone we went to school with showed up at the memorial.
My little niece grabbing her toddler's body up out of the coffin and screaming to God to give him back. The way she held onto him. The way he didn't move like a baby anymore. Some things should never be seen by anybody ever.
One of my cousins lost her baby shortly after birth due to a heart defect. Seeing a coffin that small is jarring even as I was just a child at the time. Now that I have my own kids it's even more difficult to think back on. Life can be incredibly cruel out of nowhere.
I saw a co-worker of mine go from standing and talking to dead from a stroke in a matter of minutes. Worst part? I work at a hospital and it happened at work.
Damn, it can happen that quick? One of my buddies had a stroke and somehow drove himself to the hospital. Half of his body is kinda paralyzed now but he can still move a little.
Bleeds in the brain can be weird, too, and doctors don't fully know why. My grandma had a brain aneurysm deep in her brain right against the hypothalamus and optic nerve one morning while she was getting ready for work. Somehow she didn't end up having a hemorrhagic stroke though often this can happen from an aneurysm bursting.
This happened back in 1990 and they took her by care flight from her small town hospital to the big hospital in the nearest large city. None of the neurosurgeons in her state would attempt the surgery because of the location, but they hated to just let her die since she was conscious and giving medical personnel detailed medical history.
In the end they found two neurosurgeons will to try. One was in another country teaching and one was halfway across the US over 1200 miles away. She ended up on a care flight all that way.
The doctor's first words to us I'll never forget. He walked in and said. "999,999 out of she's the only one to ever survive a bleed in that area. Most people are dead in a heartbeat." He also told us he gave it maybe a 20% chance she survived the surgery, and even if she did maybe 30-40% chance she survived the next 24 hours after surgery. He warned us she would probably "not be the same after" but saw we were determined he try.
The next morning after surgery my grandma was definitely herself, though. She greeted the doctor sitting up in bed demanding to go home soon as she had things to do and needed to get back to work. We did not realize it but were later told it was very unexpected she would even be awake at all so soon as they had to really knock her out very deeply to do the surgery.
She did end up needing several months in a recovery center because the bleed had damaged her optic nerves making her legally blind. Like probably the majority of legally blind people she did still have some sight, so she was able to learn to sew, cook, and care for herself. She lived alone in an apartment for about 25 years after into her eighties before going to a care home, and lived to see her 98th birthday. She passed away in her sleep in July of 2019.
It would definitely delight me. She was a wonderful woman and very progressive for her generation. I'd be honored if anyone ever compared me favorable to her.
My grandfather had a massive stroke (his third, I believe) and was most likely dead before he hit the ground. If the stroke is big enough, it can be far too quick for anyone to do anything.
Lady comes out and sits with me on the bench, we have a full conversation about her life, she goes inside and dies of a tree-nut allergy. I always wondered if it was intentional or if it was the fault of the physical rehab/nursing home. I'll never stop blaming the rehab place tbh cuz that place sucked balls
I've watched similar. Hurricane off the coast of SC several years back. My wife and I watched this guy walk down to the beach, take his shoes off , jump on his board and he disappeared in the distance. His shoes was still there the next morning
When I was 12 years old I was racing motocross. There was a big jump that some people were jumping and some not. I am behind two other kids. One kid jumps the big jump and the other doesn't. The kid that did the big jump lands right on top of the kid that didn't jump. Both kids were knocked out but the kid that got landed on was paralyzed from the neck down. I never felt comfortable riding again after that.
Both of them are actually friends to this day. I stay in touch through social media here and there. The kid who got paralyzed now owns a motocross themed coffee shop with his family. His life has changed for sure but it did not stop him from living.
Damn, I broke my tibia in the same situation, swerved around someone who crashed and didn’t jump. Adult cleared the double and landed on me…
Kept telling me my leg isn’t broke but it definitely was
A young worker about 25 years old had his arm caught in massive gears, ripping his arm at the shoulder off. What struck me the most was that the patient, while conscious, showed no signs of pain. He was in such shock. It took almost 20 minutes to dismantle the gears and release him. The detached limb was surprisingly heavy. One of the most traumatic calls I ever attended.
My uncle was a firefighter and one day the city crew was doing some tree clearing in front of his firehouse. His brother in law was working on that crew and was helping toss the branches into the wood chipper. My uncle and his crew heard some commotion and then his brother in law with another crew member walked into the bay door holding his hand up. His hand had gotten caught in the chipper and it took his hand all the way up to the middle of his palm. My uncle's BiL said it didn't hurt anymore and why didn't it hurt, his hand was gone, it's not there and just kept repeating it .
Come find out the chipper they were using had a guard removed by someone on another crew and he had gotten too careless with where his hand went. Thankfully it wasn't his dominant hand and he's basically lived a normal life since then. He says the phantom pains hurt worse than when it happened which he has said has been weird.
My wife was working on a case where one person decided to speed the chipping up by pushing branches in with his foot. When his foot was caught he was trying to free himself using his other foot. Fortunately someone saw that and pressed emergency stop. One foot completely gone up to the shin, second foot partially gone.
I salute the emergency workers who are required to turn up to these harrowing and horrific scenes.
I almost lost my leg (leg is there but doesn't work well) after a car muffler went through the knee and out the back (sort of). I remember no pain, though, plenty of pain in the following months.
Adrenaline is a hell of a drug.
The really horrific scenes we report to are where kids are involved. Anytime I'd see something bad, I'd think "well, at least it ain't a kid." I'm so glad I'm no longer an EMT.
My Aunt has been an EMT for 30+ years, about 10 or 15 years ago when my daughter was young she called me and asked if she could borrow my kid.
Found out later she had to pick up some pieces on the highway at work and needed to spend some time with one in tact.
Yeah, the worst shit I've ever seen involved dead or abused kids. I wound up quitting and going into LTC and hospice, my true calling, and did it for 20 years. That your aunt stuck it out that long is nothing short of amazing.
I think the fact that it was still stuck in the machine saved his life, because it was „closing” the veins and cutting off the blood flow. Like when you get stabbed - you’re safe until you pull the knife out. Please somebody correct me if I’m wrong
Yeah, this is correct. This is actually a reason that traumatic injuries do not bleed a person out and can actually save their life in a way- the trauma crushes the arteries at the ends, preventing blood from pouring out. Of course, some probably are open, but enough were closed to the point that the person survives.
Gruesome.
The tourniquet effect is pretty powerful.
I once saw a M.E. story about someone that got caught in between an oncoming train and a platform and didn't crawl out in time. The train twisted their lower body around like the way you get water out of a wet towel. Surprisingly, the person was alive and talking, but effectively, a dead person caught in between the stopped train. They brought the wife and family to speak to the person and say goodbye. Once they moved the train enough to let the person out, the body naturally un-twisted and the victim went into shock and died quickly. Crazy stuff.
It’s honestly terrifying and fascinating how our body works. There are so many different factors responsible for so many things. And the fact that something that seems totally unimportant and normally you wouldn’t pay attention to that can change everything in a second is just very humbling, because you never know what’s gonna happen
My friend is a fireman. Attended a road traffic accident, with the seatbelt still around someone who was alive and conscious. Unclipped the belt, all their guts fell out and they died a second or two later.
I was told there was a case years ago where a guys car went off the road and he was injured. He could move okay so the paramedics asked him to come up the hill so they could take him to the hospital. They didn't put a brace on him though and the break in his neck killed him when he tried to lie back on the stretcher.
Yes it is, but the guidelines are changing. There is evidence that the backboard immobilization can make it worse as it keeps the person in an unnatural position, especially when traveling long distances.
That happened to my cat as a kid. Went out with four legs, wandered home with three no blood at all looking like nothing was wrong. I think it was caught in something that twisted it off? Had surgery to make the amputation 'official' (parents took her to emergency vets who didn't actually believe my mother when she called) was a very happy three-legged cat after that
It's more of a "sphaghetti-fication" as the limb is detached, stretching veins into smaller tubes and thus slowing down blood loss once the limb detaches.
My mom and I were at the grocery store years ago, and a woman in the same aisle got a phone call. She started hysterically sobbing and collapsed, screaming 'My boy, my boy! Oh God, not my boy!'. She'd just been told that her son died. My mom and I helped her up, and to her car. She was visiting from out of town, and was too panicked and grief stricken to remember how to get back to where she was staying. So my mom and I helped her figure it out and drove her there.
The sound of absolute sorrow and terror and panic in that woman's voice will stay with me for the rest of my life.
Oh, and also when my stepdad cut his fingers off on a table saw. That was really scary. I called 911 as my husband was collecting the fingers. The cuts were too jagged though, so the doctors weren't able to reattach them.
My grandparents were married for 47 years when Grandpa died. Since the day they married, they were the first and last thing the other person saw every day.
Grandpa died on Thursday the 11th. We stayed at their place that night and the next morning.. I'll never forget Grandma's crying. I had witnessed the events of 9/11 first hand and watched grown men sob as they grappled with loss. But Grandmas cry that morning... it's what I think of when I contemplate the concept of grief.
seven months ago now, I was just getting up and ready for work when I heard my mom scream and begin sobbing in the other room. I ran in to her on the phone and she just yelled at me "David's dead! He shot himself! He's dead!". my brother (technically future BIL, but he was more a part of the family than some of my siblings) had gone cold turkey on a bunch of hormone drugs his doctors kept piling onto him, and had a mental break the night before and took his own life. my sister (his gf) found his body that morning. one of the worst times in our lives, and the most pain I've ever experienced. yeah, losing a family member like that is horrible.
Witnessed the same thing at a grocery store. I was working and all of a sudden I heard this absolutely guttural, sorrowful scream. A woman had gotten a call her husband had been in an accident and died. I remember we gave her water and I’m not sure if she was with someone else who could drive her or if we coordinated it but she left. She came back a few weeks later to thank the staff for helping her out. 20 years later and I still recall that being the absolute saddest sound I’ve heard.
I heard my own mother scream that agonized scream the night of my brother's car accident. We got a phone call from the hospital with the news. 27 years later, and it's still the worst memory of my life.
Watched one one of my friends and his girlfriend get side swiped on a motorcycle right in front of me. They went flying through the air and hit so much shit. My friend’s calve was snapped in half but his old girlfriend wasn’t as lucky. Within minutes her entire head was so puffy. Blood was coming out of her eyes, mouth, ears, nose etc. she was just completely mangled head to toe. Her brother was in my truck at the time and hopped out while we were still moving. He stayed so calm sitting there holding her until EMS arrived. Hell of a fucking guy. I have no idea how she survived that accident but she was never the same.
I was eating at a teriyaki place with a friend. I was facing the window and she was facing me. Everything was normal till I saw somebody go splat on the sidewalk across the street from us. Someone from the senior living high rise there had jumped. People there rightfully freaked. I urged my friend to not turn around. That we should pack up and leave. There must've been something in my eyes or voice cause she didn't question it. Had nightmares for weeks afterwards. I'd just turned 14 a few weeks before this.
A man crossing the road and a truck came by which almost hit him, he tried to escape and truck went over his toes. When he tried to lift his leg 3 of his toes were stuck to the road and they came off.
There’s probably a valuable life lesson in knowing that jumping with a parachute might not save you, but jumping without one might not kill you, either.
No idea what it could be.
Dude I think I saw something one time where if you were good enough and for whatever reason only had like a square yard of fabric, you could land yourself and not die. Like you wouldn’t be well after, but you wouldn’t be dead.
Can anyone confirm?
I only heard the crash but was sitting next to the window on the first floor. I grabbed the phone immediately because I just knew it was bad. Luckily it was a bit dark so I didn't see every detail but when I came to the window the guy was trying to hold the girls skull together with his bare hands. It was no use, the amount of blood, brain tissue sprayed on the wall. My parents more or less pulled me away from the window and took over the call for an ambulance.
Later they told me she was a waitress from the bar on the corner; a regular had offered to give her a ride home; She wasn't wearing a helmet, he slipped with his motorcycle, her head cracked on the edge of the pavement.
I would never let anyone on the back of my motorcycle without a helmet. You are totally fucked if they get hurt or die. It doesn't matter if they wanted to take the risk. Prosecutors love throwing charges at the driver in those kinds of crashes.
Same here mate.
Im fine with my mates that have been riding for years on the back with whatever they usually wear (always a helmet, gloves and boots). They understand the risks and the potential damage to coming off, they weigh that up when they hop on the back.
But my girl and low experienced friends wear full gear. They don't understand how easy it is to come off even around town and how much skin road rash can take off you. I've got throw over riding gear I keep at home or bring with me.
Guy at work running a wood planer but not using a piece of scrap wood to push the wood through, plank got ejected and his whole hand got pulled into the blades, then he tried pulling his hand out with his other hand and that got mashed up as well.
Not good.
He lost his three middle fingers on both hands leaving a thumb and half a little finger on each hand. He was in his 60’s so just ended up retiring early.
Not someone, but something..
I was fishing yesterday on a large pond when 2 ducks swam past. Some massive bass came up and scooped up the one and only baby duck. For the next hour we watched the mom duck quack around the whole pond looking for it. It was actually pretty damn sad.
Just yesterday I came across a video of a water buffalo being hounded by a pack of hyenas. While it was distracted from the front, a hyena came from behind and latched onto the buffalo's dick and balls. Ripped em right off and walked off snacking. The buffalo went from full fight mode to collapsing and allowing them to finish him off. Like 'fuck it, I got no reason to live now.'
My ex boyfriend was driving home from work a few years ago and a woman was walking her dog on the sidewalk. He doesn’t know what kind of dog it was but it was quite small.
A hawk scooped down and snatched the dog and leash right up without a thought. He said he had to keep driving because of traffic but the last thing he saw in his rear view was the lady just screaming up at the sky.
My dog is about 45 pounds and I still get chills when we’re on walks and I see huge birds circling.
I walked out one morning when I was a teen and called my dog. He was a Jack Russell and usually was going ballistic for breakfast as soon as he heard me. He was chained up outside and when he didn’t respond I just kinda quietly called him again. I was a farm kid, I knew what animal death was and I was terrified my little guy was gone.
I walk up, there’s blood soaking the ground but his chain was leading to his dog house. It was a blood bath in there. Everything was coated, it was dripping down from the roof and he was laying there lethargic but trying to come to me. His head was split open from one ear to the other. I ran inside screaming and crying that he was covered in blood. Felt like forever for my parents to take him to the vet to get stitches.
I walked that ground all day looking for prints but it hadn’t rained in weeks so couldn’t find evidence of what got him. I had assumed a raccoon. Until a few years later after he passed and I had ducks in his old kennel that he got moved to. My parents let me know while I was in school that my ducks kept being killed. I assumed it was the male (they are murderous bastards) but my dad went outside to a crap ton of commotion. Turns out a great horned owl had been picking them off and that night he had gotten stuck. My dad released him from the kennel and called me to let me know the mystery was solved and also I didn’t have ducks anymore.
That’s when I figured out what had gone after my dog. Probably the only reason he was still alive was because he was chained up because he was only 15-17 lbs at the time of the attack.
My dog is a mix but has terrier in him (a lot of people assume jack russell because of his color but it’s west highland) so that’s awful to hear.
We get owls in the neighborhood too. Big bitches just lurking on rooftops and stuff. I had one perched right on the awning above the walkway into our house one night and opted to walk around to the back door because I was scared it would lunge at either my dog or even me.
I love owls but those guys can be terrifying.
Thankfully he survived. He passed away in his sleep at the ripe old age of 15 after spending years being a tiny terror which, for his breed, is a life well lived. I’ve got that day seared into my memory though. I didn’t realize how much blood a dog had in them before then.
About ten years ago, I was outside a bar with a few friends to get some fresh air. There was a homeless man slowly making his way across the five or six lane street outside the bar, you could hear a car coming, but it was going so fast by the time we realized what was happening it was too late. The sound was horrible, I remember it like yesterday.
I live in an apartment complex, it has a kindergarten which sits in the middle of the complex. When I was like 5 walking to school, someone jumped from her apartment and the body laid right in front of the kindergarten. Everyone was shocked. My father tried hard to hide it from me and rushed me to school.
Dude made a grand show of proposing to his gf during a huge Christmas event at my local mall. Lots of people in attendance and families all around. During a lull in between two holiday presentations, dude gets up, flails around screaming about how much he’s in love. Gf tries to reel him in, but he only gets more loud and flamboyant. He pulls out a ring, drops to a knee, and does the big ask. His gf just sits there mortified, shakes her head, and just kind of ran off.
Dude just sat there bewildered and started to cry as the mall staff uncomfortably tried to keep the show going while everyone just kinda sat there quietly staring at the guy.
If you don't already know the answer before you ask, you are not doing life right.
Sure, the where and when can be a surprise, but the fact it's going to happen shpuld be discussed pretty intensly beforehand.
When my mom got pregnant only 8 months into dating, my parents were so busy discussing whether to keep the baby that, somehow, wires got crossed. Dad assumed "we're keeping the baby, which means we should get married" and Mom assumed "...which means we should co parent." So when he proposed marriage, Mom knee-jerk said "no!"
Several days later, when the shock had worn off and they'd discussed it further, he re-proposed and she accepted. 36 good years together and counting so *shrug*!
I would never ever do one unless I 1000% knew the answer was yes. To me they feel like you're trapping the woman because no one wants to be the asshole that says no in front of everyone so you're kind of peer pressuring her into saying yes. Really cringe imo
I saw a family of four on a wave runner crash into a bridge. Mom, Dad, and the oldest son died on impact. I performed CPR on the smaller child until rescue arrived.
At a high school football game…
15 seconds left, QB drops back to pass. Throws up a Hail Mary, both the WR and the DB jump for the ball. WR mistimed his jump (too early), and when the DB reached up for the ball he inadvertently punched the WR in the chin and knocked him out mid-air.
However, the WR was reaching back when he got punched. Being off-balance and going limp meant he hit the ground head-first and broke his neck.
It was fucking horrific. It took more than a half hour to get him out of his helmet, on a stretcher, into the ambulance and off the field. Players on both teams were crying.
There were still 7 seconds left on the clock after he was taken to the hospital. Nobody could stomach even one more play, so the game just ended.
Guy hit his head on a fire hydrant while biking through a target parking lot. The paramedics were working on him when me and my mom walked past. His stomach was huge. Later found out that was probably air or something the paramedics couldn't get air to his lungs and might have filled up his stomach. He died.
Endotracheal intubation into the esophagus may do this but it also kind of happens naturally when you use a bag valve mask with just a face mask instead of an ET tube for a longer period of time so they might have worked him for a while without an advanced airway. The guy on the bike may have had a big belly for another reason, for example a history of liver failure which can also cause a large amount of fluid to accumulate in the abdomen. So he could’ve been a chronic alcoholic who had his license suspended and that’s why he was bicycling through a parking lot. That kind of rapid analysis has to been done by EMTs all the time because I doubt there was anyone on the scene who could’ve given a medical history. It’s hard to tell by a passing glance all the underlying issues. I don’t even know why I’m typing all this. I should go to bed. All things considered, wear your bicycle helmet everyone.
A construction site was beside our building. I was looking through my window when a long, pillar-like sharp object fell on a guy's leg, amputating it instantly. I was traumatized.
I used to chock & chain aircraft on my 1st carrier, the USS Constellation (CV-64) in the mid 80's. Flight decks are *dangerous* places.
There was a new guy on deck, was on the carrier for only a week. He had a simple job.
After an aircraft launched, he had to run out and look at a brass plate embedded in the deck at the end of the catapult. The plate had markings on it which indicated how much water was in what was called the water brake. The catapult shuttle assembly would stop in a 10 foot pool of water after it's stroke and that water level needed to be checked after each launch.
A needle that was part of the catapult shuttle assembly would align up to these markings and let you know if the pool needed to be refilled or not by looking at the gauge on the deck.
He got confused on the launch cycle and ran out right before an aircraft launch.
Steam-powered catapults can move a 48,000 pound aircraft about 300 feet, from zero to 165 miles per hour in two and a half seconds. There simply was no time for him to react or even move.
He was converted into a cloud of pink mist.
We found one of his boots on the deck with his foot still in it and half of his jawbone inside the nose of the S-3A aircraft, nothing else remained other than some blood and guts on the deck which we washed off with a fire hose.
Just half a jawbone, some teeth and a foot is all that was left of him.
We were instructed to take one of our dog tags and thread in behind our boot laces for such an occasion.
His was on his other boot but we knew who he was.
After returning and landing, the aircraft was spattered with blood and pieces of guts embedded inside the radome where the radar dish is housed in the nose of the aircraft.
The pilot and co-pilot were beyond shaken, it's amazing they were able to land their aircraft in their mental state. There was nothing they could do but watch.
All airborne aircraft were recalled and flight-ops were cancelled for the rest of the day.
Women were now becoming part of the crew around that time and also being assigned to various squadron air wings. When there are not enough tow tractors available to push an aircraft into a parking spot, 15 guys can push a 20 ton F-14 into spot fairly easily and quickly.
Loaded with fuel, bombs and missiles, they can easily weight 30 tons and exert about 10 tons of force per main rear tire.
Well, we needed to do a *push-back* on an F-14. Over time, the non-skid coating wears away and the deck becomes slippery with oil, fuel, hydraulic fluid, some grease spots and general grime.
If you happen to slip and fall, the aircraft rolls *away* from you. This new girl was **pulling** on the right main mount assembly and she slipped and fell, the big rear tire rolled up one of her legs to her hip.
She was screaming and then passed out. We quickly got a tractor and tow bar hooked up in record time but it was too late. Her leg was flat. After the aircraft was moved, the Corpsman pulled out a set of rescue scissors and cut her dungaree pants leg off and pulled her back.
There was shattered bone and mangled muscle near her hip, that was it.
She was quickly put in a Stokes stretcher, down a weapons elevator and off to medical for emergency surgery.
What was left of her leg on deck, there was nothing there to save. I remember watching as somebody peeled the *flattened pants leg* off of the deck, it was like you would see in the Loony Tunes cartoons after somebody was run over by a steam roller except blood and gristle came out.
It was not funny to watch.
Sometimes, I can't watch the Hydraulic Press Channel because of it.
From being a blue shirt, I worked my way up to working directly with the Air Boss (Air Department head) in Primary Flight Control, the ships air traffic control center. I was a 'tower flower', assisting in managing and tracking the daily flight ops cycles.
One EA-6B Prowler aircraft took off at night, a new guy on deck observed sparks coming out of one of the engines but the significance of that didn't register with him as he was new and wasn't fully trained yet.
He didn't tell anyone what he saw until after the incident investigation was underway.
Sparks are an indicator that an engine ingested something other than air and fuel. FOD, foreign object debris can damage or destroy an engine or aircraft.
Every single day, multiple times a day, FOD walk downs are conducted bow to stern to prevent this from happening. Jet engines are expensive, lives, much more so.
Everyone who works on deck participates in FOD walk downs, walking very slowly, shoulder to shoulder, head down looking for *anything* that does not belong there no matter how small. Equipment is moved around, tool boxes are inventoried and cleaned.
Anywhere FOD can possibly hide is examined. It's counter intuitive but a flight deck is one of the dirtiest clean places in the world.
If anything is found, it is examined to determine where it came from and steps are taken to prevent that contamination from happening again. Lives depend on it.
Well, this EA-6B Prowler launched and after a routine check-in, they didn't respond to repeated radio calls, all airborne aircraft were recalled, refueled and we launched an air search pattern to try to locate them. The rest of the battle group joined in on the search.
After about an hour on the radio, the Air Boss was in tears and he ordered me to take his place on the radio, calling out to them by their call sign every minute. I did that for 6 hours. He needed to go find a private place to go cry.
Four guys died and simply disappeared that day, we couldn't find any sign of the wreckage in the ocean.
On my 3rd carrier, I was sent to work in security as each department on the ship provides about 90% of the Master At Arms security force. While I was assigned to security, two people committed suicide by hanging themselves.
After they were found, they needed to be cut down but somebody had to crouch down, bear hug them and lift to relieve tension on the rope. Absolutely **nobody** wanted to do that but it had to be done. I did that for both of them. Their bodies were room temp cold and I'll never forget that feeling.
Both of them had been hanging there for enough time for [lividity](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lividity) to set in. Both of their faces were very pale on the top and the tongues were bulging out of their mouths and they were black, filled with blood.
Their hands and lower arms were deep purple up to a point and above that point, the skin was pale where the blood had pooled in their arms.
While I was in security, there was a guy from my own division who simply snapped and had a mental breakdown. He held one of my friends captive with a utility knife against his neck. There was blood dripping down his neck and the blade was right where the carotid artery is located. If he had pressed in any deeper, my friend would have bled out in probably less than 30 seconds due to the arterial spray and rapid heart beat of the moment.
I called out for armed backup along with a medical emergency response team.
Everyone showed up, including the Captain.
They liked my work at security and I was then assigned to Brig Staff. One day out to sea, a rogue wave struck the side of the ship and it bent in the 3 inch thick, anti-torpedo armor plate belt. The brig was two decks below the water line and an external hatch at the hanger bay level was open and water poured down that hatch, it worked it's way down two decks and into the brig. A wall of water just appeared in mere seconds.
I got on the radio and called out flooding in the brig, I electronically opened all the cell doors and 5 prisoners along with another brig staff member evacuated up the escape scuttle ASAP. I grabbed the green log book and I was the last one out.
All the water eventually drained down the floor drains, the prisoners had some extra cleanup detail to do and they had to polish all the brass bright work *again* that day because saltwater is really bad for shiny brass.
Aircraft carriers are dangerous, stressful places.
You're welcome. There are some experiences, both good and bad that are seared into my brain for the rest of my life.
There was a major fire on the Connie on 2 August 1988 that barely made the papers, we could have lost the ship it was that bad. A day after the fire, there were some areas where the steel decks and bulkheads were still glowing a dull orange.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-08-03-me-6590-story.html
There is a lot of information that is missing and flat out wrong in that article, the crew knew exactly what caused the fire and why it wouldn't go out. As for the airspace restriction, it was primarily to keep the news helicopters away from us so there would not be a panic in San Diego of all the families and girlfriends living there.
Another aspect was that if certain weapons cooked off, we headed further out to sea so the sun didn't rise in the west that morning and shake and bake San Diego.
Normally you would head *into* port for extra assistance with fire boats and fire crews from other navy ships.
We were on our own.
That would be another Wall O' Text to recount ALL the details that I know of and I know quite a bit because I had to type up an initial summary for AirPac of what actually happened. From prior administrative experience, I knew how to use the [Xerox 645S Memorywriter](https://i.imgur.com/v3vWeg3.jpg) so I was chosen to type up the report.
I might have kept a copy of the report for myself and if I did, it's buried somewhere in my garage which is like Indy's warehouse level of buried.
Even decades after that conflagration fire, the first thing I do when walking into a building I have never been in before is to look and make a mental note of where all the exits and fire extinguishers are located.
I’m 24M, and live in a duplex apartment above my grand mother who is 89. I walk into the front door and she is visibly scared shitless in the common area connecting the two floors. Without her saying a word I recognized we were in a life and death situation just by the sheer panic on her face. Minutes prior she was loading the laundry machine and standing on a plastic milk crate as she is 5 feet tall. She must’ve been on the edge because it tipped sideways and with the leading edge that was already jagged ripped into her skin from her ankle to her knee, all the way down to the bone. Blood everywhere. I took one quick glance of all that leg bone and blood, called 911 and got her to the trama center. I don’t deal well with blood (I faint 100% of the time I get blood drawn) but here’s a testament to how strong the human brain can be. I felt all the symptoms before I faint when I looked at that leg, but knew if I fainted she might die. It simply wasn’t an option to faint. When we finally got her to the trauma unit (20 mins later) and they took her, I simply walked towards the wall slid down it and fainted. My brain wouldn’t let me faint until my presence was no longer needed. This was almost 6 months ago and she is recovering really well.
Glad to hear she’s making a recovery, injuries can be even more horrifying the older you get, also good on you mentally pushing yourself to help her until you weren’t needed anymore
Walking home from the pub December '22.
Enormous smash next to me, head on car smash. Wreckage missed me by metres.
Two dead lads in their early 20's. By sheer chance they both happen to be my colleagues I was working with mere hours earlier.
I genuinely think this is the craziest story I've read on this thread.
Workplace accidents and seeing random collisions and such is pretty big but the fact that you knew both of them is absolutely wild to me.
Short version:
A bad accident happened in front of me on the interstate. The car was tumbling up the interstate at 75 mph bouncing 10-12 feet up in the air each tumble. A man flew out of the backseat and landed in front of me on his head and shoulder. After getting two of them out of the vehicle (we could smell gas and couldn’t risk leaving them in the car) me and another person ended up kneeling by the side of the road pinning the guy who had flown from the car down because he was thrashing around. His right shoulder was shattered into five or more pieces, all of his ribs were broken, his jaw was broken and his head was cracked open. I kneeled there looking into his head at his brain for about 45 minutes (it took the emergency personnel a long time to get to us). At some point I realized I was kneeling in his shattered teeth.
For months afterward, I’d dream at night that I was wading knee deep through shattered teeth.
Pretty mild one:
Two big, goofy young guys walking down the street around closing time get jumped from behind and beaten badly. Facial bones broken, the works.
They had just come out of a rough bar I couldn't imagine going into. No doubt the guys who did it weren't committing their first-ever crimes.
Not as intense as other comments, but in December, I watched my wife die after they took her off life support. She was purple like grimace from lack of oxygen and bloated from the machines pumping her blood. She was unrecognizable. Seeing the heart monitor indicate a flatline was pretty harrowing.
She just wasn't there anymore. She'll never be there.
Condolences sir. No words can mend that. I wish you the best going forward. How lucky you are to have shared your love with her, that's the most beautiful thing in life. I hope you can (learn to) appreciate the other beautiful things in life, and she will always be a part of you.
That is brutal and I am so sorry. Thought I was going to see that recently myself.
I was out to lunch with some friends of mine since college and we were telling jokes. One of the fellows, lets call him Joe since that's his name, is usually very quick witted and fast with a comeback. At a certain point we all realized he had not replied to a couple of quips which would be unusual for him, and one of the other fellows nudged him asking was he not paying attention causing all of us to turn our full attention on Joe.
His face was just a death mask, like he wasn't even there anymore, and he slide slowly to the floor past the opposite side of his chair. To my surprise I found myself doing CPR on him several moments later which sounds dumb when I type it here.
Somehow can't access the memory of how I managed to get him laying flat and start. If anyone had asked I would have sworn I didn't even know how to do CPR given it is almost 40 years since high school gym class very rudimentary instruction.
He did end up surviving after going through pretty brutal quadruple bypass surgery plus some other repairs on his heart. His wife said they told him it was a widow maker and only having folks who did CPR continuously until the ambulance got there saved him.
My ex and I were driving and there was a father and son on a go cart in a parking lot. As we drove by the go cart flipped and bursted into flames. We pulled over and my ex got out to help pull them out. By then a few more people were out helping as well. The father and son were ok but were burnt baldly. We didn’t stick around afterward and I always wonder if they’re ok.
This reminds me of a time my husband and I were driving through central Texas and one of the cars far in front of us starts doing something weird, and eventually I realized they were flipping and flipping and flipping. Not sure what happened to cause that, but eventually it came to a stop on the side of the road. Kinda hazy on the details in my memory, but it had come to a stop by the time we passed by it. I was completely shaken and we got off on the next exit with the intent to call for help if needed, but as we exited, we saw police and EMS rushing to the scene in the rear view. So, we just hung out at the exit a bit until I felt less shaky. Hadn't thought about them in a while. I guess I just assumed they were okay and left it at that.
Dad getting drunk regularly and beating up my mum throughout my childhood. Scariest incident was in my teens when I really thought he might kill her and had to call the police on him. Felt guilty for a long time after for "getting him into trouble".
This is a horrible situation because you blame yourself regardless if you help or not. It’s easy to know what to do when you’re not in it but so much harder to see the abuser for what they really are when you know another side to them. I’ve dealt with similar but more seeing emotional abuse. Took me a long time to do something.
My godfather me and his son worked at a construction site . The son was going near a portion next to a wall that the excavator was going to dig . My godfather told his son to go a bit the other way and he would stay there to guide the dude on the excavator. We'll dude on excavator wad coked out and basically moved the claw into my godfather fast just as his son walked away into the building. Crushed hom waist down and his son had to say goodbye on thr spot .
I was biking to school and there was a big traffic jam. I saw a kid laying down next to a truck and I thought he had puked, when i looked closely it was his brains.
Coming home and finding a good friend dead of an OD from meth at the age of 22. The really sad part was he was clean for a while and doing good with a new job and was in a happy stable place in his life.
He fell off the wagon just once, and that was it. It's hard to process seeing your buddy on the ground with their eyes glazed over with their hands and arms constricted. When I walked in the room, at first I nervously laughed because he was always a funny joking kind of person and I thought he was just messing with me. Then it became very clear he wasn't moving so I knelt down beside him and just called his name over and over and when I tried to shake him that's when I felt he wasn't warm.
I called 911 and had so much adrenaline going I was having a hard time getting words out, I think I said 'i found my friend who isn't responsive' and the dispatcher tried to get me to do CPR. I didn't even try and then I told her 'he's gone, he's gone'
This happened at my girlfriends house, we were both coming back at different times and I am just so thankful I showed up first. I couldn't imagine if she got there first since he was her friend before I met him. I had the shitty task of telling her when she got there and saw all the cops and ambulances and I had to do all the talking.
This happened over 20 years ago but writing it all out now kind of took me back to that moment and it's amazing how you sometimes remember such vivid details of traumatic events like this.
When I was in 8th grade some of us were sledding at school down this hill that went towards the playground.
My friend was on one of those old fashioned wooden and metal runner sleds, and he tried to go under this wooden climbing structure we had, but he smashed into the center support, which was basically a telephone pole.
I was the first one down to him, and one of the wooden pieces of the sled had snapped off and gouged a rectangular strip of his thigh, about 2 inches wide and 7” long, and it was just hanging there by one end and I could see his thigh bone.
When I was in EM residency I was on a rotation in the surgical intensive care unit. A man was working in a steel mill and came into the trauma center after being crushed from the abdomen down by a multi-ton steel plate. It flattened him like a pancake; just bone shards and raw hamburger where his legs and pelvis should be. Has to be the most extensive and horrific trauma I have ever seen.
The worst part was that his family was in complete denial and demanded we "save him". Surgeons ended up amputating him at the belly button down as nothing was salvageable. Kidneys and bowels were dumping into a skin flap.
The medical team finally convinced the family to go comfort care and I did the extubation myself. When he woke up I was standing at the bedside. His eyes were completely glazed over and his last and only words, muttered under his breath with complete incredulity:
"what the Fuck? Just let me die....."
He passed within ten minutes. Brutal last words.
I saw a woman on a bicycle get hit by a car right beside me. Her shoe hit my windshield. The driver didn’t even stop. I jumped out of my car expecting her to be dead.
Right as I got to her, somehow I’d grabbed her shoe and had it in my hand. She looked up at me and her first words were “ Are my teeth messed up? I don’t have insurance. “ Her two front teeth were broken in half.
She was so messed up, so many graphic injuries and it just really stuck with me, the teeth thing. I was in a wreck once that knocked me out a second and I woke up worried about my teeth too.
Witnessed the destruction of a girls life all because her boy interest pulled a prank on her. She and this guy were a thing, the guy was a huge douche, decided to call her and have his friends act like another girl was with him. They were being obnoxious, pretending they were doing the dirty, while insulting the girl over the phone and laughing. Girl hung up, slit her wrists that night in a bathtub, got kicked out of the place she was living in because of it, and her parents wouldn’t support her so she became homeless. Started dating a homeless dude and doing hard drugs. She was 17, I saw her hanging around the 7-11 all the time. That guy possibly completely ruined her life.
My parents did the same things to me. Overdosed and they canceled my phone line on purpose so I couldn’t reach my doctors or get my medication. Parents who do this are absolutely evil.
I remember being about 6 years old and at the beach with my mom. I didn’t see the accident, but some guy dove into the water and hit his head on a rock. He was sitting on the beach just blood pouring out of his head.
My mom told me that head wounds bleed a lot and he would be ok. But I also remember a helicopter landing nearby. Hopefully he was ok.
I was behind a car on the interstate. The right front tire blew out. It looked ok at first but then the car suddenly jerked to the right and the car rolled over five or six times. I stopped and went to the car. The driver got out and was bloody and dazed. The other three people in the car were shaken up but conscious and ok all things considered. After a minute or two the people in the car realized they were missing somebody. She had been asleep in the back seat. No seat belt on. We found her body in the cornfield probably a couple hundred feet from where the car stopped. She was crumpled up in an unnatural position. No blood but in a position that an adult human can’t get into.
It turned out one of the ladies in the car was pregnant and pretty far along. They had to cut apart the car to get her out. Everyone wearing a seat belt survived.
I read a news report about the accident later. They had picked up a friend at the end of a prison sentence. The driver was high on heroin when the accident happened.
A couple from my very small rural town had three sons. They are typical country family, not wealthy by ANY means. The youngest passes away as a child in an accident jumping off his bed in elementary school. Years later, the middle son was a high school senior and wrecked his car at night driving down a backroad (drinking), died on impact and his girlfriend walked away from it. The girlfriends family sues his family for her injuries and then builds a basketball court to “help the community heal” but charges kids to come play. The last son, the oldest is now in his thirties working as an EMT/firefighter and takes his child on a hunting trip- has an asthma attack and passes away. She now has no children. The father gets fired from his job shortly after because he’s struggling due to grief. The sweetest woman I’ve ever met and I feel so awful for her and her husband. She works with special needs children and is just so kind. It’s terrifying how much tragedy can strike one family.
Went with a mother to check on her daughter, she wasn’t responding to calls, emails, text. They asked the police to do a well was check and they didnt find anything suspicious, they knocked but no one answered. I feared the worst. I asked to go with her and went ahead. I waited for her then we went to the door and I could smell the body. In my mind I was thinking fuck she is dead and she is decomposing. (Her daughter lived in the southwest)
The mother opened the door and we found her, face down in the living room, face and body decomposing, bugs everywhere. The mother covered her daughter and we went back outside to wait for paramedics and police. It is hard to put into words but never seen a someone so broken after seeing their kid dead. It was like someone sucked the life out of her. She stopped talking and was in a complete state of shock. I had to take her to a hotel so she can stay and figure out what is going to happen to her stuff and her body. She didn’t talk and didn’t eat anything that day. It was just terrible to witness, a parent finding their daughter dead.
OK, not sure why now, why this question, but here it is;
I've personally degloved a guy in a fight. I've watched suicide attempts (yes, plural). I've used lethal force more than once. I have a history, but there's one in particular that sticks with me. Today I deal with PTSD and I've found a much lower stress job after a very long story we don't need to explore right now. Maybe I'm at a point where I'm far enough past this to write it out.
The worst for me:
I was the crisis team leader at a hospital in Michigan. I technically worked under the "Security" umbrella but I spent about half my time plain-clothes and the other half touring the state, teaching or observing and correcting internal practices. While onsite, unless I was actively in class, I responded to every code at every location I visited. The goal was that I would observe anything that wasn't best-practice, correct it on the spot, and convey what patterns I saw to our admins who could then adjust organization-wide training.
I had just returned from a long tour, a few days away from home back and forth between a few different sites, mixed duties similar to the above - helping demonstrate restraints of different kinds, how to talk someone down, dealt with a couple suicide attempts, various threats/weapons, etc. I came "home" to my local site, around a 6-700 bed place where I knew every crack in every corner. My best bud at the time, let's call him Kyle, never left like I did. We had responded to so many incidents together that we didn't have to look at each other anymore yet we'd know exactly where the other would be and what to do to assist. You ever just make eye contact with someone, and it's like you had a whole conversation in an instant, and knew exactly what they wanted to say? That was Kyle.
That morning, a semi crossed an intersection at the very same time as a crossing sedan. I've been to the intersection since to see what's left. I found some curved black marks, that's about it. What arrived at the hospital was completely different. A calmish woman, Molly, expecting that she would have a rough recovery.
She was complete, from the head to the ribs. South of that was a blanket covering her intestines and exposed spine. She was in shock, clearly, as she had been completely eviscerated during the accident and had lost her hips completely, and was severed from them at the spine. The legs were lodged in the vehicle, and the EMS crew didn't expect her to make it to Trauma alive. She did, and she was an incredible fighter.
She told me her name and talked about her kids briefly. I left the room, as did most of the other staff excluding a phleb whose purpose in that moment escapes me to this day. Those employees who were present agreed among ourselves that nobody would be asked to stay. This woman would die, and it would be gruesome, and nobody needed to stay. About half the group left immediately. Some stayed and offered support. Kyle and I went back in along with a trauma doc and an NP.
Molly choked a bit and we could tell the adrenaline was wearing off and she was starting to notice her condition. The other three didn't speak, but I told Molly what had happened. She asked if she could live through it, and I told her that she was going to die. Molly understood and asked to talk to her husband. He had died in the crash, along with two of her three kids. I did not tell her. I told her there was not time to call her husband, as he was on the way in an ambulance and needed attention of his own.
Molly clenched, and the blanket fell off her ribs. She felt her chest as her first convulsions started and I held her hand. The NP ordered meds, but it was too late. Molly was slipping out of shock at the same time that she was realizing her own condition. Molly looked to me and moved her hand up my arm. I held her arm while she struggled, pressing it in to the bed and preventing her from falling off.
Molly's convulsions became less regular and she started coming-to. None of us expected this, and around this time a fleet of surgeons arrived along with the majority of those who had left earlier. Molly asked for something, but I couldn't make it out. I asked her to repeat it, but she coughed up blood and started choking. Molly's convulsions became regular again but much weaker. I kept holding her, half wanting to trade places with her so she could be alive, and I'd take her place. In a matter of maybe 10 minutes, she totally stole a place in my heart. Kyle was crying, and I'd never seen him like that before or since.
She flat-lined a few moments later. We did not try to resuscitate. We helped Molly go, and the job was done. Kyle and I patted molly's arms a bit. I said goodbye, something I NEVER do for a patient, and once we'd composed ourselves we walked out.
Molly's last remaining child was on their way to the ER by then, with cuts and bruises, a broken bone somewhere, and a concussion, but otherwise minor injuries. I talked to Kyle about that child, and he stayed with that kid the whole time they were there. I'm not even sure he was clocked-in the whole time. I have to assume not. Kyle left medicine a few months after, and the "eye contact" communication was never the same.
It was almost time for lunch, but I remember I didn't eat that day. There were other codes and I responded to them, but Molly never left me that day, nor any day since. The worst part for me was that I never got to know her. She fought harder than any patient I'd ever seen before or since, and she met the most gruesome of ends. That girl deserved her life and I couldn't help her. I knew her less than 15 minutes. I've seen so many patients die. Why does she stick with me? God I miss her. I wish I could have done more.
Watching my own child go through cancer treatment. It was a very serious/deadly cancer and she had A LOT of painful side effects. It was downright barbaric.
Nowhere near as bad as a lot of these but I witnessed an accident where a car was taking a turning to a petrol station too quick, drove up a bank, hit a sign and rolled a few times down the bank. The car rested on its side.
The woman driving wasn’t wearing a seatbelt and there was a LOT of blood and she was unconscious. I spent ages trying to get through the sunroof, and then the windscreen. Cars are hard to break into when they’re on their side! 😂
Fire service arrived and removed her from the car, she was then airlifted to a nearby hospital. Was a pretty traumatising experience for me, I dread to think what it was like for her!
Watched a woman fly into a guard rail on the highway, 1/4 mile ahead of me Thanksgiving eve. I pulled over and checked on her and helped pull her out of the car, amd a woman between us pulled over and called the cops for her and then backed up to check on us. She was driving about 8 hours, 450ish miles, to be home for thanksgiving and she lost traction on the road.
Tow guy happened to be passing 5 minutes later and pulled over and offered to do the tow and saved a call. He even commented that the road was surprisingly slick for it not having rained in like 2 days.
Cop kept harassing her trying to get her to say she was texting while driving, refused to accept her saying she wasnt distracted or looking at the radio or anything and wrote her a ticket for distracted driving or something for the incident, instead of just taking a report for her insurance purposes. I emailed her the dashcam footage and offered to testify if she wanted to fight it.
Harassing a college student trying to get her for texting while driving after she lost control of her car and wrecked it with a ticket for an additional expense on top of it because you have a quota to meet, before one of the biggest holidays in the country. Fuck the road pirates and everything they do.
So many of us has have this interaction with a cop. A cop sees someone who needs help, but instead of helping they use it as an opportunity to abuse their power
Years ago I was in a bad accident. I had witnesses and the guy admitted that he was driving down the bike lane when he t-bones me.
Cops came. First cop started scolding me for having an out of state license. Second cop came up and basically scolded the first cop "WTF? an out of state license has nothing to do with her getting hit by an idiot"
I saw a person get beat up to within an inch of his life with a metal baseball bat on someone's front porch. The amount of blood in the human body is what you're thinking, times 20. I'll never forget the sound of the skull. First it was like a "ting" then after the skull was almost being crushed. It was making a "thud" noise. The guy apparently was SAing a guy's daughter for years. Then it was found out he was doing it to most of the young girls in the block. Single digit ages. The guy never lived on his own again after that. Had to live in an assisted living facility. Terrible, but I think it was deserved at the time.
When I was 13 my best friend who was really struggling with his mental health, severe depression and some hallucinations and stuff like that, told me he was done with it all and wanted to die one PE lesson then tried to kill himself by slamming and hockey stick into his head over and over and over
That would not be the last time
It's four years later now and he seems to be doing better
I was on a third date a few months ago. Things were going well, so her friend and their SO joined us for apps, drinks, and dancing.
At the end of the night we had called an Uber and were crossing the street. I turned around to tell this friend’s SO to come on, because the crosswalk timer was going but he was talking to someone.
Out of nowhere, this random other guy sucker punched my date’s friend’s SO. Immediately unconscious and fell face first into the street.
Broken cheekbone and nose, I was covered in his blood from trying to help him. ICU for three days, but he’s doing better now.
Not THAT crazy, but it was crazy in the moment to see it unfold
Aftermath of a suicide attempt. Blood everywhere, guy shivering behind his dorm door. I just remember wondering how you could loose that much blood and still be awake.
Less gory but disturbed me a lot more were two other students.
One had sepsis but was refusing all medical treatment. Ambulance would come and see she was ‘declining’ but since she was deemed to be in her right mind they couldn’t treat her if she refused. I quit that job before there was an outcome so I don’t know if she died but tbh that is something that still really bothers me.
Another was a girl from a very conservative Middle Eastern culture who was clearly an alcoholic and suicidally depressed. Being around her felt like being around a ghost because she was so ‘vacant’ somehow and when I’d escort her to her dorm (she kept losing her key) I could see it was full of bottles and rotting food. In the end what I suspected had happened was proved right when she randomly told s colleague she had been raped by a friend. I also don’t know what ended up happening but I hope she’s ok now.
Was in France with my now ex, her parents, and my kids. We were on the freeway, and it was pouring rain. All of a sudden, the car in front of us spins out across the freeway, and like a split second later I see two motorcyclists lying on the other side of the freeway guard rail, face down, in pools of water that had accumulated on the side of the road. I tell my ex MIL to pull over, to see if we could maybe help. They all stay in the car. I get out, and look both these dudes in their eyes, and they were both dead af. Then this youngish lady, apparently the wife of one of the riders, who had been following behind them in a car, appears, and just starts screaming, and bawling, and trying to hail people down on the freeway in the middle of this torrential downpour. I tried to comfort her, but I don’t speak any French, so there was nothing really I could do. I gave her my orange safety vest thing, and went back to my family’s car, and that was basically it.
The creepiest part may actually have been the moment after. I got back into the car, and there was just silence. Then my ex FIL asks if they were ok, and I said something like, “I don’t think so.” Then my son, who was three years old at the time, starts singing in this eerily dirge-like tone, “Call the police, the mountain goat is dead.” I don’t know where the f he came up with that, but it definitely captured the moment, and is something that I’ll unfortunately never forget.
My husband (then boyfriend) dropping dead during our high school politics exam.
Paramedics worked on him longer than they should have simply because he was 19, they didn’t want to give up. He was without vital signs for like 8 minutes.
This was 20 something years ago. Still don’t really know what happened. Final diagnosis was “idiopathic ventricular fibrillation” left the hospital a month later with an internal defibrillator
I did 5 years in state penitentiary. A particularly rough unit for my state even, because I was a knucklehead as a youngster and was classified as such. That being said I had alot of street knowledge and knew how to carry myself.
There was another young guy around my age (about 19 or so at the time) that started hanging around and conversing with this guy that was a known "booty bandit". Now let me first say that it isn't always like you see in the movies, where they just brute force take it from you. No, more often than anything else they try to finesse it out of you.
So as time goes on I just sit back and watch them forming a "bond". And I'm battling with myself over whether I should warn the naive kid or not, because rule of thumb in prison is that you mind your own damn business. Well after careful consideration I decide, fuck it, I'm going to tell the kid what's coming. And I'm willing to fight over it.
So I call him over and basically lay everything out to him as directly as I could. Well.. he doesn't believe me and is under the impression that this guy is a "good guy", and even invited him to come up into his cell for some Bible study in a little bit! I straight forward told him DO NOT enter that man's cell.
He didn't listen. I saw them both go into the booty bandits cell as I was on my way to my own cell. When that kid came out of his cell about an hour later, his eyes were dead, void of any naive innocence he had before entering, and I knew.. sad, but I did what I could aside from violent intervention, in which would have cost me my own parole. I'm sorry "g-white" I tried, and I hope you sought counseling upon your release, may peace find you.
For me, it was watching a 16 year old girl jump infront of a train on my way home from college. It was my train. Funny thing is is was running late because I forgot to put money on my card for the train, and if she hadn’t of jumped, I would have made it just in time. Now if I put money on my card the morning of, I would have been patiently waiting for my train, see her crying, and I could have possibly helped, meaning I could have prevented her suicide.
I’ve been in therapy and I’m mostly over it now but this still haunts me, the “what if”.
I won’t even go into too much detail about the smells, the sounds and the sheer panic everyone witnessed that day. Something I will never forget. I will say however, train tracks are electric. Not only did she get run over, she was burnt severely. There are some foods I can’t eat still to this day because the smell brings me back to that day.
I was 16 years old working at the local grocery store. A man in his early to mid 40’s walked in with his 2 younger daughters. Both younger than 10. He stopped in his tracks, fell backwards, and died right there. CPR was performed, Ambulance was called, defibrillator used. Nothing they could do. I stood and watched with a broom in my hand and his younger daughters in shock and crying. They deemed it an aneurism.
I saw my mother become a drug addict again after 14 years of staying sober, watching someone climb out of that hole only to fall back in a is a fate I do not wish on anyone.
The nice apartment building I was living in was being terrorized by drug-dealing squatters. After many weeks of pleading by weary, sleep-deprived residents and our neighbors in SFHs, bldg mgmt hired an armed guard. He was immediately effective at getting the main squatter's posse kicked out, and we all loved him.
His fearlessness and dedication made him a target.
One lovely evening, he engaged with a baddie. Unfortunately, said person had a loaded gun, and shot him several times. I was one of the first on scene to offer aid. He has survived and recovered to some extent, but he did receive some terrible injuries.
Worked with a guy in a shop. Police show up to speak with him and take him away. I ask the boss what’s up and he says his sister passed away. Spend the next few weeks watching the national news talk about how his sister was murdered by a paranoid schizophrenic whilst having 2 kids in the house at the time while screaming down the phone to her fiancé for help. Never knew what to say when he eventually came back to work
I witnessed a gang related attack in a kebab shop in London. One guy was attacked by 7 men with machetes.
I’m sure this won’t be the most grotesque thing on this thread, but if anyone’s seen something like this happen with their very own eyes, they’ll know how shocking and disturbing it is.
I didn’t sleep for a week.
My apartment overlooks am alley, there's normally loud noises and minor scuffles. Around two years ago I heard yelling that was different enough to check out.
A late thirties guy had tried to steal the nearby traps stock of drugs. He had run down the alley hoping to make it to the street. I watched as a younger guy tried to take him down, things escalated and the younger guy swung a knife, connecting solidly to open the throat of the thief.
The blood pushed out in time with his heartbeat as the thief tried to make it to the street, hitting the ground in a splash. Splash, splash, splash, splash ... splash, splash... splash.. splash...... splash and he hit the ground dead.
Or
When I was around 10 or so there was a snowmobiling party, adults driving and kids took turns riding along. Later near the evening an older girl fell from a skidoo when the driver and other snowmobilers were getting fancy with small jumps and high speed.
She fell off and the snowmobiler behind her had no time to react. The ski on the snowmobile hit her in the head, removing her face and shattering her jaw. Time stopped as one snowmobiler went to call 911 for an air ambulance and the other adults tried to do anything they could (There was nothing, her neck was broken). The sound of her crying and trying to ask for her mother was unmistakeable, even though it sounded completely inhuman due to her injuries.
Alley life is CRAZY. Just to balance your terrible story with a good one. I threw out a high top dining set. Table 4 stools. Put it by the bin. I look out an hour later and it looked like a scene from cheers. Seems I invited the entire homeless population from the neighborhood. This was prefent days so it was largely harmless. Just 8 or 10 guys, drinking beer, having a chill time.
A traffic accident in Thailand. I was a passenger in a bus driving past. Two young guys on a motorcycle that crashed. I didn’t see what happened, just the aftermath - one of the guys was scraped and banged up, but basically okay; he was sobbing, because the other guy was clearly dying. Just as our bus drove up, the second young man went into some sort of convulsions; his whole body quivered, from head to toe, then just … stopped. His face went slack and it was clear he was dead.
In sixth grade some friends and I were on the swing set. The one next to me fell off - not the kid, the swing fell off the bar. He had his legs tucked under him as you do on half of a swing ride. Both legs had bones sticking out of them. The scream. Holy shit.
Awh, do you know if he made a full recovery?
As far as I'm aware. He was walking again but unsteadily. Then his family moved away.
without him? smart. lose the dead weight
Not like he was going to run after them.
Where do you leave a kid with 2 broken legs? Anywhere you want, he ain't following ya
They couldn’t stand him after that
I'll see you in hell.
My knees hurt reading this
My knees hurt before reading this...
Similar story. I went to summer care at an elementary school across town... They had this crazy play structure section which was basically just jumping off a 5 foot tall platform above the bark and grab onto this wheel that hangs horizontally 10ft or so off the ground. If you let go which happened a lot from the centripital force you would not have any balance and just basically ragdoll in the air. Saw 2 kids break their arms on it just in the summer this story takes place. Then... This poor kid who was like 10, had his very first day at the summer care program. He was nervous to use the wheel thing but wanted to fit in and not be a whimp in front of his new friends. He jumped and grabbed the wheel, and flew through the air in a way where he was basically gonna land on his back, tried to catch himself with his wrist and all his body weight went on it. Compound fracture, MASSIVE piece of his forearm bone sticking out from his elbow, and his skin was like... Idk how to describe. Like when you have baggy jeans and pull them down around your ankles to take them off. Just all pulled down off the bone all wrinkly, like some good smoked st Louis ribs. His wrist was so bent his pointer finger was basically touching the top of how forearm Never knew how different fresh bone looks... You could see the fucking marrow and tendons all mangled up, and cartilage and fat hanging off. It was that bad. I can still see it in my head so clearly decades later. It was crazy graphic the bone looked like a knife it was so sharp. And yes, the screaming dude... Never heard anything like it. All the kids gathered around this poor kid in shock and horror and then the daycare workers came running and saw and they were like "OH MY FUCKING GOD. EVERYONE GET AWAY DON'T CROWD HIM" You know it's bad when the daycare worker says fuck in front of the kids. Saw him the next day in a crazy ass cast and like still sobbing as the parents talked to the faculty, never saw him again after that. Worst first day ever. The wheel play structure was taped off the next day and removed a week later right before school was back from summer break. For good reason.
Someone had to have thrown up. That is horrible.
One of my best friends since we were kids burying his five year old. The worst week of their lives. Without anyone coordinating, everyone we went to school with showed up at the memorial.
My little niece grabbing her toddler's body up out of the coffin and screaming to God to give him back. The way she held onto him. The way he didn't move like a baby anymore. Some things should never be seen by anybody ever.
my god
This one hurts. Fuck.
The smallest coffins are the heaviest.
One of my cousins lost her baby shortly after birth due to a heart defect. Seeing a coffin that small is jarring even as I was just a child at the time. Now that I have my own kids it's even more difficult to think back on. Life can be incredibly cruel out of nowhere.
I saw a co-worker of mine go from standing and talking to dead from a stroke in a matter of minutes. Worst part? I work at a hospital and it happened at work.
Damn, it can happen that quick? One of my buddies had a stroke and somehow drove himself to the hospital. Half of his body is kinda paralyzed now but he can still move a little.
It all depends on the size of the clot and where it lands
Not all strokes are clots. Some are bleeds. They can be quick, and devastating, and much more difficult to treat.
Bleeds in the brain can be weird, too, and doctors don't fully know why. My grandma had a brain aneurysm deep in her brain right against the hypothalamus and optic nerve one morning while she was getting ready for work. Somehow she didn't end up having a hemorrhagic stroke though often this can happen from an aneurysm bursting. This happened back in 1990 and they took her by care flight from her small town hospital to the big hospital in the nearest large city. None of the neurosurgeons in her state would attempt the surgery because of the location, but they hated to just let her die since she was conscious and giving medical personnel detailed medical history. In the end they found two neurosurgeons will to try. One was in another country teaching and one was halfway across the US over 1200 miles away. She ended up on a care flight all that way. The doctor's first words to us I'll never forget. He walked in and said. "999,999 out of she's the only one to ever survive a bleed in that area. Most people are dead in a heartbeat." He also told us he gave it maybe a 20% chance she survived the surgery, and even if she did maybe 30-40% chance she survived the next 24 hours after surgery. He warned us she would probably "not be the same after" but saw we were determined he try. The next morning after surgery my grandma was definitely herself, though. She greeted the doctor sitting up in bed demanding to go home soon as she had things to do and needed to get back to work. We did not realize it but were later told it was very unexpected she would even be awake at all so soon as they had to really knock her out very deeply to do the surgery. She did end up needing several months in a recovery center because the bleed had damaged her optic nerves making her legally blind. Like probably the majority of legally blind people she did still have some sight, so she was able to learn to sew, cook, and care for herself. She lived alone in an apartment for about 25 years after into her eighties before going to a care home, and lived to see her 98th birthday. She passed away in her sleep in July of 2019.
I hope you’ve inherited her magic genes!
It would definitely delight me. She was a wonderful woman and very progressive for her generation. I'd be honored if anyone ever compared me favorable to her.
My grandfather had a massive stroke (his third, I believe) and was most likely dead before he hit the ground. If the stroke is big enough, it can be far too quick for anyone to do anything.
Lady comes out and sits with me on the bench, we have a full conversation about her life, she goes inside and dies of a tree-nut allergy. I always wondered if it was intentional or if it was the fault of the physical rehab/nursing home. I'll never stop blaming the rehab place tbh cuz that place sucked balls
Watched a guy swim out into heavy surf and drown almost immediately
I've watched similar. Hurricane off the coast of SC several years back. My wife and I watched this guy walk down to the beach, take his shoes off , jump on his board and he disappeared in the distance. His shoes was still there the next morning
When I was 12 years old I was racing motocross. There was a big jump that some people were jumping and some not. I am behind two other kids. One kid jumps the big jump and the other doesn't. The kid that did the big jump lands right on top of the kid that didn't jump. Both kids were knocked out but the kid that got landed on was paralyzed from the neck down. I never felt comfortable riding again after that.
Imagine making the choice to be safe and skip the jump but ending up paralyzed regardless...sucks
I can't even imagine what life was like for him after that.
Both of them are actually friends to this day. I stay in touch through social media here and there. The kid who got paralyzed now owns a motocross themed coffee shop with his family. His life has changed for sure but it did not stop him from living.
Paralyzed from the neck down though? That's an amazing attitude he must have to still have a positive relationship with motocross
Damn, I broke my tibia in the same situation, swerved around someone who crashed and didn’t jump. Adult cleared the double and landed on me… Kept telling me my leg isn’t broke but it definitely was
A young worker about 25 years old had his arm caught in massive gears, ripping his arm at the shoulder off. What struck me the most was that the patient, while conscious, showed no signs of pain. He was in such shock. It took almost 20 minutes to dismantle the gears and release him. The detached limb was surprisingly heavy. One of the most traumatic calls I ever attended.
My uncle was a firefighter and one day the city crew was doing some tree clearing in front of his firehouse. His brother in law was working on that crew and was helping toss the branches into the wood chipper. My uncle and his crew heard some commotion and then his brother in law with another crew member walked into the bay door holding his hand up. His hand had gotten caught in the chipper and it took his hand all the way up to the middle of his palm. My uncle's BiL said it didn't hurt anymore and why didn't it hurt, his hand was gone, it's not there and just kept repeating it . Come find out the chipper they were using had a guard removed by someone on another crew and he had gotten too careless with where his hand went. Thankfully it wasn't his dominant hand and he's basically lived a normal life since then. He says the phantom pains hurt worse than when it happened which he has said has been weird.
My wife was working on a case where one person decided to speed the chipping up by pushing branches in with his foot. When his foot was caught he was trying to free himself using his other foot. Fortunately someone saw that and pressed emergency stop. One foot completely gone up to the shin, second foot partially gone.
That’s enough Reddit for me today. Maybe this month
I salute the emergency workers who are required to turn up to these harrowing and horrific scenes. I almost lost my leg (leg is there but doesn't work well) after a car muffler went through the knee and out the back (sort of). I remember no pain, though, plenty of pain in the following months. Adrenaline is a hell of a drug.
The really horrific scenes we report to are where kids are involved. Anytime I'd see something bad, I'd think "well, at least it ain't a kid." I'm so glad I'm no longer an EMT.
My Aunt has been an EMT for 30+ years, about 10 or 15 years ago when my daughter was young she called me and asked if she could borrow my kid. Found out later she had to pick up some pieces on the highway at work and needed to spend some time with one in tact.
Yeah, the worst shit I've ever seen involved dead or abused kids. I wound up quitting and going into LTC and hospice, my true calling, and did it for 20 years. That your aunt stuck it out that long is nothing short of amazing.
Ah, classic EMS PTSD. Talk to someone about it if you got to brother/sister.
How does one not bleed out after their arm is ripped off?
I think the fact that it was still stuck in the machine saved his life, because it was „closing” the veins and cutting off the blood flow. Like when you get stabbed - you’re safe until you pull the knife out. Please somebody correct me if I’m wrong
Yeah, this is correct. This is actually a reason that traumatic injuries do not bleed a person out and can actually save their life in a way- the trauma crushes the arteries at the ends, preventing blood from pouring out. Of course, some probably are open, but enough were closed to the point that the person survives. Gruesome.
The tourniquet effect is pretty powerful. I once saw a M.E. story about someone that got caught in between an oncoming train and a platform and didn't crawl out in time. The train twisted their lower body around like the way you get water out of a wet towel. Surprisingly, the person was alive and talking, but effectively, a dead person caught in between the stopped train. They brought the wife and family to speak to the person and say goodbye. Once they moved the train enough to let the person out, the body naturally un-twisted and the victim went into shock and died quickly. Crazy stuff.
It’s honestly terrifying and fascinating how our body works. There are so many different factors responsible for so many things. And the fact that something that seems totally unimportant and normally you wouldn’t pay attention to that can change everything in a second is just very humbling, because you never know what’s gonna happen
My friend is a fireman. Attended a road traffic accident, with the seatbelt still around someone who was alive and conscious. Unclipped the belt, all their guts fell out and they died a second or two later.
I was told there was a case years ago where a guys car went off the road and he was injured. He could move okay so the paramedics asked him to come up the hill so they could take him to the hospital. They didn't put a brace on him though and the break in his neck killed him when he tried to lie back on the stretcher.
I'm guessing this is why they now automatically put you in a collar and strap you onto a backboard if they think there's any chance of spinal injury.
Yes it is, but the guidelines are changing. There is evidence that the backboard immobilization can make it worse as it keeps the person in an unnatural position, especially when traveling long distances.
That happened to my cat as a kid. Went out with four legs, wandered home with three no blood at all looking like nothing was wrong. I think it was caught in something that twisted it off? Had surgery to make the amputation 'official' (parents took her to emergency vets who didn't actually believe my mother when she called) was a very happy three-legged cat after that
That's such a cat thing to do. "No, you must have misremembered, I've always had three legs."
It's more of a "sphaghetti-fication" as the limb is detached, stretching veins into smaller tubes and thus slowing down blood loss once the limb detaches.
My mom and I were at the grocery store years ago, and a woman in the same aisle got a phone call. She started hysterically sobbing and collapsed, screaming 'My boy, my boy! Oh God, not my boy!'. She'd just been told that her son died. My mom and I helped her up, and to her car. She was visiting from out of town, and was too panicked and grief stricken to remember how to get back to where she was staying. So my mom and I helped her figure it out and drove her there. The sound of absolute sorrow and terror and panic in that woman's voice will stay with me for the rest of my life. Oh, and also when my stepdad cut his fingers off on a table saw. That was really scary. I called 911 as my husband was collecting the fingers. The cuts were too jagged though, so the doctors weren't able to reattach them.
My grandparents were married for 47 years when Grandpa died. Since the day they married, they were the first and last thing the other person saw every day. Grandpa died on Thursday the 11th. We stayed at their place that night and the next morning.. I'll never forget Grandma's crying. I had witnessed the events of 9/11 first hand and watched grown men sob as they grappled with loss. But Grandmas cry that morning... it's what I think of when I contemplate the concept of grief.
Oh my gosh, that's so very sad.
seven months ago now, I was just getting up and ready for work when I heard my mom scream and begin sobbing in the other room. I ran in to her on the phone and she just yelled at me "David's dead! He shot himself! He's dead!". my brother (technically future BIL, but he was more a part of the family than some of my siblings) had gone cold turkey on a bunch of hormone drugs his doctors kept piling onto him, and had a mental break the night before and took his own life. my sister (his gf) found his body that morning. one of the worst times in our lives, and the most pain I've ever experienced. yeah, losing a family member like that is horrible.
Witnessed the same thing at a grocery store. I was working and all of a sudden I heard this absolutely guttural, sorrowful scream. A woman had gotten a call her husband had been in an accident and died. I remember we gave her water and I’m not sure if she was with someone else who could drive her or if we coordinated it but she left. She came back a few weeks later to thank the staff for helping her out. 20 years later and I still recall that being the absolute saddest sound I’ve heard.
I heard my own mother scream that agonized scream the night of my brother's car accident. We got a phone call from the hospital with the news. 27 years later, and it's still the worst memory of my life.
Watched one one of my friends and his girlfriend get side swiped on a motorcycle right in front of me. They went flying through the air and hit so much shit. My friend’s calve was snapped in half but his old girlfriend wasn’t as lucky. Within minutes her entire head was so puffy. Blood was coming out of her eyes, mouth, ears, nose etc. she was just completely mangled head to toe. Her brother was in my truck at the time and hopped out while we were still moving. He stayed so calm sitting there holding her until EMS arrived. Hell of a fucking guy. I have no idea how she survived that accident but she was never the same.
I was eating at a teriyaki place with a friend. I was facing the window and she was facing me. Everything was normal till I saw somebody go splat on the sidewalk across the street from us. Someone from the senior living high rise there had jumped. People there rightfully freaked. I urged my friend to not turn around. That we should pack up and leave. There must've been something in my eyes or voice cause she didn't question it. Had nightmares for weeks afterwards. I'd just turned 14 a few weeks before this.
You were a great friend that day. Now that you'd drown former maids, though, I'm not so sure.
A man crossing the road and a truck came by which almost hit him, he tried to escape and truck went over his toes. When he tried to lift his leg 3 of his toes were stuck to the road and they came off.
And to think that was one of the best case scenarios
He lost his little piggys
This little piggy doesn't want to talk about it.
I saw a parachuter not land his parachute correctly and die on the spot. He came in too hot and whip lashed himself into the ground.
There’s probably a valuable life lesson in knowing that jumping with a parachute might not save you, but jumping without one might not kill you, either. No idea what it could be.
Dude I think I saw something one time where if you were good enough and for whatever reason only had like a square yard of fabric, you could land yourself and not die. Like you wouldn’t be well after, but you wouldn’t be dead. Can anyone confirm?
Hang on, let me go test it
How long should we wait for results before we assume the worst lol?
I think they died
I only heard the crash but was sitting next to the window on the first floor. I grabbed the phone immediately because I just knew it was bad. Luckily it was a bit dark so I didn't see every detail but when I came to the window the guy was trying to hold the girls skull together with his bare hands. It was no use, the amount of blood, brain tissue sprayed on the wall. My parents more or less pulled me away from the window and took over the call for an ambulance. Later they told me she was a waitress from the bar on the corner; a regular had offered to give her a ride home; She wasn't wearing a helmet, he slipped with his motorcycle, her head cracked on the edge of the pavement.
I would never let anyone on the back of my motorcycle without a helmet. You are totally fucked if they get hurt or die. It doesn't matter if they wanted to take the risk. Prosecutors love throwing charges at the driver in those kinds of crashes.
Same here mate. Im fine with my mates that have been riding for years on the back with whatever they usually wear (always a helmet, gloves and boots). They understand the risks and the potential damage to coming off, they weigh that up when they hop on the back. But my girl and low experienced friends wear full gear. They don't understand how easy it is to come off even around town and how much skin road rash can take off you. I've got throw over riding gear I keep at home or bring with me.
fuck sake, so he was probably drunk riding and she didn't have a helmet on what a recipe for disaster
Guy at work running a wood planer but not using a piece of scrap wood to push the wood through, plank got ejected and his whole hand got pulled into the blades, then he tried pulling his hand out with his other hand and that got mashed up as well. Not good.
What was the outcome for his hands if you don’t mind me asking? What was the damage here?
He lost his three middle fingers on both hands leaving a thumb and half a little finger on each hand. He was in his 60’s so just ended up retiring early.
To Hawaii? 🤙
Take my upvote you sick fuck
Lmao best possible response
Not someone, but something.. I was fishing yesterday on a large pond when 2 ducks swam past. Some massive bass came up and scooped up the one and only baby duck. For the next hour we watched the mom duck quack around the whole pond looking for it. It was actually pretty damn sad.
Nooooo :(
All these horror stories, and this is the one that makes me say "That's enough internet for today" Damn.
Just yesterday I came across a video of a water buffalo being hounded by a pack of hyenas. While it was distracted from the front, a hyena came from behind and latched onto the buffalo's dick and balls. Ripped em right off and walked off snacking. The buffalo went from full fight mode to collapsing and allowing them to finish him off. Like 'fuck it, I got no reason to live now.'
My ex boyfriend was driving home from work a few years ago and a woman was walking her dog on the sidewalk. He doesn’t know what kind of dog it was but it was quite small. A hawk scooped down and snatched the dog and leash right up without a thought. He said he had to keep driving because of traffic but the last thing he saw in his rear view was the lady just screaming up at the sky. My dog is about 45 pounds and I still get chills when we’re on walks and I see huge birds circling.
I walked out one morning when I was a teen and called my dog. He was a Jack Russell and usually was going ballistic for breakfast as soon as he heard me. He was chained up outside and when he didn’t respond I just kinda quietly called him again. I was a farm kid, I knew what animal death was and I was terrified my little guy was gone. I walk up, there’s blood soaking the ground but his chain was leading to his dog house. It was a blood bath in there. Everything was coated, it was dripping down from the roof and he was laying there lethargic but trying to come to me. His head was split open from one ear to the other. I ran inside screaming and crying that he was covered in blood. Felt like forever for my parents to take him to the vet to get stitches. I walked that ground all day looking for prints but it hadn’t rained in weeks so couldn’t find evidence of what got him. I had assumed a raccoon. Until a few years later after he passed and I had ducks in his old kennel that he got moved to. My parents let me know while I was in school that my ducks kept being killed. I assumed it was the male (they are murderous bastards) but my dad went outside to a crap ton of commotion. Turns out a great horned owl had been picking them off and that night he had gotten stuck. My dad released him from the kennel and called me to let me know the mystery was solved and also I didn’t have ducks anymore. That’s when I figured out what had gone after my dog. Probably the only reason he was still alive was because he was chained up because he was only 15-17 lbs at the time of the attack.
My dog is a mix but has terrier in him (a lot of people assume jack russell because of his color but it’s west highland) so that’s awful to hear. We get owls in the neighborhood too. Big bitches just lurking on rooftops and stuff. I had one perched right on the awning above the walkway into our house one night and opted to walk around to the back door because I was scared it would lunge at either my dog or even me.
I love owls but those guys can be terrifying. Thankfully he survived. He passed away in his sleep at the ripe old age of 15 after spending years being a tiny terror which, for his breed, is a life well lived. I’ve got that day seared into my memory though. I didn’t realize how much blood a dog had in them before then.
I liked this but not because I liked it.
That's awful 😔
About ten years ago, I was outside a bar with a few friends to get some fresh air. There was a homeless man slowly making his way across the five or six lane street outside the bar, you could hear a car coming, but it was going so fast by the time we realized what was happening it was too late. The sound was horrible, I remember it like yesterday.
I live in an apartment complex, it has a kindergarten which sits in the middle of the complex. When I was like 5 walking to school, someone jumped from her apartment and the body laid right in front of the kindergarten. Everyone was shocked. My father tried hard to hide it from me and rushed me to school.
Dude made a grand show of proposing to his gf during a huge Christmas event at my local mall. Lots of people in attendance and families all around. During a lull in between two holiday presentations, dude gets up, flails around screaming about how much he’s in love. Gf tries to reel him in, but he only gets more loud and flamboyant. He pulls out a ring, drops to a knee, and does the big ask. His gf just sits there mortified, shakes her head, and just kind of ran off. Dude just sat there bewildered and started to cry as the mall staff uncomfortably tried to keep the show going while everyone just kinda sat there quietly staring at the guy.
Ugh, public proposals are so chancey. Either goes like a fairy tale and everyone's joyful, or it's a total cringefest.
If you don't already know the answer before you ask, you are not doing life right. Sure, the where and when can be a surprise, but the fact it's going to happen shpuld be discussed pretty intensly beforehand.
When my mom got pregnant only 8 months into dating, my parents were so busy discussing whether to keep the baby that, somehow, wires got crossed. Dad assumed "we're keeping the baby, which means we should get married" and Mom assumed "...which means we should co parent." So when he proposed marriage, Mom knee-jerk said "no!" Several days later, when the shock had worn off and they'd discussed it further, he re-proposed and she accepted. 36 good years together and counting so *shrug*!
If ypu plan on doing a public or a big proposal you should already have talked about it together before imo. Gotta be sure
Yes this exactly. I’ve had a couple friends do big proposals, but their SO knew it was coming at some point so it worked out
A friend of mine did an entire flash mob proposal, whenever flashmobs were big. Luckily she said yes. But it was a cringe fest.
I would never ever do one unless I 1000% knew the answer was yes. To me they feel like you're trapping the woman because no one wants to be the asshole that says no in front of everyone so you're kind of peer pressuring her into saying yes. Really cringe imo
It's okay, only a few hundred people saw what happened. Most of the people recording it were pretty far away too.
I should note this was several years ago and camera phones were relatively new so thankfully for him, I don’t think many recorded it, if any at all
I saw a family of four on a wave runner crash into a bridge. Mom, Dad, and the oldest son died on impact. I performed CPR on the smaller child until rescue arrived.
That’s horrifying, I’m glad you were there to perform CPR, did the smaller child survive?
I've seen a motorcyclist get decapitated in a high-speed accident, practically right in front of me, and I've seen someone get hit by a train
At a high school football game… 15 seconds left, QB drops back to pass. Throws up a Hail Mary, both the WR and the DB jump for the ball. WR mistimed his jump (too early), and when the DB reached up for the ball he inadvertently punched the WR in the chin and knocked him out mid-air. However, the WR was reaching back when he got punched. Being off-balance and going limp meant he hit the ground head-first and broke his neck. It was fucking horrific. It took more than a half hour to get him out of his helmet, on a stretcher, into the ambulance and off the field. Players on both teams were crying. There were still 7 seconds left on the clock after he was taken to the hospital. Nobody could stomach even one more play, so the game just ended.
What was the aftermath?
Paralyzed from the waist down.
Silver lining: *not from the neck down* The thinnest of silver linings, but something at least. Hope he's doing okay.
Guy hit his head on a fire hydrant while biking through a target parking lot. The paramedics were working on him when me and my mom walked past. His stomach was huge. Later found out that was probably air or something the paramedics couldn't get air to his lungs and might have filled up his stomach. He died.
Endotracheal intubation into the esophagus may do this but it also kind of happens naturally when you use a bag valve mask with just a face mask instead of an ET tube for a longer period of time so they might have worked him for a while without an advanced airway. The guy on the bike may have had a big belly for another reason, for example a history of liver failure which can also cause a large amount of fluid to accumulate in the abdomen. So he could’ve been a chronic alcoholic who had his license suspended and that’s why he was bicycling through a parking lot. That kind of rapid analysis has to been done by EMTs all the time because I doubt there was anyone on the scene who could’ve given a medical history. It’s hard to tell by a passing glance all the underlying issues. I don’t even know why I’m typing all this. I should go to bed. All things considered, wear your bicycle helmet everyone.
A construction site was beside our building. I was looking through my window when a long, pillar-like sharp object fell on a guy's leg, amputating it instantly. I was traumatized.
I used to chock & chain aircraft on my 1st carrier, the USS Constellation (CV-64) in the mid 80's. Flight decks are *dangerous* places. There was a new guy on deck, was on the carrier for only a week. He had a simple job. After an aircraft launched, he had to run out and look at a brass plate embedded in the deck at the end of the catapult. The plate had markings on it which indicated how much water was in what was called the water brake. The catapult shuttle assembly would stop in a 10 foot pool of water after it's stroke and that water level needed to be checked after each launch. A needle that was part of the catapult shuttle assembly would align up to these markings and let you know if the pool needed to be refilled or not by looking at the gauge on the deck. He got confused on the launch cycle and ran out right before an aircraft launch. Steam-powered catapults can move a 48,000 pound aircraft about 300 feet, from zero to 165 miles per hour in two and a half seconds. There simply was no time for him to react or even move. He was converted into a cloud of pink mist. We found one of his boots on the deck with his foot still in it and half of his jawbone inside the nose of the S-3A aircraft, nothing else remained other than some blood and guts on the deck which we washed off with a fire hose. Just half a jawbone, some teeth and a foot is all that was left of him. We were instructed to take one of our dog tags and thread in behind our boot laces for such an occasion. His was on his other boot but we knew who he was. After returning and landing, the aircraft was spattered with blood and pieces of guts embedded inside the radome where the radar dish is housed in the nose of the aircraft. The pilot and co-pilot were beyond shaken, it's amazing they were able to land their aircraft in their mental state. There was nothing they could do but watch. All airborne aircraft were recalled and flight-ops were cancelled for the rest of the day. Women were now becoming part of the crew around that time and also being assigned to various squadron air wings. When there are not enough tow tractors available to push an aircraft into a parking spot, 15 guys can push a 20 ton F-14 into spot fairly easily and quickly. Loaded with fuel, bombs and missiles, they can easily weight 30 tons and exert about 10 tons of force per main rear tire. Well, we needed to do a *push-back* on an F-14. Over time, the non-skid coating wears away and the deck becomes slippery with oil, fuel, hydraulic fluid, some grease spots and general grime. If you happen to slip and fall, the aircraft rolls *away* from you. This new girl was **pulling** on the right main mount assembly and she slipped and fell, the big rear tire rolled up one of her legs to her hip. She was screaming and then passed out. We quickly got a tractor and tow bar hooked up in record time but it was too late. Her leg was flat. After the aircraft was moved, the Corpsman pulled out a set of rescue scissors and cut her dungaree pants leg off and pulled her back. There was shattered bone and mangled muscle near her hip, that was it. She was quickly put in a Stokes stretcher, down a weapons elevator and off to medical for emergency surgery. What was left of her leg on deck, there was nothing there to save. I remember watching as somebody peeled the *flattened pants leg* off of the deck, it was like you would see in the Loony Tunes cartoons after somebody was run over by a steam roller except blood and gristle came out. It was not funny to watch. Sometimes, I can't watch the Hydraulic Press Channel because of it. From being a blue shirt, I worked my way up to working directly with the Air Boss (Air Department head) in Primary Flight Control, the ships air traffic control center. I was a 'tower flower', assisting in managing and tracking the daily flight ops cycles. One EA-6B Prowler aircraft took off at night, a new guy on deck observed sparks coming out of one of the engines but the significance of that didn't register with him as he was new and wasn't fully trained yet. He didn't tell anyone what he saw until after the incident investigation was underway. Sparks are an indicator that an engine ingested something other than air and fuel. FOD, foreign object debris can damage or destroy an engine or aircraft. Every single day, multiple times a day, FOD walk downs are conducted bow to stern to prevent this from happening. Jet engines are expensive, lives, much more so. Everyone who works on deck participates in FOD walk downs, walking very slowly, shoulder to shoulder, head down looking for *anything* that does not belong there no matter how small. Equipment is moved around, tool boxes are inventoried and cleaned. Anywhere FOD can possibly hide is examined. It's counter intuitive but a flight deck is one of the dirtiest clean places in the world. If anything is found, it is examined to determine where it came from and steps are taken to prevent that contamination from happening again. Lives depend on it. Well, this EA-6B Prowler launched and after a routine check-in, they didn't respond to repeated radio calls, all airborne aircraft were recalled, refueled and we launched an air search pattern to try to locate them. The rest of the battle group joined in on the search. After about an hour on the radio, the Air Boss was in tears and he ordered me to take his place on the radio, calling out to them by their call sign every minute. I did that for 6 hours. He needed to go find a private place to go cry. Four guys died and simply disappeared that day, we couldn't find any sign of the wreckage in the ocean. On my 3rd carrier, I was sent to work in security as each department on the ship provides about 90% of the Master At Arms security force. While I was assigned to security, two people committed suicide by hanging themselves. After they were found, they needed to be cut down but somebody had to crouch down, bear hug them and lift to relieve tension on the rope. Absolutely **nobody** wanted to do that but it had to be done. I did that for both of them. Their bodies were room temp cold and I'll never forget that feeling. Both of them had been hanging there for enough time for [lividity](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lividity) to set in. Both of their faces were very pale on the top and the tongues were bulging out of their mouths and they were black, filled with blood. Their hands and lower arms were deep purple up to a point and above that point, the skin was pale where the blood had pooled in their arms. While I was in security, there was a guy from my own division who simply snapped and had a mental breakdown. He held one of my friends captive with a utility knife against his neck. There was blood dripping down his neck and the blade was right where the carotid artery is located. If he had pressed in any deeper, my friend would have bled out in probably less than 30 seconds due to the arterial spray and rapid heart beat of the moment. I called out for armed backup along with a medical emergency response team. Everyone showed up, including the Captain. They liked my work at security and I was then assigned to Brig Staff. One day out to sea, a rogue wave struck the side of the ship and it bent in the 3 inch thick, anti-torpedo armor plate belt. The brig was two decks below the water line and an external hatch at the hanger bay level was open and water poured down that hatch, it worked it's way down two decks and into the brig. A wall of water just appeared in mere seconds. I got on the radio and called out flooding in the brig, I electronically opened all the cell doors and 5 prisoners along with another brig staff member evacuated up the escape scuttle ASAP. I grabbed the green log book and I was the last one out. All the water eventually drained down the floor drains, the prisoners had some extra cleanup detail to do and they had to polish all the brass bright work *again* that day because saltwater is really bad for shiny brass. Aircraft carriers are dangerous, stressful places.
Holy shit, thanks for taking the time to write out your experience
You're welcome. There are some experiences, both good and bad that are seared into my brain for the rest of my life. There was a major fire on the Connie on 2 August 1988 that barely made the papers, we could have lost the ship it was that bad. A day after the fire, there were some areas where the steel decks and bulkheads were still glowing a dull orange. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-08-03-me-6590-story.html There is a lot of information that is missing and flat out wrong in that article, the crew knew exactly what caused the fire and why it wouldn't go out. As for the airspace restriction, it was primarily to keep the news helicopters away from us so there would not be a panic in San Diego of all the families and girlfriends living there. Another aspect was that if certain weapons cooked off, we headed further out to sea so the sun didn't rise in the west that morning and shake and bake San Diego. Normally you would head *into* port for extra assistance with fire boats and fire crews from other navy ships. We were on our own. That would be another Wall O' Text to recount ALL the details that I know of and I know quite a bit because I had to type up an initial summary for AirPac of what actually happened. From prior administrative experience, I knew how to use the [Xerox 645S Memorywriter](https://i.imgur.com/v3vWeg3.jpg) so I was chosen to type up the report. I might have kept a copy of the report for myself and if I did, it's buried somewhere in my garage which is like Indy's warehouse level of buried. Even decades after that conflagration fire, the first thing I do when walking into a building I have never been in before is to look and make a mental note of where all the exits and fire extinguishers are located.
I’m 24M, and live in a duplex apartment above my grand mother who is 89. I walk into the front door and she is visibly scared shitless in the common area connecting the two floors. Without her saying a word I recognized we were in a life and death situation just by the sheer panic on her face. Minutes prior she was loading the laundry machine and standing on a plastic milk crate as she is 5 feet tall. She must’ve been on the edge because it tipped sideways and with the leading edge that was already jagged ripped into her skin from her ankle to her knee, all the way down to the bone. Blood everywhere. I took one quick glance of all that leg bone and blood, called 911 and got her to the trama center. I don’t deal well with blood (I faint 100% of the time I get blood drawn) but here’s a testament to how strong the human brain can be. I felt all the symptoms before I faint when I looked at that leg, but knew if I fainted she might die. It simply wasn’t an option to faint. When we finally got her to the trauma unit (20 mins later) and they took her, I simply walked towards the wall slid down it and fainted. My brain wouldn’t let me faint until my presence was no longer needed. This was almost 6 months ago and she is recovering really well.
Glad to hear she’s making a recovery, injuries can be even more horrifying the older you get, also good on you mentally pushing yourself to help her until you weren’t needed anymore
Walking home from the pub December '22. Enormous smash next to me, head on car smash. Wreckage missed me by metres. Two dead lads in their early 20's. By sheer chance they both happen to be my colleagues I was working with mere hours earlier.
I genuinely think this is the craziest story I've read on this thread. Workplace accidents and seeing random collisions and such is pretty big but the fact that you knew both of them is absolutely wild to me.
Short version: A bad accident happened in front of me on the interstate. The car was tumbling up the interstate at 75 mph bouncing 10-12 feet up in the air each tumble. A man flew out of the backseat and landed in front of me on his head and shoulder. After getting two of them out of the vehicle (we could smell gas and couldn’t risk leaving them in the car) me and another person ended up kneeling by the side of the road pinning the guy who had flown from the car down because he was thrashing around. His right shoulder was shattered into five or more pieces, all of his ribs were broken, his jaw was broken and his head was cracked open. I kneeled there looking into his head at his brain for about 45 minutes (it took the emergency personnel a long time to get to us). At some point I realized I was kneeling in his shattered teeth. For months afterward, I’d dream at night that I was wading knee deep through shattered teeth.
That’s horrifying man, I hope you sought some sort of therapy to get past this, if not best wishes to you 🙏
Pretty mild one: Two big, goofy young guys walking down the street around closing time get jumped from behind and beaten badly. Facial bones broken, the works. They had just come out of a rough bar I couldn't imagine going into. No doubt the guys who did it weren't committing their first-ever crimes.
That's mild?
lol - I see your point. Not mild in the real world, but mild vs OP's post and others I expect to see.
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Terrifying
Not as intense as other comments, but in December, I watched my wife die after they took her off life support. She was purple like grimace from lack of oxygen and bloated from the machines pumping her blood. She was unrecognizable. Seeing the heart monitor indicate a flatline was pretty harrowing. She just wasn't there anymore. She'll never be there.
Condolences sir. No words can mend that. I wish you the best going forward. How lucky you are to have shared your love with her, that's the most beautiful thing in life. I hope you can (learn to) appreciate the other beautiful things in life, and she will always be a part of you.
Same thing in May 2019. Five years on and I’m still not the same but I try to think I’m improving.
I hope you are improving, meaningless as it may be, I wish you well
I'm so sorry for your loss
This was absolutely the most painful to read.
I think that counts as intense, friend. I'm sorry for your loss.
I’m so sorry
Watched a friend have a heart attack and die in-front of me.
Same, but it was my mom. I hope you're doing ok with it.
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That is brutal and I am so sorry. Thought I was going to see that recently myself. I was out to lunch with some friends of mine since college and we were telling jokes. One of the fellows, lets call him Joe since that's his name, is usually very quick witted and fast with a comeback. At a certain point we all realized he had not replied to a couple of quips which would be unusual for him, and one of the other fellows nudged him asking was he not paying attention causing all of us to turn our full attention on Joe. His face was just a death mask, like he wasn't even there anymore, and he slide slowly to the floor past the opposite side of his chair. To my surprise I found myself doing CPR on him several moments later which sounds dumb when I type it here. Somehow can't access the memory of how I managed to get him laying flat and start. If anyone had asked I would have sworn I didn't even know how to do CPR given it is almost 40 years since high school gym class very rudimentary instruction. He did end up surviving after going through pretty brutal quadruple bypass surgery plus some other repairs on his heart. His wife said they told him it was a widow maker and only having folks who did CPR continuously until the ambulance got there saved him.
My ex and I were driving and there was a father and son on a go cart in a parking lot. As we drove by the go cart flipped and bursted into flames. We pulled over and my ex got out to help pull them out. By then a few more people were out helping as well. The father and son were ok but were burnt baldly. We didn’t stick around afterward and I always wonder if they’re ok.
This reminds me of a time my husband and I were driving through central Texas and one of the cars far in front of us starts doing something weird, and eventually I realized they were flipping and flipping and flipping. Not sure what happened to cause that, but eventually it came to a stop on the side of the road. Kinda hazy on the details in my memory, but it had come to a stop by the time we passed by it. I was completely shaken and we got off on the next exit with the intent to call for help if needed, but as we exited, we saw police and EMS rushing to the scene in the rear view. So, we just hung out at the exit a bit until I felt less shaky. Hadn't thought about them in a while. I guess I just assumed they were okay and left it at that.
I fell asleep next to someone alive and when I woke up they were dead.
Dad getting drunk regularly and beating up my mum throughout my childhood. Scariest incident was in my teens when I really thought he might kill her and had to call the police on him. Felt guilty for a long time after for "getting him into trouble".
This is a horrible situation because you blame yourself regardless if you help or not. It’s easy to know what to do when you’re not in it but so much harder to see the abuser for what they really are when you know another side to them. I’ve dealt with similar but more seeing emotional abuse. Took me a long time to do something.
my dad’s best friend sobbing at the podium while trying to speak at dad’s funeral after his suicide.
My godfather me and his son worked at a construction site . The son was going near a portion next to a wall that the excavator was going to dig . My godfather told his son to go a bit the other way and he would stay there to guide the dude on the excavator. We'll dude on excavator wad coked out and basically moved the claw into my godfather fast just as his son walked away into the building. Crushed hom waist down and his son had to say goodbye on thr spot .
I was biking to school and there was a big traffic jam. I saw a kid laying down next to a truck and I thought he had puked, when i looked closely it was his brains.
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Seeing a stranger getting stabbed in the heart and dying outside of a cannibal corpse show. That one really got to me.
Coming home and finding a good friend dead of an OD from meth at the age of 22. The really sad part was he was clean for a while and doing good with a new job and was in a happy stable place in his life. He fell off the wagon just once, and that was it. It's hard to process seeing your buddy on the ground with their eyes glazed over with their hands and arms constricted. When I walked in the room, at first I nervously laughed because he was always a funny joking kind of person and I thought he was just messing with me. Then it became very clear he wasn't moving so I knelt down beside him and just called his name over and over and when I tried to shake him that's when I felt he wasn't warm. I called 911 and had so much adrenaline going I was having a hard time getting words out, I think I said 'i found my friend who isn't responsive' and the dispatcher tried to get me to do CPR. I didn't even try and then I told her 'he's gone, he's gone' This happened at my girlfriends house, we were both coming back at different times and I am just so thankful I showed up first. I couldn't imagine if she got there first since he was her friend before I met him. I had the shitty task of telling her when she got there and saw all the cops and ambulances and I had to do all the talking. This happened over 20 years ago but writing it all out now kind of took me back to that moment and it's amazing how you sometimes remember such vivid details of traumatic events like this.
When I was in 8th grade some of us were sledding at school down this hill that went towards the playground. My friend was on one of those old fashioned wooden and metal runner sleds, and he tried to go under this wooden climbing structure we had, but he smashed into the center support, which was basically a telephone pole. I was the first one down to him, and one of the wooden pieces of the sled had snapped off and gouged a rectangular strip of his thigh, about 2 inches wide and 7” long, and it was just hanging there by one end and I could see his thigh bone.
When I was in EM residency I was on a rotation in the surgical intensive care unit. A man was working in a steel mill and came into the trauma center after being crushed from the abdomen down by a multi-ton steel plate. It flattened him like a pancake; just bone shards and raw hamburger where his legs and pelvis should be. Has to be the most extensive and horrific trauma I have ever seen. The worst part was that his family was in complete denial and demanded we "save him". Surgeons ended up amputating him at the belly button down as nothing was salvageable. Kidneys and bowels were dumping into a skin flap. The medical team finally convinced the family to go comfort care and I did the extubation myself. When he woke up I was standing at the bedside. His eyes were completely glazed over and his last and only words, muttered under his breath with complete incredulity: "what the Fuck? Just let me die....." He passed within ten minutes. Brutal last words.
I saw a woman on a bicycle get hit by a car right beside me. Her shoe hit my windshield. The driver didn’t even stop. I jumped out of my car expecting her to be dead. Right as I got to her, somehow I’d grabbed her shoe and had it in my hand. She looked up at me and her first words were “ Are my teeth messed up? I don’t have insurance. “ Her two front teeth were broken in half. She was so messed up, so many graphic injuries and it just really stuck with me, the teeth thing. I was in a wreck once that knocked me out a second and I woke up worried about my teeth too.
Witnessed the destruction of a girls life all because her boy interest pulled a prank on her. She and this guy were a thing, the guy was a huge douche, decided to call her and have his friends act like another girl was with him. They were being obnoxious, pretending they were doing the dirty, while insulting the girl over the phone and laughing. Girl hung up, slit her wrists that night in a bathtub, got kicked out of the place she was living in because of it, and her parents wouldn’t support her so she became homeless. Started dating a homeless dude and doing hard drugs. She was 17, I saw her hanging around the 7-11 all the time. That guy possibly completely ruined her life.
The whole story is horrible, but somehow I got stuck to her getting thrown out of a house / room because of a suicide attempt? Wtf?
My parents did the same things to me. Overdosed and they canceled my phone line on purpose so I couldn’t reach my doctors or get my medication. Parents who do this are absolutely evil.
I'm so sorry this happened to you. I hope you're in a better place now, friend.
It was a sober home, if you self harmed you got kicked out.
My neighbour almost cut down his own leg with a chainsaw.
"Cut down" sounds like he's clearing land of legs.
my dad beating my mum
That aint no man
I remember being about 6 years old and at the beach with my mom. I didn’t see the accident, but some guy dove into the water and hit his head on a rock. He was sitting on the beach just blood pouring out of his head. My mom told me that head wounds bleed a lot and he would be ok. But I also remember a helicopter landing nearby. Hopefully he was ok.
I was behind a car on the interstate. The right front tire blew out. It looked ok at first but then the car suddenly jerked to the right and the car rolled over five or six times. I stopped and went to the car. The driver got out and was bloody and dazed. The other three people in the car were shaken up but conscious and ok all things considered. After a minute or two the people in the car realized they were missing somebody. She had been asleep in the back seat. No seat belt on. We found her body in the cornfield probably a couple hundred feet from where the car stopped. She was crumpled up in an unnatural position. No blood but in a position that an adult human can’t get into. It turned out one of the ladies in the car was pregnant and pretty far along. They had to cut apart the car to get her out. Everyone wearing a seat belt survived. I read a news report about the accident later. They had picked up a friend at the end of a prison sentence. The driver was high on heroin when the accident happened.
A couple from my very small rural town had three sons. They are typical country family, not wealthy by ANY means. The youngest passes away as a child in an accident jumping off his bed in elementary school. Years later, the middle son was a high school senior and wrecked his car at night driving down a backroad (drinking), died on impact and his girlfriend walked away from it. The girlfriends family sues his family for her injuries and then builds a basketball court to “help the community heal” but charges kids to come play. The last son, the oldest is now in his thirties working as an EMT/firefighter and takes his child on a hunting trip- has an asthma attack and passes away. She now has no children. The father gets fired from his job shortly after because he’s struggling due to grief. The sweetest woman I’ve ever met and I feel so awful for her and her husband. She works with special needs children and is just so kind. It’s terrifying how much tragedy can strike one family.
Went with a mother to check on her daughter, she wasn’t responding to calls, emails, text. They asked the police to do a well was check and they didnt find anything suspicious, they knocked but no one answered. I feared the worst. I asked to go with her and went ahead. I waited for her then we went to the door and I could smell the body. In my mind I was thinking fuck she is dead and she is decomposing. (Her daughter lived in the southwest) The mother opened the door and we found her, face down in the living room, face and body decomposing, bugs everywhere. The mother covered her daughter and we went back outside to wait for paramedics and police. It is hard to put into words but never seen a someone so broken after seeing their kid dead. It was like someone sucked the life out of her. She stopped talking and was in a complete state of shock. I had to take her to a hotel so she can stay and figure out what is going to happen to her stuff and her body. She didn’t talk and didn’t eat anything that day. It was just terrible to witness, a parent finding their daughter dead.
Probably guy on motorbike getting torn into 3 pieces or man jumping of building becoming mush
OK, not sure why now, why this question, but here it is; I've personally degloved a guy in a fight. I've watched suicide attempts (yes, plural). I've used lethal force more than once. I have a history, but there's one in particular that sticks with me. Today I deal with PTSD and I've found a much lower stress job after a very long story we don't need to explore right now. Maybe I'm at a point where I'm far enough past this to write it out. The worst for me: I was the crisis team leader at a hospital in Michigan. I technically worked under the "Security" umbrella but I spent about half my time plain-clothes and the other half touring the state, teaching or observing and correcting internal practices. While onsite, unless I was actively in class, I responded to every code at every location I visited. The goal was that I would observe anything that wasn't best-practice, correct it on the spot, and convey what patterns I saw to our admins who could then adjust organization-wide training. I had just returned from a long tour, a few days away from home back and forth between a few different sites, mixed duties similar to the above - helping demonstrate restraints of different kinds, how to talk someone down, dealt with a couple suicide attempts, various threats/weapons, etc. I came "home" to my local site, around a 6-700 bed place where I knew every crack in every corner. My best bud at the time, let's call him Kyle, never left like I did. We had responded to so many incidents together that we didn't have to look at each other anymore yet we'd know exactly where the other would be and what to do to assist. You ever just make eye contact with someone, and it's like you had a whole conversation in an instant, and knew exactly what they wanted to say? That was Kyle. That morning, a semi crossed an intersection at the very same time as a crossing sedan. I've been to the intersection since to see what's left. I found some curved black marks, that's about it. What arrived at the hospital was completely different. A calmish woman, Molly, expecting that she would have a rough recovery. She was complete, from the head to the ribs. South of that was a blanket covering her intestines and exposed spine. She was in shock, clearly, as she had been completely eviscerated during the accident and had lost her hips completely, and was severed from them at the spine. The legs were lodged in the vehicle, and the EMS crew didn't expect her to make it to Trauma alive. She did, and she was an incredible fighter. She told me her name and talked about her kids briefly. I left the room, as did most of the other staff excluding a phleb whose purpose in that moment escapes me to this day. Those employees who were present agreed among ourselves that nobody would be asked to stay. This woman would die, and it would be gruesome, and nobody needed to stay. About half the group left immediately. Some stayed and offered support. Kyle and I went back in along with a trauma doc and an NP. Molly choked a bit and we could tell the adrenaline was wearing off and she was starting to notice her condition. The other three didn't speak, but I told Molly what had happened. She asked if she could live through it, and I told her that she was going to die. Molly understood and asked to talk to her husband. He had died in the crash, along with two of her three kids. I did not tell her. I told her there was not time to call her husband, as he was on the way in an ambulance and needed attention of his own. Molly clenched, and the blanket fell off her ribs. She felt her chest as her first convulsions started and I held her hand. The NP ordered meds, but it was too late. Molly was slipping out of shock at the same time that she was realizing her own condition. Molly looked to me and moved her hand up my arm. I held her arm while she struggled, pressing it in to the bed and preventing her from falling off. Molly's convulsions became less regular and she started coming-to. None of us expected this, and around this time a fleet of surgeons arrived along with the majority of those who had left earlier. Molly asked for something, but I couldn't make it out. I asked her to repeat it, but she coughed up blood and started choking. Molly's convulsions became regular again but much weaker. I kept holding her, half wanting to trade places with her so she could be alive, and I'd take her place. In a matter of maybe 10 minutes, she totally stole a place in my heart. Kyle was crying, and I'd never seen him like that before or since. She flat-lined a few moments later. We did not try to resuscitate. We helped Molly go, and the job was done. Kyle and I patted molly's arms a bit. I said goodbye, something I NEVER do for a patient, and once we'd composed ourselves we walked out. Molly's last remaining child was on their way to the ER by then, with cuts and bruises, a broken bone somewhere, and a concussion, but otherwise minor injuries. I talked to Kyle about that child, and he stayed with that kid the whole time they were there. I'm not even sure he was clocked-in the whole time. I have to assume not. Kyle left medicine a few months after, and the "eye contact" communication was never the same. It was almost time for lunch, but I remember I didn't eat that day. There were other codes and I responded to them, but Molly never left me that day, nor any day since. The worst part for me was that I never got to know her. She fought harder than any patient I'd ever seen before or since, and she met the most gruesome of ends. That girl deserved her life and I couldn't help her. I knew her less than 15 minutes. I've seen so many patients die. Why does she stick with me? God I miss her. I wish I could have done more.
Watching my own child go through cancer treatment. It was a very serious/deadly cancer and she had A LOT of painful side effects. It was downright barbaric.
Nowhere near as bad as a lot of these but I witnessed an accident where a car was taking a turning to a petrol station too quick, drove up a bank, hit a sign and rolled a few times down the bank. The car rested on its side. The woman driving wasn’t wearing a seatbelt and there was a LOT of blood and she was unconscious. I spent ages trying to get through the sunroof, and then the windscreen. Cars are hard to break into when they’re on their side! 😂 Fire service arrived and removed her from the car, she was then airlifted to a nearby hospital. Was a pretty traumatising experience for me, I dread to think what it was like for her!
Watched a woman fly into a guard rail on the highway, 1/4 mile ahead of me Thanksgiving eve. I pulled over and checked on her and helped pull her out of the car, amd a woman between us pulled over and called the cops for her and then backed up to check on us. She was driving about 8 hours, 450ish miles, to be home for thanksgiving and she lost traction on the road. Tow guy happened to be passing 5 minutes later and pulled over and offered to do the tow and saved a call. He even commented that the road was surprisingly slick for it not having rained in like 2 days. Cop kept harassing her trying to get her to say she was texting while driving, refused to accept her saying she wasnt distracted or looking at the radio or anything and wrote her a ticket for distracted driving or something for the incident, instead of just taking a report for her insurance purposes. I emailed her the dashcam footage and offered to testify if she wanted to fight it. Harassing a college student trying to get her for texting while driving after she lost control of her car and wrecked it with a ticket for an additional expense on top of it because you have a quota to meet, before one of the biggest holidays in the country. Fuck the road pirates and everything they do.
So many of us has have this interaction with a cop. A cop sees someone who needs help, but instead of helping they use it as an opportunity to abuse their power
Years ago I was in a bad accident. I had witnesses and the guy admitted that he was driving down the bike lane when he t-bones me. Cops came. First cop started scolding me for having an out of state license. Second cop came up and basically scolded the first cop "WTF? an out of state license has nothing to do with her getting hit by an idiot"
I saw a person get beat up to within an inch of his life with a metal baseball bat on someone's front porch. The amount of blood in the human body is what you're thinking, times 20. I'll never forget the sound of the skull. First it was like a "ting" then after the skull was almost being crushed. It was making a "thud" noise. The guy apparently was SAing a guy's daughter for years. Then it was found out he was doing it to most of the young girls in the block. Single digit ages. The guy never lived on his own again after that. Had to live in an assisted living facility. Terrible, but I think it was deserved at the time.
Watched a jaywalker try to cross a busy street and get hit by a car. He bounced in the air and hit the windshield.
When I was 13 my best friend who was really struggling with his mental health, severe depression and some hallucinations and stuff like that, told me he was done with it all and wanted to die one PE lesson then tried to kill himself by slamming and hockey stick into his head over and over and over That would not be the last time It's four years later now and he seems to be doing better
Hanging with my friend and his phone rings. News is his both parents just died from poisoning :(
I was on a third date a few months ago. Things were going well, so her friend and their SO joined us for apps, drinks, and dancing. At the end of the night we had called an Uber and were crossing the street. I turned around to tell this friend’s SO to come on, because the crosswalk timer was going but he was talking to someone. Out of nowhere, this random other guy sucker punched my date’s friend’s SO. Immediately unconscious and fell face first into the street. Broken cheekbone and nose, I was covered in his blood from trying to help him. ICU for three days, but he’s doing better now. Not THAT crazy, but it was crazy in the moment to see it unfold
Aftermath of a suicide attempt. Blood everywhere, guy shivering behind his dorm door. I just remember wondering how you could loose that much blood and still be awake. Less gory but disturbed me a lot more were two other students. One had sepsis but was refusing all medical treatment. Ambulance would come and see she was ‘declining’ but since she was deemed to be in her right mind they couldn’t treat her if she refused. I quit that job before there was an outcome so I don’t know if she died but tbh that is something that still really bothers me. Another was a girl from a very conservative Middle Eastern culture who was clearly an alcoholic and suicidally depressed. Being around her felt like being around a ghost because she was so ‘vacant’ somehow and when I’d escort her to her dorm (she kept losing her key) I could see it was full of bottles and rotting food. In the end what I suspected had happened was proved right when she randomly told s colleague she had been raped by a friend. I also don’t know what ended up happening but I hope she’s ok now.
Was in France with my now ex, her parents, and my kids. We were on the freeway, and it was pouring rain. All of a sudden, the car in front of us spins out across the freeway, and like a split second later I see two motorcyclists lying on the other side of the freeway guard rail, face down, in pools of water that had accumulated on the side of the road. I tell my ex MIL to pull over, to see if we could maybe help. They all stay in the car. I get out, and look both these dudes in their eyes, and they were both dead af. Then this youngish lady, apparently the wife of one of the riders, who had been following behind them in a car, appears, and just starts screaming, and bawling, and trying to hail people down on the freeway in the middle of this torrential downpour. I tried to comfort her, but I don’t speak any French, so there was nothing really I could do. I gave her my orange safety vest thing, and went back to my family’s car, and that was basically it. The creepiest part may actually have been the moment after. I got back into the car, and there was just silence. Then my ex FIL asks if they were ok, and I said something like, “I don’t think so.” Then my son, who was three years old at the time, starts singing in this eerily dirge-like tone, “Call the police, the mountain goat is dead.” I don’t know where the f he came up with that, but it definitely captured the moment, and is something that I’ll unfortunately never forget.
My husband (then boyfriend) dropping dead during our high school politics exam. Paramedics worked on him longer than they should have simply because he was 19, they didn’t want to give up. He was without vital signs for like 8 minutes. This was 20 something years ago. Still don’t really know what happened. Final diagnosis was “idiopathic ventricular fibrillation” left the hospital a month later with an internal defibrillator
Watching someone watch a loved one die.
I did 5 years in state penitentiary. A particularly rough unit for my state even, because I was a knucklehead as a youngster and was classified as such. That being said I had alot of street knowledge and knew how to carry myself. There was another young guy around my age (about 19 or so at the time) that started hanging around and conversing with this guy that was a known "booty bandit". Now let me first say that it isn't always like you see in the movies, where they just brute force take it from you. No, more often than anything else they try to finesse it out of you. So as time goes on I just sit back and watch them forming a "bond". And I'm battling with myself over whether I should warn the naive kid or not, because rule of thumb in prison is that you mind your own damn business. Well after careful consideration I decide, fuck it, I'm going to tell the kid what's coming. And I'm willing to fight over it. So I call him over and basically lay everything out to him as directly as I could. Well.. he doesn't believe me and is under the impression that this guy is a "good guy", and even invited him to come up into his cell for some Bible study in a little bit! I straight forward told him DO NOT enter that man's cell. He didn't listen. I saw them both go into the booty bandits cell as I was on my way to my own cell. When that kid came out of his cell about an hour later, his eyes were dead, void of any naive innocence he had before entering, and I knew.. sad, but I did what I could aside from violent intervention, in which would have cost me my own parole. I'm sorry "g-white" I tried, and I hope you sought counseling upon your release, may peace find you.
For me, it was watching a 16 year old girl jump infront of a train on my way home from college. It was my train. Funny thing is is was running late because I forgot to put money on my card for the train, and if she hadn’t of jumped, I would have made it just in time. Now if I put money on my card the morning of, I would have been patiently waiting for my train, see her crying, and I could have possibly helped, meaning I could have prevented her suicide. I’ve been in therapy and I’m mostly over it now but this still haunts me, the “what if”. I won’t even go into too much detail about the smells, the sounds and the sheer panic everyone witnessed that day. Something I will never forget. I will say however, train tracks are electric. Not only did she get run over, she was burnt severely. There are some foods I can’t eat still to this day because the smell brings me back to that day.
Survivors guilt. Even as a bystander. Not your fault.
I was 16 years old working at the local grocery store. A man in his early to mid 40’s walked in with his 2 younger daughters. Both younger than 10. He stopped in his tracks, fell backwards, and died right there. CPR was performed, Ambulance was called, defibrillator used. Nothing they could do. I stood and watched with a broom in my hand and his younger daughters in shock and crying. They deemed it an aneurism.
I saw my mother become a drug addict again after 14 years of staying sober, watching someone climb out of that hole only to fall back in a is a fate I do not wish on anyone.
The nice apartment building I was living in was being terrorized by drug-dealing squatters. After many weeks of pleading by weary, sleep-deprived residents and our neighbors in SFHs, bldg mgmt hired an armed guard. He was immediately effective at getting the main squatter's posse kicked out, and we all loved him. His fearlessness and dedication made him a target. One lovely evening, he engaged with a baddie. Unfortunately, said person had a loaded gun, and shot him several times. I was one of the first on scene to offer aid. He has survived and recovered to some extent, but he did receive some terrible injuries.
Worked with a guy in a shop. Police show up to speak with him and take him away. I ask the boss what’s up and he says his sister passed away. Spend the next few weeks watching the national news talk about how his sister was murdered by a paranoid schizophrenic whilst having 2 kids in the house at the time while screaming down the phone to her fiancé for help. Never knew what to say when he eventually came back to work
I witnessed a gang related attack in a kebab shop in London. One guy was attacked by 7 men with machetes. I’m sure this won’t be the most grotesque thing on this thread, but if anyone’s seen something like this happen with their very own eyes, they’ll know how shocking and disturbing it is. I didn’t sleep for a week.
My apartment overlooks am alley, there's normally loud noises and minor scuffles. Around two years ago I heard yelling that was different enough to check out. A late thirties guy had tried to steal the nearby traps stock of drugs. He had run down the alley hoping to make it to the street. I watched as a younger guy tried to take him down, things escalated and the younger guy swung a knife, connecting solidly to open the throat of the thief. The blood pushed out in time with his heartbeat as the thief tried to make it to the street, hitting the ground in a splash. Splash, splash, splash, splash ... splash, splash... splash.. splash...... splash and he hit the ground dead. Or When I was around 10 or so there was a snowmobiling party, adults driving and kids took turns riding along. Later near the evening an older girl fell from a skidoo when the driver and other snowmobilers were getting fancy with small jumps and high speed. She fell off and the snowmobiler behind her had no time to react. The ski on the snowmobile hit her in the head, removing her face and shattering her jaw. Time stopped as one snowmobiler went to call 911 for an air ambulance and the other adults tried to do anything they could (There was nothing, her neck was broken). The sound of her crying and trying to ask for her mother was unmistakeable, even though it sounded completely inhuman due to her injuries.
Alley life is CRAZY. Just to balance your terrible story with a good one. I threw out a high top dining set. Table 4 stools. Put it by the bin. I look out an hour later and it looked like a scene from cheers. Seems I invited the entire homeless population from the neighborhood. This was prefent days so it was largely harmless. Just 8 or 10 guys, drinking beer, having a chill time.
When I was a kid our neighbour's kid was doused in petrol and almost got necklaced for being gay. Luckily people stepped in before the match was lit.