Man who dissolved in boiling Yellowstone hot spring slipped while checking temperature to take bath

Today in headlines

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/11/17/man-who-dissolved-in-boiling-yellowstone-hot-spring-slipped-while-checking-temperature-to-take-bath/

this is the most horrifying thing I've read all week

How would it stack up if you read about it last week?

Ugh, and, to make things worse, I opened this thinking it was one of those blah blah blah what's on yout iPod threads.

cannibal corpse presumably

I gotta confess I have a sick fascination with people dying in predictable ways in the wilderness.

I get terrified when I watch movies that involve people against nature. In a way more than ghost or monsters.

Can't remember where I read it but the fact that they were from Oregon is the key thing; hot springs here are like 115'F or so and totally fine. Yellowstone, on the other hand, is more than twice that and far, _far_ more acidic

there's plenty of signs telling you to stay on the boardwalk though, often with reference to injury or death, it's the apparent belief that it couldn't possibly be as dangerous as it says that gets me about things like this

This has happened a bunch. A few times actually dudes whose dogs accidentally jump in, then they jump in to try to save the dog. And then their flash boils off.

Flesh.

there's plenty of signs telling you to stay on the boardwalk though, often with reference to injury or death, it's the apparent belief that it couldn't possibly be as dangerous as it says that gets me about things like this

'Post-truth' declared word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries

... you can shoehorn Trump and Brexit into virtually anything.

I gotta confess I have a sick fascination with people dying in predictable ways in the wilderness.

― slathered in cream and covered with stickers (silby), Thursday, November 17, 2016 4:24 PM (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yep i enjoy reading about this sort of thing as well

This has filled me with disgust, but of stupidity

we are a disgustingly stupid species

need a lie down

That was Snowdon's secret - we are all trash etc etc (bad paraphrase, probably misspelt name)

And then their flash boils off.

well that just boils my flash!

Yes I'm sure Snowden read this news today and felt quite validated.

anybody read this book, is it good

https://www.amazon.com/Death-Yellowstone-Accidents-Foolhardiness-National/dp/1570984506/

The Flaming Lips - "Feeling Yourself Disintegrate"

They were selling a book just like that at the Grand Canyon when I was there last month.

i dunno, isn't it nice to see a really just comeuppance for a human being in the news for once

i'm always impressed at how many ways people find to die in the white mountains in NH which are super tame compared to much of the terrain out west

That was Snowdon's secret - we are all trash etc etc (bad paraphrase, probably misspelt name)

― imago, Thursday, November 17, 2016 11:43 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

snowden's secret was "ripeness is all", as this bather to his credit already understood

took a mainland friend hiking in volcanoes national park recently and told her not to leave the path without being v careful; she was like what'd happen; i was like idk you'll step in a lava tube covered up by undergrowth; she was like holy shit would i be swallowed into hell; i was like haha no but you'd break your ankle; we walked into the park and immediately encountered a don't-leave-the-path sign w giant lurid color illustration of a hiker being swallowed into hell, actual death date in accompanying text, terrified face illuminated by glow of subterranean lava and all. she was like why do u keep these things from me. apparently i'm part of the problem is my point.

Hawaii also has this sign
http://www.beachmaniac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Screen-Shot-2012-09-15-at-3.29.47-PM.png

my favorite dangerous water feature might be Bolton Strid

http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/bolton-strid

what's on your iPod... "Hot in Herre"

my favorite dangerous water feature might be Bolton Strid

http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/bolton-strid

― slathered in cream and covered with stickers (silby), Thursday, November 17, 2016 1:17 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

my local river has similar (but not usually as severe, dangerously) hidden downcurrents and underwater hollows/tubes in its most welcoming swimming spots and basically eats high school kids :(

https://1bo9y82e76el2rf8ms1m5i0r-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/5249832670_4bd71dd62a_o-copy.jpg

I have just now started to listen to an album called On The Dry Land. That is what's on my iPod

The Strid is one of nature's classically benign looking meat grinders. Confusingly both The Strid and the Abbey are absolutely nowhere near the town of Bolton. These people that jump over it almost make my heart stop, one slip and you get processed - what fun!

:) knew you'd be a fan

http://thefullquid.com/art/drawing/fishman.htm

..for those who enjoy predictable deaths in the wilderness. though there is quite a large novel element to that one, too.

"One of the few pieces of evidence left behind was a pair of Scott’s flip-flops."

TBH, you wear those fucking things while hiking, you deserve to die. Not just hiking, actually, just wearing them out in the world.

Wtf flip flops are perfectly acceptable footwear in the tropics/at the beach

guarantee whoever handlettered that sign at hanakapiai was wearing rubbah slippahs

These people that jump over it almost make my heart stop, one slip and you get processed - what fun!

la culte du bolton strid

(i don't see gender)

this is the most reassuring story i've read since the election

That strid thing is freaking me out! It looks so inviting!

(sorry, still on "what's on your iPod" because "I Melt With You" would also work)

The story about German tourists who died in Death Valley is a particularly grim example of this genre

http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the-death-valley-germans/

Dissolve Me by Alt-J
Being Boiled by Human League
Boiling Boy by Wire

silby I just wasted like an hour on that site thanks a lot

This is unrelated but I'm just going to use this thread to post remarkable sentences as well as remarkable wilderness deaths since I'm taking a Twitter break:

These starfish relatives need to make lots of sperm since they’re shooting it into the sea where it has to waft to a female.

via

i bet flip flops feature in a lot of these stories

Being Boiled by Human League

― hardcore dilettante, Friday, November 18, 2016 10:10 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

v first thing I thought when I read the story

Those giant books about deaths in the park they sell at various National Parks in the US (I have the Yosemite one) are really pretty great. Biggest danger in the wilderness turns out to be if you're a young male in it.

Susan Boyle

We were in Kauai last week and signs like that Hanakapiai one are all over the place at most of the beaches. We were staying with a friend who lives there, and he got really mad when we saw people at a few of the beaches blithely wandering into the surf -- his basic thing was, "I don't really care if tourists want to kill themselves, but they're endangering the lives of the lifeguards who are going to have to go try and rescue them."

Those giant books about deaths in the park they sell at various National Parks in the US (I have the Yosemite one) are really pretty great.

I read the Grand Canyon one, and promptly decided there was no fucking WAY I was going down there on a mule.

i wonder how many kids had a go at this
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/huwmJOXoVao/hqdefault.jpg

I should probably avoid all these parks. When I was a kid I was reading a sign warning pedestrians to be careful when crossing railroad out loud to my parents, only to look down and notice that my shoe was firmly wedged between the railroad track and the wooden sidewalk.

people who don't quite grasp how much momentum a train has is another perhaps more horrifying source of accidental death

xp you have to try pretty hard to kill/injure yourself in any national park, it's willful ignorance of rules and warnings that does it, not absent mindedness

my family still laughs at me for the train tracks think. pretty sure i had to take my foot out of the shoe in order to unwedge it.

I feel like the "people can't judge distance/speed and the concept of objects appearing further away than they actually are when viewed head-on" applies more to getting hit by trains. unless people are thinking that trains will stop for them, in which case... dang, dude

Not only ignoring the warning signs, but thinking that a boiling sulphur pool would make a good spa. xp

yeah i mean especially after dante's peak. ugh. horrible way to die, horrible to think about witnessing it and being unable to do anything.

boiling sulphur pool used to be something a coworker would cook for himself every day in the office. Thankfully, he switched to cooking applewood smoked bacon which is pretty much the polar opposite of smells in my book so things are much better.

One can avoid geyser fed hot springs. Its harder to avoid sidewalks, riding buses, or driving about.

Yang Erjing, Beijing Sidewalk Collapse Victim, Dies After Falling Into Scalding Pool Of Water

Being scalded to death is a particular risk in Russia:
Moscow Heating Pipes Create Lethal Traps

City officials acknowledge that Moscow has become a "minefield" and predict that without a sudden infusion of cash to repair the pipes, more people will die in the same grisly fashion.

"People will, I am afraid, keep falling in such pits in the future," said a spokeswoman for a city heating agency, Mosenergo.

​Screaming passengers flee bus from scalding jet of steam
Dozens of animals are boiled alive at Russian pet shop after heating pipe bursts and the store is flooded with scalding water
Bizarre moment cars plunge into sinkhole of boiling hot water after pipes burst and collapse road

yeah i mean especially after /dante's peak/. ugh. horrible way to die, horrible to think about witnessing it and being unable to do anything.

Old lady deciding to JUMP IN for no reason after pierce brosnan has already successfully rowed them to within an inch of dry land is definitely an inspiration to these people

hahaha i was actually thinking of the much earlier scene with the nameless nubile youth going for a sexy dip in the hot springs and then oh noooooooo

I read the Grand Canyon one, and promptly decided there was no fucking WAY I was going down there on a mule.

I think that's probably one of the safest activities you can do in the Grand Canyon. Mules know the trail better than any tourists do! And most of them don't drink.

Also, having hiked down the Mist Trail at Yosemite I'm frankly surprised people don't die every day trying to get down the trail next to Vernal Falls.

I suspect there are plenty of dumb mules . . . you can find their skeletons lying at the bottom of the canyon.

but natural selection is making them better and better and we're slowly evolving toward a supermule

In future dystopia mules ride you!

I almost fell off of the Coba pyramid, slipped down the stairs and not ultimately sure if it was me or someone else who stopped my fall (a guy grabbed my backpack but I'm not sure if that's what stopped me). I feel I'm probably not made for extreme outdoorsmanship, just a little too clumsy.

i tripped and tumbled down the side of a hill once when i was a child. there were a lot of rocks on the hillside but it was mainly just grass and mud. i narrowly missed a couple of the rocks and had probably travelled about 100 metres before coming to a stop.

jesus!

it was this fearsome behemoth

https://trailwalker32.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/p1020296.jpg

an older japanese tourist i passed while hiking huayna picchu in peru (it is the larger mountain next to machu picchu) later fell a few stories down the mountain that day

http://incatrail.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Huayna-Picchu-stairs.jpg

this is definitely the most terrifying hike i've ever done

yeah that's a nope

(not my photo, just posted it to share some of the pretty scary views you get while climbing)

descending it is way more terrifying btw

sweet mother of mercy

too many other ppl above you you have no way of dodging, whose sure-footedness you have no way of judging :0

that looks like the type of thing I would be 100% into climbing right up until I was actually in front of it and calculating the odds that I would trip on a shoelace

I just instinctively retied my shoelaces while looking at the picture

i still have actusal real nightmares abt clambering up this on a school geography trip, aged 11-ish, i.e. 45 years ago (it's stair hole in dorset):
https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/0d/37/89/4e/sliced-cut-like-a-cake.jpg

i climbed up to the top ridge tidily enough, then realised as i was climbing down that i had inadvertently positioned myself right over the tunnel-cave thing, so if i slipped i would probably fall into the sea -- which is not deep but this put me in a bit of an adrenalised panic, in a way just being on an interrupted steep rock slope had not… i got back to easier territory safely enough but i was shaking when i got to the ground

naturally no one had noticed my plight -- the other kids were clambering all over everywhere, the teacher was eating sandwiches and not paying attention, so mild side-eye to him tbh (also lol if we'd climbed right up and over the fence at top left, we'd be on MoD land, complete with mines and firing ranges and so on)

makes me think of Picnic at Hanging Rock

descending is always scarier than ascending steep trails, since forward momentum sends you out into the void rather than just against the slope

I think Huanya Picchu benefits from looking as dangerous as it is, so people are less inclined to fuck around like they do at Yosemite.

Less inclined, get it

yea ciderpress otm. at huayna picchu there were stretches where i just sat down on the steps and moved my ass down one step at a time

I think Huanya Picchu benefits from looking as dangerous as it is, so people are less inclined to fuck around like they do at Yosemite.

― erry red flag (f. hazel), Monday, November 21, 2016 3:56 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Less inclined, get it

― erry red flag (f. hazel), Monday, November 21, 2016 3:56 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

goes both ways tbh. the mountain has steps (carved and built by the incas) so that can be deceiving, people think "oh i can do that because im just walking up and down steps"

i've done it two times. once at age 15 and once at age 28, it was considerably more terrifying hiking it at 28.

i tolerate heights way less than i did in my teens.

you mean this staircase don't you marcos?

http://i.imgur.com/DS5RsOy.jpg

yeah i would be super uneasy on that trail, i do a lot of hiking but not in places with that amount of vertical exposure

I just gave up any pretense of dignity and backed down that thing on all fours like it was a ladder.

do you ever get the impression that the people who originally lived in these places would be aghast that people are still walking on the eroded staircases instead of patching in better stones?

hahah otm

ha probably. when climbing i kept thinking about the likely huge number of people who died building those too

hiked a mountain in peru where there was a point i literally used a rope to swing between a gap in the trail - below was p much a sheer drop

thank god i was 15 and didn't realize how dangerous that was

I think even at 15 I would have noped my way back down the mountain

my hands and feet are sweaty just looking at my photos from that day tbh

there's a bunch of photos of me at the top of the mountain and im just sitting on the ground bc im too paralyzed to even stand up

can somebody please take donald j. trump on a walk of a geyser field?

the hairpiece would fetch a good sum on ebay i'm sure

man these pics... shudder. i had labyrinthitis about 11 or 12 years ago and it tends to stick around in some form, i've had a real problem with heights since. i was in the top tier at the nou camp a few years ago and i was paralysed by fear and couldn't enjoy the game, managed to sneak down to an empty low seat at half-time.

I've always had problems with heights and even working on tower scaffolds and scissor lifts for over a decade never really cured it. Fucking love terra firma, man.

Once I was told not to leave site until I had got a chandelier cable to the apex of a church dome before the painters came in that weekend. it involved going up an illegal tower scaffold built onto the top of a big scaffolding structure with lots jutting steel poles that would skewer you if fell. One of the painters felt sorry for me and said gimme your drill I'll do it. He did an absolute abortion of a job, fucking etch-a-sketch type wiring. I told him thanks but it was fucking dog rough and I'll probably get pumped for this on Monday, but at least I'm alive!
He said "wait until it has been painted, you won't notice it". When I returned on monday it still looked fucking pez with a layer of paint and I got a massive fucking and it actually ruined my reputation at that company. But I'm still glad I didn't do it.

Y'all don't click on this now

https://youtu.be/RpXL_QaK17E

yesss the cigarette

nnnnnnggggaaaaahhhhh

that is giving me the serious Fear

Crazy Russians Tower Climbing Compilation

^^^tom's warning probably applies here too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjvLIvnrTvU

do you ever get the impression that the people who originally lived in these places would be aghast that people are still walking on the eroded staircases instead of patching in better stones?

Just makes me think of Klaus Kinski lurching about while Popol Vuh plays in the background.

we need so many more people to die this way soon

lol xp

heh, as I mentioned in one of the Popol Vuh threads, I forgot to put Aguirre on my phone so I had to listen to Seligpresung instead as I was climbing up Huayna Picchu. I think I also listened to the first Verve album?

I hiked in Peru when I was 15 too ; )

Not in the same ballpark as most of these but back when we went to the top of Sigiriya (15 years ago) none of the metalwork or barriers were there - if you look at e.g. 2:30 when he's point in back up the walkway you can see what the 'stairs' were like when we did it to the left of the tourists coming down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0oC-qH64CQ

but natural selection is making them better and better and we're slowly evolving toward a supermule

― marzipandemonium (Ye Mad Puffin)

I hiked in Peru when I was 15 too ; )

― velko, Tuesday, November 22, 2016 2:29 AM (five hours ago) Bookmark

; )

MatthewK, thank you for getting my dumb, rather pointless biology joke.

https://68.media.tumblr.com/6d6fc2252a60cae0bb0c8f6900808f00/tumblr_o05kgpRHcu1rznn4wo1_1280.jpg

okay lol

lol dayo

I get IA about people swimming when there are riptide warnings ffs; stuff like Yellowstone makes me despise humanity.

but on the upside maybe we have now reached the point, evolutionarily speaking, where we are self-culling

darwin awards was so 2003

Mourning in America - Trump Year One: November '16 to

is that a hot spring you're trying to get us to click on and fall in

Got to be honest, this thread has been curiously calming to me.

<3

like a warm bath

^____^

Also prompted me to read about the Dyatlov Pass Incident again, featuring one of my favourite weird things that humans do, namely paradoxical undressing in hypothermia.

Thank you. I'd forgotten about that one.

When I am experiencing panic or anxiety, the survival stories in this book always calm me down:

https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Survival-Who-Lives-Dies/dp/0393326152

Consequently I've read it dozens of times, at least some chapters. I'm not sure why. It's way outside the categories of my normal reading.

emil.y otm re dyatlov pass

http://www.outsideonline.com/1926316/freezing-persons-recollect-snow—first-chill—then-stupor—then-letting-go

At 85 degrees, those freezing to death, in a strange, anguished paroxysm, often rip off their clothes. This phenomenon, known as paradoxical undressing, is common enough that urban hypothermia victims are sometimes initially diagnosed as victims of sexual assault. Though researchers are uncertain of the cause, the most logical explanation is that shortly before loss of consciousness, the constricted blood vessels near the body's surface suddenly dilate and produce a sensation of extreme heat against the skin.

All you know is that you're burning. You claw off your shell and pile sweater and fling them away.

Was reading about Dyatlov Pass recently, after listening to this post-rockish concept album about it: https://open.spotify.com/album/2vYSKNZsE3R7pBbCFZKrOd

These students from the Dyatlov Pass incident would probably have been youngish or born during the '37-38 great terror, and then their formative period would have been the Barbarossa years. They were probably thinking no probs when they set off.

http://www.outsideonline.com/1926316/freezing-persons-recollect-snow—first-chill—then-stupor—then-letting-go

This was great and terrifying, tempered slightly by the fact that I'm clueless about temperatures in Fahrenheit.

32° ... Just take off your clothes no matter what thermometer you're using.

lol

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4032438/Death-chocolate-Mother-two-dies-falling-vat-molten-confectionery-Russian-sweet-factory.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/10/31/death-yosemite-travel-blogging-couple-perishes-foot-fall-they-may-have-been-taking-pictures-relative-says/

More than 250 people have died worldwide in the last six years while taking selfies, according to a recent study from researchers in India published in the Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care.

... almost a third of them Indian, strangely enough.

turns out the guy reappeared but had magical powers