Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

‘That girl is going to get herself killed’ (2022)

longreads.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 474 posts

Re: ‘That girl is going to get herself killed’ (2022)

#141

Post by dsfyu404ed »

sixstringtheory wrote: post #16

Drowning is the leading cause of death in national parks and recreation areas. It's scary how powerful water is.

This is one of those lies right up there with "the box cutter and the step stool are the most dangerous tools"

Frequency/exposure matters. A lot of people swim. Not a lot of people choose the more extreme hike that's borderline on rock climbing.

The danger of the typical or average swim is basically nil. Worrying about it other than just knowing there's baseline danger (that you can amplify by poor decisions if you choose to, but same goes for everything in life).

Re: ‘That girl is going to get herself killed’ (2022)

#142

Post by antipotoad »

foobarian wrote: post #6
wil421 wrote: post #4

Do your research before getting into rivers. My local river has several gauges and hotlines you can call to get dam releases. They also have a chart of the water release amounts and if you could paddle/float/canoe/kayak etc. It even has a turbidity gauge that will show you if any harmful bacteria is present, we have issues with fertilizer runoff and e-coli. It's a rather mundane river in an area not as known as Glaci…

Acquaintance did some suburban kayaking and didn't see a 3ft drop (some kind of dam or culvert under a bridge) until too late. The fluid mechanics of that drop are such that there is a vortex at the base that makes it difficult to get out. He was able to stand but just barely - scary to think how close a call that was in a pretty innocuous looking setting.

See this video from Practical Engineering, aptly titled ‘The Drowning Machine’: https://practical.engineering/blog/2019/3/16/drowning-machin...

Re: ‘That girl is going to get herself killed’ (2022)

#143

Post by s1artibartfast »

rootusrootus wrote: post #65
emtel wrote: post #48

One time, I was driving at night in the Sierra after a storm - roads were covered in snow. It's a drive I've made close to 100 times without incident. Going around a bend, I saw a car in the ditch on the outside of the curve. I stopped the car, put on the hazards, and went to see if there was anyone in the car. As I was about to cross the highway a car come sliding around the bend more or less sideways. I stopped and…

Probably not the full voltage, just a leak. 230V is quite an experience. 120V is a mere annoyance by comparison, even if you touch live terminals directly. Even 120V is more than vibrating, though.

For context, a modern defibrillator is about 3,000 volts and 15 amps.

Re: ‘That girl is going to get herself killed’ (2022)

#144

Post by giantg2 »

toss1 wrote: post #109
giantg2 wrote: post #54

Risk can be fun. I don't feel bad if someone gets hurt or killed doing an activity that is inherently dangerous. They died doing what they enjoyed and feeling alive. Don't feel bad for me if I go that way either.

Yes, risk can be fun. But everyone I encountered in risk sports knew the difference between "smart crazy" vs "dumb crazy". It is the difference between using knowledge, skill, technology, and mental focus to reduce risk to manageable levels, vs "getting away with it". Getting away with it, riding on PDL — Pure Dumb Luck — can work for a long time. Until it doesn't, and you're dead. Like those YouTube idiots in the ar…

In my experience, some people operate on PDL because they never learned about risk in general, or are incapable of operating differently.

If you get hurt as a kid in a lower stakes fashion, you start to learn that breaking the rules hurts. That opportunity for lower stakes learning might be shrinking as we legislate away some "risky" stuff.

Some people simply can't handle the "constraints" of being responsible... like my wife. Her favorite quote is "I just want to live life". No thoughts to "what if?" or being prepared. If some stranger held the same beliefs and died, I still wouldn't feel bad - that's the way they chose to live thier life.

Re: ‘That girl is going to get herself killed’ (2022)

#145

Post by antipotoad »

psychphysic wrote: post #87
shagie wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Practical Engineering has a video on the dangers of a lowhead dam - https://youtu.be/GVDpqphHhAE

What on Earth!? I just submitted Kyle Hills video on this early today to HN. What an eery coincidence. I hope it's not a bad omen that I keep coming across this topic today...

Seems about five others of us also linked his video in this thread :) Guess you’re experiencing the Baader-Meinhof effect, AKA the frequency illusion [1].

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion

Re: ‘That girl is going to get herself killed’ (2022)

#146

Post by sixstringtheory »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #141
sixstringtheory wrote: post #16

Drowning is the leading cause of death in national parks and recreation areas. It's scary how powerful water is.

This is one of those lies right up there with "the box cutter and the step stool are the most dangerous tools" Frequency/exposure matters. A lot of people swim. Not a lot of people choose the more extreme hike that's borderline on rock climbing. The danger of the typical or average swim is basically nil. Worrying about it other than just knowing there's baseline danger (that you can amplify by poor decisions if you c…

It's more obvious how a cliff is dangerous versus a seemingly calm body of water. Thus people are less wary about water, and more people die that way.

It's not a lie, because the results are the results. And spreading awareness of the outcomes is about reducing the exposure that you mentioned, especially amongst the unprepared/unskilled.

Re: ‘That girl is going to get herself killed’ (2022)

#147

Post by rideontime »

falcolas wrote: post #136
emtel wrote: post #48

One time, I was driving at night in the Sierra after a storm - roads were covered in snow. It's a drive I've made close to 100 times without incident. Going around a bend, I saw a car in the ditch on the outside of the curve. I stopped the car, put on the hazards, and went to see if there was anyone in the car. As I was about to cross the highway a car come sliding around the bend more or less sideways. I stopped and…

Most of the current is going across your skin, not through it, and stone isn't necessarily a good ground. A light fixture generally won't create enough current to kill you. Usually. Probably not worth testing excessively though.

Aren't light fixtures typically direct mains power?

Re: ‘That girl is going to get herself killed’ (2022)

#148

Post by poulpy123 »

emtel wrote: post #48

One time, I was driving at night in the Sierra after a storm - roads were covered in snow. It's a drive I've made close to 100 times without incident. Going around a bend, I saw a car in the ditch on the outside of the curve. I stopped the car, put on the hazards, and went to see if there was anyone in the car. As I was about to cross the highway a car come sliding around the bend more or less sideways. I stopped and…

After wondering for 20 years why people got shocked when electric safety is common knowledge, I got shocked myself twice in one year because I was stupid

Re: ‘That girl is going to get herself killed’ (2022)

#149

Post by antipotoad »

themaninthedark wrote: post #84
Loughla wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look to your local Community College or State University extension office. Many of them offer outdoors classes. The problem with private wilderness survival classes you may find in the community, even the light versions, is that they tend to come with a very particular political slant. And that slant tends toward the paranoid.

As long as the paranoia is about how nature is going to try and kill you at any chance it gets, sounds good to me!

That paranoia is the creeping realization that civilization coddles us to the point of uselessness in the face of trivial survival challenges, and that nature actually cares not one jot for your continued existence as a living being. I’d modify your statement to say not that nature is trying to kill you, but that you’re irrelevant. The difference is deeper than it might at first seem.

Re: ‘That girl is going to get herself killed’ (2022)

#150

Post by pge »

There are two takeaways from this story:

(1) always know the risks you are getting into - while she was an experienced outdoorsperson, the author clearly had little to know awareness of the dangers of moving water.

(2) statistically, things happen outside your control - and our natural response is to pretend it can't happen to us because we follow the rules, but that's not true. Sometimes lightning hits you, or the drunk driver slams into your car, or your foot slips in a place where there's no margin for error.

To me, (2) is the more important point, and can be lost in the harrowing story that she uses to make point (1). You can do everything right, whether that is in the outdoors or driving on a highway, and still become a fatality. When we pretend it couldn't happen to us, because we are better prepared, respect the environment, etc, we are kidding ourselves.

The outdoors may bring this into starker focus because the margin for error is lower, but the point applies throughout our lives.

Post reply on HN