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

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

#291

Post by atoav »

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…

> If anyone would like to explain why that didn't kill me I'm all ears.

What kills people is current, not voltage. With AC having your heart beat 50 times a second can also cause you to die hours or even days after receiving a shock, but even that requires enough current to flow and cross your skin resistance. Go to ghe hospital even if you are alive and feel well after an electrical shock! Your heart may have suffered from this.

That being said, there can be many things at play here. E.g. there could have been contact resistance between the live wire and the fixture, which would mean the current that could have flown through your body was limited by that resistance. The reason why you can touch an insulated wire is because there are megaohms of resistance between your hand and the wire. Lower that resistance gradually and there will be a point where you feel the electricity slightly, lower ot more and there is the shock. The most hurtful thing would piercing a wire through the skin, because then the skin resistance is gone.

Aside from contact resistance it could also be that the bath the current took through your body was good (so more on the surface, not across the heart, but down one side of the body and so on).

That being said, your description of the shock does not sound like a fully fledged 230V 50Hz shock to me (certified electical engineer). In my experience you will definitely notice it right away, e.g. because you suddenly just see black and a sharp pain including with extreme vibrations that feel like pure energy is hitting you with a brick in the face. Feeling the vibration like you described it and then making the decision to let go sounds like only a very small current was flowing.

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

#292

Post by ip26 »

giantg2 wrote: post #129
ip26 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many incidents, people are completely misinformed on the degree of risk, or woefully unprepared, which does strike me as tragic. E.g. happy family who takes a pleasant hike a few miles from the car, except they weren’t thinking about the fact it was August in Utah and they only brought 8oz of water. It’s also evident in her story about getting caught by the river. She thought, I’m not going to do anything crazy li…

I think she had fair warning. The story states that the ranger told her that statistically one of them would die that summer. Sure they didn't enumerate all the possible dangers, but who could? It's a wilderness or near wilderness setting with innumerable risks and scenarios. Simply saying it's so dangerous that one of you should die this summer should be sufficient for someone to then do their own research and take…

She was young and assumed it was the mountain climbers who were at risk. Is that her own fault? Yes. Would it still be tragic if youthful hubris & ignorance took her life in a senseless accident? Also yes.

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

#293

Post by PeterisP »

no_butterscotch wrote: post #280
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…

Kind of related, but if someone is being shocked, live, what is the safest way to help them? The immediate answer might be turn of the circuit breaker, but what if we're in a giant office building? Or I don't have access or know where the circuit breaker is? Grab them with rubber gloves?

IMHO that's a rare event, usually instead of being continuously shocked, someone gets shocked and then in the worst case they die and you have to apply CPR until an ambulance can try to save them.

If someone is being shocked, live, then it all depends on the circumstances, but the most generic standard suggestion in various first aid courses seems to be using a non-conductive stick (e.g. broomhandle) to push them away from the source of power or vice versa. They have probably grabbed the thing with their hand and are unable to release it as the hand is cramped, so that may be difficult.

Finding a circuit breaker may be too long. My intuitive guess (though that's not something I have seen recommended) is that intentionally causing a short-circit and trip the breaker might be faster.

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

#294

Post by kkielhofner »

shortstuffsushi wrote: post #282
kkielhofner wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish it was anywhere near that "respectable". I was visiting a college town for an away football game. This was the night before the game and some of my friends and I went out. I met these two guys at a college bar my friends and I went to. My friends were going back to our hotel but these guys (who we had all met maybe an hour before) had invited me to a party. It was still fairly early and I thought "Neat, this w…

I guess in the scheme of "things that happen in a college town," being invited to another party from a public bar with people you just met there doesn't seem like a particularly unusual thing to take part in either. It being a college town, and stemming from a bar, does seem like it may have aided in the inappropriate response from the police, unfortunately. I wonder how many college kids end up in a similar situatio…

That's the other side - when describing the situation to the incredulous officers my take was (essentially) "The beginning of this scenario likely happens multiple times every single day in this city and it's not about drugs or other criminality". It's a fairly standard situation by college town standards, not some fantastical story or some other scenario that screams "a bad guy ripped off another bad guy". At one point they even said "we just don't understand why you would get in a car with people you just met". It was clear to me the subtext there was "why would you trust /those/ people". Again, sadly, it was clear race was a factor.

In my situation the bar was a corporate national chain in the downtown center with locations in most college towns (at least in my experience). They likely had video surveillance from every angle. The perpetrators may have even paid by credit card, been already known to others there, possibly even the staff, etc. Compared to the situation your friend's brother experienced it seems like there's a decent chance my assailants could be caught. As I said I'd been talking to them for an hour, left with them, etc. Video wouldn't be tough to get.

I often wonder if it was a one-off crime of opportunity or some MO/pattern of theirs. No way to know I suppose but given my case they certainly wouldn't have any reason not to do it again.

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

#295

Post by taeric »

saurik wrote: post #220
taeric wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it that lightning strikes twice, or that most events are not as rare and in need of as much setup as a lightning strike?

I think the idea for the metaphor is that, if you see lightning hit a tree, you shouldn't think it is so rare that it wouldn't hit the tree a second time (as some people then think "lightning never strikes the same place twice")... it is, in fact, so rare to have hit anything at all , that it having hit that tree in the first place is maybe an indication that that tree is acting as some kind of preferential local lig…

Right, but this is different than if you see a tree that has clearly been hit by a bolt.

That is, seeing the strike shows that things are primed at the moment. Seeing a singed tree is not. (That make sense?)

That said, I can see how that still fits the idea.

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

#296

Post by joveian »

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…

One thing I learned from reading some stuff on an electician forum years ago is that the actual ground is really not that attractive to household electricity, mostly just to lightning. I recall them mentioning a video of, IIRC, someone connecting a 15A circuit to a metal stake driven several feet into the ground without the circuit breaking. This is also why things like stray voltage shocking cows can happen. I'm guessing that this might potentially be part of why electric shocks aren't deadly more often, it may not be just a path to ground needed but a path through ground and back into the circuit (although the current needed to kill you is much less than tripping a breaker and I think there are various situations that can make it easy for that amount to flow into the ground even if there isn't a good path back to the circuit, which sometimes there is, so possibly this isn't really a factor).

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

#298

Post by taeric »

brianpan wrote: post #287
taeric wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it that lightning strikes twice, or that most events are not as rare and in need of as much setup as a lightning strike?

I think other people have sort of answered it, but a more general version might be: If you observe an extremely unlikely event, you should update your Bayesian prior about how likely that event is.

Makes sense. I was stuck with the idea that "seeing a car on the side of the road" is closer to seeing a tree that had been struck. Actually seeing it get struck would be like seeing the car actively crash.

Close in thought to each other, but still different things. Granted, I think your point still fully holds. There is a decay function for the likelihood of repeating events. And if you don't have evidence that what you are looking at is old, much safer to assume it is not and that the circumstances are still primed for it to happen again.

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

#299

Post by pvaldes »

blackbrokkoli wrote: post #57
the_af wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why McCandless was idolized (I do know there was backlash from actual knowledgeable people, like park rangers). He purposefully put himself in harm's way and didn't have any relevant skills that would have helped him survive. So what's admirable or romantic about the way he died?

Well he most likely died due to poisoning himself with a misidentified plant that was only ever documented as dangerous in an ancient encyclopedia over 100 years old. Nothing romantic about it, but nothing screaming "no relevant skills", either. Don't think this is the part people romanticize, I think it's the whole "I think careers are a 20th century invention and I don't think I want one" and the "Instead, I will w…

Poisoned by legumes, that most people seen (wrongly) as safe to eat, just because they are legumes

Many herbivores are poisoned only when desperated to find alternative sources of food. He probably tried and failed to find other sources of food, so he ate legumes, that caused serious damage in their nervous system, and left him unable to walk and hunt anymore

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

#300

Post by P_I_Staker »

kkielhofner wrote: post #253
P_I_Staker wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Victim blaming does NOT just happen with SA cases. I know someone that was mugged in a small town. When he reported to the police it was recommended for him not to file an official report, because they would be forced to arrest him for underage drinking. P.S. Arrest doesn't mean taken away in cuffs, so it was probably gonna be a ticket. Still, this is utterly ridiculous.

It's interesting you mention SA cases. I'm not proud to admit it but prior to this experience I was firmly in the camp of "Of COURSE you report it, go to the police, testify, etc". In my incident even though the responding officers were terrible, racist, victim blaming, etc they filed what I'm sure was a mandatory report. I received a call (voicemail) from a detective about a week later. I was still having nightmares…

It's worth pointing out that many people go through these experiences and never do anything like that. There's homeless drug addicts that would commit crimes, but never hold someone up at gunpoint... maybe break into a house and run away when there's an intruder, and feel very guilty.

At risk of sounding like a conservative (I don't consider myself one), greed, as well as a culture of violence, and wanting to be tough come into play. Lots of working stiffs out there, predominately POCs (due to inequality), will simply work the shit job and roll with the punches... as I understand, these people often suffer more than anyone, because despite keeping it on the straight an narrow, they are usually the most likely to be victimized.

That said, I see it this way: some people are predisposed to crime. Think of it like a genetic thing (in some cases probably it is). Under harsh conditions these people are far more likely to turn to extremism, and crime.

You kinda had it figured out. What was the point of going through all that for $100? It probably isn't even the best risk / reward ratio... some people just don't want to do "sneak crimes". Go to a prison and I bet some of the inmates say it themselves.

That said, the reality of living in a world stacked against you weighs on people, and working degrading jobs and dealing with bigotry must be exhausting and infuriating. To some the extreme fridges of society, and violence, feel more dignifying than playing a rigged game, and being insulted all along the way.

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