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

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