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Personally, I would need a lot more than a saucer of beer.
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Apr 26, 2015 09:19
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Solice Kirsk posted:The death roller coaster would be my suicide of choice, but only if they put it in like Great America or something. I love roller coasters so spending a day riding them, drinking, and eating funnel cakes followed by a final ride would be a pretty great day. I feel like the looming death coaster might put a damper on non-suicide related family vacations
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Apr 26, 2015 17:10
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Aesop Poprock posted:I feel like the looming death coaster might put a damper on non-suicide related family vacations I don't know, you already get parents taking their kids to Disneyland if they get good enough grades. Now there's somewhere for the failing kids to go.
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Apr 26, 2015 17:36
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Eien Ni Hen posted:This is true. When I think aquatic snakes, I think of these motherfuckers: Motherfuckers crawl up in my yard all the drat time. Nothing like living next to a swamp in Florida.
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Apr 27, 2015 01:22
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Big Centipede posted:There's a lot of people who simply don't understand anything about snakes. Moccasins don't chase people, they've got an aggressive reputation because they don't always retreat when threatened. As cliché as it sounds, if you don't grab it, it's simply not going to bite you. Have you ever seen one of them in person? Because every single relative I have has had their life threatened by one of those motherfuckers at some point in time. I was working one day and I hear incoherent screaming. I looked out the window and there was my smoker cousin, running like his life depended on it. Following him was a water moccasin. It chased him all the way down the road until someone finally got a gun. Apparently he was just out by his car talking on his cell phone and smoking when he saw this snake zipping at him from the direction of the pond. My dad was surveying in someone's yard when one came up to him and went loving crazy biting his boot. He was lucky it didn't pierce skin. I was turning on a hose in the yard. There was a water moccasin nesting in the water main about twenty feet away. I noticed it immediately and made an effort to stay well away. Did that keep it from zipping at me, ready for murder? NOPE. Nobody I know has so much as touched them or messed with them in any way to get attacked. Either you have bizarro moccasins or the ones around here are made of pure loving hate.
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Apr 27, 2015 04:06
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MikeCrotch posted:Who you calling canuck you yanks don't respect ARE BOYS This was the response I got when I sent a friend a link about the euthanasia coaster. Too good not to share. my buddy Jeff posted:You've stood in line for thirty one hours. Who knew that so many people would want to kill themselves? For the first four hours, you assuaged yourself by repeating a mantra, "Soon it will be all over. What's another day?" But then, as the line snaked back and forth, you heard others saying the same thing, droning on, as if you were all of the same, sad doomed hive. The stench as you get closer becomes unbearable. The workers have begun taking the bodies and throwing them under the tracks as the demand has overwhelmed the capacity of the facilities. After fourteen hours in line, most of the people around you have began defecating themselves, unable to leave the line. "No pride in the euthanasia line," says a cancer-stricken man to you or himself, it doesn't matter anymore. He flashes a gray-lipped sardonic smile as you watch the urine spread down his legs. You would have thought that others would turn back, deciding to find more reason to live, but once in this dark, horrible end labyrinth of steel switchbacks and chipped paint, stained concrete, life itself seem crueler than ever. When attendants appear, they don't bother with niceties. They club people that step slowly. Accusations of line-hopping are met without trial, the defendants are quickly dispatched with blows to the head. Somewhere you always hear children crying, children that have been allowed to end all due to the 2027 Life Extension Termination Act. There is no room to pity them in your heart. You have no room for self-pity, after all. As the thirtieth hour approaches, self-deprecation and exhaustion begin to thin the herd in front of you and the line seems to move quicker. Your aching legs threaten to fail. "It will be all over soon," you say as you step forward soggily, your shoes now soaked through with brown, bloodied fluids. An old woman, demented and scared, is forced into the ride ahead of you. She no longer seems to have the will to die. She calls out the name of a son or a husband, perhaps a schoolmate from decades past. You don't know if she's in later stage Alzheimer's or if the hallucinations are taking hold or even if she knew what the line was for when she got in it. "Soon," you say, "soon." The smell of decay has attracted more flies than a landfill. Rats gnaw on the bones of the dead and of other rats. The man at the front takes your ticket and you sit in the feces-stained plastic seat. The ride lurches to a start and you are taken upward at an unpleasant angle. Just as you reach the peak, a skinny teenager three cars in front of you vomits, the acidic chunks fly back into your eyes and, as you scream in horror, mouth. When you finally stop breathing around the third loop, you don't know if you die from choking or suffocation. But, hell, there are worse ways to go. No pride in the euthanasia line.
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Apr 27, 2015 04:12
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Monkeytime posted:
Starting a band called this. Can't wait to meet you and your friend in court!
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Apr 27, 2015 04:37
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No article, but apparently Everest is getting it's tribute from the earthquakes in Nepal. An ice sheet crashed through the Sourthern Base Camp.
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Apr 27, 2015 05:04
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bulletsponge13 posted:No article, but apparently Everest is getting it's tribute from the earthquakes in Nepal. An ice sheet crashed through the Sourthern Base Camp. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JC_wIWUC2U the mountain hungers
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Apr 27, 2015 05:20
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3 posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JC_wIWUC2U Holy poo poo that is loving terrifying.
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Apr 27, 2015 06:18
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bulletsponge13 posted:Holy poo poo that is loving terrifying. That's just spindrift from the main avalanche. The main avalanche occurred under the Khumbu ice fall, and has left hundreds unaccounted for. Fig. 1: Khumbu Icefall 
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Apr 27, 2015 06:29
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Mount Everest: New Game Plus
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Apr 27, 2015 06:45
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Wasabi the J posted:That's just spindrift from the main avalanche. The main avalanche occurred under the Khumbu ice fall, and has left hundreds unaccounted for. That's scary all by itself. And you're saying it's now even worse?
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Apr 27, 2015 07:05
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Is Green Boots okay??? 
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Apr 27, 2015 07:50
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Khazar-khum posted:That's scary all by itself. And you're saying it's now even worse? The Khumbu is MASSIVE. Literally miles of house-sized boulders of ice. From the Everest thread: Blitter posted:
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Apr 27, 2015 08:43
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Midnight Voyager posted:Have you ever seen one of them in person? Because every single relative I have has had their life threatened by one of those motherfuckers at some point in time. Yeah, I've personally caught and relocated dozens. Also, I've kept them as pets. I'm not calling you a liar, but short of maybe a mamba, snakes aren't going to persue a person https://youtu.be/ePnZakZ5wgk
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Apr 27, 2015 11:35
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bulletsponge13 posted:Holy poo poo that is loving terrifying. If there was ever any good, solid, valid reason to never climb Everest, and pictures of dead people don't deter visitors...that avalanche video should do the trick. My heart about stopped when I saw the cloud of snow and debris coming down, goddamn 
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Apr 27, 2015 14:31
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That will be a really fun place to visit in 10-20 years. Better than Rainbow Ridge by far.
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Apr 27, 2015 15:04
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Big Centipede posted:Yeah, I've personally caught and relocated dozens. Also, I've kept them as pets. I'm not calling you a liar, but short of maybe a mamba, snakes aren't going to persue a person You must not live in Florida. Those assholes have chased me out of a lake on MORE than one occasion.
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Apr 27, 2015 15:06
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I've lived in Florida and never been chased by any snake despite getting very close to several of them, including cottonmouths. They don't pursue humans. Plus, lakes are their homes. Of course they're gonna be swimming around in there. Along with alligators n poo poo. Don't go in the water if you don't wanna encounter the things that live in it?
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Apr 27, 2015 19:07
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I lived in Florida for most of my life and pretty much all my encounters with water moccasins have been completely benign--stuff like "oh look, there's one, let's go away." Except one time that I posted about on the previous page where I startled one on a trail and it chased me for a few feet. It does happen, but it's by no means common enough to be considered a universal behavioral trait.
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Apr 27, 2015 19:16
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After learning about it a few years ago, I've become really fascinated with the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse that happened in Kansas City in 1981. We go through life just kind of accepting and assuming that structures are sound and that the people involved in designing and building buildings know what they're doing. In this case, with all of the structural engineering panache of a child building with legos for the first time, a walkway was basically hung off of the bottom of another walkway without any proper support. When loaded with people for a party, the whole works came down. Terrifying! equals 
Transistor Rhythm has a new favorite as of 20:23 on Apr 27, 2015 |
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Apr 27, 2015 20:19
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On the topic of building collapses, I've always been drawn to the Sampoong Department Store Collapse especially since it was basically caused by the rapid expansion and corruption in South Korea. It was just so loving deadly.
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Apr 27, 2015 20:27
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Transistor Rhythm posted:After learning about it a few years ago, I've become really fascinated with the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse that happened in Kansas City in 1981. We go through life just kind of accepting and assuming that structures are sound and that the people involved in designing and building buildings know what they're doing. In this case, with all of the structural engineering panache of a child building with legos for the first time, a walkway was basically hung off of the bottom of another walkway without any proper support. When loaded with people for a party, the whole works came down. Terrifying! I live here in KC and this city is terrible about its history. Unless it's about football or baseball of course (the last time the Chiefs were even in the Super Bowl was when man first walked on the moon). You would never know Disney and Hemmingway started their careers here, for instance. Or maybe I just run with stupid people.
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Apr 28, 2015 00:04
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Nouvelle Vague posted:On the topic of building collapses, I've always been drawn to the Sampoong Department Store Collapse especially since it was basically caused by the rapid expansion and corruption in South Korea. It was just so loving deadly. Wikipedia's got a hell of a way to put it: quote:It was the deadliest building collapse since the Circus Maximus collapse in c. 140 AD and until the September 11 attacks
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Apr 28, 2015 02:24
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Nouvelle Vague posted:On the topic of building collapses, I've always been drawn to the Sampoong Department Store Collapse especially since it was basically caused by the rapid expansion and corruption in South Korea. It was just so loving deadly. I was actually staying in Seocho-dong (about a ten minute walk away from that building) when that happened. I'd been in that store before, so it was quite shocking to turn on the news one night and find out that apparently someone had taken a huge meat cleaver to it. That was what really stuck out to me about the collapse--it was really clean. It almost looked like one of those cross-section diagrams except for the rubble. There's a residential complex where it used to be now and people still say the underground parking lot is haunted. 
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Apr 28, 2015 03:51
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Nouvelle Vague posted:On the topic of building collapses, I've always been drawn to the Sampoong Department Store Collapse especially since it was basically caused by the rapid expansion and corruption in South Korea. It was just so loving deadly. quote:The last to be rescued, 19-year-old Park Seung-hyun (박승현; 朴昇賢), was pulled from the wreckage 17 days after the collapse with a few scratches. She said that she heard the sounds of other survivors drowning in the fire department's deflation(?) water. That is just the worst. You survive a massive multi-story building collapse, only to drown in the water sprayed on the rubble by the fire department. KozmoNaut has a new favorite as of 21:50 on Apr 28, 2015 |
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Apr 28, 2015 21:48
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KozmoNaut posted:
Better or worse than burning alive or suffocating on smoke? Seems like there are few good options at that point.
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Apr 28, 2015 21:56
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quote:On the morning of June 29, the number of cracks in the area increased dramatically, prompting managers to close the top floor and shut the air conditioning off. The store management failed to shut the building down or issue formal evacuation orders, as the number of customers in the building was unusually high, and they did not want to lose the day's revenue. However, the executives themselves left the premises as a precaution.
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Apr 29, 2015 03:03
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Imagined posted:Better or worse than burning alive or suffocating on smoke? Seems like there are few good options at that point. Worse, because you die by the hands of the people who are supposed to save you.
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Apr 29, 2015 08:42
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Nckdictator posted:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_Skyway_Bridge Reminds me of the Tasman Bridge Disaster quote:The Tasman Bridge disaster occurred on the evening of 5 January 1975, in Hobart, the capital city of Australia's island state of Tasmania, when a bulk ore carrier travelling up the Derwent River collided with several pylons of the Tasman Bridge, causing a large section of the bridge deck to collapse onto the ship and into the river below. Twelve people were killed, including seven crew on board the ship, and the five occupants of four cars which fell 45 m (150 feet) after driving off the bridge.   quote:Two drivers managed to stop their vehicles at the edge, but not before their front wheels had dropped over the lip of the bridge deck. One of these cars contained Frank and Sylvia Manley. Comstar has a new favorite as of 12:13 on Apr 29, 2015 |
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Apr 29, 2015 12:08
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Yeaaahh, that's when you get you turbo pant crapping on.
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Apr 29, 2015 13:42
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KozmoNaut posted:
I was thinking, surviving trapped in the wreckage of a multi-story building collapse, listening to other people dying around you, for 17 days, has got to be pretty loving bad. How did she even survive that long?
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Apr 29, 2015 13:54
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pookel posted:I was thinking, surviving trapped in the wreckage of a multi-story building collapse, listening to other people dying around you, for 17 days, has got to be pretty loving bad. How did she even survive that long? That was my first thought. Being in the right area might get you access to a busted vending machine or something, but unless someone was feeding her fresh water, I doubt she really only had a few scratches when it was all said and done.
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Apr 29, 2015 14:00
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New Leaf posted:That was my first thought. Being in the right area might get you access to a busted vending machine or something, but unless someone was feeding her fresh water, I doubt she really only had a few scratches when it was all said and done. Looking into it only made me more puzzled. http://www.deseretnews.com/article/428266/SURVIVOR-IS-MOST-STARTLED-OF-ALL.html?pg=all quote:Park was weak but stable Saturday after being pulled from a tiny pocket in the jumble of concrete slabs, a scratch on the leg her only visible injury.
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Apr 29, 2015 14:06
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Well if we're gonna talk about genuine engineering gently caress-ups, meet Galloping Gertie: quote:The 1940 Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the first Tacoma Narrows Bridge, was a suspension bridge in the U.S. state of Washington that spanned the Tacoma Narrows strait of Puget Sound between Tacoma and the Kitsap Peninsula. For those of you who don't drive cars or are vampires and thus cannot cross moving water, bridges ain't 'posedta do that wavy thing. What eventually happens is something we now understand well - thanks to loving Galloping Gertie.  The good news: when the bridge collapse a few months after it opened, there was only one fatality. Unfortunately it was an adorable cocker spaniel named Tubby. Tubby belonged to a little girl who was no where near the bridge, but her father was forced to leave Tubby behind as he slow crawled 500 yards to relative safety of the towers. The road was whipping the entire car from one side to the other and the dog was too loving terrified to leave it. Two others attempted to save Tubby during a lull because this is real life and not some cynical comic book bullshit but unfortunately again the dog nipped at his would be rescuers. The poor thing went down with the bridge. So, anyway, there was an inquiry.  Shown here in the form of interpretive dance Tubby was cleared of all charges. His owner's father was compensated for the car and everything in it, including our hero. And so ended the story of- Oh, right, the collapsed bridge! Yeah, we should probably wrap up the loose ends. gently caress-ups like this require a little more than shrugging ones shoulders and saying how at least we learned something. On the other hand, this wasn't something you could chalk up to incompetent assholery, either - the suspension bridge was time-tested at this point, and in fact the lead on this was Leon Moisseiff, the noted New York bridge engineer who served as designer and consultant engineer for the Golden Gate Bridge. Moisseiff was approaching 70, and he had a strong reputation as a good consulting engineer. He was an early believer in all-steel bridges, which began to replace steel-and-concrete designs in the 1920's. He also was well-known for his work on "deflection theory," which held that the longer bridges were, the more flexible they could be.  Gonna just enjoy some Lipton here while that last part sinks in. Moisseif wanted a bridge to call his own - for all his consult on bridge design, he'd never been lead engineer on any. Meanwhile, a Washington State engineer was already already on the job. quote:Washington State engineer Clark Eldridge produced a preliminary tried-and-true conventional suspension bridge design, and the Washington Toll Bridge Authority requested $11 million from the Federal Public Works Administration (PWA). Pretty reasonable. However in this line of work, there's only one thing that trumps 'reasonable', and that's "We can make it cheaper!" So Moisseif put a word in: quote:However, according to Eldridge, "Eastern consulting engineers"—by which Eldridge meant Leon Moisseiff, the noted New York bridge engineer who served as designer and consultant engineer for the Golden Gate Bridge—petitioned the PWA and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) to build the bridge for less. When we continue in part 2, we'll expand on why this was a Terrible Idea, but in brief: quote:The decision to use such shallow and narrow girders proved to be the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge's undoing.
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Apr 29, 2015 17:59
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Literally Kermit posted:Well if we're gonna talk about genuine engineering gently caress-ups, meet Galloping Gertie: Well, he was right about that. Looks pretty drat flexible alright.
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Apr 29, 2015 21:11
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Karma Monkey posted:Well, he was right about that. Looks pretty drat flexible alright. I can't remember where I heard it, and as I type this I suspect it's bullshit, but big things like buildings are designed to wobble a little, accounting for winds/etc. The idea is that if there's forces like that acting on the building, it's safer to design in a little bit of bend versus something snapping off.
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Apr 29, 2015 21:34
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MisterBibs posted:I can't remember where I heard it, and as I type this I suspect it's bullshit, but big things like buildings are designed to wobble a little, accounting for winds/etc. The idea is that if there's forces like that acting on the building, it's safer to design in a little bit of bend versus something snapping off. Yeah, to be fair, despite the eventual collapse it looks like it lasted waaaaay longer than a really rigid bridge would have. And considering the distances you're talking about, and how much the earth moves and all the vibrations from the engines and shifting loads on it all day every day, flexibility is def an asset but yeah that bridge was flexible as gently caress apparently hahaha edit: fun fact I did some of the radiography/ultrasound work on the replacement bridge when it was getting built; I got hired onto the company that was subcontracted for that right at the tail end of the project.
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Apr 29, 2015 22:13
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Son of Thunderbeast posted:Yeah, to be fair, despite the eventual collapse it looks like it lasted waaaaay longer than a really rigid bridge would have. And considering the distances you're talking about, and how much the earth moves and all the vibrations from the engines and shifting loads on it all day every day, flexibility is def an asset Shhhh, spoilers!  Unless you live near or worked on the bridge, of course. Or know the history. Or just clicked the link to the wikipedia article, really. Okay, so it isn't a spoiler: not only was the bridge rebuilt (and opened in 1950), another bridge was built to handle eastbound traffic! That opened in 2007, and as SoT proves, they didn't gently caress around making sure it was safe. And yes: MisterBibs posted:I can't remember where I heard it, and as I type this I suspect it's bullshit, but big things like buildings are designed to wobble a little, accounting for winds/etc. The idea is that if there's forces like that acting on the building, it's safer to design in a little bit of bend versus something snapping off. Yes, flexibility is usually worked into structures for that very reason! Swaying is a lot less stress on the building than being totally rigid. Every material has a breaking point, and factors like thickness, shape, and even temperature have to be taken into account when building poo poo like this. However, ol' Gertie was too flexible - we'll get into specifics why, later. But the problem wasn't that Gertie could sway a bit in the wind, it was the wind making Gertie its total bitch. And over Puget Sound, presumably, there was more than plenty wind.
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Apr 29, 2015 22:34
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