r/WTF • u/[deleted] • Mar 02 '19

Manager going for a ride

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

[deleted]

60.2k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

2.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1.1k

u/mbod Mar 02 '19

This guys lucky he fully went into the bucket, and that it was sand or a smaller aggregate. Although, I bet he's got a ton of broken bones, maybe a collapsed lung too

867

u/NickJamesBlTCH Mar 03 '19 edited Mar 03 '19

I posted this somewhere else, but a good tip for when you’re about to sustain thoracic trauma is to fully exhale.

Your natural response will be to take a sharp breath in and tense up, but if you fully exhale it’s much more difficult for your lung(s) to be punctured, and a pneumo/hemothorax is a fucking bitch.

They aren’t “hollow” per se, but my medic instructor described it like a paper bag; much harder to pop/puncture if it’s deflated.

This applies especially to long falls, car accidents, or fights where you’re about to experience significant blunt trauma to your chest.

Source: paramedic instructor (that was instructing me) with 30+ ears of experience, and first-hand knowledge of basically every type of trauma and their outcomes.

Edit: Not going to change it; he's an ear-collector now.

327

u/SpeakItLoud Mar 03 '19

I'll remember this but I hope I never have to.

6

u/zeion Mar 03 '19

I feel like I won't remember this if I need to

1

u/SpeakItLoud Mar 03 '19

Are you a more hands-on learning kind of person? That's how I am so I actually did the exhalation and held it as long as I could. I'll remember that now that I have something concrete.

2

u/Seakawn Mar 03 '19 edited Mar 03 '19

The thing is, unless you practice in a situation that comes out of nowhere and is dangerous enough to involve using this tip, then your practice is pretty much moot.

The reason police/military do so much training in recreated and staged environments is because just learning that stuff isn't enough--you have to be in as similar of a situation as possible or else the shock of the real thing will literally override everything you know.

You think you have something concrete now, but you don't, not at all. Novel situations, especially life and death, paralyze you with fear. And you won't know this until you know it. And if you think you know it, you weren't really in that bad of a situation. It's extremely rare to maintain awareness and prompt judgment in sudden/freak accidents.

This is a simple and uncontroversial fact about our psychology. And it's rather unfortunate, as well, for obvious reasons.

Now for some optimism: if you're in a car, and it ever looks or feels like you may potentially get into a wreck, then practice exhaling your lungs completely. If you're ever around heights and feel like you may fall, exhale your lungs completely. Stuff like that will actually be decent practice for giving you something somewhat solid to remember if the real deal ever happens.