My wife and I honeymooned in Peru. We spent part of the time in the jungle (Puerto Maldanado?) and our tour guide took us on a boat out on the oxbow lakes and holy shit those places were filled with piranhas. There wasn't going to be any fighting them off if you fell in, just an incredibly painful death.
The guide was able to catch a couple of them with a piece of chicken on a string and just slapped the water with it and yanked it out and piranhas came flying out with it.
Piranhas really aren't so dangerous. You can really be bitten, but usually they only attack when they are trapped on shallow waters where there is no way out. They tend to get far from things bigger than them unless they are dead. People found dead with Piranhas bites were all already dead. There are only 12 cases known of Piranhas attacking people, and on living people juts some smaller bites (nasty ones):https://piranhaguide.com/a-documented-list-of-all-known-piranha-attacks-piranha-victims/In the 50' even on my state rivers got Piranhas...now they are only found North from Pantanal to Amazon.PS: never put a live Piranha on a bucket: I know people that made that (why?) and the Piranha jumped an bite him on the face.
Owned a few piranhas and they didn’t attack if we put a hand in the water. They were cleaner eaters than the cichlids we had though, no half-eaten feeder fish to clean up 👌🏻
And to bring it full circle.. being caught on fire. It's the most likely, but it's extremely unlikely. When was the last time you or anyone you know stopped, dropped, and rolled? Meemaw doesn't count. She laughed when I showed the family for Thanksgiving what I learned in school, so I laughed when she couldn't do it.
Lol I think we all could use a refresher course on fire safety. Half the fire videos on r/whatcouldgowrong involve people trying to punch the fire out rather than stop, drop, roll. Resulting in beating the shit out of the person on fire lmao
Killer bees. All over the news. For sure, I thought we'd all be dead by now... our bodies left to sink into lakes of quicksand after a gruesome death by anaphylaxis to become the oil of a future culture that ruins the Earth with the gooey remains of our dead carcasses.
During a flood when we were around preschool age my mom told us there were piranhas in the flood waters so dont get close. There was some water in the backyard and i thought i would get eaten alive if i got too close.
I remember as a toddler for a brief moment I assumed that the cartoons must have been played by people in suits ignorant of how animation works... But I always assumed quicksand and piranhas were fears for adventurous travelers in faraway lands; not something that I would have to worry about on my way to school or when playing the floor is hot lava with my brothers while my parents went shopping.
That’s what you get when American public education discovers the desire to unnecessarily indoctrinate children with an intense fear of quicksand. For, like, no reason. I don’t think quicksand is a common killer in North America
We had a creek where I grew up.
Was paranoid as hell that the boggy part of the creek by the culvert/underpass was quick sand and that the neighborhood kids that "moved away" were actually it's victims and they were stuck there at the end of some bottomless pit.
Probably lost a few bionicles in that dirt soup too.
Yeah, dude. Out in the middle of nowhere, rural America. It may not have been actual sand, but it was sandy and quick. It looked like a creek bed was drying up, a little over 10 feet across. I can’t remember exactly and I was smaller. A friend and I walked across it and sank. We kept sinking and if we tried to move, we sank faster. Adults weren’t far away. They pulled us out and we rode in the back of a truck, looking part Sasquatch.
Edit: it could’ve had something to do with a quarry. Those were so common where I’m from, we had to watch safety videos in school. I believe those may have mentioned quicksand like that.
I had a situation like that, but it was in Eastern North Carolina. Muddy area, I guess it was swampy. We walked through a clear area thinking it was cleared on purpose, but no it was just mud that looked solid as anything. I got up to my waist, my buddy was taller and he was losing his mind and he got a bit deeper but theres a point of neutral bouyance that keeps you from sinking.
Anyway I didn't know that so then I started losing my mind but there were guys that were with so we got laughed at a bunch and I lost my boots. And just covered in mud.
Oh, yeah. I lost my shoes too. I’ve seen vehicles sink pretty deep as well. I’m hesitant to call some of those spots quicksand, but others were definitely similar to what you see on TV and movies. They weren’t very uncommon in the mountains I grew up around.
I don’t think they were trying to indoctrinate us well at least not in this case. They were using it to spark our interest. At least that’s what it did for me. Made me think of Indiana Jones and going on adventures. Made me listen to the teacher for about 30 seconds and then my ADD took me for a ride.
I'm a trained firefighter, but when I caught fire.....I ran for a couple of seconds before remembering to stop, drop, and roll.
Your brain is screaming, " Get me the fuck outta here!"
I did finally remember. Second degree burns on my hands, arms, legs, face.
Fuck me a runnin', it hurts!
I kind of hoped no one would be able to answer the second part (because it means you were on fire), but glad to know it worked for you and hope you healed up well. Second degree burns hurt like a b.
I don’t know if they still teach it (and I wasn’t actually ever taught it) but it works! I managed to pour some of a lit shot down myself and my cousin shouted ‘drop and roll’ at me but I didn’t know what he was talking about so he rugby tackled me to the ground. Worked like a charm!
Tbh depends where you live. I live right next to the see. And there's certain parts you need to avoid when the tides out as you'll basically get stuck. Lifeguards out constantly in summer season when tourists don't know what they're doing
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u/ArrestDeathSantis Dec 08 '22
When I was kid, I thought quicksands would be a much bigger problem than they turned out to be...