> “I spent 22 years keeping that boy safe. Do not drink, you need to have a designated sober person that is making life and death decisions with these things.”
- the Poor mother
Breaks my heart
My aunt did the same exact thing with her son. She was always a turbo helicopter parent who was worried about every single little thing he did, didn't want him to do anything dangerous, wanted to protect him from everything etc.
Then when he was 19 he was doing stupid teenager things and climbing around with his friends on an abandoned warehouse, and he fell through the roof and broke his neck
It's such a shame, because no matter how many times you try to convince teenagers and young adults not to do something, they will still ignore you and think they can get away with it
Edit: I should clarify, she was a helicopter parent and worried about him, but she did let him play outside a ton and ride his dirt bike and go hiking etc, so it's not like he was bubble boy. I took him hiking one time and she literally called like 4 different times during a like hour hike, to make sure he was okay.
*that's* what I mean by helicopter parent. She would basically rip your arms off if you put him in danger, but she did let him do stuff that should have given him some life experiences, he was just really unfortunate that he gave in to peer pressure and went to "check out" the warehouse, and got really unlucky that he fell through the roof
That’s really rough. My dad did the opposite and I learned super early that I could get horrifically injured from seemingly benign situations. I think it’s kept me from taking a lot of risks but I do think it’s saved me a few times.
I grew up on a farm and one day we were loading small square bales onto the conveyor(bale elevator) and the loose strings on the knee hole of my pants caught the pto shaft. Smacked my leg against it and ripped the dry rotten strings off, somehow luckily my leg immediately bounced back.. I can't help but picture my grandpa or brother looking over and seeking my body broken and twisting around that thing to this day
That’s terrifying man. Glad you made it out of there in one piece. Farmers are such brave people to place themselves and their families at risk the way they have to. Many farmers in my family and unfortunately a lot of injuries associated with it.
I knew a few guys who recorded themselves jumping between shitty 150 year old abandoned mills freshman year of college. One kid just didn’t jump far enough, and the lucky shit *only* broke his ankle. They’re literally lucky they all didn’t die in roof collapse. These buildings were literally the first built in the first city where textile mills were built that kicked off the Industrial Revolution. Fucking morons.
I knew a couple in high school who thought they were immortal like most teenagers and weren't wearing seat belts. The driver lost control of the vehicle and sent it into a roll.
*Somehow* they managed to get out of that unscathed but from what I understand they wear their seat belts now.
Perhaps it’s a case of the pendulum swinging too far back the other way. Like they say preacher’s kids are always the worst.
Maybe if he had not felt so stifled in his youth and was able to learn on his own on less dangerous activities, he wouldn’t have been so dumb on the last one.
Idk whatever
I think it’s that they don’t get an accurate measuring stick for danger. If your parent is always saying everything is dangerous, but most of the stuff they warn about isn’t actually dangerous, then you don’t listen when they warn you about actually dangerous things.
I think it’s more that you don’t teach them how to be safe and responsible in scenarios if you only preach to not be in those scenarios. Similar to abstinence sex ed having more pregnancies
Yeah exactly. I was a wild kid, my father let me climb trees frequently at a young age (like before teens) but was there to catch me when I started until he saw I was confident and experienced enough and then trusted me in doing it without him standing there, giving me freedom to explore more, if I got stuck I learned to yell for help instead of doing something too risky.
He'd help me build bike jumps out of wood but nothing too crazy, take me on bike trails through the woods, weld me skateboard rails from scraps, let me hit jumps when I was learning snowboarding, etc...
I fell many, MANY times, often with him filming haha. But a lot of those falls were when I was learning those things at a young age and so what I'd be attempting at the time wasn't too dangerous. This gave me the freedom to develop my skills of falling as safe as possible in any given scenario (this is a skill a lot of people do not develop these days and it results in a lot of injury as they just end up panicking or freezing up even over simply tripping).
And on top of that it allowed me to get a better sense of the risks involved with what I might be thinking about doing, which is the most important part. I'd been getting to test my limit for all my youth and get a feel for what is a reasonable risk and not.
We obviously want to protect our kids from danger, but if you protect someone from risks as much as possible, they don't get to experience the mistakes which are important for learning and growth.
**If a test only asked you questions you knew, how would you learn anything?**
This is it.
The private school and religious kids always had the reputation of being the wildest sex addicts in college and I know a TON of young adults that finally got their freedom start to do shit they should have done in high school.
Two things that combo:
1. Lack of development and exposure (trial and error) to know what to do and what not to do
2. Repressed emotions that come out in bursts
A designated sober person wouldn’t have helped.
Don’t drink and play with fireworks even if sober people are around. Accidents happen at the speed of explosions.
I don’t think she’s saying playing fireworks is safe as long as you’re not drunk. I think she’s saying that drinking impairs decision-making. She feels like her kid might not have made that stupid decision if he hadn’t been in a big group of drunk people egging each other on.
I don’t really agree. A drunk person isn’t just quietly setting a firework off on their head out of sight and mind. They’re hyping it up and making a show out of it. Plenty of time for a sober person to intervene.
I was the first person to arrive at a car wreck - guy was DUI, car went off the road, clipped a tree and spun. He was flung out the rear window, no seatbelt, and flew what police estimated was around a hundred feet before hitting the pavement.
He was breathing, but I later heard he could have landed inside the ER and couldn’t have been saved. It was bad. I was DDing for a friend after a party, it fucked us both up for a while.
Alive but incompatible with life is the most accurate description I’ve ever read to describe what we saw.
My twin brother was thrown off his motorcycle at age 18, he high sided a corner and the bike pushed him into a rock wall. They estimated his speed at around 100mph. The first person on the scene was my uncle David, he was a local officer in the town the accident occurred. My brothers helmet was fully split down the middle and his face was completely covered in blood. My uncle said he didn’t realize it was my brother until he cleaned his face off a bit, he thought he was dead. He was life flighted to the nearest hospital and immediately went into surgery, he had major brain swelling along with so many broken bones and punctured lungs. I remember the doctors coming into the waiting room and telling us that he would likely never speak again and that things would be very different. I’m tearing up writing this. Today you wouldn’t know he was in an accident if you met him unless he took his shirt and hat off.
Always wear a helmet when riding. I wouldn't be here if I hadn't been wearing a helmet when I high-sided it into some woods at about 60mph. I don't remember a thing between breakfast that morning and waking up in the hospital. My riding buddies said I hit some sand and recovered, but then hit the lip at the edge of the road and didn't make it back onto the road. My helmet was split like the Liberty Bell and ground halfway through on one spot, but all I got was broken bones and a concussion. I still wake up going over the handlebars. seeing the sun reflected in the gauges, but I can't remember that in the day. Also: wear seatbelts they can save you too!
While in the trauma center, when we get a call regarding an “MVA involving a motorcyclist” my heart sinks because it’s probably going to be some mangled mess of a young person.
I used to be interested in riding motorcycles, not any more.
Nothing like single engine low priced hobby aircraft though, when things go wrong you usually skip the trauma center and go straight to the morgue.
I once overcarbonated some mead. 4 am I was awakened by what sounded like a gunshot, found the bottle exploded and shot out from the rack across the kitchen because of that damned Newton guy.
Pilot here, who flies single engine Cessnas for hobby. Most of the time, single engine aircraft incidents are quiet survivable. The difference is, the survivable ones are very different from the non-survivable ones. The non-survivable usually are pretty dramatic with strong impacts.
Imagine being Louis Slotin, a physicist with the Manhattan Project who let a reflective sphere of beryllium drop on a core of uranium, allowing it to go supercritical and spew out ionizing radiation. He was a professional. He knew he was dead. He was friends with Henry Daglian who died of another accident with the same core six months before. He sat with Daglian and watched him die. He knew that it was going to be worse for him. All in an instant. He is the most irradiated human in history.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon\_core](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core)
There was an accident on one of the rides at a theme park near where I live called Dreamworld. People got upset when the paramedics described the injuries sustained as “injuries incompatible with living” but it’s just one of those things where they technically hadn’t died yet, but there was zero chance of survival.
I don’t envy the job they have to do and how you’d deal with that kind of situation.
Take it from me, I have lived enough of this for many of you here while I worked in the ICU for 10 years. The worst ever probably came from a guy who crawled into a cattle trough after his trailer house exploded with him in it. He was talking with EMS while on scene. His fingernails and eyelids were gone along with 95% of his skin. We all knew..
My brother is a paramedic and has to make those tough calls sometimes. Recently he had a burn victim who coded in the ambulance, and he had to make the decision not to revive them ☹️ hard job for a 24 year old
I'll never forget a video where staff where doing chest compressions on a guy that was missing half of his torso and a couple of his limbs. I still don't know why they were even working on him. I could see his stomach.
Off a guy I used to know had one of them situations only to find em alive and the girl was his daughter's best friend...
Incase ya wants to know;
>!guy was a tow truck operator, showed up to a car crash before EMT's, drunk driver hit a young girl on her bike
Drunk driver had her pinned against the guardrail and stretched out her torso, she had her head down when my guy approached the scene but he recognized her as his daughter's best friend (who was biking to meet up with the daughter no less). He initially thought she was dead for sure but as he walked up she shot her head up and started screaming.......
Gave the dude nightmares for years!<
That is easily one of the most horrifying things I've ever heard, in the top 10 at least.
That's the kind of thing you never totally recover from seeing. I don't doubt it haunted his dreams for a very very very long time.
There's a term used in the military & emergency medicine... FUBAR BUNDY.
Many people have heard the term fubar, not really knowing it's origins.
Fucked up beyond all recognition, but unfortunately not dead yet.
I've never heard anyone claim that "FUBAR BUNDY" was the "origin" and can't find any evidence of it. People know FUBAR but not BUNDY because FUBAR is the original term.
This is going to turn into another "the customer is always right"... "in matters of taste"
People like to add things and others spread it to seem like they are in the know.
We got a guy one night I’ll never forget, got in a car accident and through some fuckery got a metal fence pole that just about went through his heart. He managed to survive for 7 more excruciating hours.
That honestly sounds like an award winner for world’s darkest humor.
“Im gonna kill myself, but I’m gonna do it with something that is only used for celebrations.”
Kyle Kinane has a stand up bit about suicide after watching the documentary about Golden Gate Bridge suicides. The premise of the joke is basically, if you're going to do it, why not do it with some flair.
If you're going to jump off a building, why not put a glass of water on the sidewalk outside and wear a snorkel while doing it.
Wasn't there that one not too long ago about the guy that died jumping off a building wearing a spider man or superman costume? I felt like he was channeling that energy
I still, for some reason, randomly remember the security camera footage of him just flying around while he politely explained his situation to the tower. Sky King lives on in our hearts.
> The 22-year-old lit up a reloadable fireworks mortar tube that was on his head while celebrating the Fourth of July with friends in Calais, Maine.
>“Apparently, he thought that was a great idea,” said Stephen McCausland, a spokesman for the state Department of Public Safety. “His friends said they thought they had dissuaded him from doing it, and the next thing they knew, he ignited the fireworks and he was killed instantly.”
Well there you go
oof, I had a hangfire on a 3" mortar once. I left it the whole display and a few minutes of going wtf after the show and then it went off. safety perimeter had not been changed as I thought there may be a hangfire, but it was startling when it did go.
Submerge in water, so ideally a hose that I can still have a standoff distance and ability to soak the mortar tube. You have to assume any unspent firework is a hang fire, so keep as much distance as possible, don’t let anyone approach. At the end of a show, I fire every cue just in case one didn’t go and may still. After that, it’s pantshitting time
I'm firing some mortars for the 2nd time in my life and a 25 shot 500g cake for the first time in my life tonight. I've spent the past couple days picking and questioning the safest launching point in my yard where I can set down a level large concrete planter, and when I go to light things up tonight I'm going to have both my garden hose and a fire extinguisher within reach. If a mortar doesn't fire, I'm sacrificing the tube and drenching that shit for 10 min. The cake finishes and even if I think it's good it's getting a good soaking and will be left out overnight. You've got to have absolutely respect and thorough planning for dealing with explosives in my mind. The last thing I want to do is become a statistic or wreck any of my own or my neighbors' property.
That's exactly it.
Because I've seen this exact shit happening with fortunately lesser consequences.
Shell was loaded upside down because it came off the little string looping it around. Plus beer.
First little explosion went off, (which is surprisingly weak when not pressurized) then the guy legitimately brought it to about eye level and flipped it over to let the "dud" shell fall out and the moment it came about an inch off the tube, it went off and seared his facial hair off lmao.
Got some bruising on his chest and thighs.
He might not have thought it was a dud but also not really thought it was going to go off, and certainly not that it was going to go off fast and hard enough to kill him. Sometimes when you're drunk you just don't connect dots that are really obviously connected when you're sober. I feel bad for the guy and his family.
Really, the fact that our independence holiday mixes explosives with alcohol is both the dumbest thing we could have done and the most American thing possible.
I interned at a public defender's office in Kentucky in the 90s. The attorneys there told me that it was a regular thing every summer that they'd have charges dismissed against their clients because one or more key witnesses had blown themselves up with fireworks on the 4th.
Sadly he was with family, it was his brother that first approached and is quoted saying something like ‘an ambulance wasn’t needed given the head trauma’.
Every force has an equal and opposite reaction. When those mortar tubes are on the ground you don't see the ground squish so you may not instinctively realize the the explosion is basically punching the ground underneath it with the same force that's shooting that ball up in the air a hundred feet or so. Now add in that the top of your head is not flat so all of that force is going to initially be applied to a small patch on top of your skull which is a relatively thin part of it (compared to the back & sides behind your ears).
Mortar fireworks are a whole different level. Even the smaller ones have a hell of a lot more oomph than something like an m80, which can still take fingers off.
It's amazing how easily we disconnect ideas, especially the more commonplace they are.
I bet if I asked you what fireworks are made of, you'd correctly identify it as a form of gunpowder.
And then I'd ask you want gunpowder does, and you'd say explode (just directed explosions).
But the connection between 'firework on head' and 'mini bomb on head' can get weirdly dropped sometimes. It's fascinating.
What is crazy is that this continues to happen (as recently as this Independence day). People keep dying from lighting fireworks on their head.
Maybe it's time for a large mandatory warning label with easy to understand graphics?
Not saying it still wouldn't have severely injured or killed him, but unless it was a absolutely massive simply launching a mortar from a tube on your head wouldn't do enough damage to completely destroy your head, either the shell was loaded upside down or more likely it was defective and instantly exploded. I've shot tons of shells off of flimsy plywood on top of grass and aside from scorch marks the wood is undamaged.
An article from the Sun Times said, “the investigation revealed Devon Staples had loaded the firework backward so that when it exploded, it exploded downward onto his skull, rather than upward into the sky.”
I hope the family is healing. I can't imagine witnessing something like that. That image is haunting even when it's a complete stranger, let alone a loved one.
Worse than that. I've seen this story mentioned almost every 4th. The quote is more like "there was no saving ____. There was nothing left." Or something along those lines. I believe it literally blew his head off.
Something similar happened to a friend of mine in high school. He died in a car crash, we all asked if he could’ve survived if this or that.
Then the story came out the car was hit so hard it decapitated him.
> [His brother] Cody was at the event when Devon was killed.
> “There was no rushing him to the hospital. There was no Devon left when I got there,” said Cody.
Yeah that would absolutely leave some serious mental scarring for the rest of your life
It was like putting a live grenade on your head and pulling the pin. Shame. There’s always a few stories a year like this. Like the kid who jumped off the boat on spring break into shark infested waters on a dare. And he drifted into darkness never to be seen again. Senseless tragedies. You pray your kids make better decisions
If someone goes overboard throw a lot of floating debris near them. Not just a life preserver. Chairs, trash, plastic bottles. If it floats put it in. Just try not to hit them.
The idea is to 1) give them something to hang onto
2) effectively create a zone of debris to find rather than one person on one life ring. Maybe even a “trail of breadcrumbs” back to them.
In that video they threw like one ring and that was it.
yeah unfortunately there’s not much chance that you’re getting back on the cruise. especially at night
probably more likely to be pulled under the boat and into the propellers before a shark gets you too :(
People are reporting seeing a shark in [the video](https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/13vd9ic/18_year_old_teen_jumped_off_a_cruise_ship_bahamas/). Honestly there does appear to be a shark. But the brain is fantastic at filling in details it's why people see the Loch Ness Monster.
But if you see the breakdowns other people post it's 100% a wave. Not to mention that when people get attacked by sharks they panic and nobody on the boat saw him getting attacked.
So you're right the guy mostly got pulled under.
It doesn’t have to be that same boat. The surface of the water generally moves together. So a coast guard search pattern would be more successful if it hits that straight line of debris.
Holy shit, this is so sad and so incredibly stupid. I've sailed across the Atlantic, and the one thing that was drilled into us is that if you go overboard, you are dead. We did drills where we threw a neon orange dummy overboard and had the full crew of 60 try to track it with binoculars.
The entire crew lost it in under a minute. Do not fuck with the ocean.
I can believe it. I was on the carnival cruise ship where the woman jumped off the side to avoid security (gulf of Mexico heading back to New Orleans in 2022) it happened so fast that by the time people ran to look over the railing she was just gone. Our ship, the coastguard, and a container ship circled the area for hours and no one ever saw a sign of her. The ocean is not to be messed with.
It’s crazy, I race sailboats and sometimes it’s incredibly difficult to find the starting pin or mark. Stuff that you know where it should be on the course and it’s still very hard to find.
Giving people instructions and warnings often goes right over their heads. When you show them an example of what happens, it becomes very real and etched into you. After the drill, you bet all of the sailors had that lesson remembered.
I'll tell you what, I never went on deck without my safety harness clipped in after that. I probably wouldn't do a voyage like that again without an emergency sos beacon either.
>Shark infested waters sounds pretty hardcore
Wait until you realize that jumping off a big ships like a cruise is almost always a death sentence because the ship can't stop and turn around fast enough without you drifting too far out.
Doing so at night time is even more fatal
The fucking idiots in this Drop a Gear and Disappear Facebook Group I'm in tried calling me a Karen and a Debbie Downer for telling them just how stupid it is so strap Roman Candles and 6 foot long Fireworks to a motorcycle, to then do a wheelie and light them off into the air WHILE RIDING DOWN A PUBLIC HIGHWAY. A 500 pound machine, that itself heats up, loaded with enough explosive to turn the immediate 100-foot vicinity into a fireball of death and destruction.
I have set off professional fireworks, I have seen even the smaller 3 inch round explosives get trapped inside a tube, and instead of just being a dud, blow the entire rack apart within milliseconds and almost take off someone's leg less than 10 feet away...
People are so fucking stupid, that I refuse to be a part of that, and remove myself from the situation. I'd rather not be witness to a brutal and wholly preventable death just because idiots want to learn the hard way. Some stupid people are so stupid that they deserve to leave this mortal realm. I say, let them. Better off everyone else not be involved in their self-stupid-suicide.
The key sentence is 'he thought it was a dud'. That means it had been lit, but had not gone off. So he put it on his head, where the main charge ignited and killed him.
Please do not touch a firework that has been lit but not gone off until you've doused it in water, or if possible completely soaked it. It will take some time for water to penetrate, so better to stay away until you're sure.
as kids we were told any firework that doesnt goes off to just leave it and completely ignore it, it's a lost cause and we've bought plenty of others, you can come check on it tomorrow, but definitely don't try to relight it either.
Guy at my old high school lost an eye like that. He actually looked into the firework after it stopped shooting fireballs. It should have shot like 5 and it only shot like 2. Well, then it shot the rest out but into his eye.
I was at a wedding about 20 years ago that was held on a farm in the middle of nowhere. They did an armature fireworks show at the end of the reception and then decided it would be a great idea to load all of the scrap and duds from the show into the back of their pickup truck and DUMP IT ALL IN THE BONFIRE!!!
Que huge and instant explosion. People running, people diving into the pond. I have no idea how no one died.
Same thing [happened ](https://www.wpri.com/news/local-news/south-county/police-westerly-man-died-after-firework-was-set-off-on-his-head/) in my area recently
>Ziegenfuss and others were messing around with fireworks at a home on Pound Road when a mortar-style firework was put on his head and set off.
usually happens because people accidentally load mortar fireworks upside down which causes it to explode in the tube...because people unwrap the fuse not knowing its like that on purpose
https://imgur.com/a/9AbZz4Q
A long time ago myself and 2 friends were playing with fireworks. Friend A had an m 80. Friend B went looking around his house and found a metal cup/pencil holder thing to put on top of the m80. They tried to convince me to put my foot on top of it. I kept saying no but friend a and it was theirs and friend b said it was thier house so I had to contribute... I said fine so we would light it. I had my foot on it but said fuck this and ran away. The cup flew like 20 feet up and sounded like a gunshot. The top got blown out from the bottom. Had I been steping on it, my foot would have blown off.
Thank God I'm not *that* stupid.
There’s a fine line of educating people on how bombs and grenades work. You need to know, so you don’t hurt yourself, but also you don’t want people to do it on purpose.
I've seem people light off multiple rockets at the same time, only for one to light significantly faster than the others, knock the others over which then shot into a croud of people.
That happened at the party I was at when I was little. People ran, but there was one lady sitting in front of me who didn’t move an inch. Dumb little kid me though “oh well if she’s fine then I’ll be fine.” lol I didn’t get hit but my brother was like “why tf didn’t you move?!”
The [push-ups Gaston](https://youtu.be/W3bp59Eci_0)? I know people are saying it's the same guy, but it's not. If you look closely and compare the faces and voices, it's different.
That poor Gaston lost his job because he became That Gaston. Everyone wanted to see him and were disappointed when someone else was in the costume. That's not how character interactions work at Disney.
Few years back we had a grandpa in our town literarily blow off his head doing fireworks with his small grandkids. Yeah, that left a mark on those poor kids
Same thing happened in Chicago 7 years ago. The mortar didn’t go off so dad decided to look straight down the tube. Had his head blown clean off in front of his kids. https://abc7chicago.com/fireworks-accident-deadly-gage-park/2184336/
Man, you always wonder who is setting off the fireworks behind people's bedrooms in the back alleys late at night... I assumed it was usually teenagers, but I guess this goes to show that stupidity has no age limits. The poor kids.
A high school kid in my town was messing around with fireworks last 4th. His hand ended up looking like a peeled banana skin. I’m pretty sure I heard he had just earned a college baseball scholarship. Not anymore. Don’t fuck with fireworks
>“Anyone who would want to give a tribute to Devon should go out and do something nice for someone. Show some love to someone you don’t know."
Wise words these days.
Plugging the reminder that alchohol greatly increases your hubris and desire to do risky things like speeding or play with fire, while also decreasing your hand eye coordination and ability to reason.
I saw someone after the fact that decided it was a good idea to try and spit fire with gasoline while drunk. Insane idea he would have never done sober. I wish I was there to stop it. Shit friends are shit. Burned half his face off.
This was normally a very smart and conservative person socially. Alchohol can be so destructive when consuming in larger quantities.
Makes me wonder how many deaths are technically attributable to alcohol bot not counted as an alcohol-related death because it's difficult to capture that data.
TIL how he died. I'd aways wondered what happened to this guy. He was the same age as me and I'm from Jacksonville. Devon went viral for his Gaston performance back then; people loved him. He was known for being funny, great with the kids, and iirc he was the Gaston in one viral video who sent two women away for trying to touch him inappropriately during pictures, which helped the conversation about treating character actors with respect. Never met him myself, but he seemed like a good person and it was a weird shock for Florida when he died. It's so sad that he died just trying to be silly. I hope his loved ones are doing okay.
It probably looked something like this:
[https://www.threads.net/@uscpsc/post/C8rpWOWvgQr/?xmt=AQGzi2YZvUvbiWkE4hXimr4fVbhFairiLEVYHXgP7l-RbQ](https://www.threads.net/@uscpsc/post/C8rpWOWvgQr/?xmt=AQGzi2YZvUvbiWkE4hXimr4fVbhFairiLEVYHXgP7l-RbQ)
The USCPSC has been posting warnings for the past week about fireworks safety, using videos featuring mannequins and crash-test dummies to show the destructive potential.
they post these videos every year, I hope it gets through to some people but it also sadly keeps happening.
maybe it's the fact that you can just buy fireworks without seemingly any fuss, people do not respect the fact that they're handling explosives.
Is this the same Gaston that is videoed kicking that chick out after she kept touching him while taking a picture?
edit: tragic, seemed like a solid dude.
edit2: nevermind, was a different guy, still tragic though.
My brotherinlaw is from Italy. He was a male model. A firework he was holding, he and his friends did this every year, exploded. Lost his eye. Still undergoing sessions of corrective plastic surgery. Not to mention the emotional scars.
My boy doing something stupid to hurt himself is one of my great fears. He’s 8 and I’m already teaching him not to do something stupid, not to play “dares”. And I told him that story about an Aussie eating a slug and turn stupid and died, and another guy that jump into the ocean from a party ship at night, and was never seen again.
And now I have yet another example of men having shorter lifespan because they do stupid shit.
If you are going to die from fireworks, do it like hockey goalie Matīss Kivlenieks.
“Merzļikins revealed that Kivlenieks protected others, including Merzļikins' wife and their unborn child, from the errant fireworks mortar shell that fatally struck him in the chest.”
If there’s anything us Latvians are good at, it’s [suicidal acts of sudden heroism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludvigs_Bol%C5%A1teins). Matīss was a real one, and I seriously wish he had a statue in Riga like Šilovs.
> “I spent 22 years keeping that boy safe. Do not drink, you need to have a designated sober person that is making life and death decisions with these things.” - the Poor mother Breaks my heart
My aunt did the same exact thing with her son. She was always a turbo helicopter parent who was worried about every single little thing he did, didn't want him to do anything dangerous, wanted to protect him from everything etc. Then when he was 19 he was doing stupid teenager things and climbing around with his friends on an abandoned warehouse, and he fell through the roof and broke his neck It's such a shame, because no matter how many times you try to convince teenagers and young adults not to do something, they will still ignore you and think they can get away with it Edit: I should clarify, she was a helicopter parent and worried about him, but she did let him play outside a ton and ride his dirt bike and go hiking etc, so it's not like he was bubble boy. I took him hiking one time and she literally called like 4 different times during a like hour hike, to make sure he was okay. *that's* what I mean by helicopter parent. She would basically rip your arms off if you put him in danger, but she did let him do stuff that should have given him some life experiences, he was just really unfortunate that he gave in to peer pressure and went to "check out" the warehouse, and got really unlucky that he fell through the roof
That’s really rough. My dad did the opposite and I learned super early that I could get horrifically injured from seemingly benign situations. I think it’s kept me from taking a lot of risks but I do think it’s saved me a few times.
I grew up on a farm and one day we were loading small square bales onto the conveyor(bale elevator) and the loose strings on the knee hole of my pants caught the pto shaft. Smacked my leg against it and ripped the dry rotten strings off, somehow luckily my leg immediately bounced back.. I can't help but picture my grandpa or brother looking over and seeking my body broken and twisting around that thing to this day
> my body broken and twisting around that thing to this day Well, I would assume at least by _now_ that they would have turned it off.
The fuel bill alone
😂🤣
That’s terrifying man. Glad you made it out of there in one piece. Farmers are such brave people to place themselves and their families at risk the way they have to. Many farmers in my family and unfortunately a lot of injuries associated with it.
I knew a few guys who recorded themselves jumping between shitty 150 year old abandoned mills freshman year of college. One kid just didn’t jump far enough, and the lucky shit *only* broke his ankle. They’re literally lucky they all didn’t die in roof collapse. These buildings were literally the first built in the first city where textile mills were built that kicked off the Industrial Revolution. Fucking morons.
I knew a couple in high school who thought they were immortal like most teenagers and weren't wearing seat belts. The driver lost control of the vehicle and sent it into a roll. *Somehow* they managed to get out of that unscathed but from what I understand they wear their seat belts now.
Perhaps it’s a case of the pendulum swinging too far back the other way. Like they say preacher’s kids are always the worst. Maybe if he had not felt so stifled in his youth and was able to learn on his own on less dangerous activities, he wouldn’t have been so dumb on the last one. Idk whatever
I think it’s that they don’t get an accurate measuring stick for danger. If your parent is always saying everything is dangerous, but most of the stuff they warn about isn’t actually dangerous, then you don’t listen when they warn you about actually dangerous things.
I think it’s more that you don’t teach them how to be safe and responsible in scenarios if you only preach to not be in those scenarios. Similar to abstinence sex ed having more pregnancies
Yeah exactly. I was a wild kid, my father let me climb trees frequently at a young age (like before teens) but was there to catch me when I started until he saw I was confident and experienced enough and then trusted me in doing it without him standing there, giving me freedom to explore more, if I got stuck I learned to yell for help instead of doing something too risky. He'd help me build bike jumps out of wood but nothing too crazy, take me on bike trails through the woods, weld me skateboard rails from scraps, let me hit jumps when I was learning snowboarding, etc... I fell many, MANY times, often with him filming haha. But a lot of those falls were when I was learning those things at a young age and so what I'd be attempting at the time wasn't too dangerous. This gave me the freedom to develop my skills of falling as safe as possible in any given scenario (this is a skill a lot of people do not develop these days and it results in a lot of injury as they just end up panicking or freezing up even over simply tripping). And on top of that it allowed me to get a better sense of the risks involved with what I might be thinking about doing, which is the most important part. I'd been getting to test my limit for all my youth and get a feel for what is a reasonable risk and not. We obviously want to protect our kids from danger, but if you protect someone from risks as much as possible, they don't get to experience the mistakes which are important for learning and growth. **If a test only asked you questions you knew, how would you learn anything?**
This is it. The private school and religious kids always had the reputation of being the wildest sex addicts in college and I know a TON of young adults that finally got their freedom start to do shit they should have done in high school. Two things that combo: 1. Lack of development and exposure (trial and error) to know what to do and what not to do 2. Repressed emotions that come out in bursts
Unfortunately, advising against attaching fireworks to your head and lighting them is not mentioned.
Some things you gotta figure out yourself.
A designated sober person wouldn’t have helped. Don’t drink and play with fireworks even if sober people are around. Accidents happen at the speed of explosions.
I don’t think she’s saying playing fireworks is safe as long as you’re not drunk. I think she’s saying that drinking impairs decision-making. She feels like her kid might not have made that stupid decision if he hadn’t been in a big group of drunk people egging each other on.
I don’t really agree. A drunk person isn’t just quietly setting a firework off on their head out of sight and mind. They’re hyping it up and making a show out of it. Plenty of time for a sober person to intervene.
>“There was no rushing him to the hospital. There was no Devon left when I got there,” said Cody. Fuck, that must have been some firework
Imagine rushing up and finding your brother like that, realizing that he's dead beyond repair, blown to bits. Fuck that's grim.
I mean, there are certain situations where, all things considered, you hope someone is already dead.
Yeah I'd be more worried about showing up to someone alive but incompatible with life, than instantly gone.
Wow that's a haunting phrase, "alive but incompatible with life."
I was the first person to arrive at a car wreck - guy was DUI, car went off the road, clipped a tree and spun. He was flung out the rear window, no seatbelt, and flew what police estimated was around a hundred feet before hitting the pavement. He was breathing, but I later heard he could have landed inside the ER and couldn’t have been saved. It was bad. I was DDing for a friend after a party, it fucked us both up for a while. Alive but incompatible with life is the most accurate description I’ve ever read to describe what we saw.
My twin brother was thrown off his motorcycle at age 18, he high sided a corner and the bike pushed him into a rock wall. They estimated his speed at around 100mph. The first person on the scene was my uncle David, he was a local officer in the town the accident occurred. My brothers helmet was fully split down the middle and his face was completely covered in blood. My uncle said he didn’t realize it was my brother until he cleaned his face off a bit, he thought he was dead. He was life flighted to the nearest hospital and immediately went into surgery, he had major brain swelling along with so many broken bones and punctured lungs. I remember the doctors coming into the waiting room and telling us that he would likely never speak again and that things would be very different. I’m tearing up writing this. Today you wouldn’t know he was in an accident if you met him unless he took his shirt and hat off.
Modern medicine is amazing. I’m glad your brother came through it.
Fuck yeah helmets
Always wear a helmet when riding. I wouldn't be here if I hadn't been wearing a helmet when I high-sided it into some woods at about 60mph. I don't remember a thing between breakfast that morning and waking up in the hospital. My riding buddies said I hit some sand and recovered, but then hit the lip at the edge of the road and didn't make it back onto the road. My helmet was split like the Liberty Bell and ground halfway through on one spot, but all I got was broken bones and a concussion. I still wake up going over the handlebars. seeing the sun reflected in the gauges, but I can't remember that in the day. Also: wear seatbelts they can save you too!
Thank god for that helmet. So glad he was able to pull through.
Everything turned out better than expected
I saw a motorcyclist go under the rear tires of an 18 wheeler. His body was literally ripped in half, and he was briefly still alive.
While in the trauma center, when we get a call regarding an “MVA involving a motorcyclist” my heart sinks because it’s probably going to be some mangled mess of a young person. I used to be interested in riding motorcycles, not any more. Nothing like single engine low priced hobby aircraft though, when things go wrong you usually skip the trauma center and go straight to the morgue.
This is why my hobbies are cooking and beer brewing. Or making sci-fi models. No helmet needed
I once overcarbonated some mead. 4 am I was awakened by what sounded like a gunshot, found the bottle exploded and shot out from the rack across the kitchen because of that damned Newton guy.
Pilot here, who flies single engine Cessnas for hobby. Most of the time, single engine aircraft incidents are quiet survivable. The difference is, the survivable ones are very different from the non-survivable ones. The non-survivable usually are pretty dramatic with strong impacts.
When I used to work in the ER these usually came as DOAs or Dead on Arrival .
My sister in the ER calls them DBB's. Dead but breathing.
Agonal respirations got the FTD fixing to die
Yarp. ER RT, sometimes the lights are on and nobodies home. Sorry I hope you are doing ok.
Imagine being Louis Slotin, a physicist with the Manhattan Project who let a reflective sphere of beryllium drop on a core of uranium, allowing it to go supercritical and spew out ionizing radiation. He was a professional. He knew he was dead. He was friends with Henry Daglian who died of another accident with the same core six months before. He sat with Daglian and watched him die. He knew that it was going to be worse for him. All in an instant. He is the most irradiated human in history. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon\_core](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core)
There was an accident on one of the rides at a theme park near where I live called Dreamworld. People got upset when the paramedics described the injuries sustained as “injuries incompatible with living” but it’s just one of those things where they technically hadn’t died yet, but there was zero chance of survival. I don’t envy the job they have to do and how you’d deal with that kind of situation.
That one was horrific
Take it from me, I have lived enough of this for many of you here while I worked in the ICU for 10 years. The worst ever probably came from a guy who crawled into a cattle trough after his trailer house exploded with him in it. He was talking with EMS while on scene. His fingernails and eyelids were gone along with 95% of his skin. We all knew..
Alright that’s enough reddit for the day!
Friend was hit by a train. He was still alive for about 15 mins when ambulance arrived. Pretty grim
My brother is a paramedic and has to make those tough calls sometimes. Recently he had a burn victim who coded in the ambulance, and he had to make the decision not to revive them ☹️ hard job for a 24 year old
I'll never forget a video where staff where doing chest compressions on a guy that was missing half of his torso and a couple of his limbs. I still don't know why they were even working on him. I could see his stomach.
Yeah if I saw something like that I would 100% become a monk in some far off cloister. Spending most of my time praying to keep the undead away.
Off a guy I used to know had one of them situations only to find em alive and the girl was his daughter's best friend... Incase ya wants to know; >!guy was a tow truck operator, showed up to a car crash before EMT's, drunk driver hit a young girl on her bike Drunk driver had her pinned against the guardrail and stretched out her torso, she had her head down when my guy approached the scene but he recognized her as his daughter's best friend (who was biking to meet up with the daughter no less). He initially thought she was dead for sure but as he walked up she shot her head up and started screaming....... Gave the dude nightmares for years!<
That is easily one of the most horrifying things I've ever heard, in the top 10 at least. That's the kind of thing you never totally recover from seeing. I don't doubt it haunted his dreams for a very very very long time.
Your spoiler tags didn’t work…
I would never quit drinking. This is exactly why I decided not to work on an ambulance - even after doing well in the class.
There's a term used in the military & emergency medicine... FUBAR BUNDY. Many people have heard the term fubar, not really knowing it's origins. Fucked up beyond all recognition, but unfortunately not dead yet.
I knew what FUBAR meant (both parents were enlisted), never heard the BUNDY part. That's rough.
The version I’m familiar with is T.F. Bundy. “Totally fucked, but unfortunately…”
I've never heard anyone claim that "FUBAR BUNDY" was the "origin" and can't find any evidence of it. People know FUBAR but not BUNDY because FUBAR is the original term.
This is going to turn into another "the customer is always right"... "in matters of taste" People like to add things and others spread it to seem like they are in the know.
People get REALLY attached to factoids
We got a guy one night I’ll never forget, got in a car accident and through some fuckery got a metal fence pole that just about went through his heart. He managed to survive for 7 more excruciating hours.
I know someone whose brother committed suicide this way. It really messed her up.
Firework on the head? Damn
That honestly sounds like an award winner for world’s darkest humor. “Im gonna kill myself, but I’m gonna do it with something that is only used for celebrations.”
Impaled on a christmas tree.
Santa the impaler
Kyle Kinane has a stand up bit about suicide after watching the documentary about Golden Gate Bridge suicides. The premise of the joke is basically, if you're going to do it, why not do it with some flair. If you're going to jump off a building, why not put a glass of water on the sidewalk outside and wear a snorkel while doing it.
Wasn't there that one not too long ago about the guy that died jumping off a building wearing a spider man or superman costume? I felt like he was channeling that energy
That baggage handler out west that stole a plane, did some tricks and slammed it into a mountain comes to mind.
RIP Skyking.
The audio of that guy is wild. He was clearly going through a whole lot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DstWZY_eUOc
It was a Q400 and he crashed into an island.
Wasn’t even some small plane it was a damn passenger jet!
Yeah that loop he did above the water was wild lol.
I still, for some reason, randomly remember the security camera footage of him just flying around while he politely explained his situation to the tower. Sky King lives on in our hearts.
It's not too far from seeing your buddy take a direct mortar hit in battle. Like that is war level PTSD. *Damn*.
At least in war it would be something one expected and psychologically prepared for to a greater degree.
That's a great (and depressing) point
> The 22-year-old lit up a reloadable fireworks mortar tube that was on his head while celebrating the Fourth of July with friends in Calais, Maine. >“Apparently, he thought that was a great idea,” said Stephen McCausland, a spokesman for the state Department of Public Safety. “His friends said they thought they had dissuaded him from doing it, and the next thing they knew, he ignited the fireworks and he was killed instantly.” Well there you go
The poor mom is saying he thought it was a dud, but he must've lit it so he probably didn't actually think that.
Only thing I can think of is if they lit it and it didn't go off for a few mins so they started messing around with it thinking it was a dud
oof, I had a hangfire on a 3" mortar once. I left it the whole display and a few minutes of going wtf after the show and then it went off. safety perimeter had not been changed as I thought there may be a hangfire, but it was startling when it did go.
What’s the protocol if it just didn’t go off and you have to pack up? Douse it with copious amounts of water? Steel bucket?
Submerge in water, so ideally a hose that I can still have a standoff distance and ability to soak the mortar tube. You have to assume any unspent firework is a hang fire, so keep as much distance as possible, don’t let anyone approach. At the end of a show, I fire every cue just in case one didn’t go and may still. After that, it’s pantshitting time
So, if I have this right, the protocol is: 1.) Fire off every cue 2.) Don't approach unspent fireworks 3.) Submerge in water 4.) Shit pants
Feel free to shit pants anytime you think you have unfired fireworks, I do !
5.) Profit
I'm firing some mortars for the 2nd time in my life and a 25 shot 500g cake for the first time in my life tonight. I've spent the past couple days picking and questioning the safest launching point in my yard where I can set down a level large concrete planter, and when I go to light things up tonight I'm going to have both my garden hose and a fire extinguisher within reach. If a mortar doesn't fire, I'm sacrificing the tube and drenching that shit for 10 min. The cake finishes and even if I think it's good it's getting a good soaking and will be left out overnight. You've got to have absolutely respect and thorough planning for dealing with explosives in my mind. The last thing I want to do is become a statistic or wreck any of my own or my neighbors' property.
Not necessarily. Probably didn’t go off immediately because it was loaded upside down, so he thought it was a dud, moved it, and it blew up.
That's exactly it. Because I've seen this exact shit happening with fortunately lesser consequences. Shell was loaded upside down because it came off the little string looping it around. Plus beer. First little explosion went off, (which is surprisingly weak when not pressurized) then the guy legitimately brought it to about eye level and flipped it over to let the "dud" shell fall out and the moment it came about an inch off the tube, it went off and seared his facial hair off lmao. Got some bruising on his chest and thighs.
He might not have thought it was a dud but also not really thought it was going to go off, and certainly not that it was going to go off fast and hard enough to kill him. Sometimes when you're drunk you just don't connect dots that are really obviously connected when you're sober. I feel bad for the guy and his family.
Really, the fact that our independence holiday mixes explosives with alcohol is both the dumbest thing we could have done and the most American thing possible.
I interned at a public defender's office in Kentucky in the 90s. The attorneys there told me that it was a regular thing every summer that they'd have charges dismissed against their clients because one or more key witnesses had blown themselves up with fireworks on the 4th.
"it's not loaded, I promise"
at least he died on the spot, no suffering
Wouldn't have even had time to realise it was happening.
Like the submarine guys that were headed to the titanic
Holy shit, I’m sure his friends have the worst trauma from seeing their friend explode in front of them. That’s awful
Sadly he was with family, it was his brother that first approached and is quoted saying something like ‘an ambulance wasn’t needed given the head trauma’.
Every force has an equal and opposite reaction. When those mortar tubes are on the ground you don't see the ground squish so you may not instinctively realize the the explosion is basically punching the ground underneath it with the same force that's shooting that ball up in the air a hundred feet or so. Now add in that the top of your head is not flat so all of that force is going to initially be applied to a small patch on top of your skull which is a relatively thin part of it (compared to the back & sides behind your ears).
Sheesh, my only experience is with little tiny firecrackers so it never occurred to me that the big ones are powered by explosions. What a way to go.
The little ones are powered by explosion too.
Mortar fireworks are a whole different level. Even the smaller ones have a hell of a lot more oomph than something like an m80, which can still take fingers off.
Key word: *Mortar*
It's amazing how easily we disconnect ideas, especially the more commonplace they are. I bet if I asked you what fireworks are made of, you'd correctly identify it as a form of gunpowder. And then I'd ask you want gunpowder does, and you'd say explode (just directed explosions). But the connection between 'firework on head' and 'mini bomb on head' can get weirdly dropped sometimes. It's fascinating.
What is crazy is that this continues to happen (as recently as this Independence day). People keep dying from lighting fireworks on their head. Maybe it's time for a large mandatory warning label with easy to understand graphics?
Fireworks are just sparkly bombs
Not saying it still wouldn't have severely injured or killed him, but unless it was a absolutely massive simply launching a mortar from a tube on your head wouldn't do enough damage to completely destroy your head, either the shell was loaded upside down or more likely it was defective and instantly exploded. I've shot tons of shells off of flimsy plywood on top of grass and aside from scorch marks the wood is undamaged.
An article from the Sun Times said, “the investigation revealed Devon Staples had loaded the firework backward so that when it exploded, it exploded downward onto his skull, rather than upward into the sky.”
That makes sense. I've shot those off by hand plenty of times as a teen and I couldn't understand how it had happened.
I hope the family is healing. I can't imagine witnessing something like that. That image is haunting even when it's a complete stranger, let alone a loved one.
Worse than that. I've seen this story mentioned almost every 4th. The quote is more like "there was no saving ____. There was nothing left." Or something along those lines. I believe it literally blew his head off.
“There was no rushing him to the hospital. There was no Devon left when I got there,” said Cody.
Something similar happened to a friend of mine in high school. He died in a car crash, we all asked if he could’ve survived if this or that. Then the story came out the car was hit so hard it decapitated him.
> [His brother] Cody was at the event when Devon was killed. > “There was no rushing him to the hospital. There was no Devon left when I got there,” said Cody. Yeah that would absolutely leave some serious mental scarring for the rest of your life
It was like putting a live grenade on your head and pulling the pin. Shame. There’s always a few stories a year like this. Like the kid who jumped off the boat on spring break into shark infested waters on a dare. And he drifted into darkness never to be seen again. Senseless tragedies. You pray your kids make better decisions
If someone goes overboard throw a lot of floating debris near them. Not just a life preserver. Chairs, trash, plastic bottles. If it floats put it in. Just try not to hit them. The idea is to 1) give them something to hang onto 2) effectively create a zone of debris to find rather than one person on one life ring. Maybe even a “trail of breadcrumbs” back to them. In that video they threw like one ring and that was it.
That video was at night and the boat was not the sort that could turn quickly. I don't think a trail of breadcrumbs would have realistically helped.
yeah unfortunately there’s not much chance that you’re getting back on the cruise. especially at night probably more likely to be pulled under the boat and into the propellers before a shark gets you too :(
People are reporting seeing a shark in [the video](https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/13vd9ic/18_year_old_teen_jumped_off_a_cruise_ship_bahamas/). Honestly there does appear to be a shark. But the brain is fantastic at filling in details it's why people see the Loch Ness Monster. But if you see the breakdowns other people post it's 100% a wave. Not to mention that when people get attacked by sharks they panic and nobody on the boat saw him getting attacked. So you're right the guy mostly got pulled under.
It doesn’t have to be that same boat. The surface of the water generally moves together. So a coast guard search pattern would be more successful if it hits that straight line of debris.
That was on video, it was eerie to see him panic too
Oh man, sorry for the morbid curiosity but do you have a link? Shark infested waters sounds pretty hardcore
You don't see anything. He just jumps off the side of the cruise ship at night and pretty quickly gets lost in the darkness
Holy shit, this is so sad and so incredibly stupid. I've sailed across the Atlantic, and the one thing that was drilled into us is that if you go overboard, you are dead. We did drills where we threw a neon orange dummy overboard and had the full crew of 60 try to track it with binoculars. The entire crew lost it in under a minute. Do not fuck with the ocean.
I can believe it. I was on the carnival cruise ship where the woman jumped off the side to avoid security (gulf of Mexico heading back to New Orleans in 2022) it happened so fast that by the time people ran to look over the railing she was just gone. Our ship, the coastguard, and a container ship circled the area for hours and no one ever saw a sign of her. The ocean is not to be messed with.
It’s crazy, I race sailboats and sometimes it’s incredibly difficult to find the starting pin or mark. Stuff that you know where it should be on the course and it’s still very hard to find.
Damn what was that for?
Giving people instructions and warnings often goes right over their heads. When you show them an example of what happens, it becomes very real and etched into you. After the drill, you bet all of the sailors had that lesson remembered.
I'll tell you what, I never went on deck without my safety harness clipped in after that. I probably wouldn't do a voyage like that again without an emergency sos beacon either.
Ah I see. Nothing mind-blowing, just a depressing reality. Stay safe out there guys, lmao.
Dude I’ve seen some grim and gory shit but this video affected me more than most.
>Shark infested waters sounds pretty hardcore Wait until you realize that jumping off a big ships like a cruise is almost always a death sentence because the ship can't stop and turn around fast enough without you drifting too far out. Doing so at night time is even more fatal
We should stop using “infested” in this context. They just friggin LIVE there. There is no such thing as a shark infestation.
Yeah they ain't owls
The fucking idiots in this Drop a Gear and Disappear Facebook Group I'm in tried calling me a Karen and a Debbie Downer for telling them just how stupid it is so strap Roman Candles and 6 foot long Fireworks to a motorcycle, to then do a wheelie and light them off into the air WHILE RIDING DOWN A PUBLIC HIGHWAY. A 500 pound machine, that itself heats up, loaded with enough explosive to turn the immediate 100-foot vicinity into a fireball of death and destruction. I have set off professional fireworks, I have seen even the smaller 3 inch round explosives get trapped inside a tube, and instead of just being a dud, blow the entire rack apart within milliseconds and almost take off someone's leg less than 10 feet away... People are so fucking stupid, that I refuse to be a part of that, and remove myself from the situation. I'd rather not be witness to a brutal and wholly preventable death just because idiots want to learn the hard way. Some stupid people are so stupid that they deserve to leave this mortal realm. I say, let them. Better off everyone else not be involved in their self-stupid-suicide.
The key sentence is 'he thought it was a dud'. That means it had been lit, but had not gone off. So he put it on his head, where the main charge ignited and killed him. Please do not touch a firework that has been lit but not gone off until you've doused it in water, or if possible completely soaked it. It will take some time for water to penetrate, so better to stay away until you're sure.
as kids we were told any firework that doesnt goes off to just leave it and completely ignore it, it's a lost cause and we've bought plenty of others, you can come check on it tomorrow, but definitely don't try to relight it either.
Guy at my old high school lost an eye like that. He actually looked into the firework after it stopped shooting fireballs. It should have shot like 5 and it only shot like 2. Well, then it shot the rest out but into his eye.
I was at a wedding about 20 years ago that was held on a farm in the middle of nowhere. They did an armature fireworks show at the end of the reception and then decided it would be a great idea to load all of the scrap and duds from the show into the back of their pickup truck and DUMP IT ALL IN THE BONFIRE!!! Que huge and instant explosion. People running, people diving into the pond. I have no idea how no one died.
Man if that happened nowadays we’d have so many angles posted on Reddit
Same thing [happened ](https://www.wpri.com/news/local-news/south-county/police-westerly-man-died-after-firework-was-set-off-on-his-head/) in my area recently >Ziegenfuss and others were messing around with fireworks at a home on Pound Road when a mortar-style firework was put on his head and set off.
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usually happens because people accidentally load mortar fireworks upside down which causes it to explode in the tube...because people unwrap the fuse not knowing its like that on purpose https://imgur.com/a/9AbZz4Q
I have had rockets explode immediately after lighting them. Thankfully I had retreated. I cannot fathom how someone would think this was a good idea.
A long time ago myself and 2 friends were playing with fireworks. Friend A had an m 80. Friend B went looking around his house and found a metal cup/pencil holder thing to put on top of the m80. They tried to convince me to put my foot on top of it. I kept saying no but friend a and it was theirs and friend b said it was thier house so I had to contribute... I said fine so we would light it. I had my foot on it but said fuck this and ran away. The cup flew like 20 feet up and sounded like a gunshot. The top got blown out from the bottom. Had I been steping on it, my foot would have blown off. Thank God I'm not *that* stupid.
they dont seem to be the best people to be around, I know that if that happened to me, its instantly friends off — one close call is far too many
There’s a fine line of educating people on how bombs and grenades work. You need to know, so you don’t hurt yourself, but also you don’t want people to do it on purpose.
I've seem people light off multiple rockets at the same time, only for one to light significantly faster than the others, knock the others over which then shot into a croud of people.
That happened at the party I was at when I was little. People ran, but there was one lady sitting in front of me who didn’t move an inch. Dumb little kid me though “oh well if she’s fine then I’ll be fine.” lol I didn’t get hit but my brother was like “why tf didn’t you move?!”
Alcohol...
I had the pleasure of meeting him a few times during my College Program when he was Gaston. He was amazing. RIP Devon.
Was this the guy I used to see all over Reddit years and years ago?
The [push-ups Gaston](https://youtu.be/W3bp59Eci_0)? I know people are saying it's the same guy, but it's not. If you look closely and compare the faces and voices, it's different.
Thank you, I ended up reading the article, and it does clarify at the bottom that they aren't the same person. What a way to die.
That poor Gaston lost his job because he became That Gaston. Everyone wanted to see him and were disappointed when someone else was in the costume. That's not how character interactions work at Disney.
A bit like dying in a freak gasoline fight accident.
It’s really not easy being really really really ridiculously good looking.
Just because we have chiselled abs and stunning features, it doesn't mean that we too can't not die in a freak gasoline fight accident.
I used this line in a text to shoot my shot at my huband, via text, 17 years ago.
Orange Mocha Frappuccino!
Jitterbug
"He must have thought it was a dud. He would not have done something so stupid." 🤔
But why male models?
I just told ya
I fucking love that he repeated this because he forgot his line. Duchovnys confusion is real.
MerMAN!
^cough ^cough #MerMAN!
I got the black lung, pops
*...Jitterbug...*
Few years back we had a grandpa in our town literarily blow off his head doing fireworks with his small grandkids. Yeah, that left a mark on those poor kids
Same thing happened in Chicago 7 years ago. The mortar didn’t go off so dad decided to look straight down the tube. Had his head blown clean off in front of his kids. https://abc7chicago.com/fireworks-accident-deadly-gage-park/2184336/
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The official time of death may be after actual time of death.
Man, you always wonder who is setting off the fireworks behind people's bedrooms in the back alleys late at night... I assumed it was usually teenagers, but I guess this goes to show that stupidity has no age limits. The poor kids.
How common is this??? It doesn't take intelligence to understand that having an explosive near ones head is going to cause serious harm
A high school kid in my town was messing around with fireworks last 4th. His hand ended up looking like a peeled banana skin. I’m pretty sure I heard he had just earned a college baseball scholarship. Not anymore. Don’t fuck with fireworks
>“Anyone who would want to give a tribute to Devon should go out and do something nice for someone. Show some love to someone you don’t know." Wise words these days.
Unfortunately hubris, alcohol, and explosives don't mix well.
Plugging the reminder that alchohol greatly increases your hubris and desire to do risky things like speeding or play with fire, while also decreasing your hand eye coordination and ability to reason. I saw someone after the fact that decided it was a good idea to try and spit fire with gasoline while drunk. Insane idea he would have never done sober. I wish I was there to stop it. Shit friends are shit. Burned half his face off. This was normally a very smart and conservative person socially. Alchohol can be so destructive when consuming in larger quantities.
Makes me wonder how many deaths are technically attributable to alcohol bot not counted as an alcohol-related death because it's difficult to capture that data.
TIL how he died. I'd aways wondered what happened to this guy. He was the same age as me and I'm from Jacksonville. Devon went viral for his Gaston performance back then; people loved him. He was known for being funny, great with the kids, and iirc he was the Gaston in one viral video who sent two women away for trying to touch him inappropriately during pictures, which helped the conversation about treating character actors with respect. Never met him myself, but he seemed like a good person and it was a weird shock for Florida when he died. It's so sad that he died just trying to be silly. I hope his loved ones are doing okay.
No the article even says he was NOT the pushups Gaston actor.
Was he also the guy who shut the chick down who was trying to flirt with him (Gaston)??
This dude died in 2015. Pretty sure the video you’re talking about went viral in like 2021. So same character, different dude playing him.
It probably looked something like this: [https://www.threads.net/@uscpsc/post/C8rpWOWvgQr/?xmt=AQGzi2YZvUvbiWkE4hXimr4fVbhFairiLEVYHXgP7l-RbQ](https://www.threads.net/@uscpsc/post/C8rpWOWvgQr/?xmt=AQGzi2YZvUvbiWkE4hXimr4fVbhFairiLEVYHXgP7l-RbQ) The USCPSC has been posting warnings for the past week about fireworks safety, using videos featuring mannequins and crash-test dummies to show the destructive potential.
they post these videos every year, I hope it gets through to some people but it also sadly keeps happening. maybe it's the fact that you can just buy fireworks without seemingly any fuss, people do not respect the fact that they're handling explosives.
Is this the same Gaston that is videoed kicking that chick out after she kept touching him while taking a picture? edit: tragic, seemed like a solid dude. edit2: nevermind, was a different guy, still tragic though.
The article says no. It’s a correction at the bottom of the page
They all look like Gaston. No one can tell for sure
I used to hold the tube in my hand while launching these, it never crossed my young dumb brain that I could of lose my hand
My brotherinlaw is from Italy. He was a male model. A firework he was holding, he and his friends did this every year, exploded. Lost his eye. Still undergoing sessions of corrective plastic surgery. Not to mention the emotional scars.
My boy doing something stupid to hurt himself is one of my great fears. He’s 8 and I’m already teaching him not to do something stupid, not to play “dares”. And I told him that story about an Aussie eating a slug and turn stupid and died, and another guy that jump into the ocean from a party ship at night, and was never seen again. And now I have yet another example of men having shorter lifespan because they do stupid shit.
very gaston of him
I mean it was probably just as Goofy
So morbid, but also my first immediate thought.
If you are going to die from fireworks, do it like hockey goalie Matīss Kivlenieks. “Merzļikins revealed that Kivlenieks protected others, including Merzļikins' wife and their unborn child, from the errant fireworks mortar shell that fatally struck him in the chest.”
If there’s anything us Latvians are good at, it’s [suicidal acts of sudden heroism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludvigs_Bol%C5%A1teins). Matīss was a real one, and I seriously wish he had a statue in Riga like Šilovs.
No one lights fireworks like Gaston