LORDKAHUNA
Don't make me fuk your moustache   SSHOLE |
Posts: 1609 Registered: 8/5/2003 Offline
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4/28/2007 at 06:44 |
I had a brush with death on Thursday, not of the pansy-ass “gosh I almost got hit by a car/I had a tumour that was removed” kinds of events, but a real manly death. This was the type of event where you actually get to see what your meat suit can do when all your adrenaline pistons are firing.
A lot of people are pretty cavalier when discussing their own mortality, fully confident that the contents of their nut sack are of stern enough stuff that when danger looms they will stare it down with GIJOE chutzpah. It turns out that my danger-coping mechanism consists of me running willy-nilly as fast/far as I fucking can.
I am ok with this because:
PANTING/WHEEZING SCRAMBLEPANICRUN-1, DEATH-0
-The event-
First let me set this up a bit, one of the things we do at my workplace is remove metal that has been electrochemically deposited onto other metal (fascinating, I know). This is done with an acid, and you can read about a very similar process that we use
here.
The main ingredient that we use is Nitric Acid; this shit is the John Wayne of acids:
Commonly used as a laboratory reagent, nitric acid is used in the manufacture of explosives including nitroglycerin, trinitrotoluene (TNT) and cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine (RDX), as well as fertilizers such as ammonium nitrate.
Not saying that the process that we use isn’t safe, our process is probably one of the safest in the entire industry; we dilute this acid to safe levels and use it in small, controllable batches. This stuff is kept in 3 huge, 3-storey, triple-hulled storage tanks that are probably akin to the hull of a battleship.
They are right next to my office.
And on this particular Thursday afternoon I heard a fantastic “whooshing” sound followed by a door slamming open at the end of the hall and a incredibly shill man voice yelling “WOOOOOOOOOOOOO GTFO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” followed by the sight of one of my co-workers launching himself down the emergency escape. By the time I got to the hallway I was confronted by the thickest yellow smoke/vapour/steam you can imagine (think of what would happen if you pulled the pin on a smoke grenade in your closet, yeah, like that).
Now I’m no dummy, and I quickly deduced what was going on, for some reason (I won’t get into this to avoid any legal shit that might go down if my employer ever sees this) a substantial amount of reactant found it’s way past multiple fail-safes and entered the gigantic tank that was holding 100% nitric acid (it is drilled into us that YELLOW MEANS GO!).
I don’t believe that I have ever run so fast in my entire life, I literally vaulted down that 3-storey escape and hit the tarmac running, looking for someplace to hide. At that point I knew that there was no way I could outrun this, so I climbed into an empty steel dump box and sobbed big ropey noseboogery sobs, knowing that I was fucked. Regaining a bit of composure I phoned (incoherently), emailed, SMSed anyone who might be using the nitric system to fucking stop.
So sitting there all girly like in the pouring rain waiting for the BIGBOOM, I thought that if I hit #megarad with my handheld, the poop/fart/faggo jokes might just make shit feel better, and it did.
Our bacon got saved, the weakest part of the tank, the access hatch, partially blew open allowing the pressure to release (all the acid was caught in a sump that exists specifically for this purpose), the office gets to be remodelled in the wake of the acid cloud, and I had a bitchin story to tell.
Now tell me of your brush with death, did you take it like a man, did you pee/poop self, did you pray (LOL)?
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the rice I had yesterday came out practically verbatim
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The_GoBotSodomizer
SIR BABYHEAD  Posts: 64 Registered: 2/1/2005 Offline
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4/28/2007 at 08:13 |
I pooped a little bit just reading your story. Glad you're OK. |
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jwalker
Token Discordian  SSHOLEPosts: 945 Registered: 8/6/2005 Offline
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4/28/2007 at 08:41 |
LK: That is awesome (like a hollywood action film)!
I had one close call. Years ago when I was in the AF, I joined a private skydiving club, and we jumped nearby in Granville, OK. I had a sweet deal with the club; I drove their 24-seater schoolbus, carting the students back and forth, and also folded the student chutes, and in return I got to jump free all weekend.
One day we planned a jump where three of us would fly together and then hold on in a line, while a fourth with a camera mounted on his helmet took our picture. Everything went as planned, and when it came time to pull at around 2500 feet - the handle broke off in my hand - OMFGOOPS!
In an attempt to get my chute to open, I (stupidly) yanked on the strap connecting the pilot chut in my leg strap to the main chute - but the length to the main was shorter, so it pulled the main chute open without releasing the pilot chut from my leg, creating the dreaded "horseshoe malfunction", with the main chute looped over my head, where pulling the reserve chute could get caught up in it. In fact, the main chut did get caught in the reserve, but only on the side, snagged on the strings. I landed about couple of miles off course in a cornfield, no worse for the wear.
While all this was happening, I was kind of in survival mode, and didn't really think about what would happen in several seconds if things did not turn around quickly. Don't know why that is, but in any case I'm glad to still be here. I look back on that sometimes, when I need to put things in perspective.
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To the dog who has money, men say "My Lord Dog". |
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BigDinWaunakee
SENATOR BABYHEAD  Posts: 103 Registered: 1/24/2007 Offline
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4/28/2007 at 16:10 |
Lord K,
First, congratulations on avoiding death.
From reading your description, your decision was the best option that was presented to you... no escape method or ability to get far enough away before an explosion, so take the best odds and hope.
A few Q: Was the dump capable of resisiting the corrosion of the acid?
Was it sealed to prevent the invasion of vapors?
I guess that these questions are moot, because the resulting explosion of the reactant and Nitric, assuming the reactant is intended for the Nitric, would have blown that entire building and its contents clear off the map... while disolving it.
I'm not sure if you are in the US, or your job is, but the next time I hear a fucking conservative, no-regulations mother fucker complaing about the US government and their many rules and regs, your story is a great example of why they are needed. Obviously, your employer either doesn't follow the regs or the feds don't/won't pay too close attention to the potential violations. Like, how the fuck does a company staff someone so close to a mega-stash of Nitric acid without giving them an immediate out in the event that said acid becomes uncontained?
Anyway, I'm glad that you are alive, because your death would have been just like one of the opening death scenes from Six Feet Under... tragic, squirm-worthy, yet funny. If this type of death were in the show, there would be no need for a burial or cremation, because there would be nothing left of your desolved body.
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Knight of Swollen Testes |
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LORDKAHUNA
Don't make me fuk your moustache SSHOLEPosts: 1609 Registered: 8/5/2003 Offline
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4/28/2007 at 23:02 |
Was the dump capable of resisiting the corrosion of the acid?
Was it sealed to prevent the invasion of vapors?
Probably not, my concern was blast radius and flying debris.
Obviously, your employer either doesn't follow the regs or the feds don't/won't pay too close attention to the potential violations. Like, how the fuck does a company staff someone so close to a mega-stash of Nitric acid without giving them an immediate out in the event that said acid becomes uncontained?
The layout is in line with the regs, this type of accident is usually unheard of, it was just one of freak accidents that don't happen often enough to collect data to protect against.
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the rice I had yesterday came out practically verbatim |
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Wrecker
Misanthrope  SSHOLEPosts: 446 Registered: 1/25/2006 Offline
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4/28/2007 at 23:20 |
LK, I am happy you are still alive. I imagine the sight of you shooting out of that building looking like the Millenium Falcon exiting the second Death Star.
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< nuevoSock_> "me and the phone cable plugged to her labia were shaking hands
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Lownotes
They all float down here.  SSHOLEPosts: 180 Registered: 4/23/2005 Offline
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4/30/2007 at 05:56 |
I spent my entire senior year of high school in various beds, most in hospitals, because I crushed a few vertebrae, but that's another story.
The closest I came to absolute death that I know of (because, let's face it, the specter of death has likely brushed against your neck many times in your life without leaving a trace) was when I worked for a company that installed and maintained electrical control systems.
I went to a job site with a fellow worker to drive a ground rod. The ground rod, which I'm sure is actually called a ground-ing rod, but no one ever said so, is a 10-foot-tall metal spike used to channel lightning away from sensitive equipment. You must climb a ladder with a sledgehammer to begin the process of driving it into the earth, then, as it goes deeper, you can climb down the ladder and finish the job.
It's tough work; you must not bend the spike, so one guy has to clasp it with a pair of channel-lock pliers as the other swings the sledgehammer overhead. You pass the sledgehammer back and forth as you tire out. The site we went to was one with a water tower, you know, the metal egg on stilts, and a shitload of controls connected to pumps and generators and such.
We selected a patch of grass behind a wall of doodads and flashing lights, set up a ladder, and went to work.
It took about 15 minutes, and afterward, as we were connecting the copper wire to the rod, a guy who worked for the water department came racing down the road leading to the tower.
He spilled out of the truck and yelled to us to stop what we were doing, one hand outstretched as if to yank us to him.
We looked up, and then he stopped cold, put his hands on his hips, and laughed.
He explained he had come to stop us from driving the rod because a buried cable, live with several hundred thousand volts of juice flowing through it, ran underneath the site but was not marked.
He walked over to where the rod was and told us we must have missed it by about three or four inches.
We shrugged it off, but it was creepy. Creepy in the sense that three or four inches would have either have split my timeline into a tangent where I exploded into purple spiderwebs of charred salsa, or one where I watched someone else do so. But, since nothing happened out of the ordinary at all, we had to just go on and say, "Hrmph, that's crazy," and leave it at that.
The anticlimax of being told we almost were killed mixed with the knowledge we never feared what we were doing for a moment generates an emotion difficult to convey. I suppose there there have dozens if not hundred of similar moments in my life I will always be oblivious to. |
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freakmachine
Web Fucko Extraordinaire  SSHOLEPosts: 588 Registered: 4/15/2004 Offline
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4/30/2007 at 15:28 |
Congratulations on defrauding Mr. Death, keep up the good work.
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Steel
If you want to keep your tongue, don't lick me in the Winter!  SSHOLEPosts: 487 Registered: 10/14/2004 Offline
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4/30/2007 at 15:45 |
Now Death is angry and will come after you for cheating it so! |
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Sidechain
Funk Lord of the Universe.  SSHOLEPosts: 69 Registered: 8/18/2006 Offline
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4/30/2007 at 16:18 |
Years ago, I worked in an aluminum annodizing plant. One day, I was driving the anno crane with a huge rack of parts on it. It's one of those overhead types with the hand-held controller, and you walk along the edge of the tanks as you move the crane. Just as I'm driving the rack over the etching tank (hydrofluoric acid), the rack holding the parts decides that it has been etched one too many times, seperates from the crane arm, and falls into the etching tank, making a huge spash and wave. To this day, I have no idea what really happened, but as I'm watching the splash coming toward me, something wrapped around my right foot, and toppled me toward the tank. They think I must have had my foot in a loop of the controller cable and hit the emergency return button as I was trained, but I don't remember pushing anything. The next thing I know, I'm lying face down on the guard screen which hangs over the lip of the tank. I am dimly aware that I am only about 8 inches above the acid, and that it's churning back and forth widly in waves. I am in fact more concerned that I have just been splashed head to toe with the stuff. My head and one shoulder are actually out over the lip of the guard and hanging free above the acid. As I'm looking down in to the tank and watching my parts sink, my face shield slips off and and falls into the tank, and my resperator feels like it's just about to follow. It's drilled into you that if you ever somehow end up on the guard, DON'T MOVE. It isn't designed to be stood or walked on. So, I'm kind of fighting my own flight response with a little internal montra - "Don't move! Don't move!" I have just enough time to realize that my goggles are loose and clamp my eyes shut tight before I feel hands yanking me off the guard. At this point I'm no longer quite sure what's going on - until the cold water hits. And I mean COLD. At that point, I open my eyes, and am immediately told to shut them again, but I catch a glimpse of the scene. I am on the edge of the crane platform (two storeys in the air, visible from the entire plant, buck-nekkid, and am being hosed down by two guys in haz-mat suits.
As it turns out, I was only splashed a little bit, and my hardhat, face shield and apron took most of it. Although some did get through, and I still own the heavy jeans I was wearing, which have several holes all down the front. Couple of blisters was all for me. Had I gone into the tank, I wouldn't be here. Had I hung there on the guard for 15 seconds longer and my resperator come off, I would probably wish I weren't still here.
About a year later, at the same plant I was now working in the fab shop, and nearly killed someone in the office when the machine I was working on malfunctioned. On that morning, when I came to work, the big sign said "28 days without a serious accident!" (someone on the graveyard shift had been killed in a forklift accident a month earlier).
I quit shortly thereafter.
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You can't hear me laughing to myself
If you could you would be someone else. |
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Lownotes
They all float down here. SSHOLEPosts: 180 Registered: 4/23/2005 Offline
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4/30/2007 at 17:29 |
I think a valuable lesson is beginning to emerge. |
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Steel
If you want to keep your tongue, don't lick me in the Winter! SSHOLEPosts: 487 Registered: 10/14/2004 Offline
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4/30/2007 at 17:55 |
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LORDKAHUNA
Don't make me fuk your moustache SSHOLEPosts: 1609 Registered: 8/5/2003 Offline
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4/30/2007 at 18:45 |
Steel:
LAL Mr. Carpal Tunnel man.
Sidechain, I got a little hydrofluoric action too about 8-9 years ago. A pvc pipe burst and shot a stream right at my tackle, I don't think my pants had ever dropped so fast. Our hazmat team hosed my cockandballs for 30 minutes (that is the minimum time prescribed by WHMIS regs, at least that is what they told me) with water so cold, my cock tried to invert.
I still have ppl call me "dink" at work.
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the rice I had yesterday came out practically verbatim |
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dent
Slipping it into the wrong hole any chance I get  SSHOLEPosts: 832 Registered: 10/20/2004 Offline
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4/30/2007 at 18:50 |
Heart attack at age 22 caused by lung failure - that's as close as I ever need to get to deff again.
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"You must have weak asslips. I like to sculpt mine on the way out, like table legs under a lathe" - Vasudeva |
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government_death_robot
DARTH MENSES  Posts: 902 Registered: 4/23/2004 Offline
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4/30/2007 at 20:04 |
I almost drowned once in third grade.
While I was flailing around underwater, I sort of had a hope that maybe I'd go Aquaman and grow some gills. I had to make my life flash before my eyes, because I was mostly concerned with how pissed my mom would be at me if I died.
Finally popped up at critical moment and pouted for a while.
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bwned. |
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halfpint200
Tender vittles  Posts: 21 Registered: 5/14/2007 Offline
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5/15/2007 at 23:53 |
You should sue your works for almost making you poop your self
or taken a base ball bat to the managers head so that he knows what is like to poop himself
Glad you are ok and not laid out on a cold slab
Motor cycle accident was my brush with death but i did not get it right , so im still on this damm planet
On 2007-05-15 at 18:56:07, halfpint200 craps monkey baby
On 2007-05-15 at 19:04:37, halfpint200 craps monkey baby
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Come feel this evil, Come give your soul
You'll learn the answers, As time takes it's toll
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ghostrider
liberal exit  SSHOLEPosts: 2413 Registered: 7/29/2004 Offline
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5/16/2007 at 00:09 |
I went into anaphylactic shock(usually causes death within minutes) due to an overdose of experimental psychoactive tranquilizers. I knew I was in trouble when my throat was squeezing shut, and I had to pull on my hair to keep my head from snapping back.
Good times.
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WHY IS THE IMAGERY SUSPECT? |
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vasudeva
Bad Taste in your Mouth  SSHOLEPosts: 4398 Registered: 3/8/2002 Offline
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5/16/2007 at 00:26 |
ghostrider: I went into anaphylactic shock(usually causes death within minutes) due to an overdose of experimental psychoactive tranquilizers. I knew I was in trouble when my throat was squeezing shut, and I had to pull on my hair to keep my head from snapping back.
That sounds great. Let's do that next time I'm up, yo.
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mundhra: And its crocobody is made of dile. |
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halfpint200
Tender vittles Posts: 21 Registered: 5/14/2007 Offline
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5/16/2007 at 00:45 |
That sounds great. Let's do that next time I'm up, yo.
HAHAHAHAHA...LOL
now that was funny
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Come feel this evil, Come give your soul
You'll learn the answers, As time takes it's toll
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