What's the most stupid thing you ever did..and lived to tell?

[Fat Tone]

Following on from 'Real men fear nothing' (which I think is a candidate for Mythbusters testing) I got to thinking that would be a pretty stupid thing to try for real, and wonder what other stupid things we've all done over the years.

They can be due to sheer stupidity, naievity, bravado or just plain drunkeness - whatever.

I'll kick off with a moderate one (I have worse!):

After my stag night, where needless to say I got extremely pickled, I walked home to a friends house to stay. We went through the local train station. Rather than using the provided bridge I decided to jump down from the platform and cross the tracks.
Clearly I lived to tell the tale, but I swear that checking for trains never once entered my head.


Perhaps we should get Darwin points added to our profiles as a result

[Umfriend]

I once joined this forum

[Lizzard[MPE]]

drinking and driving and wrecking at 16 years old. by far the worse thing ive ever done.

[Brian Ellis]

When I was 16 or thereabouts, I built myself an oscilloscope. At one point, I was doing something (forget what exactly!) at the base end of the CRT, knowing I was holding on to a 2 kV live trimmer. I needed to make a simultaneous adjustment to the brilliance and very carefully took hold of the plastic knob, keeping my fingers away from the chassis. As I adjusted the brilliance, my fingers touched the grub screw that held the knob onto the metal shaft. I can assure you that 2 kV from left hand to right hand was not funny. Fortunately, I was thrown away from the source, half way across the room, so it lasted only a small fraction of a second, but I sat on the floor, panting, for at least 15 minutes before I was able to do anything.

Another electrical shocker, but not to myself, happened at work. A colleague and myself formed the design team of a 2 kW HF transmitter. I forget the anode voltage of the output stage, probably 1.2 or 1.5 kV. We were working on the prototype, obviously without any safety interlocks, so the whole chassis was open (a 19" rack about 1.75 m tall), so that we could see whether anything untoward was happening. I was at the front, changing the frequency and tuning it up when my friend, behind the rack, thought he saw something happening and he leaned in to have a closer look. An HF plasma jumped about 3 cm from the tank coil to the tip of his nose. He recoiled and hit the back of his head on a horizontal chassis bar, and a reflex forced his head forward again, to repeat the process. It took me a second to realise what was happening and switch off the power. The only damage was a nasty ulcerous burn on the tip of his nose that took a good three months to heal. HF plasma burns are very nasty, indeed, even from low-power sources. I had one once on a finger from a mere 10 W transmitter; it was less than a mm across but about 2 mm deep, with yellow necrosed skin forming a 3 mm halo round the hole.

[Umfriend]

I was mounting a wall-lamp and wanted to get the wire in the exact right lenght to get it down from the lamp to socket height and from there to the right. The lamp was connected to a switch and the wire had to go there from the socket. So. pluged the wire in the socket, guided it through its required route and came to the switch. Took the pliers (?) to cut the wire and KABANG!.

No shock, but I was in one for the better part of an hour. Still have the pliers with two very little holes where it melted (or more like evaporated). Was fun though and the lamp did brilliant!

[NetSnake]

I was around 10 years old when I stuck a pair of metal tweezers in an electrical plug (220) to see what happens I got struck by electricity and thought it was cool. never tried it again though

Tried to climb to the top of a hill (around 80-90m) from sea level although I had no training to do that and no one was around in case something happened. I picked the worst possible route (vertical) and made it 1/3 of the way up when I got stuck and scared. I waited for about an hour before someone came to help me. I was 14.


By far the most stupid thing I've done (ok that I can remember of right now) is while mildly drunk and driving a pick-up truck I tried to beat the "best time" held by a taxi driver with a mercedes of driving from a small town to a specific village (around 12km very bad road). I miraculously did not fell off a cliff when I lost control of the car as I was stopped by a 1.5m lump on the side of the road (the ONLY one around). the "best" part: I was 27

[ZokesPro]

Taking an uphill 40km/h curve in an 80km/h zone (curve recommended at 40km/h) at 160km/h in a 1.9L Saturn SL1 (my first car, I was 19) and sliding into the ditch, crashing into the rockface then flying 20ft back on the road and walking away from the whole ordeal with only a dislocated shoulder and then lying to the police saying I swerved to avoid an animal.

[Wulfman]

short story: I left my tent during the night.

long story: solo hiking trip in lappland in september, rainy & cold weather - probably 5°C or so. I had started just two days before, so the backpack was still (too) heavy, and I was not walking that well yet. early in the evening I couldn't find a place to camp: everywhere there were either too many stones, or no running water. anyway, it had been raining for hours, I'm soaked & freezing, and still had to go on and on... as it was finally getting dark, I just picked a spot some hundred meters off a small spring. put up the tent, already shivering violently, drank some (cold) water left in a bottle (big mistake) and cooled out even more. crawled into the sleeping bag, managed to munch some nuts & a mars and more or less fell asleep instantly, completely cold.

when I woke up, I was warm again - but hungry, and had no water left for cooking. the weather forecast said it was going to freeze during the night, so I had to restore some of the energy I lost during the day, which meant cooking - for which I needed water. got some clothes on - no complete rain gear, as the rain had nearly stopped at that time and my softshell could handle the (strong) wind, left the tent with the water bottles towards the spring, into the night.

after ten meters I turned back, looked around and realized that the tent is quite difficult to see: green tent, grey stones & moss, and the floor was more or less wavy, as in "higher than the tent and myself". to get to the spring, I had to cross quite a few of these ripples - and the LED flashlight only had a very limited range, so I started worrying about finding the tent again.

after some thinking I looked into my emergency pack, got a small tea light out, put it into the apsis, lighted it and watched it being blown out after 2 seconds by the first wind gust. great.
put out the cooking gear, placed the candle in the lower part (wind screen), covered it - watched it for a minute, two minutes: the tent was glowing in the dark, looked nice and apparently worked without setting anything on fire.

some 5 minutes later, I'm turning back with my filled bottles. I had counted steps, tried to stay on a straight line & even had the compass with me, so I was looking forward to cooking.

walked, walked, walked - no tent. and I'm not really worried yet, I climbed around in a circle, found nothing - decided to head back to the spring. found the same spot, turned around, walked back - nothing. somewhat worried, I did a larger spiral - again: nothing. really worried now (rain picked up again, freezing cold), I went back to the spring, looked around again closely - and decided that I ****ed up, somehow.
stood there in the night, listening to the wind, realized how cold it would get, felt the rain running over my face and thought about how far the next hut would be (too far ). took a few deep breaths, and decided that the only thing left to do would be to get an overview, and hope that the candle was still burning. headed uphill, and after some minutes of climbing, I stood above a stony step some meters high, and looked into the valley. completely dark - except for a glowing tent, somewhere off to the left.

believe me, I still have that sight in front of my eyes. beautiful - and I was more than happy during the next few days...

and now, so you can start laughing: during the day, the scene looks like this:


I have no idea how I could get lost like that within that area, but I know how it felt to be all alone out there. it was a very valuable experience.

mfg
wulfman

[Dr Mordrid]

1. Rolling a race MG Midget at >100 mph because I tried to wipe my goggles while not in the straights. That was scary

2. a BASE jump from the roof (622 ft/190 m) of the Tower of the Americas in San Antonio, Texas long before I had enough experience to even try such a thing. Pic taken just before "takeoff";

[Fat Tone]

And the rest of murc never did anything stupid? Come on, you can tell us...

[Technoid]

At the age of 4 i stuck my tongue into a lamp socket.

I had the sensation of that everything was electrical blue.

Burned my tongue somewhat, never told my parents

[cjolley]

Well, outside of the normal youthful indiscretions.

Once I was driving on a curvy mountain road through the beautiful Sandia Mountains when I had the bright idea to take a picture.
While I was driving.
There was no guard rail.
Left hand on the wheel and right hand holding the camera.
Eye to the view finder.


The sound of gravel under my right front wheel disturbed my composition as I nearly drove off a 200ft cliff when the road curved 90 degrees left to follow the cliff face.
Camera still in hand, I slapped my right hand on the wheel and turned hard left.
I got a perfect picture of the underside of the dashboard of my 1982 Toyota Starlet.
If I can find the print I will scan it and put it up.

Still gives me the willies just thinking about it.

PS

At the age of 4 i stuck my tongue into a lamp socket.

Wow, beats my sticking one of my mothers hairpins in a wall socket at the same age by a mile.

[NetSnake]

At the age of 4 i stuck my tongue into a lamp socket.

I had the sensation of that everything was electrical blue.

Damn, why didn't I think of that? it must have been lots of fun!