Pepper Mill, who spent the day substitute teaching, is not surprised. She reports that the kids in her class didn’t know that the Mormons are headquartered in Salt Lake City. But at least they weren’t daring each other to eat dry ice.
Not to sound totally ignorant, but I didn’t know dry ice was all that dangerous. I wouldn’t eat it just because it seems pointless–had no idea it could kill you.
I hate to admit it, but I’m not even entirely sure what dry-ice is. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered any. Therefore, I cannot see it as totally inconceivable that I would not eat some on a dare, if it looks fairly harmless.
It’s frozen Carbon Dioxide - instead of melting to a liquid, it sublimates directly to CO2 gas (under everyday conditions). It looks like water ice, but is sufficiently colder as to be able to cause frostbite/ice burns on contact with skin.
The thing I find completely baffling is the whole concept of doing something incredibly stupid and dangerous on a freakin’ dare.
What the hell? Someone tells you to do it, and you do it? FOR NO REWARD??
Anyone tried to pull that crap with me, I would’ve demanded one of two things: 1. You first, or 2. Put up cash, and keep putting up until I like what I see. No pay, no play, wimp!
Yeah, I can’t quite grasp the mindset either - like that guy who chainsawed off his own head during dare-like ‘manly games’ - was he thinking “I can’t wait to see the look on the faces of the guys at the bar, when I tell them about the time I cut off my own head!”?
My husband accidentally swallowed a bit of dry ice once. He was in college at a party where they thought it’d be cool to have dry ice in the alcoholic punch, but they only had small pieces of it, not big blocks. We think that one piece in his drink got coated in enough regular ice produced from the punch’s liquids - must not have had enough booze in it - that it had a core of dry ice inside normal, and his drink wasn’t “smoking”. So he swallowed it, not knowing that the punch didn’t have regular ice cubes as well.
He didn’t drink very much, so he was shocked when he started violently vomiting and then dry-heaving. He complained of some stomach pain after but didn’t get himself checked out, figuring it was just a weird post-drinking experience. We figured out much later it was probably due to the solid CO2 rapidly expanding into a gas. It could have also been the cause of a scar noticed in his stomach when a few years later he developed an ulcer and had his stomach scoped.