For the purpose of this thread, I am not asking what is the most horrible thing you’ve ever seen. I am asking you to rate, using whatever scale of horrible you wish to use, your estimation of just how horrible the most horrible thing you’ve ever seen was. Does this make sense?
The reason I ask is this: a few weeks ago I was talking to a co-worker, as sweet woman in her mid-thirties who is sociable and smart and funny. Although she works in a different department, our paths often cross and I always enjoy stopping for a short chat. She was telling me about watching two squirrels frolic high in a tree. One fell from the tree and landed on the sidewalk. According to her, it seemed stunned, then ran around a little, then sat for a while. She concluded the story with “It was the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen.” I was taken aback, and said rather incredulously “That’s the most horrible thing you’ve ever seen?” She actually thought for a moment, then said yes, it was. I replied with something like “Wow, you’ve led a charmed life.”
I grew up on a farm, worked the front lines of medicine for many years, and suffered a terrible family trauma two years ago. I have seen many humans and countless animals in all states of destruction and injury and dismemberment. For me, a squirrel falling out of a tree is barely noteworthy, and even if I knew the animal died or was injured it still wouldn’t qualify as horrible. The most horrible things I’ve seen I consciously repress to keep from surfacing. I can’t spend time thinking about the truly horrible things I’ve seen because it would be emotionally destructive to dwell on them. But after I had this short exchange with my friend, I got to thinking… most people these days don’t grow up on farms, don’t work in emergency medicine, and thankfully don’t experience the near death of a family member. I thought maybe it’s not that my friend has led a sheltered life, but that I have, because of my career and upbringing, experienced a much greater than average share of horrible things.
For me, using a scale of 1-10, I would rate the horribleness of a squirrel falling from a tree as essentially zero. I would rate the most horrible things I’ve personally seen as a solid 8.5, maybe greater, but as I said I really don’t want to dwell on horrible memories long enough to parse the horribleness in detail. What about you? Feel free to share your horrible sights and experiences, if you wish, but it’s not necessary.
I assume you mean in person? 2, probably. I’ve never seen a person die or even be seriously injured. I watched my cat die, but it was just sad, not horrible. I’ve seen some moderately bad auto accidents, but they were pretty small-scale and if someone was hurt, it wasn’t obvious.
As with the pain scale, I have a pretty good imagination, and so 10 is just way off the charts for anything that’s ever happened on Earth, let alone witnessed by me in any form. I’ll give the worst thing I’ve ever seen (in video form, etc.) a 7.
When I was in grade school there was an accident with a school bus and a car. A woman in the car was thrown out (pre-seat-belt days) and struck a guy wire on a power pole and was essentially beheaded. I was on another bus and arrived maybe one minute after this occurred. It was a 10 on the horrible scale. I had nightmares about it for a while. I can look back on it now fairly calmly but only because it was a long time ago. The next-most horrible thing I have ever seen would probably be a 3. That squirrel would be a 0 for me, too.
In my top 10 of horrible things I’ve seen, the lack of paragraphs breaks would have to be up there…
Oh, and your egocentric, all powerful human lack of universal compassion…
I don’t think I’ve seen much in the way of human related horrible things. I do volunteer several times a week at our city animal shelter. I’ve see many horrible things there.
Well… Dead human body after suicide by cranial gunshot… (My mother, alas…) In all honesty, have to say “7.” I’ve seen worse in news photos and especially war photos, and I’m sure there are much, much worse that the news sources have chosen not to publish.
Not much at all for me.
The most horrible thing I ever heard was a wife and mother’s blood-curling scream emanating from a private hospital emergency room after being informed that her 38 year old husband had just died of a heart attack suffered at work.
It should have been recorded for use in movies.
- I was an aircraft mechanic and sitting in an office in a hanger. BIG explosion. Ran into the hanger and saw a red mist in the air. A guy broke about every safety rule in the book. He was putting almost 1500 psi of nitrogen into a tire designed for 250 psi. It blew him in half. Parts of him were splattered on the hanger door.
Just what we needed … another “new” member posting crap … your attitude isn’t appreciated, dearie …
On a scale of 0 to 10, maybe a 5. I witnessed a handcuffed man somehow escape from the back of a police cruiser and jump off the Tobin Bridge in Boston. I later learned he hit a parking lot far below and died instantly. Thankfully I did not see that. If I had, it might be more like an 8.
At least an 8, discounting everything I saw in the Army which easily hits ten after ten.
When I was 14 I saw a deputy step in front of a speeding semi, I had no idea that much blood could be splashed so far.
I haven’t seen a lot of blood and gore (thank goodness), but some of the scale and depth of poverty that I’ve seen is pretty intense-- things like slums that stretch for miles, entire families living in scraps of cardboard and plastic along the railroad tracks, hospitals with patients laying three deep in the halls…all pretty disturbing.
I imagine their is a limit to how much something can affect us, if that is the case natural disasters and war type mass killings might rate the same as seeing a child killed in an auto accident. I don’t feel good about rating something like this. I lost 3 childhood friends in seperate accidents that I witnessed and they haunted me for a while. All 3 were hit by cars.
Let’s see. I’ve seen my own mother die, young and in incredible pain. I’ve seen three people killed, messily, in a car crash, while a fourth passenger bled out, screaming in terror. I saw a young, gorgeous woman lawyer utterly humiliate an elderly woman, a total stranger, just because she could, and she was cranky that day. Abuses of power are horrible to witness.
So for me, a stunned squirrel wouldn’t really register on the scale of horrible things. I mean, not at all. Not a blip. Nor would a dead squirrel.
So am I egocentric? Do I demonstrate an all-powerful lack of human compassion?
Everything else I have to say about this is fit only for the Pit.
I’ve seen some fairly nasty stuff. Before reading this thread I would have said it was a seven, and I thought I was being kinda badass about it. Now I’m going to rate it a five, and be thankful I’ve been so lucky.
Damn.
Probably a 5. Seen some major cuts (arm, 38 stitches) on myself, and been beaten to bruises. Other than that, just an odd electrocuted squirrel and roadkill.
a man stepped in front of my car. I swerved and missed him. Looked in the mirror to see the lady behind me hit and kill him. Thrown up in the air and spun around like a rag doll. Landed on his head. Until the road was repaved I saw the stained spot every time I drove by.
A few months ago I saw the body of a kid about 8 or 10 years old who had been hit and killed by a bus by the side of the road. But he just looked like he was asleep: no blood or damage evident. Many years ago I saw the body of another bus accident, and this time there was blood, but I saw it briefly and from not very close. I’ve seen horribly disfigured beggars and lepers in the Third World. No gory accidents or other major traumatic sights.
I would rate these maybe a 3 or 4 on the horror index, compared to what others have described and the worst I can imagine.
I am afraid that a squirrel falling out of a tree and getting a little stunned would be more likely to ping my humor meter than my horror meter. I see animals have accidents that bad or worse all the time.
Sadly, I’ve been one of the first on the scene of motorcycle wrecks twice. That was horrible. I’ve watched friends die in hospitals. That was horrible as well. I’ve had more animals put down in a year than most people own in a lifetime, and I’ve been there for most of them. I do cat rescue, there is a lot of horrible there as well.
That being said, the most horrible thing I ever saw was caused by me. I try to live my life without doing harm, so that colors what I’m going to share.
I was trying to trap a feral cat before a snow storm moved in. When it started snowing, I rigged the trap to stay open so he could eat the bait and maybe come back the next day for more.
When I opened the door the next morning I was horrified to see that somehow, a raccoon had gotten into the trap. Not only had it gotten into the trap, it had messed around with it so much that it had unwrapped the wire I had used to keep the trap open. Once it got trapped, it stuck its paw so far out the mesh of the cage that its arm got stuck, while fighting to get free, broke its arm and there was blood all over. Did I mention that it had snowed? Its arm was frozen to the wooden table.
It was still alive when I went out the door to go to work. Just typing about it is making me see the bloody snow and the almost dead, but suffering raccoon blink and hiss.
I’ve told this, I think a few times here - a good friend hit and killed by a car. We were crossing the street together and two guys were drag racing. She just didn’t run as fast as I did when we realized they were going much faster than first thought. There was blood, and catastrophic injury. Myself and a passerby got her heart beating again, they took her off the machines the ext morning.