Gross!! I know a doctor who dealt with patients in a psycho ward at UCLA during her psychiatric residenchy. One patient cut the other’s carotid arteries–that carry blood to the brain. The guy was a goner, of course; the ceiling was dripping with blood spurted upward out the carotid arteries from the aorta. Ecch!
I have seen a litter of kittens born with maggots crawling through the bodies. Very gross.
Some sleeping lady fell out of a pickup camper onto the interstate. The husband didn’t miss her for half a day. People ran over the body for half a day thinking it was a dead deer.
Neighbor killed himself with a shotgun when his family was gone. A month after the funeral the little kid finds daddy’s jaw. Poor kid.
Somebody I know just had this happen. She was swimming. A friend dived into the water and stood up with his whole face hanging by the mouth. The skull, eye balls and muscles were exposed from the scalp to the lips. She had to hold him in the water until paramedics arrived. He asked her a few times if it was very bad. I can’t imagine why she couldn’t sleep at night and spent a week at the bars.
The grossest thing? I can narrow it down to three:
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An 18 year old, who after “borrowing” his uncle’s motorcycle, decided that he was going to jump a hill on one of our local roads. After coming up over the crest of the hill at 120 to 125 mph (at least thats what the State Police said), and not making the jump, he realized that there was a small Toyota pickup midway down the hill (we’re not talking a big hill here, maybe 50’ tall over a 1/3 mile distance). He slammed the brakes on, the bike slid out from under him and off of the road. He continued down the road for about 400’ or so until his body slammed into the rear of the pickup. He displaced the tailgate about 3’, cracked the rear differential, and wedged himself under the center of the truck. When we got him out, his helmet was squished around his head (from the truck landing on top of him), and most of his skin was left on the road approaching the truck. That wasn’t pretty.
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A gentleman returning to Portugal with all of his belongings, and drunk out of his gourd, drove off another one of our more windy roads and landed about 10’ up in a large oak tree on the side of the road in a depression next to a stream. Upon our arrival, the Saab he was in had hit the tree with its roof, and wrapped itself around the tree. The headlights and taillights were close to looking at each other. After we winched the car off of the tree and extricated the body, he was about 2 inches thick and completely squished. The stream below the tree was bloody (and filled with gasoline/oil/transmision/radiator fluid, which made for a bigger mess to clean up). We also found an empty, but bloody, child seat in the back of the car. After searching the woods around the car, we decided that there wasn’t a child associated with it (confirmed by the police afterwards).
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Not the grossest, but I think the most disturbing. When I interned with the State Fire Marshal’s Office, myself and two other interns managed to get to see three autopsies one day (just a field trip kind of thing). One guy had shot himself in the head, that one was neat. The other two got to me a little bit. They were two sisters, either 2 and 4 or 3 and 5 years old, I don’t remember exactly. They had died the night before in a house fire on the north shore. We got to watch them cut open these two charred bodies to see if they had died due to the fire (which they had) or from some other means. All I can say is if I had children at the time, that would have sent me over the edge in a hurry.
Jeremy…
I can think of no more stirring symbol of man’s humanity to man than a fire engine - Kurt Vonnegut
I’m sure no one here needs to be reminded that if you have a rat in your house or whatever, you should never do anything in your extermination efforts that would make him bleed.
Remember, I’m pulling for you; we’re all in this together.
—Red Green
I used to work in an auto auction, and we would frequently get salvaged cars that had been involved in nasty accidents. One day we got a car that was totally burned out. Nothing unusual about that, I was pretty used to it, and I have a pretty morbid mentality anyway, so it never bothered me much to begin with. One day, I was poking around in it, and I noticed a child seat in the back. It was, like everything else in the car, very charred except for a little baby-shaped patch of cloth in the center, which had red stains on it. I avoided that car from then on, and was glad when we finally sold it. I guess this isn’t really gross, but it was plenty disturbing, let me tell you.
I don’t need to be reminded, I need to be told the first time. Why shouldn’t we bleed the rat?
Because he spreads enough germs just walking around, but if he bleeds, his HIV, Ebola, hepatitis or whatever he’s carrying will be fully unleashed. And then you’d never be absolutely sure that you’d wiped down every surface so affected, or that you’d sanitized them thoroughly, or that you were safe from airborne pathogens. I would just have to move.
Remember, I’m pulling for you; we’re all in this together.
—Red Green
Well…aside from Nixon’s inauguration speech in 1969, the two that come to mind are:
I was in the conference room in our office late one afternoon when we heard a big bang from outside. Looking out, we saw a guy come sliding up the middle of the road on his face and come to rest right outside our window. Guy had been on a motorcycle and hit a car broadside (leaving the bike and sailing over the car) and slid almost 200’ up the road. Two broken legs sticking out a wierd angles and one hand hanging by a thread, not to mention no face. He died in the hospital shortly after.
Back around 1970 I was staioned at the Air Force Hospital in Anchorage. One night at Anchorage International a guy tried to take off a stretch DC8 loaded with fuel and 250 military and dependents (military families)for a flight to Japan and dropped it at the end of the runway. It didn’t blow up right away (when it did the whole skyline lit up from where we were at the other side of town). About 200 people got out alive, but many with injuries and incredible burns. They called for volunteers to man the ambulances and, fool that I was, I went. The injured were mostly gone by the time I got there so we got elected to remove the bodies of the people who died, most of them burned to a crisp in the jet fuel fire. There may be grosser things than picking up bodies of kids that had been fried to the size of a housecat but I can’t think of any off hand.
BTW…much as I hated being in the service and as little use as I had for the military in general, I had to rethink a few things after that night. Most of the civilians and young troops got out of the plane because the old lifers stayed on the plane and tossed them out through the breaks in the plane’s body. When the plane finally blew most of the dead were the guys who stayed aboard to get the others out. If ever there was an occasion for a mass award of the Congressional Medal of Honor, those guys were it.
JB
Lex Non Favet Delictorum Votis
Check out this site. It has videos of such things as that lady getting hit by the train, the Bud Dwyer suicide, etc. THe last one is disgusting/funny. Everyone I’ve shown it to at work has had some hilarious reactions.
I found it searching for the Bud Dwyer suicide tape. Never saw it before.
http://home.bip.net/abpg/movies.html
Okay, I clicked on it. -10 smart points for Babar.
PHOBIA:
I’m really curious and confused…wha tin heaven’s name are you talking about re:kittens born with maggots crawling in/on their bodies? Huh???
I’ve seen many kittens being born. Kittens sometimes develop worms in their guts later and they appear in their feces. I imagine dead kittens lying around for awhile would develop maggots. But neither of these scenarios would quite fit or explain assertion. Please enlighten me.
Thanks.
Stoid
Somebody I know just had this happen. She was swimming. A friend dived into the water and stood up with his whole face hanging by the mouth. The skull, eye balls and muscles were exposed from the scalp to the lips. She had to hold him in the water until paramedics arrived. He asked her a few times if it was very bad. I can’t imagine why she couldn’t sleep at night and spent a week at the bars.}} Phobia
How did this happen? Or do I want to know?
Neil
“. . .they could as easily have been carrying euphoniums and wearing war paint for all the notice their quarry would have taken of them.”
-Douglas Adams, “Life, the Universe, and Everything”
From my Army days:
- In Desert Storm, my MASH unit was stationed out in the middle of the desert, miles form anywhere. We had to take care of the latrine waste every day, which meant emptying out the catch barrels into a big pile, covering with fuel, and burning the waste. Of course, we couldn’t just light a match and leave, we had to stir all the shit with a big stick until it was burned. The worst part was carrying the barrels to the pit. The female latrines were far worse. All those maxi pads. Also, there was a bulemic in camp, because there was always piles of vomit in one of the barrels every morning.
- Female Soldier who came into our triage with her lower half completely blown away. She did not survive the chopper ride in. She looked to be about 20.
- During basic training, I saw a fellow soldier get blown up by the hand grenade he was holding right next to his head when it went off. They had to bring a fire truck in to hose out the bunker.
Stoidela. The mother cat was a disguesting imanciated stray, and when it gave birth the kittens had maggots eating through them. They lived if you can call that living about 30 minutes. The mother cat died soon after. This was when I was a kid and all of us kids saw it.
Neil I luckly wasn’t there. She just said this person dived in and came up like that. I whould have to say they hit the bottom when diving. She hasn’t really wanted to discuss it in more detail and I’m not going to prod her. I’ve just listened to what she volintered. This person had his face reattached. When she last saw him,his face was swollen and purple, but he will have a face.
Divemaster—
Just curious, was that female KIA part of that unlucky SCUD hit near Khobar Towers in Dhahran?
“…send lawyers, guns, and money…”
Warren ZevonBluepony,
Regarding the female KIA,
She was choppered to our field hospital after the ground war had started; we actually got two versions (rumors) about what had killed her (being the Army, I’m surprised it wasn’t at least five).
The first rumor was that she was in convoy, stepped off into the desert to relieve herself and stepped on a mine. Version two, which to my understanding is closer to the truth, is that she was souvenir hunting, gathered up what she thought was a dud mine, put it on the floorboard of her HumVee, and it went off a while later.
I can’t say exactly what happened, but I do know that gathering Iraqi “collectibles” was a favorite passtime. I myself have an Iraqi gas mask, but no ordinance. One of our seargents did have a piece of Patriot-hit SCUD fall onto his dinner plate while at the MGM towers.
Interesting how this came up. I got an video attachment the other day from a friend showing someone pooping in a girl’s mouth. Wonderful stuff. So I sent it to a friend, saying “top this”.
I got back a video attachment with 2 naked women in a bath tub puking into each other’s mouths. I’ve seen gross stuff, but I could only watch 25% of it before I had to click it off.
If anyone wants it, I’d be thrilled to send it. Not my cup of tea, but since these things are made, there must be a market for it.
“It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in an argument” - William McAdoo
Hey Hubzilla, that’s the video I was talking about in my earlier post. It’s at the site that I put a link up for. I agree, it’s pretty gross.
Wow, I’ve been sheltered. Thank God! I don’t mind not being able to top you guys 
Once we had an infestation of mice which we tried to clear up with traps. My mom set one by the refrigerator because we’d seen them coming and going from between the fridge and the wall, and we caught several. I didn’t mind emptying the traps (I know, they’re supposed to be disposable, but we were poor, ok?) until one night I heard it snap and ran to check. The mouse was still flip-flopping around, trap and all. I ran screaming to my mom and refused to even go near a full trap after that. My mom continued to set them, though, until one day when she went to check one in an otherwise empty drawer. The trap was gone, but the newspaper that lined the drawer was smeared with blood. Poor damn miserable creature was bleeding to death, but still dragged itself and the trap off. That rattled her enough to quit using snap traps and she switched to live traps. Of course, she drowned the mice that she caught with those, but in her mind at least she was there to make sure they didn’t suffer long. (We stopped needing traps altogether when my cat Squeaky tangled with a skunk. Even after he quit stinking, my mom refused to let him back in the house so he took up residence underneath and the house was mouse-free ever after.)
The only other bad thing I can recall is a dead horse that was left in the driveway of my father’s gas station. It had been bought at an auction in McMinnville (about 20 miles away), and after buying it, the owner went out to dinner or went drinking or something, anyway he was passing our place later that night after we were closed when it sounded like the horse was acting funny in the trailer, so he stopped to investigate. Somehow, he got a vet out there at that late hour who announced that the horse had a broken leg, so they put it down right there in our driveway. And then no one wanted to deal with it so they left it to roast in the summer sun. It was almost a week before the county or state or whoever finally got a rendering truck out there to get it. In the meantime, this was the height of the summer tourist season and our business suffered for it. We finally shut down until the horse was removed because we were tired of smelling it and people only stopped to take pictures of it, then moved on when the stink hit. (On a side note, I do have a videotape of a local news reporter interviewing my dad about it–can you say slow news day? Anyway, the reporter asks my dad how’s business been, and dad says, “It’s dead. Just like the horse.” Silly, I know, but that was our 15 seconds of fame )
“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy
Well i can’t really top the stories of human tragedy, but i can add my own experience with the gross. Even after this experience I had i still eat meat and dont get grossed out by blood and guts :).
Anyway, when i was in the 10th grade of High School, as a part of a summer job, we got to go to the local marine science graduate program and watch a necropsy on various sea mammals. We were watching them cut these things open (dead and stinky of course) and thinking “ewww…that looks nasty”.
About a half hour into this, they asked us to come down and help (we were sitting above the necropsy area on top of the shed roof). Just looking at these sea animals with their faces eaten off, and bloody (rotting so fluids were escaping) nearly made one kid wrench.
I thought it was interesting, but the nastiest part was when they cut into a Sea Lion and hit the abdominal cavity, a very nasty strong odor hit everyone in a wave. It was also not a place for the weak stomached because looking at the estuary nearby, the waters were red with blood. I then realized that sea mammals look an awful like beef when skinned and cut up (though the blood is almost black).
They also cut open the stomachs to examine what these animals had eaten (we found in a foxes stomach lots of mice). They had me help to lift a several hundred pound sea lion onto a metal “basket” so we could measure it (about three weeks dead, no less).
You would think the stench would have made everyone wrench but after 20 minutes we really didnt smell anything (my dog followed me around the rest of the day).
There, is that gross enough?