I wonder about car crashes in general. There’s a lot already, but it could be worse. I’m still young-ish and have good reaction times and I’m generally more observant than a lot of people I know but I don’t even consider myself a particularly good driver. When someone else is driving a lot of the time I have to not pay attention or I get anxious of imminent flaming death. Then add in drugs, distractions, sleep deprivation, crazy people cutting through 4 lances at once and expecting everyone else to GTFO…it’s a miracle you can just drive down to the grocery store. I think the self driving car generation will look back with open mouthed horror.
On youtube look up “real life heroes,” “good people,” “lucky people,” etc. and you’ll see a ton of people falling onto the subway tracks. Seems like most of the time they pass out.
Suicide is often impulsive, the feeling lasting only 5-10 minutes. I’m not sure if most would blame other people either. I think most are self loathing.
I am both thankful and amazed that someone hasn’t come up with a way to nuke NYC and especially Manhattan especially with a low-yield nuclear bomb or a dirty bomb. I know the materials for a true nuke are surprisingly hard to get but there must be some out there especially after the fall of the Soviet Union and the lack of controls surrounding those in stored in the rebelling states. Even a dirty bomb could collapse financial markets and cause the U.S. to semi-implode from within.
I know small nukes are overrated but people have a visceral fear of nuclear radiation and will react to it in a big way. Instead, the best we get is some college kids buying pressure cookers and using fireworks to detonate them at the Boston Marathon or some guys trying to blow up planes with a faulty shoe bomb or even their underwear. I could have done much better than that when I was 13 and I am not even a terrorist.
Thank goodness the vast majority of terrorists seem to be both completely stupid and technically incompetent. They seem to be obsessed with planes for no good reason even though other targets are much easier to attack. Let them line up and get caught all day long. If all else fails, the other passengers can just pummel them for a while until they go to jail for life at the nearest stop.
I am always amazed at how absurdly easy it is to enter hospitals and enter patient wards completely unchecked. I was visiting a hospital in Kansas City a few months back and skated right past two sets of doors, past patients and procedure rooms, until finally someone politely asked if I worked there. I explained that I was with a group of Japanese doctors visiting, and that answer was good enough.
I’m sure there are security cams everywhere and anyone who tried anything would get caught, but it seems odd that people can walk around so freely.
I am also amazed that there isn’t more theft or robbery associated with private delivery companies like FedEx or UPS. I had a UPS driver tell me once back in the 90’s that he was amazed that almost none of them ever get robbed even though they have a large truck full of merchandise, a few hundred to several thousand dollars of cash on hand because of Cash On Delivery orders and they have to drive to some isolated and dangerous places on demand. Postal workers get robbed much more often than they do even though that is about the dumbest crime you can commit because Postal workers have special federal laws protecting them and the sentences are usually severe if you hurt one let alone kill them.
I was told that isn’t the case with UPS or FedEx though. That brown uniform might as well be a police officer’s uniform because they go wherever they want and people do not mess with them in general at all.
There was a newstory a while back about a teenage girl from the USA that was picked up by police and she lied and claimed she was a illegal immigrant from Chile? And so she was deported there and apparently she did it to meet and online boyfriend she met on the internet.
I was like hell I’m surprised that doesn’t happen more often, apparently the destination countries just take the USA’s word that people are citizens and let them enter with no documentation or family to meet them, seems like more people would be getting free trips courtesy of the USA government lol.
I don’t understand what exactly you think people would do? Hospitals aren’t prisons, there is no need to keep patients in secure wards unless there has been a threat on their life. If you mean stealing narcotics or something, those are kept locked up.
I have been meaning to head back to Costa Rica for vacation pretty soon. I may have to try that one but you will have to explain it to me in more detail in Spanish because I suddenly can’t speak English very well anymore. I need to be deported. Please forgive me.
That is the story I was thinking of, I could swear I read that she did it to meet a boyfriend in Colombia(I was wrong it wasn’t Chile) she met online and that he was the father of her child she was pregnant with.
If she was really good, she could play it both ways and get herself deported between countries whenever she wanted to visit another one. Talk about a free air travel bonus. That could be better than the best frequent flyer program available and might make a good movie.
In the US cars come to a traffic light, and wait. Even when its late at night and no other cars around we always seem to obey traffic lights.
And queing up in a line for something. It seems most people in the US are pretty polite about standing in line and waiting their turn compared to what I’ve heard about in other countries where every attempt at forming a line turns into a near riot where everyone tries to rush the door.
I think it’s surprising that arson isn’t a more common accompaniment of crime. Fire’s a great way of destroying evidence, including DNA evidence; I recall when DNA evidence was first starting to be a thing there were semi-serious predictions that arson would become a standard accompaniment to most crimes, yet it hasn’t happened that way.
Because contrary to what many Americans think, “kill lot of random Americans” isn’t the goal of most of them. It wasn’t even the goal of 9/11; the targets were picked for symbolic purposes, not to kill as many people as possible.
When gas prices first started climbing, I assumed gas theft by siphoning would be a big deal. Having siphoned gasoline, I can understand thieves choosing other targets.
People don’t fall into the Grand Canyon very often. Thousands of people visit it every day and most of the viewpoints have no safety rails or anything to stop you from walking right up to the edge, but falls happen less than ten times a year.
Criminals aren’t smart though and a lot of people will do stupid things. Either way, you’re literally sitting there with you’re window open and a five or ten dollar bill just sort of dangling in your hand. It’s easy pickens for someone that just wants to run past your car and grab it.
And, with that, I’m surprised that there aren’t more people that do it at the bank. I’m at the bank with my business deposit every.single.day. As well are plenty of other businesses. The people stuck in the Taco Bell drive though might be sitting there stuck in line with three dollars, but the guy from [local restaurant] on Monday morning is stuck in line with 10 or 15 thousand dollars and as soon as he puts his car in park his passenger door will unlock and the bank bag is probably sitting right there in the seat. And as for security, most of the time the cameras are just pointed at the person the teller is working with and not the line.
I’m amazed the graffiti trend of tagging has not yet extended to private cars. I sometimes will see a delivery truck that was tagged, but not some guy’s Chevy in his front driveway.
I like to think even the taggers have respect for a personal car, but I dunno. Around here they tag trees. Trees.
I’m always surprised that airport baggage carousels are not stolen from more often. It’s basically, “here’s a pile of luggage: take yours and leave the rest” using the honour system with no one checking that the bag is yours, or that you were on the flight this carousel is delivering for, or even any flight at all.
But there are signs up saying “many bags look alike; make sure the bag you take is yours” implying that the wrong bag being taken by accident is actually a bigger problem than theft.
Whenever there is a school shooting, the news reporters all express amazement, how could anybody do something like this? Me, I keep wondering why kids aren’t shooting up schools every day.
I have an interesting memory clattering around in my head, whenever questions like this come up. I was at my sisters house in Milwaukee watching the late night news one weekend, anchored by a young black woman, maybe an interne or a trainee. There was a feature piece about a woman who had delivered a baby on an airline flight, and abandoned the baby in the plane’s restroom. The experts and pundits in the news feature were beside themselves, baffled about why anybody could ever do such a thing. Feature ends, back to the young anchorperson of color, who ad-libbed to the weatherman “Nobody has any idea about what it is like to be truly desperate.” I’m going to guess that that was the end of her career in TV journalism. For daring to substitute truth for platitude.
IIRC that used to be a grifter trick but these days trying any stunts in an airport can get you shot so it probably isn’t worth it. They used to pull tricks to snatch other people’s purses coming out of X-ray machines but since these days you have to have a plane ticket to even get in line that just isn’t profitable anymore.
Terrorists want symbols, not body counts. Al queda started going for bodies late in its game and managed to piss off the people they claim to represent. Chainsawing a few electric poles makes a mess but has only the reward of being shotgunned by rednecks. Hard to convince anyone that will get you virgins in the afterlife.
Fast Food robberies? Well, hanging out around the backside of a Fast Food joint is going to get you a police call, so you have to be invisible to the employees, everyone going through the drive-through, and the obnoxious but not unlawful teenagers hanging out in the parking lot. There’s also the issue of making a getaway in what are usually open commercial zones.