I met two bomb events, one is in SC, another is in DC union station. And a missed gunshot at home in Raleigh. Also there was a plane used to fly very low. It seemed it would crash at my apartment. In my childhood, a basketball stand fell down just behind me since I grabbed the rim.

[Edited on July 27, 2011 at 3:53 PM. Reason : ;]

7/27/2011 3:50:52 PM

i saved a girl's life once...well, potentially...i suppose she could have fallen off the cliff and been perfectly fine or only broken an arm or something

7/27/2011 3:55:17 PM

7/27/2011 4:10:33 PM

Sounds like someone is living at Campus Crossing.

7/27/2011 4:22:16 PM

Campus crossing has a gunshot case? I was not living there. I lived near Gorman.

7/27/2011 4:25:49 PM

When flying in my plane, I lost all electrical power just after take off at night in controlled airspace. It ended well, but thats probably as close as I've come to getting really worried. Doesn't compare to an engine out experience, however, which thankfully I have avoided.

7/27/2011 4:32:02 PM

^I was on duty yesterday, manning the radio, and one of our jets lost their entire primary hydraulic system. There is a backup system that allows you to fly the airplane, but you lose most other hydraulically actuated stuff (including pretty much everything that helps you get the jet stopped on landing rollout, except for the tailhook), unless there's an electrical backup.

Not that big of a deal in and of itself; you get the flaps down with the electric backup system, and then take an arrested landing. However, when they configured for landing, the leading edge slats came at least most of the way down, but still indicated fully up. The flaps also indicated fully up, and they had no idea what they were doing since you can't see them. That's not good because you don't know what configuration and therefore stall speed you have.

They dumped fuel down to a level that would allow them to perform the arrested landing and also be able to fly slowly enough with the unknown wing configuration, and then the wing and drop tanks stopped transferring to the main tank (which is the only tank that feeds the engines). In other words, they had a trapped fuel scenario. The weather at Cherry Point was fairly poor, the weather at Seymour Johnson (primary divert) was dog shit, and they didn't have enough fuel to get to Oceana due to the trapped fuel and the fact that they couldn't get the landing gear and flaps/slats up (much worse bingo numbers than with a clean airplane, obviously)...so they had no options other than Cherry Point if the weather got worse or anything went wrong.

I and a couple of other guys read through the systems manuals to try to find any useful info,looked up weather at different places, and helped to coordinate with tower, crash/fire/rescue, and our maintenance dept to get them towed back to our hangar. Glad I was on the ground for that one.






As far other flying emergencies, i've had several. i prob can't remember them all. Nothing really bad, but a few that weren't what you'd call routine. I don't think I've ever actually declared an emergency with ATC. If I did, I think it was just for the first one listed here (and if I didn't, we were definitely an emergency aircraft, but they were giving us the handling we needed)

-Unable to get nosegear lowered. Got down to about 15 minutes of fuel remaining and was coming in for an arrested landing with only the 2 main gear down. About 10 seconds before touchdown, the nosegear magically came down.

-Hydraulic failure over Iraq

-Left main landing gear wouldn't come down (Iraq). Took some troubleshooting, but got them down before things got crazy.

-Same with flaps in Iraq on another flight.

-Couple of near misses with other aircraft; numerous near misses with birds while low and very fast

-Unable to break out runway on short final in Bagram, Afghanistan; pilot finally saw it and made a huge, close-in play for it (prob 60 degree bank with gear/flaps down and prob <100' altitude)

-Struck by lightning at night over Khost, Afghanistan.

-in Cessna 152 one time in FL, fuel gauge was reading just above zero. These gauges aren't very accurate, and by flight planning, I knew that I had to have 30-45 of fuel remaining unless I had a leak (I must have gone through all the match 10 times, haha), but I was fucking nervous until I could get that airplane back on the runway.

[Edited on July 27, 2011 at 5:06 PM. Reason : ]

7/27/2011 5:03:40 PM

Maybe the plane nearly crashing in my story is yours!

7/27/2011 5:08:11 PM

Standing outside doing weather observation about 1/8mi from an HP (high precipitation) tornado at night back when I worked at GSO. I didn't see it. Visibility went from 9SM to less than 1/4SM (statute miles) within 10 seconds. My main focus was looking for hail even though there had been prolific tornadic activity throughout the evening. I didn't even know it was that close until I saw the trees sheared in half when I left the next morning.

7/27/2011 5:13:22 PM

let's see, what else...

-gun pulled on me on Capitol Blvd
-4 motorcycle wrecks (1 of them was pretty small time...the other 3 were pretty legitimate)
-1 totally demolished car (truck stopped in the middle of the road just over the crest of a hill in the rain. hit it at ~40)
-mortared/rocketed a whole shitload of times in Afghanistan

7/27/2011 5:18:55 PM

Gun pulled on you? Details?

7/27/2011 5:33:08 PM

I too had a gun pulled on me. It was the first week of school my freshman year and was walking up to UT to see a friend. I am next to the building when this bum asked for a light. I gave him my lighter and the next thing I know I have a pistol being pushed into my temple. He wanted money, I didn't have any cash. Showed him my empty wallet he ran off. I met up with my buddy and we headed out to some party and I got shit housed after dealing with all cops and whatnot.

7/28/2011 10:52:53 PM

http://www.biography.com/isurvived/

anyone got stories they could get on this show?

i love this kind stuff

[Edited on July 28, 2011 at 11:06 PM. Reason : f]

7/28/2011 11:06:05 PM

Part 1: Working in the private industry/fun on my own.

- Working as a bridge inspector (intern, but I was my boss's assistant out in the field, two man team). On one bridge inspection I had on my hip waders and was just shy of balls deep in river water with the two folks that were also on my team that day. Then we noticed two baby beavers about 6' from us. Then we noticed two very large mommy and daddy beavers a few feet behind them with our eyes on us. So we GTFO before those beavers decided we were a threat and sliced us open. Come to think of it, that was also the bridge where I was walking to the water, the path collapsed under me and I kept walking, then I looked back and saw about a hundred bees in the air who didn't pick up on the fact that I just stepped on them.

- Working as a bridge inspector I also nearly ran face first into a nest of black widows and couldn't see them even with my coworkers pointing in the general vicinity of the nest (that's always bad). I also missed being hit by a car on an interstate by less than a second (we had to work through interstate traffic, which means running as fast as you can across the street with your gear and work boots/hip waders on). I had several occasions where I was walking along some of the older bridges on I-95 and if I just leaned a bit to the left (maybe a foot) I'd probably have gotten clocked in the face with the mirror of a vehicle. Had a few occasions where I thought somebody was going to wreck. Our instructions were to jump off the bridge and break our legs/risk possible death (instead of certain death) if we thought we were in imminent danger of being hit by a vehicle. Inspected bridges in some bad parts of durham where all the windows were shot out and we had a "hurry the fuck up and get out of here" inspection procedure (absolutely nobody came out while we were there, no cars drove by, it was creepy as fuck).

- Less than six months of being diagnosed as a type 1 diabetic I was hiking with a high school group that was woefully underprepared for the type of hike they just decided to take on at the last minute. Crossed over trails, involved cutting through the woods and hiking along a river (jumping across at some seriously dangerous spots), etc. 2/3 the way through I had to stop because I couldn't breathe, took my heart rate and it was maxxed out (we weren't walking fast or on super hilly terrain, my heart and body were just pissed the hell off). I was super thirsty and getting dizzy. They had me lead the way (so I could set the pace) and I had to stop for a few minutes every ten or twenty minutes to catch my breath. Super weak, etc. The hike took something like 6-8 hours and by the time I got back to camp I just had a bottle of water and passed out, waking up feeling like shit later that night. Given what I know now about my diabetes my blood sugar may have been out of control at that point and I could have been in very real danger of passing out in an area where you couldn't land a helicopter or send out an ambulance.

- Worked for the DOT again as a survey party member. Often times had to step out of the road because the massive earthworker vehicles would sometimes be working where we were working and they didn't stop (they also had massive blind spots). Had a few occasions where I was pretty sure the guy didn't see us at all. Also had to work on walnut st in cary one time during rush hour traffic in the middle of the traffic lines. I had to face down the street with my back facing traffic, trusting that my coworker with a tiny little flag was going to be able to keep cars from running me over. Heard tires chirp a few times while doing that but hey I'm not dead!

- Worked for a local engineering company that specializes in high-end urban utility design (manholes and ductbanks and fancy work using autocad civil 3d) as an engineering intern, so I got to do a lot of the field inspections when they tested systems out (this kind of ruled). One time I was in a manhole with no ventilation which smelled seriously strong of epoxy fumes and which had yellow jackets walking out from a ductbank that ran to a nearby manhole (there was a nest in there somewhere). There were also live lines next to me, I was standing in a puddle of water, and there were three dead birds on the floor of the place that were rotting. So yeah, that was the coolest biochemical and nature hazard I was stuck in for several hours at a time. Had a headache for hours after that, just glad the fumes didn't knock me out immediately.

- Working for a large cast-in-place concrete construction firm as an intern I had more than one occasion where heavy suspended loads were being carried over my head via crane as I was working with no alarm/any indication from the crane operator/riggers that they were even performing a lift. You just get an eerie sensation and look up and hey there's a big ass generator being carried over your head. The conditions were really bad for the workers there as well, lots of osha violations and situations where somebody could get killed if everybody didn't have their shit together. Thankfully that company DID have its shit together, it just operated like a firm from the 1970s. Nobody got hurt there the entire time I was working there so that's something I guess.

7/29/2011 12:27:50 AM

Part 2: Don't work as a civilian at any federal government facility.

Working for the DoD as an equipment engineer at a shipyard I had a number of fun experiences.

- First call on the job was a large fire that had taken out power to one of the major machining buildings that was caused by some flammable hydraulic fluid, shitty electrical design, procedural violations, and a failing hose clamp. Standing in the room where that fluid sprayed was the worst sensation I've had in my lungs in a while. Instantly gave you a headache, made you lightheaded/dizzy/sick to your stomach, and the effects took over an hour to wear off with short-term exposure. There were people working in there all day.

- Had a bit of a crane accident where some jackleg contractor came in and used unauthorized equipment AND stole some shipyard equipment that my group had to pay to replace to attempt to remove a ~75000 lb load (among others) from one of the buildings in the yard. I did some calculations later and found that this crane/fork truck was overloading the floor by a factor of 50 over its original design loads (about a hundred thousand pounds per square foot). First the crane punches a large hole in the floor (it's a concrete slab on the ground, but they certainly made a mess of the floor) and the load shifts several feet towards the wall where there are live gas lines running along the wall (nothing hit, thankfully). Next I'm called out to figure out the location/spacing/size of the wood bits they've jammed under this thing so they can set the 75000 lb load on the floor (which is an awkward shape like a tetris piece, hence the cribbing) to see if they need more wood bits under there. I realize later the only thing holding the majority of the load (60,000 lbs of steel) in place was a bit of dirt, concrete rubble, and the fact that one piece of this thing was bound up against the main body of the machine so that it was held in place. If you hit it with a sledgehammer it probably would have fallen forward and put a really big dent in the floor (and squished me). Piece of shit was still sitting there when I left that place.

- I was called upon to go measure the dimensions of some lifting eyes on some equipment we had that we used to keep aircraft carriers from slamming into the pier. Needed to make sure the dimensions we had were right because these lifting eyes were the most critical part of the whole setup. So I go out there and go to measure it, carefully move onboard the equipment, take a step out and *crack* *THUNK*. Few seconds later I emerge from my dazed state and realize that my right leg has fallen through the deck of this thing and slightly twisted my ankle (my foot landed on a steel buoyancy tank) and that I had broken my watch, and that I was now laying on a huge bunch of rotten wood that was all that stood between me and drowning. I hadn't thought to bring a life vest (safety training was poor and I am not exactly a maritime-familiar sort, I realized immediately that I had forgotten a life vest before going out there), I was out there alone (person I was working with was kind of a bitch to be honest, wasn't helpful and would tell me to go do something without offering to come along or offering any information on where I was going or what to expect), and now I was kind of in shock because I landed face-first on some plywood which left me pretty dazed for hours. Somehow I managed to get up, pocket my broken watch, carefully walk back off the damn thing and climb back onto the pier, then drove back to the office. There are no safety guard rails or anything on that equipment. Who would have fucking thought the government would put goddamn untreated wood on equipment that is used in an industrial environment with a service life of 10+ years when this equipment sits in the river for 100% of its life? That was some info that would have been helpful to provide me with prior to telling me to go measure something.

- This story should have a happy ending, however. I got them to rope off those damn things and came up with a design that won't rot for 30 years, though it might rust to shit if they don't take care of it. All fiberglass/aluminum/stainless steel/painted steel/composite lumber instead of the steel/untreated douglas fir/untreated oak/shitty galvanized bolt design they had before. I even added safety ladders so you could climb back onto it if you fell into the water and made it so the damn thing had safety rails at the embarkation point that would meet OSHA requirements (IMAGINE THAT, TRYING TO MEET OSHA REQUIREMENTS). I also more than tripled the load capacity of the deck on that thing, came up with a design for mooring cleats that would break away in the event that the equipment was hit by a very large vessel (this happened, and one of my side projects was the start-to-finish planning for the repair project for the OTHER set of this equipment that we were actively using), and I specified that they use 2" kevlar mooring lines that would break the mooring cleat off before the line would break and snap back along the pier (potentially cutting a man in half, I'm hoping the cleat will break off and its ~600 lb weight will help dampen any snap back forces so the rope doesn't actually kill anybody).

- Had no fewer than a dozen times where some asshole on a forklift was tearing along marked walkways at the max speed the forklift would go without a beep or a holler or anything to let you know they were coming. Had an event where I had to make the point that it wasn't safe to slam fork truck forks into shelving units that were 3 stories/5 levels tall that carried pretty much irreplaceable long-lead-time equipment that was used in critical ship systems. The cost to repair the shelves was $12k, the cost of ONE item that might be on the shelf would typically run 1/4 million or more. The guy giving me grief was adamant that if he worked in the private industry he would keep using said shelves. Hell no you wouldn't, you'd fire the dumbass that kept breaking your shelves and endangering your customer's equipment and fix what was broken to eliminate any liability.

- Went down into a dry dock once by myself and realized that there was absolutely nobody there to help me if I broke a leg or something walking up the stairs on the way out (you're like 30' below water level in the bottom of a concrete pit, all alone). It was the winter and I slipped on a patch of ice on the way out. Caught myself with only a minor bump on the knee, HOWEVER I realized that I was just a slip from falling end-over-end down flights of stairs (dying).

- One day walking out of the building I looked up behind me and noticed a window looked cracked. It had some tape on it so I figured somebody was replacing it. Next day the area was roped off and there was broken glass on the ground and some very concerned people with too much time on their hands were looking at it and gesticulating wildly. I could have gotten a large shard of glass to the face, how wonderful it could have been.

- Once I was standing on a pier that I did not realize was sinking/failing and falling into the goddamn river. I looked behind me when I noticed I was kind of in a sinkhole and saw a misspelled phrase on a concrete barricade (these were loosely spaced and they were all over the pier to delineate between different group's storage/equipment areas) that was something like "no load zone". Asked about it and it turns out that end of the pier is a hazard and that it is failing. I did a little visual inspection from a work boat later and there were a lot of really rotten/"weathered" wood piers right in that area (sort of necked down along the water line so they lost a lot of supporting area). Hooray for all these unsafe areas that aren't roped off or properly labeled.

- Had to do some inspections after one of the many severe rainstorms we had. Turns out they will move some of the steel plates they had placed over sinkholes all across the yard (I mean these were located every few hundred feet in a several hundred acre facility, they weren't a rare occurrence) to facilitate drainage or something. Sometimes with flash flooding these plates will just move because of water pressures from the sink hole or something (I don't understand what all the plates were covering TBH so I just knew the plates were bad news). There were a few times where I was walking around in water or driving in a vehicle and couldn't really see the ground underneath quite clearly (is there a sinkhole there or did a plate shift? who knows!). A friend of mine actually wrecked his group's vehicle driving into a sinkhole. One of the plates was removed and the photo made it look like he was trying to do a stoppie in a fucking Jeep Liberty. No injuries.

- Was walking out somewhere to go measure/inspect something so I could come up with a lifting plan for it and got a mist of paint fumes/chemicals in my face/eyes somehow that burned my eyes and lungs for the rest of the day (wasn't terribly painful but it was like really bad allergies that also made you feel sick to your stomach). I don't think they were allowed to paint shit like that outside but by this point I was fairly used to being exposed to carcinogens/something that might end up killing me one day with some frequency.

Got to see a lot of stupid fucking people put themselves in harm's way as well. No fewer than a dozen, probably closer to two or three dozen people that almost got themselves severely injured or killed by being a complete fucking idiot or violating OSHA requirements/safety procedures we already had in place. Glad I left there, I'd probably have been severely injured by now with all the different/fun/dangerous work I was doing. Biggest danger I face at work these days is indigestion and depression. I think I can deal.

7/29/2011 12:42:20 AM

^Holy fucking words.

I'm the only person I know, and usually am the only person people have met, to use an emergency shower in a chemical laboratory. A vacuum flask imploded right next to me and got chemical all over me. That sucked.

I was robbed at gunpoint. Asshole got like $4.

Had an instrument almost catch on fire, when my boss asked me to run hydrogen through it. We were testing a platinum catalyst and electrode on a membrane. When the cell opened, the ambient oxygen and the lingering hydrogen spontaneously combusts in the presence of platinum. Luckily the instrument automatically seals the lines when the cell opened. But it was scary. We honestly overlooked the spontaneous combustion hazard, even on the initial design. This will never happen again under my watch.

7/29/2011 1:43:07 AM

^^ how old are you and how many jobs have you had? what exactly do you....do?

7/29/2011 9:29:00 AM