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Speaking of Galloping Gertie, let's not forget the old 90s Pioneer commercial that included footage of the famed bridge in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_mccjAnCOk
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Apr 29, 2015 22:39
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Literally Kermit posted:Shhhh, spoilers! Son of Thunderbeast has a new favorite as of 23:33 on Apr 29, 2015 |
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Apr 29, 2015 23:28
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Son of Thunderbeast posted:hahaha aw poo poo my bad WHEN ONE BRIDGE FALLS, TWO SHALL TAKE ITS PLACE!!! 
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Apr 29, 2015 23:30
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I like reading this kind of threads so after a while the same things keep coming up over and over, but I'd never heard of this before: Mass suicides in Demmin (Germany) during WW2 The coming of the Red Army to Germany triggered mass suicides everywhere, typically in 2 waves: One wave before the Russians were there, triggered by fear through Nazi propaganda, and another wave after the arrival of the Russians, when it became clear that for once the propaganda was real. Demmin was apparently more pro-nazi than most places in Germany, and towards the end of the war had a native population of about 16000 and roughly the same amount of refugees. When the Russians came the remnants of the Wehrmacht in the town killed the Russian negotiators and promptly fled, after blowing up the bridges leading in to town, which effectively trapped the civilians. When the Russians marched into town there were still some fanatics shooting at them, including one schoolteacher who, after killing his wife and children, shot a panzerfaust at the Russians and hanged himself. The Russians retaliated, or maybe would have behaved in this way regardless, and after 3 days of looting and raping not much was left of the town. All this led to a mass panic (for good reason) and mass suicide attempts. You should really read the article but here are some quotes: quote:Several mothers killed their children before killing themselves, or walked into one of the rivers with a rock in a backpack and their babies in their arms. Some families committed suicide by walking into the rivers, tied together. quote:In another recorded case, a daughter cut the wrists of her parents Estimates on deaths by suicide range from 700 to 2500 people over a 3 day period. After the war the mass suicide was made taboo in pro-Russian Eastern Germany.
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May 2, 2015 08:30
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MisterBibs posted:I can't remember where I heard it, and as I type this I suspect it's bullshit, but big things like buildings are designed to wobble a little, accounting for winds/etc. The idea is that if there's forces like that acting on the building, it's safer to design in a little bit of bend versus something snapping off. ...as anyone who has ever been to the top of the Empire State Building on a windy day can attest. I knew there was some flex, I didn't expect to actually feel the sway. It was like standing on a bench at the end of a wooden fishing pier.
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May 3, 2015 04:42
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Rev. Bleech_ posted:...as anyone who has ever been to the top of the Empire State Building on a windy day can attest. I knew there was some flex, I didn't expect to actually feel the sway. It was like standing on a bench at the end of a wooden fishing pier. Updrafts up there can be incredible: quote:On December 2, 1979, Elvita Adams jumped from the 86th floor, only to be blown back onto a ledge on the 85th floor by a gust of wind and left with a broken hip. Adams possibly attempted suicide because she faced eviction. She was taken to a mental institution to recuperate, both mentally and physically. Her current whereabouts are not publicly known. This (white) guy here has a stand-up routine based around Elvita (who is black), where he dresses in drag: http://www.elvitaadams.com/ I didn't dig too deeply but the link there is pro-loving-click, just for the onr page. He has a link there with a bio for the real Elvita, who would be 65 now, assuming she's still alive.
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May 3, 2015 14:00
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kanonvandekempen posted:The Russians retaliated, or maybe would have behaved in this way regardless, and after 3 days of looting and raping not much was left of the town. Looting and raping was pretty much the Red Army's MO* during the drive to Berlin and in the period immediately following the war, they probably would have done so regardless. * actually pretty much all of the major powers did this to some degree, there was a phrase quoted to a US divisional officer that "copulation without conversation is not fraternization," Operation Barbarossa was one giant war crime, the Japanese raped and pillaged the regions of China they occupied, etc.
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May 3, 2015 17:41
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Geoj posted:Looting and raping was pretty much the Red Army's MO* during the drive to Berlin and in the period immediately following the war, they probably would have done so regardless. Kind of a tangent but thread-appropriate, the Russian army has a huge hazing problem.
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May 3, 2015 22:46
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RNG posted:Kind of a tangent but thread-appropriate, the Russian army has a huge hazing problem. One Soldier's War by Arkady Babchenko is a good read. He was a conscript in the first Chechen war and then went back for the second one on contract. 
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May 4, 2015 00:18
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C.M. Kruger posted:One Soldier's War by Arkady Babchenko is a good read. He was a conscript in the first Chechen war and then went back for the second one on contract. Hey, thanks, this looks like a good read.
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May 4, 2015 01:43
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Literally Kermit posted:Adams possibly attempted suicide because she faced eviction. She was taken to a mental institution to recuperate, both mentally and physically. Her current whereabouts are not publicly known. How in the hell do you look at that woman's story and think to yourself, "yep, that right there would be a hilarious thing to base my comedy on!"?
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May 4, 2015 03:50
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Rev. Bleech_ posted:...as anyone who has ever been to the top of the Empire State Building on a windy day can attest. I knew there was some flex, I didn't expect to actually feel the sway. It was like standing on a bench at the end of a wooden fishing pier. Even buildings that aren't as tall can feel that way - I've got a client downtown in a 40 story building, and their offices occupy the top 2 floors. I thought I was going crazy when it got really windy during a storm and I was there, because of the swaying. As Mike Rowe famously put it, "being that high kinda makes your peepee tickle"
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May 4, 2015 18:07
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Another NYC skyscraper had a different and much scarier wind issue: the Citicorp building was in real danger of being blown over.quote:Due to a design oversight and changes during construction, the building as initially completed was structurally unsound. For his original design, LeMessurier calculated wind load on the building when wind blew from due north, east, south, or west, blowing directly against one side. He did not calculate wind loads when the wind blew from one of the quarters (northeast, northwest, southeast, or southwest), against a corner. In June 1978, prompted by discussion between a civil engineering student at Princeton University, Diane Hartley, and design engineer Joel Weinstein, LeMessurier recalculated the wind loads on the building, this time including quartering winds.[2] This recalculation revealed that with a quartering wind, there was a 40% increase in wind loads and a 160% increase in the load at all connection joints.
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May 4, 2015 21:06
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haveblue posted:Another NYC skyscraper had a different and much scarier wind issue: the Citicorp building was in real danger of being blown over. I saw a documentary on YouTube about this. If I remember right, they conducted a census of all the surrounding homes and businesses under some false pretense, so they would know how many bodies to look for if it fell over before they could fix it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZhgTewKhTQ
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May 4, 2015 23:00
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I'm late for plane crash chat, but this definitely fits the topic of the thread. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSA_Flight_182 In 1978 a Boeing 727-214 collided with a Cessna 172 over a San Diego neighborhood. quote:The accident was notable for the extreme carnage it created, as the 727's fuselage from the cockpit to the rear stairs had been compressed into an approximately 12x6 feet area, which caused the left side of the aircraft to burst open all in less than one second. Most of the passengers and crew were ejected from the plane and mutilated from impact forces and compression. An officer from the San Diego Police Academy assigned to work the scene that day said that "There were no bodies to speak of - only pieces. One alley was just filled with arms, legs, and feet... I was no stranger to dead bodies, but I wasn't ready to see the torso of a stewardess slammed against a car.... The heat of the fires and the sun made the whole scene surreal. We couldn't drink enough water. All around us was the stench of kerosene and burning flesh. We did our job by rote, locating the pieces so the SWAT team could mark the spot and cover the body parts". Only four bodies, First Officer Fox, two flight attendants, and one passenger, were found intact. Captain McFeron's remains were never found. There's sort of an urban legend regarding the crash, involving "the screaming man" a.k.a Superman. http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=153499171  quote:One of the most infamous stories of the crash was the “screaming man” or “flying Superman” as others have called him. There are a few eyewitness accounts backing it up. I'm hoping that what they heard was coming from the general chaos in the area.
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May 5, 2015 03:12
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Holy poo poo.quote:Approximately 60% of the entire San Diego Fire Department was ultimately dispatched to the scene, and first responders said nothing resembling an airplane was anywhere to be seen, since the impact, explosion, and fires had completely destroyed the 727 with no sizable components remaining except the engines, empennage, and landing gear.
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May 5, 2015 04:19
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Alien Arcana posted:There's an LP of it on the archive, if anyone wants to watch a series of nuclear wars play out. Goddam I'm old. Also, that game was frustrating as poo poo.
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May 5, 2015 05:23
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Kat R. Waulin posted:I'm late for plane crash chat, but this definitely fits the topic of the thread. I wish I could find it again, but the first time I read about this crash four or five years ago, there was a long post online in a nurse's forum that I found by googling. It was written by someone who claimed to be a nurse who lived near that street, and it was both believable and pretty unforgettable, but not in a good way.  She ran out to help when she heard the explosion, only to be told by first responders that there was no one left alive to help. So she spent hours helping retrieve body parts, only to go home to find a crew combing her own backyard after someone reported that an arm and half a trunk were hanging from the limbs of a tree there. Six months later she was gardening and turned up a mostly-fleshless hand in one of her flowerbeds. 
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May 5, 2015 16:49
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Thanks to this thread, I spent last night reading about some of the biggest and most horrible plane crashes: Tenerife Airport Disaster quote:The fog was so thick that neither aircraft could see the other, and the controller in the tower could not see the runway or the two 747s on it. As the airport did not have ground radar, the controller could find where each airplane was only by voice reports over the radio. As a result of several misunderstandings, the KLM flight tried to take off while the Pan Am flight was still on the runway. The resulting collision destroyed both aircraft, killing all 248 aboard the KLM flight and 335 of 396 aboard the Pan Am flight. Sixty-one people aboard the Pan Am flight, including the pilots and flight engineer, survived the disaster. quote:The KLM plane remained briefly airborne following the collision, but the impact with the Pan Am had sheared off the outer left engine, caused significant amounts of shredded materials to be ingested by the inner left engine, and damaged the wings. The KLM immediately went into a stall, rolled sharply, and hit the ground at a point approximately 150 m (500 ft) past the collision, sliding a further 300 m (1,000 ft) down the runway. The full load of fuel, which had caused the earlier delay, ignited immediately in a large fireball. Turkish Airlines Flight 981 quote:The crash was caused when an improperly secured cargo door at the rear of the plane broke off, causing an explosive decompression which severed cables necessary to control the aircraft. Because of a known design flaw left uncorrected before and after the production of DC-10s, the cargo hatches did not latch reliably, and manual procedures were relied upon to ensure they were locked correctly. Problems with the hatches had occurred previously, most notably in an identical incident that happened on American Airlines Flight 96 in 1972. Investigation showed that the handles on the hatches could be improperly forced shut without the latching pins locking in place. quote:The aircraft left Orly at 12:32 pm, bound for Heathrow. It took off in an easterly direction, then turned to the north to avoid flying directly over Paris. Shortly after the take off, Flight 981 was cleared to FL230, and started turning to the west, towards London. Shortly after 12:40 pm, just after Flight 981 passed over the town of Meaux, the rear left cargo door blew off. The sudden difference between the air pressure in the cargo area and the pressurised passenger cabin above it, which amounted to 2 pounds per square inch or 14 kilopascals, caused a section of the cabin floor above the open hatch to fail and blow out through the hatch, along with six occupied passenger seats attached to the floor section. The fully intact bodies of the six passengers who were ejected from the aircraft were found along with the plane's rear hatch, all having landed in a turnip field near Saint-Pathus, approximately 15 kilometres (9.3 miles) south of where the remainder of the plane would crash. An air traffic controller noted that as the flight was cleared to FL230, he had briefly seen a second echo on his radar, remaining stationary behind the aircraft, likely the remains of the rear cargo door. Saudia Flight 163 quote:Flight 163 took off at 18:08 GMT to complete its final leg to Jeddah. Almost seven minutes into the flight, the crew received warnings of smoke in the plane's aft cargo compartment, C3. The next four minutes were spent by the crew trying to confirm the warnings, and by the flight engineer going back into the cabin to confirm the presence of smoke in the cabin. The captain decided to return to the airport. The thrust lever for the number 2 engine (center engine) later became stuck as the fire burned through the operating cable, and the engine was shut down on final approach.
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May 5, 2015 17:18
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pookel posted:Thanks to this thread, I spent last night reading about some of the biggest and most horrible plane crashes: Can't talk about that without posting this. The actor they got playing the KLM pilot is the epitome of  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaFO9dEeCBQ
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May 5, 2015 19:15
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Kat R. Waulin posted:There's sort of an urban legend regarding the crash, involving "the screaming man" a.k.a Superman. That's almost  , though. Dude probably knew he was doomed, so why not act like you're flying around like Supes for the time you have left?
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May 5, 2015 20:43
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Something quite different from the plane crashes and swaying buildings (sorry), and probably not really unnerving and scary, but I have always found people like Henry Darger to be fascinating. Basically Darger was an eccentric artist shut-in who is famous for writing/drawing the 15,000 word tome The Vivian Girls. I really suggest checking out the wiki up there as it goes into his life in detail and he was really and interesting guy.
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May 6, 2015 00:00
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Madkal posted:Something quite different from the plane crashes and swaying buildings (sorry), and probably not really unnerving and scary, but I have always found people like Henry Darger to be fascinating. The Intuit Museum in Chicago has a small exhibit of Darger's work, mostly consisting of a recreation of his room, but the other stuff is interesting enough that I'd still totally recommend going. I took a class on outsider art in college and I think we spent a whole week arguing over whether or not the Vivian Girls having penises was an intentional decision or Darger was just that sheltered.
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May 6, 2015 00:36
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Madkal posted:Something quite different from the plane crashes and swaying buildings (sorry), and probably not really unnerving and scary, but I have always found people like Henry Darger to be fascinating. Pro click, but apparently it was over 15000 PAGES. There's also a documentary from 2004 that I'm watching at the moment.
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May 6, 2015 01:23
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wootsie posted:Pro click, but apparently it was over 15000 PAGES. There's also a documentary from 2004 that I'm watching at the moment. The documentary is really good. If you just heard, "Ah, here's this oddball who draws naked girls with penises getting punished by aliens AND he works as a custodian at an elementary school and always wanted to adopt a kid..." You'd think he was a monster. But he appears to be a fairly harmless guy with some mental issues that he dealt with in a harmless (and private) way. I've always wondered if he really wanted any of this published after his death.
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May 6, 2015 01:32
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If you ever find yourself in Baltimore and like outsider art, the American Visionary Art Museum is an awesome way to spend an afternoon. I *think* they have a large Darger piece in the permanent collection, but even if I'm wrong, everything there is pretty great, if occasionally unnerving.
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May 6, 2015 01:49
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I read this on the Wikipedia entry on Darger:quote:In 1968, Darger became interested in tracing some of his frustrations back to his childhood and began writing The History of My Life. Spanning eight volumes, the book only spends 206 pages detailing Darger's early life before veering off into 4,672 pages of fiction about a huge twister called "Sweetie Pie", probably based on memories of a tornado he had witnessed in 1908. ... and thought "autism!"* before reading, two sentences later: quote:MacGregor, in the appendix to his book on Darger, speculates that the most fitting diagnosis is autism, of an Asperger syndrome type. * I'm not just stereotyping, I have an autistic kid and this inexplicable, verbose obsession with random topics is quite familiar to me.
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May 6, 2015 01:59
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benito posted:The documentary is really good. If you just heard, "Ah, here's this oddball who draws naked girls with penises getting punished by aliens AND he works as a custodian at an elementary school and always wanted to adopt a kid..." You'd think he was a monster. But he appears to be a fairly harmless guy with some mental issues that he dealt with in a harmless (and private) way. I've always wondered if he really wanted any of this published after his death. I just finished it and it was amazing. Totally recommend watching it. I just googled "the realms of the unreal", and it's on a site called documentary heaven. Fascinating.
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May 6, 2015 02:29
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Madkal posted:Something quite different from the plane crashes and swaying buildings (sorry), and probably not really unnerving and scary, but I have always found people like Henry Darger to be fascinating. This inspired one of my favorite songs by one of the most underrated early-90's bands, Seely: https://youtu.be/4Um7IN4pBCQ The picture has nothing to do with the song, btw. The only other version of this I could find on YouTube was a scary and unnerving tribute to Shannon Sossamon and some other lady.
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May 6, 2015 05:00
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reading related articles from one of those plane crashes led me to this, which could be an excerpt from the plot synopsis of a Very Special Episodequote:At about 11:46, Flight 498 began its initial descent into Los Angeles with 58 passengers and six crew members aboard. At 11:52 AM, the Piper's engine collided with the left horizontal stabilizer of the DC-9, shearing off the top of the Piper's cockpit and decapitating Kramer and both of his passengers.[1]
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May 6, 2015 05:00
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quasi-relevant effort post incoming I know this isn't really fitting for the topic, but I feel that if you enjoy reading wikipedia pages that detail unnerving poo poo with cold, clinical prose then you might enjoy some of the content on the SCP Foundation website. Yes, it's fiction. If you don't wanna read it then don't. There are a lot of similarities between this thread's contents and some of the pages on there though, and I bet a few of you will really enjoy scouring through the pages of creepypasta formatted like a wiki article. Lots of common ground. Some good places to start: The Red Sea Object - long exploration log, check it out of if you like cryptic things like the Dyatlov Pass Incidient or arctic explorer journals and poo poo. "RONALD REAGAN CUT UP WHILE TALKING" - If you like the Max Headroom Pirating Incident or Vrillon messages this should be right up your alley. Along the same lines, you may also enjoy Session Opener and The Hanged King's Tragedy The LaBeouf Viewer. A strange case of psychosis/schizophreniform hallucination, but the viewer's hallucinations apply to real world physics. Some more X-Files type ones, really getting off topic here: Buried Giant - Someone has their arm stuck in a drain pipe. Maybe. Maybe about the person part, not maybe about them being stuck. Humans Go Home - We gain contact with an entity from another dimension. He is really racist. Nkondi - The Exorcist, but with West African fetish statues instead of Christian demons. Anyway, please continue with regular discussion of airplane crashes and serial killers. If you're interested in anything from this post, go talk about it in The PYF SCP thread. If you're on the fence, check this stuff out. It hits so many similar topics and is even formatted the same way.
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May 6, 2015 05:31
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p-hop posted:quasi-relevant effort post incoming Nah
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May 6, 2015 05:36
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Yeah don't post fiction archives in a thread about unnerving real-world articles, there is very little in common with the two topics.
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May 6, 2015 05:42
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I just read the first one, the Red Sea object, and I concur: nah. 
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May 6, 2015 06:18
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stickyfngrdboy posted:I've found one called Sword and Scale, which, while not quite the same as Serial, is definitely in the scary-fuckin-poo poo category. For me as a non-american there's cases I've never heard about before, such as the case of the Dozier school for boys (unbearable in parts), and an insight into psychopaths in which a child sex offender explains how and why he abused his stepdaughter. Very, very scary. I'm reading every single page of this thread and I just hit this post. Sword and Scale is one of my favorite podcasts ever because it's the furthest thing from the well-researched and laid out and Serious Journalism style of Serial. It's just a trashy true crime novel every few weeks, told by a dude who treats the Jonny Gosch sex ring conspiracy bullshit as gospel. I love it. It's also got a certain distinction as the only podcast I've ever had to shut off for being too loving gross (the episode that was text-to-speech readings of chatlogs between people discussing murdering and eating children. If you read it out loud between people it'd feel ridiculous, like a tryhard law and order episode, but with the cold detachment of the TTS it was terrifying)
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May 6, 2015 06:38
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Acne Rain posted:Yeah don't post fiction archives in a thread about unnerving real-world articles, there is very little in common with the two topics. That said, that post was somehow the first I'd heard of the real-world Max Headroom pirating incident and EDIT: Here's an interesting article about it from Vice. Empress Theonora has a new favorite as of 07:15 on May 6, 2015 |
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May 6, 2015 06:41
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p-hop posted:quasi-relevant effort post incoming Then why post it? Part of what makes the stuff posted in here "scary or unnerving" is the fact that the stuff actually happened. Also every third word isn't "redacted" to make it incredibly tedious to read. I think the "bad to mediocre creative writing exercises" should be contained in their own thread.
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May 6, 2015 07:39
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Rincewind posted:That said, that post was somehow the first I'd heard of the real-world Max Headroom pirating incident and There aren't that many actual incidents like that, really. They're pretty interesting, tap into a similar weird vibe that number stations do.
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May 6, 2015 07:50
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Bitch please Henry Darger is weaksauce.
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May 6, 2015 11:43
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p-hop posted:quasi-relevant effort post incoming I had a look, and yep sure enough... 
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