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Droogie's Deadly Desert Documentaries really got me roped in, still hard to believe that authorities care so little about someone based on appearance or habits. I mean drat, we're all human and deserve a little decency and respect, sad that the "victim" label for those poor women didn't even come out until months after their remains were found. On a side note, I'd love to go back to the desert and visit again, I spent a couple weeks in Arizona around Tucson for an old job years back. Didn't get to see a ton but loved the mountain view and even though it was summer, I could tolerate the 90+ dry heat better than here in the midwest when it's 80 with >90% humidity. Always been fascinated with these stretches of desert with almost nothing around, mainly for the creep factor and all the Native American folklore associated.
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Apr 25, 2016 19:14
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queserasera posted:Speaking of eastern Kentucky, hoo boy mining accidents. Hey there Appalachia neighbor. What is really unnerving about Appalachia is the lack of concern for human life from state legislatures, governors, and business leaders. Here's a good example, as told by two West Virginia state historic markers. There was a really big tunnel built in West Virginia in 1931 named Hawk's Nest Tunnel. It was 3 miles long. That's a really big deal. Here's the marker put up during the 1970s in commemoration of the great engineering achievement.  Oh, but there was more to the story you say? Something about one of the largest industrial disasters in American history? Something about hundreds of dead men being secretly buried (possibly in mass graves during the cover of night)? Yeah that's horrifying. In short, miners were exposed to silica and were not provided any sort of breathing apparatus, face masks, or any protection at all. Hundreds died of silicosis. The even scarier bit is that since these men were nearly all immigrants and minorities, we still don't know how many actually died. The company admitted to 109 eventually, Congressional investigations claimed 476, while labor sources estimate between 750 and 1000 (of the 1500 or so underground workers). Anyways, there's a new marker there now put up in 2011. 
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Apr 25, 2016 20:51
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How about a mining disaster that didn't kill any miners? In 1966 more than 40 thousand cubic metres of mining waste liquified and buried a school just underneath it. The National Coal Board knew that the site where they were dumping the waste was directly above a stream and more than one natural spring. "The final death toll was 144. In addition to five of their teachers, 116 of the dead were children between the ages of 7 and 10 – almost half of the children at the Pantglas Junior School." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aberfan_disaster
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Apr 25, 2016 22:09
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quote:Many noted the poignancy of the situation: if the disaster had struck a few minutes earlier, the children would not have been in their classrooms, and if it had struck a few hours later, the school would have broken up for half-term. heh
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Apr 25, 2016 22:23
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FiftyFour posted:How about a mining disaster that didn't kill any miners? Well, this sounds like a heartwarming "almost catastrophe" in which everyone involved was just fi goddamnit you son of a bitch  Also echoing the praise for Droogie's writeup. Thank you so much, and take all the time you need to recover from your no-holds-barred cage match 
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Apr 25, 2016 22:23
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Wikipedia posted:Many noted the poignancy of the situation: if the disaster had struck a few minutes earlier, the children would not have been in their classrooms, and if it had struck a few hours later, the school would have broken up for half-term. Thanks for reminding me that all "miracles" are simply a product of confirmation bias.
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Apr 25, 2016 22:25
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FiftyFour posted:How about a mining disaster that didn't kill any miners? I'm not convinced killing a bunch of minors is an improvement.
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Apr 25, 2016 22:33
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Centripetal Horse posted:I am a South Florida native who has also spent about ten years in Las Vegas. Humidity sucks, but don't listen to the people who say, "At least it's a dry heat." All the humidity in the world doesn't make up for the gap between 94 degrees and 114 degrees. The "is uncomfortable and will kill you" curve becomes very steep somewhere a little north of 100.
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Apr 25, 2016 22:38
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FiftyFour posted:How about a mining disaster that didn't kill any miners? Don't read the article if you don't want to see what a bunch of utter bastards our government were to the survivors and the parents of the children who died. Gotta love the retarded logic of a government that basically says "yeah we hosed up, but if you want us to sort the problem, then you need to pay for us to do it".
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Apr 25, 2016 22:59
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Ryoshi posted:I'm not convinced killing a bunch of minors is an improvement. This one got me. 
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Apr 25, 2016 23:16
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lorddazron posted:Don't read the article if you don't want to see what a bunch of utter bastards our government were to the survivors and the parents of the children who died. Gotta love the retarded logic of a government that basically says "yeah we hosed up, but if you want us to sort the problem, then you need to pay for us to do it". Yeah that's a show of testicular fortitude right there. "Sure this one pile of mine tailings buried your town and killed all your kids, but these other piles are totally safe and you all are overreacting and if you want them gone you have to pay for it" also "sorry guys, the law's the law, if you want to use your charity to pay people who lost their kids for psychiatrist bills you have to make sure they were actually close enough to their kids to have been hurt first"
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Apr 26, 2016 00:05
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All this desert chat has moved me to write something about the Nullarbor Plain and various other bits of Australian desert. I've driven across the Nullarbor a few times and it's an experience all right. Unbelievably hot during the day, below freezing at night. Huge stretches of road with absolutely nothing in between. One trip I did I remember hallucinating a tunnel of trees towards the end of one of the long straight stretches (this was in the wee hours of the morning and it's weird what happens to your eyes when you can see nothing but the arc of road in front of your headlights). It's also quite normal for people to drive down the centre line at night. You'll see another car coming for miles and it gives you more room to maneuver if a roo should decide to commit suicide by car. What I remember most though is the stars. Inky black land, straight cut as a ruler, and then just an explosion of stars. Kind of disorienting, felt like you were floating in space with no reference points nearer than the horizon. You haven't really seen stars until you have been in the desert. Here's a youtube video from a remote West Australian facillity to give you an idea of what it is like, but it doesn't really do justice to the experience. I never found it scary, just awe inspiring. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDoDk4D2RAw
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Apr 26, 2016 01:17
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FiftyFour posted:How about a mining disaster that didn't kill any miners? I actually read the second sentence and was like "amazing how it destroyed an entire school without killing anyone". Then I realized you meant not that it hadn't killed anyone, just that no miners died. 
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Apr 26, 2016 01:27
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Just remember that New London is the reason natural gas has an odor. One of the longform sites recently linked a pretty bad author fantasy article about the East Area Rapist-Original Night Stalker, but I had forgotten how nasty the case was. He's never been caught. He's been perhaps linked to an escalation of crimes from a run of the mill Visalia ransacker to rapist to murderer. There have been all kinds of clues from a poem to an essay dropped about a mean teacher, to this individual actually making phone calls to victims. Cold Case Files did a pretty good episode years back. That said, if you have the proper cable provider, their old episodes are all pretty good.
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Apr 26, 2016 03:06
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pookel posted:I'm pretty sure the "dry heat" bit is relevant only to discomfort. Wet heat might feel gross, but it's a lot less likely to kill you. Also, I have been in 115+ dry heat and dear lord, no, never again. There's a reason I moved to North Dakota. Also, I grew up in the desert and experienced my fair share of 120+° days. Never again.
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Apr 26, 2016 05:22
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RC and Moon Pie posted:
If we're talking about the same article (http://www.lamag.com/longform/in-the-footsteps-of-a-killer/), I remember reading that and thinking "wow, this is dumb." Googled it and apparently that's Patton Oswalt's wife who just died. 
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Apr 26, 2016 06:13
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Just checking in, I have the next post basically done, I just need to edit and fact check some stuff. I'll likely post by mid-day tomorrow. The last couple of days have been long and emotionally taxing with funeral stuff, and I'm still sore as hell and tired. As an aside i keep finding new pieces of information that are interesting and surprising, and as a reminder, this upcoming update will have some oddly disturbing images. Also I'm loving the desert and regional creepiness chat.
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Apr 26, 2016 07:03
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Relevant desert quote time! " Immediately when you arrive in Sahara, for the first or the tenth time, you notice the stillness. An incredible, absolute silence prevails outside the towns; and within, even in busy places like the markets, there is a hushed quality in the air, as if the quiet were a conscious force which, resenting the intrusion of sound, minimizes and disperses sound straightaway. Then there is the sky, compared to which all other skies seem fainthearted efforts. Solid and luminous, it is always the focal point of the landscape. At sunset, the precise, curved shadow of the earth rises into it swiftly from the horizon, cutting into light section and dark section. When all daylight is gone, and the space is thick with stars, it is still of an intense and burning blue, darkest directly overhead and paling toward the earth, so that the night never really goes dark. You leave the gate of the fort or town behind, pass the camels lying outside, go up into the dunes, or out onto the hard, stony plain and stand awhile alone. Presently, you will either shiver and hurry back inside the walls, or you will go on standing there and let something very peculiar happen to you, something that everyone who lives there has undergone and which the French call 'le bapteme de solitude.' It is a unique sensation, and it has nothing to do with loneliness, for loneliness presupposes memory. Here in this wholly mineral landscape lighted by stars like flares, even memory disappears...A strange, and by no means pleasant, process of reintergration begins inside you, and you have the choice of fighting against it, and insisting on remaining the person you have always been, or letting it take its course. For no one who has stayed in the Sahara for a while is quite the same as when he came. ...Perhaps the logical question to ask at this point is: Why go? The answer is that when a man has been there and undergone the baptism of solitude he can't help himself. Once he has been under the spell of the vast luminous, silent country, no other place is quite strong enough for him, no other surroundings can provide the supremely satisfying sensation of existing in the midst of something that is absolute. He will go back, whatever the cost in time or money, for the absolute has no price." -Paul Bowles
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Apr 26, 2016 12:42
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nockturne posted:All this desert chat has moved me to write something about the Nullarbor Plain and various other bits of Australian desert. I grew up living in big, dense cities in Europe and South America all my life... then I spent 2 years living in Perth. One March I found myself driving with a few other people across rural parts of WA, towards the middle of the state. A few days in, I was riding shotgun in the pickup truck at the front of our convoy and realised that a) we had no GPS/mobile phone signal; b) there were no visible landmarks in all directions; and c) this would be the case for the next 8 hours. I'm not agoraphobic, but that was probably the closest I ever came to having a real freakout about the sheer sense of scale of Australia. I was also the token foreigner in our convoy and everyone laughed at me.
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Apr 26, 2016 18:58
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News on a thread 'favourite'- a verdict of Unlawful Killing has been delivered at the inquest of the 89 fans who were crushed to death 27 years ago at Hillsborough. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-england-merseyside-36102998 This is BIG news in the UK, where there was a huge scandal of cover-ups and smear campaigns by the police and media (People still won't buy The Sun in Liverpool to this day) to blame the fans, and not the actions of the police that day.  quote:What the Sun said 15 years ago Families of the victims tirelessly spent 27 years campaigning to get justice for their loved ones, and today, it has happened. If you can stomach it, the 30 for 30 documentary about it is very insightful, as well as disturbing. I haven't watched this one yet, but might be worth a gander- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaBnY-SnwxA
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Apr 26, 2016 19:03
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ranbo das posted:I actually read the second sentence and was like "amazing how it destroyed an entire school without killing anyone". Then I realized you meant not that it hadn't killed anyone, just that no miners died. Well, some minors.
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Apr 26, 2016 19:09
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InequalityGodzilla posted:Well, some minors.  The West Mesa Murders Part 1 Part 2: The Missing Part 3: “The crime scene, which police called one of the largest in American history,” Part 4: Getting Our Bearings Part 5: The hosed Up Mysteries of the Desert Part 6: Investigation, First Suspects: Missouri Loves Company In less than one month’s time, a small army of people with the help of unlikely businesses and organizations had unearthed a massive grave on Albuquerque’s west mesa. Albuquerque police have yet to refer to all these women as victims, and they had also not yet brought themselves to use the term “serial killer,” instead saying that it was most likely that the killings had stopped, even though they did not know that for sure, and therefore the term didn’t apply, even though that logic makes no sense.  For a city that was a little over half a million people in 2009, a small army of primary investigators was being amassed. At least 40 people were assigned to the 118th Street Taskforce, and an unknown quantity of people working for these 40. Investigators needed information as quickly as possible, and as many as 8 years had already elapsed from the beginning of the murders. The case was cold upon discovery. Every body discovered was decomposed, there was little to no tissue to offer vital clues. The Office of the Medical Examiner would not ever conclusively be able to explain causes of death. I had read and heard a few random times that it was determined to be strangulation, but I can’t find any concrete sources for that. Many women were matched with known dental records. Others were matched through a combination of forensic reconstruction and luck.  What investigators did have, however, was the families of these women. Every news source and most every police statement would like to remind you that nearly all of these women were involved in drugs and prostitution, but the part that is quickly forgotten is that every woman that disappeared had a family that noticed their absence and all eventually reported their disappearance. Were it not for the families that loved and cared for these women, investigators would have nothing. The transgressions of these women do not outweigh the loss of their lives, no matter how many times someone will remind you that prostitution and drugs were words assigned to their names.  I’ve made a quick map of last known locations of several of the women. Most of them did not have this information attached, and several have simply hypothesized last known location to be the “East Central Corridor.” Any locals or one-time locals know exactly what I mean by that. I’ve highlighted that section in green here, and if any locals have any disputes with the location, please feel free to correct or discuss. The east Central corridor, as I understand it having lived here for 30 years, is a stretch of Central Avenue, also part of Historic Route 66 (although it wasn’t until the 50’s or 60’s, but that’s a different story). I would say that when someone says East Central Corridor, it starts just east of Nob Hill, at approximately San Mateo and it continues east to nearly Tramway. This section of road is a frequent area of drug use, violence, and prostitution. Anyone passing through the area has witnessed this, and a large portion of the corridor passes through the northern section of what locals call “The War Zone.” That should give you an impression of what it’s like. The 118th Street Taskforce descended across the city and beyond, interviewing everyone that they could that might have any information at all. Families came first, and from these initial interviews, a rough timeline of events was created. The next gigantic hurdle in the case was obtaining more information from the people that these women had associated with. Whether they were friends or even known associates, information was hard to come by as squads of police investigators attempted to approach and interview people along the east central corridor. Their primary mission was to find and interview people with a “similar lifestyle” to these women with a focus on 2001 to about 2006. In just a few years, Police had conducted well over 200 interviews. Every scrap of information, every rumor had weight and importance to the investigation. Theories started to be formed, profiles were created. One theory that gained momentum was that the killer frequented the area at the time of the annual state fair, as the fairgrounds is right in the east central corridor and fair time sees a major increase in both prostitution and gang violence. This would lead to an unlikely suspect, but the problem with the theory is that the state fair is always in late August to Early September, and almost no disappearances line up with this timeline. Persons of interest started to multiply and several were eliminated based on their timeline. Not long after the investigation started, APD had a list of at least 10 plausible suspects. Things were coming together in quick order. Just four months after all the bodies were found, APD had announced that they had narrowed the list to 5 suspects. SUSPECTS Fred Reynolds Fred Reynolds was a known pimp. He had been arrested for promotion of prostitution in 1998 and 2001, and he had ties to several of the victims. Of particular interest to the police was that Reynolds had photographs of several of the missing women. The problems arise when you take into consideration that Reynolds was known to run an illegal escort service, and that he may, very possibly, have some photos of women that worked for him. APD had let it be known that he had photos of 3 of the victims in his possession. Detectives raided his home and seized the photos, computers, records, everything. One of the photos of a known victim allegedly had the word “MISSING” written on it, which doesn’t add up. Before the bodies were discovered, two women were in contact with Reynolds. One, Amy Reid, was a friend of a missing woman (I do not know who), and the other was Lori Gallegos, sister of victim/missing number 2; Doreen Marquez. Both women had stated that Reynolds was a good man and friend, and that he was known for helping women, especially with drug addiction. Neither woman felt it strange that Reynolds had the photos, and both reported that Reynolds carried them with him to use when he would ask people about their whereabouts, because he was concerned. There was one other issue. On January 2, 2009, one month before the first bone was discovered, Fred Reynolds died at age 60, of natural causes. Obituary Scott Lee Kimball  Scott Lee Kimball is from Boulder, Colorado, and has a rather substantial strike against him. Scott Lee Kimball is a serial killer. During a stretch of time between 2003 and 2005, Kimball murdered at least four people for various reasons and disposed of their corpses in remote locations in Colorado and Utah. To this day, only three bodies were recovered. I won’t go into a lot of detail about Kimball because I don’t know a lot, but his case is pretty interesting (and I’m learning about it currently), and he happened to be working as an FBI informant during the time his murders occurred. Not only that, but Kimball is boastful, claiming to have killed “dozens more.” His travels also brought him through New Mexico during the time, but his timeline is so full of his own murders, business dealings and prison and court time that it seems unlikely. The FBI also likes him for several other murders in Colorado. In 2010, Kimball sent a correspondence to a cousin in which he says that he found out that he was being investigated as part of the West Mesa murders. Kimball, a man that has openly bragged about having killed “dozens” of people, flatly denies any involvement in the west mesa murders. Kimball is currently serving a 70 year sentence in Colorado. Ron Erwin   Oddly disturbing images aheadNo, his photo doesn’t count. Joplin Globe posted:“Photography is very important to me,” said Erwin, who has a studio on Main Street, though he said he doesn’t do much work there anymore. “I photograph a lot of people who’ve never been photographed before.” Joplin Missouri, August 3, 2010; Missouri police, Albuquerque police, and federal investigators descend upon the home and businesses of Ron Erwin, warrants in hand. In an orchestrated event, Erwin’s home was searched, Erwin’s business was searched, and Erwin’s photography studio was searched. Albuquerque police returned to New mexico, a massive U-Haul trailer in tow full of documents and photographs belonging to Erwin. The official reason why Erwin came under suspicion is literally not known to the public. What is known is that Erwin travelled to New Mexico starting in the mid 90’s as a new photographer. Spurred on by friends who told him about the culture and beauty of New Mexico in addition the the quality of the light (that sounds nuts, but ask a local, it’s true), Erwin started making trips; by his own recollection as many as three or four times a year. We also know that Erwin was in New Mexico when Veronica Romero (missing #4) and Jamie Barela (5) and Evelyn Salazar(6) went missing. These are probably good enough reasons for the warrants. If we go back to APD’s odd theory of women disappearing during the state fair, it also lines up with Erwin’s own admission that he travelled to be in Albuquerque at fair time in the early 2000’s. Erwin stated that he was especially interested in the street life of Albuquerque for a time, and people he would meet in unsavory parts of town would be photographic subjects. Shortly after Erwin’s properties were searched, APD released a series of 6 photographs with 7 women subjects. APD would not comment on where the photographs came from, but they stated that they needed help identifying and locating the women in the photos as part of the west mesa murders. None of the women pictured are women that were found at the crime scene. All photos are presented as they were cropped and released to the public.      You’ll notice a photo missing, but one family quickly reached out and identified their daughter, and also told police that she had died of natural causes somewhat recently. Every local article I could find also stated that of all the women, only two had been identified and were thought to be alive, and police were trying to find them for more information. That’s literally what I knew about these photos as a local. I found a statement this week about the photos in an article from Joplin, MO made by an APD spokesperson that stated ALL BUT TWO women had been identified and/or found, and that they don’t believe the other two are actually missing or in danger. This statement was made in 2011. I thought only three of the seven had been identified, and that was when I started writing these. So good news- the photos are slightly, ever so slightly, less creepy. APD never stated where the photos were obtained, but Erwin had no problem stating that they were his. At least he thought so. He said that he didn’t recognize a few of them, but that he had likely taken them. He also stated that he had nothing to do with their state, and he was documenting street life as he found it. Joplin Globe posted:“Erwin said that in photographing street life, some of his subjects were sleeping on park benches and elsewhere.” ...Which does not seem to be the case at all to people with functioning eyes. Joplin Globe posted:“Erwin said the photos the police released were “upsetting” to him because he was not a particularly good photographer in the 1990s, and he does not see those sleeping women as representative of his work since then…” Suspicions had also been raised after a tornado destroyed a couple of Erwin’s properties and objects were found that made APD take another look, but nothing other than “bones” were divulged, and Erwin had also owned a bookstore/collectible/oddity shop at one point. This line of investigation I have never found much more on, and it’s usually glossed over. Erwin was never actually questioned during the investigation, and about a year after the warrants were executed, Ron Erwin was officially removed from the suspect list by APD. (Next: Suspects: Real Life Monsters and an End) Droogie has a new favorite as of 10:32 on Apr 29, 2016 |
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Apr 26, 2016 19:40
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Free Market Mambo posted:Relevant desert quote time! There's a book called Tracks by Robyn Davidson which talks a lot about this. Davidson decided she wanted to take a bunch of camels across Australia, through the outback, solo. At one point in the book she talks about the distant hills "roaring" in the silence. If you like desert tales it's well worth a read. I think it might have been made into a film as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robyn_Davidson Montalvo posted:I grew up living in big, dense cities in Europe and South America all my life... then I spent 2 years living in Perth. One March I found myself driving with a few other people across rural parts of WA, towards the middle of the state. A few days in, I was riding shotgun in the pickup truck at the front of our convoy and realised that a) we had no GPS/mobile phone signal; b) there were no visible landmarks in all directions; and c) this would be the case for the next 8 hours. Well, er... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Falconio Thing is, there's really not much to be scared of in the outback so long as you respect it. It's not like we have large carnivorous animals over here that can eat you. You can die of heat exhaustion, and you can be bitten by a snake, or a spider, but that's highly unlikely to happen if you're not stupid and don't stick your hands into crevices, carry enough water, zip up your tent at night, etc. Other people though, and what can and has happened out there, that scares me. There's parts of the South Australian outback in particular which are like something out of Deliverance. Massive empty space. Isolated people. Unbelievable heat. They go a bit mad sometimes. First trip I took across the Nullarbor I was only 17 years old. Me and a mate were trying to do it in a few days. We pulled into the petrol station at Caiguna (I think? it was a long time ago - one of the long stretches anyhow). It was around 9pm, the car would do around 400km at a stretch, it was around 200km to the next station, and the station was closed. So we were standing there debating whether to take the risk to the next station or not. Couple of dudes pull up in a ute, we swap complaints about the shut station and whether or not to carry on. Eventually they decide they will. Except these dudes were kind of rough and there was something off about them. Hard to explain, just a feeling...so we let them take off first and told them we'd probably stop the night there. About 50km out of the next station we see their ute parked at the side of the road, and pass. About ten minutes later they come up close behind us, fast. Flash the lights. Wind down the window and yell something at us as they pass while grinning like loons. Then pull over again a fair distance up the road, probably a couple of kilometres, remember you can see cars for miles out here on the long stretches. We stopped the car and tried to figure out what to do. Maybe they were harmless and just trying to scare a couple of nervous teenagers, but maybe not. No cell phones in those days either. We decide we'll flag down the next person who comes along. The ute up ahead starts to turn around, just as lights appear behind us. They stop turning around and take off towards the next station. We flagged down the truck driver who was following and explained what had happened. He probably thought we were stupid youngsters freaked out by nothing but he agreed to tail us into the next town in case we ran out of petrol. The car was running on empty by this point. We made it to the next town, which was a 24-hour station, and all was well. No sign of the ute dudes though. When I heard about the Peter Falconio case I thought of that. It can be hours between traffic on that road. The whole incident was likely completely harmless but people can be a bit strange out there. You just never know.
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Apr 27, 2016 01:46
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I like how the section about te trial doesn't actually say anything about the trial or its outcome.
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Apr 27, 2016 02:47
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Droogie posted:...at the time of the annual state fair, as the fairgrounds is right in the east central corridor and fair time sees a major increase in both prostitution and gang violence. I know I get really pissed off and horny when I ride a ferris wheel, so that's a pretty solid theory. quote:Desert discussion PYF unnerving article or story: Get the hell out of the desert
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Apr 27, 2016 04:45
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The Endbringer posted:I know I get really pissed off and horny when I ride a ferris wheel, so that's a pretty solid theory. It's good to know that I'm not the only one.
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Apr 27, 2016 05:00
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Rondette posted:News on a thread 'favourite'- a verdict of Unlawful Killing has been delivered at the inquest of the 89 fans who were crushed to death 27 years ago at Hillsborough. Just a small correction: it was 96 fans that died that day. The disaster occurred on the 15th April 1989. I'm glad the families, and Liverpool itself, finally got this verdict. I knew people that were there and survived and I know that it will help them even after all this time. It'll be interesting to see if any of the police involved are prosecuted now.
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Apr 27, 2016 05:10
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I visited an old retired friend near Perth who used to drive large trucks across the wastes to the Sydney area - think of a long semi truck, then attach another long container behind it, then attach another long container behind that. I can't vouch for the accuracy of the story, and this may be stdh.txt, but he related that truck drivers would get held up or attacked by locals who would use the trick of having someone lie down on the road pretending to be hurt/lost/injured, and when the truck slowed down, it would get hijacked by a group. Swerving wasn't really an option, because of the chain of containers behind the truck. So drivers sucked it up and tried to desensitize themselves when they plowed over the body of someone lying across the road, knowing that it was likely a trap and that they would have been attacked and possibly killed if they stopped.
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Apr 27, 2016 05:15
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Abugadu posted:I visited an old retired friend near Perth who used to drive large trucks across the wastes to the Sydney area - think of a long semi truck, then attach another long container behind it, then attach another long container behind that. I'm not familiar with Australian geography, but is that the same area that is supposed to be barren for miles? If it is, you would think they would see the hijackers coming.
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Apr 27, 2016 07:20
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Chichevache posted:I'm not familiar with Australian geography, but is that the same area that is supposed to be barren for miles? If it is, you would think they would see the hijackers coming. Couldn't say for sure. Could be there's rocks, could be they'd do it at night. Brown/camo tarps. I don't know how tech savvy they were supposed to be, and this story is from about 8 years ago (and the events probably from a decade or two before that), so I apologize for the lack of detail. Just happened to ping my memory when discussion of traversing vast open desert came up. edit: from google image searching the Nullabor, it looks like there's enough bushes/hills on occasion to provide cover. It also reminded me of the Saharan Silver Ant, a creature that can withstand 115+F temps, but only for about ten minutes before they die. They have a small window each day where their natural predators give up and go seek shelter because it's too drat hot, and send out patrols to search for food. They've adapted with very long legs to keep them up off the scorched ground, and silver hairs to reflect a great deal of sunlight, but even with all of that they have an extremely limited time in the sun before they're dead. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCaVvHeI8jU Abugadu has a new favorite as of 07:45 on Apr 27, 2016 |
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Apr 27, 2016 07:40
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A Pinball Wizard posted:I like how the section about te trial doesn't actually say anything about the trial or its outcome. There is a link there to the guy who did it and the trial outcome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_John_Murdoch Another thing that makes this case notable, and could be why that article is so sparse, is the attack launched on the media on his girlfriend, Joanne Lees. Interesting also that the wikipedia article also makes no mention of this. Sort of like the whole Lindy Chamberlain thing, except the story was she was a loose woman and wanted to be rid of Peter Falconio for reasons. Somehow she murdered him and then tied herself up with zip-ties. She might have been an odd one but that doesn't make someone a murderer. The gutter press was rife with speculation. Australia does not have a good record for this sort of stuff. Google "Joanne Lees guilty" if you want to see what I'm talking about. Abugadu posted:I visited an old retired friend near Perth who used to drive large trucks across the wastes to the Sydney area - think of a long semi truck, then attach another long container behind it, then attach another long container behind that. Pretty sure this is an urban legend. However driving long-haul road-trains across those vast empty wastes is unnerving enough that I can see why the legend arose, and such a thing is indeed plausible, given the culture of some outback towns. In other words, it's a Truckie ghost story. Quite a few have also seen UFOs on the Nullarbor. Driving through Snow Town on that same trip was also unnerving, and this was before the bodies in the barrels thing. It's just one of the many Towns That Time Forgot that dot that whole area. Like I said, Deliverance. A banjo player would feel right at home in Snow Town. edit: yeah, there's cover. A lot of spinifex and low shrubs. But very very flat land. I suppose it's possible? Here, while I'm editing have another scary outback murder: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_of_Karlie_Pearce-Stevenson_and_Khandalyce_Pearce quote:On 15 July 2015, the remains of a young child surrounded by girl's clothing were discovered by a passing motorist who examined an abandoned suitcase at the side of the Karoonda Highway near Wynarka in the Murray Mallee region of South Australia. From the beginning, investigators believed the child had suffered a violent death several years before the remains had been dumped in the suitcase. It was not until October 2015 that the victim was identified as Pearce, aged two, who, with her mother, had been reported missing from Alice Springs more than five years earlier, in 2009. What they don't mention is that the suitcase lay there for quite some time. Just more rubbish on the side of the road. For six years in fact. Except sometime during those years someone messed with the suitcase but never reported that it had a toddler's body in it. And in case you recognise Belanglo, they thought initially the mother was one of Ivan Milat's victims. nockturne has a new favorite as of 08:26 on Apr 27, 2016 |
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Apr 27, 2016 07:49
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nockturne posted:
Town closest to the nullabor on the SA side. Not much to worry about there. It's not like like northern SA which is barren. The whole nullabor is pretty busy as it's the main continental crossing. Where it gets interesting is west NSW, as much of the traffic splits. Most of the traffic heads south, to vic/lower NSW. The Barrier hwy is more desolate and freakier than any point across the nullabor from my experiences. Every town is mostly shut at night (until you hit broken hill, then dubbo, orange and bathurst). Pretty dead in between as less traffic going that route (the shortest/fastest route to sydney to perth - most traffic does perth, adel, mel then sydney), and there's no way a truck would stop for you on that hwy, unlike your experience with a truck stopping for you on the nullabor. Barrier hwy has the mad max theme going for it for a reason. Content: I went under the knife for surgery recently, the anaesthesia made my BP plummet so there was a small complication. After my operation I came across an article about anaesthesia. Never knew they know so little about how it works and why. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/awakening/309188/ Fo3 has a new favorite as of 14:46 on Apr 27, 2016 |
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Apr 27, 2016 14:39
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News on the BBC today about an Aussie bloke who got bitten on the dong by a redback spider. Luckily he was near a hospital, so we were spared a recreation of the famous joke.
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Apr 27, 2016 14:52
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General anesthesia is how I discovered I have malignant hypothermia.
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Apr 27, 2016 14:55
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Abugadu posted:I visited an old retired friend near Perth who used to drive large trucks across the wastes to the Sydney area - think of a long semi truck, then attach another long container behind it, then attach another long container behind that. I've heard a similar story being from the Northeast US. There are quite a few large stretches of road where it's just you and trees. According to the tales, either they would lay in the road our put a tree across it, then jump people when they got out of their cars. It's probably just stdh, but it doesn't help that people will just disappear into the woods never to be seen again, and of course when it's 10pm and you're in the middle of nowhere with no cell service and you find a tree blocking your path, it sure feels a lot more real. For some poo poo that did happen, a girl I went to high school with broke down on a back road on her way back from a party last winter. She had no cell service and apparently decided to walk down the road and flag down a car/get cell service. They found her frozen to death the next morning This is why if you're driving in the winter in the Northeast anywhere relatively rural, you should have at least a heavy blanket in your car.
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Apr 27, 2016 15:08
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whiteyfats posted:General anesthesia is how I discovered I have malignant hypothermia. Which is kind of terrifying, I remember reading about this before a surgery a few years ago: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Malignant_hyperthermia ranbo das posted:This is why if you're driving in the winter in the Northeast anywhere relatively rural, you should have at least a heavy blanket in your car.
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Apr 27, 2016 15:17
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Fo3 posted:Ceduna? The trucking company I work for does all of these routes, and the tale of people laying in the road persists. (Usually it's Aboriginals who have had too much booze/huffed petrol etc). It's always a "mate of a mate who had it happen" kind of tale. I don't doubt that it might have happened once or a few times, but the tale about the highway hijackers laying in wait are probably more STDH than anything else. That said, certain high value loads are pretty much on the "don't fucken stop for anything" list. Truckies in Australia love a tall tale, and there's plenty of weird poo poo that can happen between massive empty spaces, fatigue and the smothering darkness. One bloke told the story of a dude in the middle of loving nowhere, just walking alongside the road. I'll ask around and see if I can pull a few more tales if you guys are interested.
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Apr 27, 2016 15:52
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Tendai posted:I assume you mean hyperthermia? Yes, hyperthermia, sorry. It was pretty bad, I'm told. Went to get my wisdom teeth pulled, and I woke up with my mom and sister in the room looking all concerned. They had to call my mom to make sure they could do whatever was necessary to save my life, since I was single and put her as my emergency contact. Randaconda has a new favorite as of 15:57 on Apr 27, 2016 |
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Apr 27, 2016 15:54
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Yoshi Jjang posted:
That quote gets a bit weird when you read the wiki on Alfred Robens, the guy in charge of the Coal Board who denied it was his fault before it was found that actually it was all his fault quote:His political ambitions, including an aspiration to become Prime Minister, were frustrated by bad timing no poo poo
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Apr 27, 2016 16:00
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Never change, Wikipedia.
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Apr 27, 2016 16:04
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