The Chit-Chat Thread

[SERIOUSLY THOUGH*]

This is pretty macabre, but here's a SERIOUSLY prediction :
Nelson Mandela's death will be announced in the next few days. The media reports that he's been taken to his home, but that he's still receiving exactly the same care.
They didn't kick him out because there's no hospital space, they sent him home so that he could end his days in a familiar setting; it's more becoming of an ex-leader to die in a place that is "theirs".

2nd prediction (that will be hard to prove) - Nelson Mandela is already deceased. No media has directly seen him over the past few days. Only official representatives/family members have given information. The government, his family and all the relevant authorities want to prepare for the announcement so that they can handle the unavoidable country-wide slump in productivity that would last for at least a week.

Sorry to be so negative, but something's up, mesays.

[BumblebeeCody*]

This is pretty macabre, but here's a SERIOUSLY prediction :
Nelson Mandela's death will be announced in the next few days. The media reports that he's been taken to his home, but that he's still receiving exactly the same care.
They didn't kick him out because there's no hospital space, they sent him home so that he could end his days in a familiar setting; it's more becoming of an ex-leader to die in a place that is "theirs".

2nd prediction (that will be hard to prove) - Nelson Mandela is already deceased. No media has directly seen him over the past few days. Only official representatives/family members have given information. The government, his family and all the relevant authorities want to prepare for the announcement so that they can handle the unavoidable country-wide slump in productivity that would last for at least a week.

Sorry to be so negative, but something's up, mesays.

Seems normal to think that though.

[Zaliphone]

I must apologize for my absence. I spent the weekend at my grandmother's house and the forums were loading too slowly on both my PS3 and 3DS. Anyway, it's good to be back.

[Mass Distraction]

[JiraiyaSennin]

At first I thought the audio sounded very fake and dubbed, but I watched sxePhils video and he actually found out it's a 3 year old video with fake audio.

[CosmykTheDolfyn]

For any other non humans reading this thread, I just wanted to post some warnings. I found this infromation to be highly accurate according to a series of films made by a leading female of the species known as "Holly Wood".

[Psychospacecow]

I remember the imgur post that came from.

My favorite was Warning: Humans take pleasure in piercing their skin with large electronic needles repeatedly and injecting chemicals to decorate themselves.

[gamemaster1991]

I was just looking at a list of movies that are coming soon/in development hell that are/were based on video games and I have to ask, what is the point of making movies that are ALREADY based on movies. Example, Clock Tower was based on a movie called Phenomena/Creepers, and someone wants to make a movie based on the game. Yea it is suppose to be based on 2 and 3 but still. Halo is loosely based on a bunch of movies and books and was going to be a movie before being turned into District 9. An Uncharted and a Tomb Raider movie are being made and both are Indiana Johns clones (I think, I have never played ether series). I not saying I would not like to see these movies, I would love to see a Clock Tower movie, but I'm just wondering what they could do to make them stand out (except the Tomb Raider movie. I know what they could do different since I have seen the first two movies). I just want to see what You guys think about the idea.

Also, A Need For Speed movie sounds like a Fast & Furious clone.

[MexicanAnime]

College sure loves to hold my hand. It should probably stop.

[SERIOUSLY THOUGH*]

I'm very happy right now - I may have saved someone's life this afternoon. I'll give more details of the story tomorrow, I've still got quite a bit of adrenaline going on so I'm going off to expend it :)

[MexicanAnime]

I'm very happy right now - I may have saved someone's life this afternoon. I'll give more details of the story tomorrow, I've still got quite a bit of adrenaline going on so I'm going off to expend it :)

That's great, glad the person was alright!

[BumblebeeCody*]

I'm very happy right now - I may have saved someone's life this afternoon. I'll give more details of the story tomorrow, I've still got quite a bit of adrenaline going on so I'm going off to expend it :)

C'mon dude. Telling someone to not buy Shaq Fu isn't saving their life.

[CosmykTheDolfyn]

I'm very happy right now - I may have saved someone's life this afternoon. I'll give more details of the story tomorrow, I've still got quite a bit of adrenaline going on so I'm going off to expend it :)

It's a unique feeling. I once pulled a drowning kid out a pool after he went under. It's a bizarre type of high that doesn't leave for a few days.

[Peach_Cookie]

Man, my entire body is sore and I hate it. Moral of the story is...always do some stretches before doing any sort of hard labor.

[SERIOUSLY THOUGH*]

Ok, here's the story I promised. It's long and the hour is late so I haven't taken the time to read through it to check for mistakes (so bear with me!).

Ok, so it was about 6PM, and I was on my lounger reading a book after an afternoon of clearing an old path through the mountain forest behind my house that hadn’t been tended for a good number of years. My little village is nestled in a valley, with houses in the valley and thinly spread on the two adjacent mountains. Our house is the topmost one on one of those two mountain slopes – so behind us is only mountain forest. From our place, you can walk up to the top of the mountain. You can also choose to turn right after 3 minutes and walk along a path that leads to a hamlet about 20 minutes walk away. The path is mostly quite thin with a few tricky parts, mainly due to the cows that often tread along the path and create muddy patches.

Anyway, I was reading my book, my sister was on a lounger close by listening to the radio through her earphones, and my mum was using the wood chipper to make shavings for our paths (so that weeds don’t grow). The thin branches we cut go into the chipper, and the thicker ones get cut up for winter fire fuel. My mum goes off into the forest to cut down a thicket for the chipper. The sun was half an hour away from setting behind the mountain to the West. It was a very warm day and I was tired from the work I had been doing during the afternoon.

From the distance, I hear a repetitive sound, like a call. I think nothing of it at first because the house just downhill from us is having a party for their kids and they're making a lot of noise. However, I seem to glean words that immediately make me put my book down and stand up. “Au secours, au secours” (“Help, help”) over and over again. I call my mum over and we both listen, trying to figure out where the voice is coming from. At this point I can clearly hear “Au secours, au secours”. The voice is coming from uphill, most likely from the path that joins our hamlet to the one 20 minutes away, a path that’s enjoyed by many over the summer months.

A second, higher-pitched voice can now be heard shouting to get attention. “ooohoooooh”, it says, to which the first voice answers something inaudible. Someone must have found the person. In any case, I grab my phone, tell my sister to stay by the house phone in case I need to call, and start running up the mountain towards the path. I’m used to running in a mountain setting so I make good progress. The adrenaline also allows me to sprint where I would normally be on a light jog. Our mountain range is steep so it takes a few minutes to not go very far. I get to the junction of the path, and cock my ear to confirm that the voice came from the hamlet path, rather than the path that leads to the top of the mountain. I can’t hear anything anymore. I decide to go down the hamlet path as it seems to be the best bet. I run off again, avoiding the cow-induced mud patches, stopping every now and again to listen out for the sounds of one of the two voices. Nothing. I keep going on. Now I’m at a section that slopes downwards and is relatively dry. I turn a corner and see the source of the sound.

Ahead of me, about twenty metres further along the path, there’s a woman lying on her stomach. She evidently hears me, because she says (in French) “Oh mister, come help me out, help me out”. I close the distance between us and have a look at the situation. No blood, no jutting bones, no visible injuries, but no owner of the second voice... It dawns on me that there was no second voice. It was just the same woman trying a different call that could attract people’s attention.

So here is this 50-something woman, alone, sprawled on the ground. Her left leg is resting on a small bridge (no more that a metre across) made of round pieces of wood held together. Her right leg is hanging off the edge. With perfect lucidity, and with no apparent risk of loss of consciousness, she lets me know that she’s a doctor and that she suspects that her right femur is fractured. Apparently a cow had taken her by surprise and charged, making her run down the path. A few pieces of wood that the bridge is made from jut out from the ground. She must have hit her foot against one, stumbled, and fallen to the ground. I take another look at her leg and notice a swelling just above her knee. I tell her this and we both agree it’s fractured and that it’s best not to move her. (As you’ll learn later in the story, if you find someone lying on the ground, DO NOT try to move them. It may cost them their lives). Her phone’s battery is dead, and she laments the fact that she didn’t want to bother the restaurant at lunchtime by asking them if she could charge it. She's also annoyed with herself because she had taken the wrong path and never meant to be there.

The woman is obviously in a lot of pain and shock is slowly setting in. She gives me numbers to call: her husband’s mobile phone, her house phone... that she wants me to call before the emergency services. She’s a doctor so I comply. Both numbers don’t work so I call my house, tell them to call the emergency services and ask my mum to come up with a first-aid kit, in case we can help. Ten minutes later, my mum arrives. By this point, the woman seems to be in more and more pain and she’s starting to shake slightly. The adrenaline must be wearing off and shock settling in. We use a stick to at least give her right foot something on which to rest. She says that it helps alleviate the pain. I then leave my mum with the woman and run back down to the house to wait for the emergency services so that I can lead them as quickly as possible to where the incident happened.

Ten minutes later, the fire service arrive (in France, they’re very often the first respondents, even for medical emergencies. The vast majority of them are volunteers and I can’t stress enough how great these people were.) So I lead the three sapeurs-pompiers (as they’re called) to the woman. They carry out their routine, asking her if she knows what day it is, where she is, how much pain she’s in. She says that out of 10, her pain is at 8. The sapeurs-pompiers immediately state that moving her by foot will be impossible given her injury. Reinforcements have also been called from the town about 15kms away. I run back down to meet up with them. They are also sapeurs-pompiers but affiliated with the SAMU, which is our medical emergency service. Now I love me a good run in the mountains, but at this point I’ve been running up and down some very steep slopes. I don’t feel tired though, and make a note to find a way to stimulate my adrenal glands next time I have a 10k to run!
The sapeurs-pompiers let us know that a helicopter has been called and is on its way.

I go with one of them to the nearest clearing so that it knows where we are. After five minutes it comes roaring over us. I can’t help smiling at this point because it’s pretty damn awesome to having a helicopter flying by and doing spins and such JUST ABOVE YOUR HEAD. By radio, it says that the clearing we’re in is too small to safely extract someone, but that they’ll drop off people to help us. They fly off to the other side of the incident where there’s a bit of level ground without trees and drop off two men. One from the GRIMP (Groupe de reconnaissance et d'intervention en milieu périlleux / Dangerous Environnments Reconnaisance and Rescue Group) and one from the CRS (Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité / Republican Security Companies). My mum and I find this odd because they’re not the same unit. As it turns out, the two units are biting at each others’ noses because of jurisdiction. If an incident occurs within 10 minutes walk from the closest drivable road, it’s under GRIMP jurisdiction. If it happens beyond a 10 minute walk, it’s up to the CRS. Seeing as they can’t agree on anything (according to the head sapeur-pompier who, like us, doesn’t understand why they can’t just agree on who’s going), they send men from each unit. So we have Mr GRIMP and Mr CRS helping out.

The woman is now entering a state of medium shock, but her life doesn’t appear to be in danger, so no-one rushes to move her as quickly as possible. The sapeur-pompiers tell the two new guys that the woman has a suspected fractured femur. Every attempt at moving her, even slightly, is met with a lot of pain and shaking. Mr GRIMP, who is a doctor, decides to inject her with morphine as there is no other choice but to move her. A sapeur-pompier, who is inspecting her leg, suddenly notices something...

“There’s a wound just above her right knee” he calls out. On further inspecting, the respondents realise that she doesn’t only have a suspected fractured femur. Far from it. She has a long thing piece of metal that is used to hold the bridge together, impaled in her thigh. That changes the game completely. You don’t have to be a specialist to know that through your upper leg runs the femoral artery, one of the largest arteries in the body. If severed, the victim can very quickly die of excessive haemorrhaging (exsanguination). They can’t move the woman. What if the metal has severed the femoral artery? The thin metal rod might be the only thing holding it into place. The woman is shaking more and more. Not yet convulsions, but enough to hinder the helpers’ work. The blanket that the sapeurs-pompiers had placed on her helps keep her warm, but the warm also counteracts the numbness felt from the cold and pain flares up in her leg, despite the morphine.

After a quick deliberation, the respondents agree that there is no other choice but to move her. They decide to lift her vertically and place her stomach-down on the stretcher. Then, if all is well, they’ll flip her over and take her away for extraction. Very professionally, they move into position. “Feet ready. Waist ready,” they call, as the men and women in position confirm that they are ready to lift. “shoulders ready, head ready. Ok, and... LIFT.” The morphine stops the woman from feeling much pain. Everyone’s eyes are on her leg. Immediately a sapeur-pompier, who is also a nurse, applies a cloth with pressure to stem the bleeding. “It’s not bleeding too much; we’re good”. The relief can be felt by all. They carefully place her stomach down on the stretcher (I call it a stretcher but it was a pretty high-tech piece of gear), before slowly turning her onto her back.

“How much pain are you in out of 10?” asks Mr GRIMP. “2”. “Ok, let’s get her out of here.”

Further down the mountain, my sister was on the lookout. Four emergency vehicles were parked near our house and a helicopter was flying by. Our village is small, and we live in an even smaller hamlet attached to the village. Some people from nearby houses started coming up, worried at first that something bad had happened at the kids’ party. After a very brief sigh of relief, they went off again up the slope to the final house, ours, hoping that none of us had had an accident that warranted four vehicles and a helicopter. My sister doesn’t know what’s going on up in the forest so lets them know what she’s gleaned. There’s a woman who has had a fall and the only way to get her out is by helicopter.

Back in the forest, the woman was being carried by the brave men and women towards a clearing where the helicopter could winch her stretcher, land in the village below and the place her into the helicopter before going off to the closest city. Throughout the ordeal, she had kept very calm and lucid. She’s a doctor, so I think it helps when you know what is likely going on. The helicopter takes off with Mr GRIMP, Mr CRS and the woman. We walk back down to the house, talking to all the respondents who are still on the ground. We tell them that we’ve asked the village council to look after and maintain the path because it was becoming more and more dangerous. One of the sapeur-pompier is a village councillor. What luck! We hope he’ll do something about it, especially because a few respondents got their nice uniforms dirty in the mud. On the way down, the sapeur-pompiers hammered the metal rods deeper into the ground so that they didn’t jut out. I took picture beforehand, though, and I’ll send them to the village hall.

What happened on that day was probably the best case scenario. Had I been making noise. Had the wood-chipper been on. Had we simply been indoors... We wouldn’t have heard the woman’s call for help. We’re the only house within earshot of where she fell. 24 hours beforehand, I was out on a run with my sister and my parents were away. 24 hours later, we would have been out of the house for two days. During the two hours we were there, no hiker walked the path. And no-one would have walked the path after sunset. No-one would have heard the woman. It’s no longer the summer holidays, so no-one would have passed through that path until the following late-morning or afternoon. A wolf could have found her first. The woman believed she had ‘only’ a fractured femur, and after many hours spent there without help, she may have tried to move to at least try and get out of there on her own. If she had moved, the thin metal rod may have gone deeper or moved along her leg, severing the femoral artery.

I can’t help but imagine these alternative scenarios, but then I remember what actually happened and I am so very glad that I was outside, silently reading my book when in the forest above our house she fell and cried out “au secours” for the first time...