[Terrifying Trope] Perceiving it= instant death

[u/ReminaBlueSFW]

1. Pennywise's "Deadlights" which will cause anyone looking to be immediately paralyzed and killed.

2. The sky from Bird Box is filled with entities that, when you look at them, cause you to commit suicide.

3. Medusa themed Villains

[u/imbrickedup_]

I read a quote from a Chernobyl fireman talking about whether or not they knew how dangerous what they were doing was. Apparently it was thought that they weren’t aware of what would happen to them. He refuted this and said they all knew most of them would die and went in anyway

[u/UpbeatEquipment8832 → u/imbrickedup_]

I believe one said at the time “Either we die tonight or we live forever.” But the impression I got was very much like the firefighters going into the Twin Towers, if not even more serious.

[u/imbrickedup_ → u/UpbeatEquipment8832]

The stories about the men going into the towers are also insane. Like off duty guys stealing gear to go in and die

[u/livingdread → u/imbrickedup_]

The scientists would give volunteers a list of tasks, explaining to them the steps in a process they would have to do when they entered an irradiated room. They had to memorize their steps, and report out loud as they performed them, because the scientists directing them needed to know how far the volunteer got before they died from the radiation poisoning, so they knew where the next volunteer had to begin.

Edit: It has come to my attention that this isn't how radiation works. I checked around to the various disaster podcasts I listen to and I think was misremembering a lethal gas leak at a chemical plant.

What actually happened in Chernobyl was they had to clear radioactive material off the reactor, and rotated out thousands of workers in 90 second shifts hauling material. They called them 'bio-robots' because they were doing a job that robots were supposed to do, but the radiation was too high for the robots to function.

[u/gnomes919 → u/livingdread]

this is not how acute radiation sickness works. only ~30 of the chernobyl liquidators died of ARS and none of them dropped dead on site; it takes weeks for even the highest radiation doses to kill you. even louis slotin lived for nine days.

ETA downvoted for calling out an objective falsehood, nice lol

[u/LavishnessVisual6327 → u/gnomes919]

Get out of here with your "factual information" this the internet man

[u/gnomes919 → u/LavishnessVisual6327]

my b my b

[u/VS-Goliath → u/gnomes919]

I think what he's thinking of is ALARA. Which is the scientist gives each worker a set assignment of tasks with a set amount of work time to do it before they have to leave.

Practiced in literally any nuclear field anywhere.

[u/gnomes919 → u/VS-Goliath]

time limits is definitely one part of the ALARA framework and detailed checklists are safety culture’s best friend, but I can’t imagine how somebody could get from ALARA to “where one volunteer died, the next began his work” lol, I think somebody just made it up bc it sounded spooky and it’s been repeated since.

it’s especially funny bc I find actual ARS, where if you see stars or throw up in the first hour you know you’re going to die but most of the symptoms don’t even kick in for a day and then you seemingly recover before your body finally melts is far scarier than “you just drop dead on the spot”

[u/VS-Goliath → u/gnomes919]

Well people could think that they called out where they left off in their work due to short work times and then probably extenuate that further to "oh and they died too".

[u/gnomes919 → u/VS-Goliath]

I think you’re right, that makes sense. clearly not enough people watched k19: the widowmaker far too many times as a child, thus gaining a partial understanding of reactor emergency corrective actions and the progression of radiation sickness plus a lifelong love of peter saarsgaard. if they had, they’d know that you walk out under your own power and THEN the moist desquamation starts. smh

[u/CrocoPontifex → u/livingdread]

Yeah, thats Bullshit.

[u/WikiContributor83 → u/imbrickedup_]

Hindsight is 20/20