Most shocking events in your lifetime?

[Johnny Crumplin Football]

1. Watching from two floors above a guy drunk out of his mind sitting on the edge of a third-floor balcony at a hotel in Ibiza trying to put his swimming trunks on and falling off, smashing to the ground by the pool and dying. Blood starting pouring out of his ears and everyone started screaming. I couldn't speak and went numb. I was 16

2. My mum suffering a heart attack and passing away while I was speaking to her on the phone from Japan two years ago.

3. The earthquake here in Japan this year. The area I live in in Chiba was pretty badly damaged. Nowhere near as badly as Sendai, mind

 

[jevs]

The Lockerbie disaster disturbed me for a long time as did the Zebrugge ferry. The ferry, in particular, creeped me out.

apart from the 2 above, there was loads of UK disasters in the mid to late 80's. please feel free to add any ive missed

Bradford
Hillsborough
Clapham rail crash
M1 plane crash
Piper Alpha oil rig
Kings cross fire
marchoness ferry

9/11 would probably be the worst for me

 

[Simster]

1. Watching from two floors above a guy drunk out of his mind sitting on the edge of a third-floor balcony at a hotel in Ibiza trying to put his swimming trunks on and falling off, smashing to the ground by the pool and dying. Blood starting pouring out of his ears and everyone started screaming. I couldn't speak and went numb. I was 16

2. My mum suffering a heart attack and passing away while I was speaking to her on the phone from Japan two years ago.

These two are f***ing awful.

 

[Lady Whistledown]

In terms of things that actually involve us (as opposed to things you see on the news), I find it far more emotive to deal with someone who's alive but badly injured and suffering, than someone who's dead. Been to car accidents etc where someone's died and I just get the work head on and get on with what needs to be done. I hope this doesn't sound harsh, but if I'm dealing with a corpse, I can look on fairly objectively, the professional thought process kicks in, and it becomes almost a thing rather than a person. Obviously not in terms of the way you treat them, just in the sense of looking at it there in front of you. A live human being, screaming in pain or terror, on the other hand, is really hard to deal with, as it's always horrible to watch anyone suffering. All the jobs that really stick in my mind from work are those kind of ones.

 

[Pot noodles for everyone]

In terms of things that actually involve us (as opposed to things you see on the news), I find it far more emotive to deal with someone who's alive but badly injured and suffering, than someone who's dead. Been to car accidents etc where someone's died and I just get the work head on and get on with what needs to be done. I hope this doesn't sound harsh, but if I'm dealing with a corpse, I can look on fairly objectively, the professional thought process kicks in, and it becomes almost a thing rather than a person. Obviously not in terms of the way you treat them, just in the sense of looking at it there in front of you. A live human being, screaming in pain or terror, on the other hand, is really hard to deal with, as it's always horrible to watch anyone suffering. All the jobs that really stick in my mind from work are those kind of ones.

I'm a taxidermist by profession and completely agree with you here.

 

[Lady Whistledown]

I'm a taxidermist by profession and completely agree with you here.

...

 

[Danny-Boy]

Most of those that Bry mentions, plus a few more, but most of all it is 9/11. I can remember almost every detail of what I did on that day, the people I was with as the events unfolded and what I did afterwards, which is bizarre as it is now over ten years ago and I can barely remember exactly what I did on any day from last week.

This. I'm over 60 which is normally when you remember things in your youth and forget recent events, but like you I've got TOTAL recall of where I was and what I did on 9/11.

I told some old blokes that afternoon on my patch of allotments, who hadn't heard the news, that this would be the day that changed the world, nothing would ever be the same again. I was right.

 

[SeagullSongs]

Reading this thread has made me realise how 'lucky' I am to have never seen anything truly horrific first hand, but slightly uneasy that I have no recollection of relatively recent disasters like 9/11 (I was 7 at the time) and the 7/7 bombings.

 

[Danny-Boy]

Indeed. My Mum woke us up with a phone call around 7.30 am and simply said: "John's been murdered". I knew exactly who she meant and was devasted.

My Mum woke me up in 1974 one morning and said "I've got some terrible news for you." Without even asking I knew she meant that Graham Hill, to whom I was distantly related and treated as my family hero, was dead. There IS telepathy, particularly between mothers and their children.

 

[kevtherev]

Anyone mentioned the Paddington train crash, was on seconds from disaster the other day..Concorde air crash and the two space shuttle disasters.

 

[Falkor]

Dunno if its Shocking as no one died but that Hudson river landing was mental.

 

[Pot noodles for everyone]

Dunno if its Shocking as no one died but that Hudson river landing was mental.

Really? You ought to see my mother-in-law try to do a 3 point turn then.

 

[Danny-Boy]

Dunno if its Shocking as no one died but that Hudson river landing was mental.

Still remember the trauma when Rock was outed....

 

[terryberry1]

In my lifetime
Babes in the wood
Saddam Gassing his own people
Hurricane 87
Boxing Day Tsunami
9/11
7/7
Michael Jacksons death
Waiting 40minutes to get a pie and pint in a £100million state of the art stadium

 

[Danny-Boy]

In my lifetime
Babes in the wood
Saddam Gassing his own people
Hurricane 87
Boxing Day Tsunami
9/11
7/7
Michael Jacksons death
Waiting 40minutes to get a pie and pint in a £100million state of the art stadium

Is this a count down or a count up? The pie in the first on your list is sdtill out there....

 

[jevs]

In terms of things that actually involve us (as opposed to things you see on the news), I find it far more emotive to deal with someone who's alive but badly injured and suffering, than someone who's dead. Been to car accidents etc where someone's died and I just get the work head on and get on with what needs to be done. I hope this doesn't sound harsh, but if I'm dealing with a corpse, I can look on fairly objectively, the professional thought process kicks in, and it becomes almost a thing rather than a person. Obviously not in terms of the way you treat them, just in the sense of looking at it there in front of you. A live human being, screaming in pain or terror, on the other hand, is really hard to deal with, as it's always horrible to watch anyone suffering. All the jobs that really stick in my mind from work are those kind of ones.

My dad is a retired dog handler from Sussex police....over 35 years working central (Brighton mainly). He was pretty hardened to most of the "job" incidents although he found the people who threw themselves in front of trains fairly hard to stomach.

However, when he retired, he took up a little "non confrontational" part time job delivering picture frames up to London. Obviously, the deliveries were were to virtually the same customers each week so he got to know a few of the blokes quite well.

One day, he was outside talking to one of the blokes in the sunshine when an ex employee just walked up and stabbed the bloke my dad was talking to. He died in my dads arms.

It completely f***ed my old man up...he couldn't sleep, hit the bottle and eventually had to go on anti depressants and have councelling.

i found this quite bizare that after everything he's seen in his career, it was this that affected him the most. "It was because i knew the bloke who got stabbed...all the others were just work" he later explained.

 

[34064 Fighter Command]

Dunno if its Shocking as no one died but that Hudson river landing was mental.

I'd definitely agree with that - same as the guy who landed at Heathrow short of the runway a couple of years back when they lost power on approach ( ice formed in the fuel line and starved the engines ). I'm extremely glad pilots practice in simulators for every kind of eventuality.

I can still recall the loud bang, a sudden smell of burning in the passenger section, the plane instantly dropping several hundred feet and the massive surge from the port engine as the pilot corrected for the starboard one giving up. I was on the other side of the plane but people were saying they saw flames coming from the engine and on landing there was a huge hole in the side of the engine casing.

 

[NCBHA]

Being on the train when a bloke got his head knocked off on Clayton Tunnel - not nice

 

[DerbyGull]

Listening to some of these phone conversations shortly before they die is the saddest thing.

 

[Stat Brother]

I was about 40 miles away from this:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luby's_massacre