“Do it wrong once, and that’s it, you’re dead.”

I'm a Senior Staff Writer based in New York City, where I've been covering classic BuzzFeed-style content since 2020.

We used some replies from the BuzzFeed Community, as well as replies from the original Reddit threads and these additional threads.

"I used to live in Florida, and I played golf. If my ball landed in a pond, but close to the edge of the grass, I thought twice about going to get it. Even with my ball extender. I also didn't walk close to the edge of a pond when out for a walk, nor would I allow my dog to get anywhere near the pond. Gators are fast. In Florida, you either swim with gators or swim with the sharks."

"It's B.cereus food poisoning. It loves room-temperature rice and produces toxins that can't be removed by reheating.

My apartment’s fridge died once, but over the course of about two days, so we didn’t realize right away. My husband brought over the container of rice he had made the day before, and it was yellowish and sort of crusty-looking. I grow B.cereus at work; it looked so similar, it immediately made me realize something was horribly wrong. 🤮 I'm so glad we didn’t end up sick."

"Also, a single teaspoon of liquid in your lungs can drown you, and it's possible to drown in one inch of water, much like people choking on their vomit."

"I'm a competitive (in my age class) swimmer and a wild swimmer, and I tell you, I'm a LOT more cautious now than I ever was when I just knew how to do a bit of doggy paddle. I sometimes wonder how I survived back in the day. Even so, a couple of years ago, I got into trouble in a river about two feet deep — exactly like you say, it didn't feel bad walking through it, but I slipped and went under, and the weight/angle/speed of the water made it VERY hard to get up. I inhaled a lot of river; it was not fun."

"Yup. This killed my mom last year. She tripped and hit her head on her iron patio table."

"Some people might just assume the kid would pass it eventually and not seek medical attention. If you think your kid ate Orbeez, take them to the ER ASAP."

"Several die each year in my area from selfies on rock ledges in the mountains."

"Honestly, blood clots after an injury need their own PSA or something. I've heard so many horror stories of people having a fall/injury that’s bruised badly and just shrugging it off, only to develop a blood clot a few days or weeks later."

"My neighborhood has seen a huge uptick of fires caused by people charging their e-bikes indoors. Homes, businesses, lives gone."

"The water vaporizes from the heat and explodes out of the oil, creating a big plume of steam that can carry oil with it and create a huge fucking fireball. Absolutely do not use water on a grease fire. Put a metal lid on it (glass could break from the heat), and/or dump baking soda on it.

MythBusters has a great episode on this. Here's part of one, where they use barely any water and get a huge fireball. And this one shows a snippet of where they use more water in a larger pot before they show the real experiment."

"...Missing the crucial part 'even when unplugged'."

"That whole 'unplug it, wait 10 seconds, then plug it back in' is because those capacitors hold on to enough power that they may still be keeping whatever gremlins are in your electronics alive. Depending on the capacitor, you could get a fatal zap even well after that."

"I took apart old telephones so I could connect the receivers and speakers with wires and batteries to make my own little telecoms systems.

One time I touched a capacitor without knowing what it was, and it shocked the bejesus out of me.

It’s a really scary thing, being shocked by something that’s unplugged. Suddenly, you don’t want to poke around inside electronics anymore."

"The old style CRT monitors and TVs as well."

"Microwaves, too. They're cheap to make but take lots of power, so their capacitors are relatively large. That's why you should never repair one at home, and it's honestly not worth the risk even for a professional for something so cheap."

"Certain electrical appliances and devices, ESPECIALLY TVs. They hold their charge long after being unplugged. Might seem easy to go in and repair or replace a part, but you'll be dead before you hit the floor.

Always assume that any large appliance can and will kill you if you touch the wrong thing, even unplugged."

"Good one. People don't read the drug info packets. Even worse, they stopped including the info packets recently. It's asinine. Tons of people don't know that grapefruit, for example, can completely screw up the dosage of their meds."

"I recently made a joke to a group of friends who are all on at least one antidepressant each about some people who can't have grapefruit. They all stared at me, confused, before moving on. They didn't seem to understand it. I've been worried they dont know they can't have grapefruit themselves. 😳"

"No grapefruit, no blood orange, and for certain medications, you have to be careful with iron supplements, too. Guess who didn't tell me! Right, the pharmacist. I found out by looking online and talking with people on the same medication"

"Research your pain meds; something as simple as mixing Advil with Aleve could have bad side effects, possibly killing you."

"After my back surgery, I was on a lot of drugs and had no experience. I didn't realize just *how* narcotics killed you (basically turning off your diaphragm). I was on a lot of prescription meds and unwittingly took Percocet, muscle relaxers, and Doxylamine succinate (a sleep aid).

I woke up several times feeling like I was coming up from the deep end of a pool, gasping. I was so confused, and I JUST KEPT GOING BACK TO SLEEP. The next day, I was googling it, and I realized that for about four hours, I was absolutely walking a tightrope over the abyss of death and just kept going back to sleep because I didn't understand it."

"A bunch of kids threw a piece of concrete down as I went under an overpass. I was very lucky that it landed on the hood of my car and not the windshield. I was livid. Don't these kids know they can KILL someone doing shit like this?"

"Last year in Colorado, a group of teenagers threw 3–5-pound rocks at car windshields until they managed to kill a young woman. Sometimes they do know they can kill someone, but they think their personal entertainment is more valuable than life itself."

"Abandoned mines are the worst for this. Groundwater seeps through the rock and leaches sulfides from the decaying host rock, creating puddles of hydrogen sulfide gas. You walk through it, and you're fine, but the gas gets disturbed from the water, so on your way out, it gets you. The signs that they put on abandoned mines are correct: 'Stay out, stay alive.'"

"My cousin is a paramedic but was on maternity leave when her partner and replacement responded to a call at a mine. Two workers were down. One paramedic went down the ladder and instantly passed out. The other ran after him and also passed out. They all were pretty much dead immediately."

"A kid I went to school with died this way. The fumes knocked him out, and he fell into the silo, where he became trapped and inevitably suffocated to death. I believe he was 13–14 years old. It shattered our small community."

"In my MSHA training, our trainer told us about a farm near her house that had a manure pit. A son had gone into the pit, not realizing the methane gas buildup, and passed out. His father chased after him, thinking he could save him, and also passed out. Both died within minutes. Never chase after someone into unknown chemicals"

"That happened in Italy recently. A vineyard hobbyist went into a fermentation shed. When he didn't show back up outside, another person went to see what happened to him. Both guys were found dead."

"I was cleaning my dad's old room with my cousin, and my grandparents turned the room into a wine fermentation room. We cleaned it, sat around for a bit, and my grandma came to us. She freaked out, told us it was dangerous, and forced us to go out. When we took a breath of clean air, we had the worst headache known to mankind. If it wasn't for my grandma, God bless her soul, we would've been dead. Don't fuck with fermentation!"

"I clean beer lines. This happens in beer coolers due to leaks. Go change a keg, wind up dead."

"For everyone asking about the surface not being the surface — I am referring to a phenomenon known as a halocline, which occurs when waters of different densities mix and separate into different layers that form the illusion of the water’s surface from below. Here’s a Reddit post with suitable, awesome (terrifying) images to illustrate it."

"Fuck all of that. I went potholing once when I was a young teen. I did not know what 'potholing' meant — they told me we'd be going into a cave, and of course, being a kid, I was like, FUCK YEAH! COOL! I'VE NEVER DONE THAT!

Potholing, as it turned out in this instance, meant going into *very narrow* caves. Specifically, crawling through squeeze after squeeze after squeeze so tight you could scarcely breathe, in air that did not move, encased by millennia of rock that absorbed all sound. And there was nothing anyone could really do to help you if you started freaking out because there was only the person in front of you and the person behind. I stupidly thought I was being unreasonable and just needed to 'man the fuck up,' which is how I found myself balls-deep underground having the first real panic attack of my young life, trapped in a squeeze.

Some people live for that stuff. I liked to think I could be one of those people, but I am not ashamed to admit that I most certainly am not."

"My kids banged heads once while playing, and came running to me. One was crying, and he had a little goose egg on his head.

Fast-forward a few weeks, and the bump wasn’t going away. I took him to the pediatrician, who was slightly puzzled and sent us to a pediatric neurosurgeon at the children's hospital. We had some scans and got a call to come back (which is never good news), and we were told he had a rare sort of cancerous lesion in his skull.

A year of chemo, and he was fine. This was nine years ago, and he's still doing great, but his oncologist said that injury has been reported with this type of cancer-like lesion. The way my brain processes it is that the cells that went to fix the injury just didn’t leave properly and instead continued to grow abnormally. It's very rare, but still, it happened."

"Heart failure is what gets you, and if you are already primed for a heart attack due to either unhealthy habits or genetics, dehydration can kill you in seconds. Some drop dead of a widow maker right there on the spot. 

Dehydration truly is a gamble, so be cautious with it. It happens a lot in the summer months as people pick up alcohol and energy drinks instead of electrolytes."

"Sepsis! People always think that if your wound gets infected, it'll clear up. Seriously, always go to the doctor and ask. My uncle passed away from sepsis a couple of years ago because he thought it was normal and fine that a cut he got still hurt and hadn't healed properly!"

"Disregarding minor injuries. I had a very, very small scratch from a screwdriver, which got infected after washing the dishes. Turned into golden staph in a day or so, and I came sooooo close to an amputation.

Ten days in the hospital later, it finally broke. I carry betadine everywhere now."

"Note: If you (like me) accidentally do not add enough milk in one bottle, your baby will be fine. Baby may have a tummy ache and some diarrhea, but they will be FINE. If you notice while they are eating, just add in whatever amount of formula you skipped in their bottle and have them finish it. If they drank the bottle and you didn't notice, just add whatever amount of formula you skipped in the next bottle and take steps so you don't do it again.

I now just count out loud how many scoops I am pouring into the bottle and how many ounces of water."

"An allergic reaction to something you have been exposed to countless times before. My mom was in her 40s when she suddenly had a reaction to a bee sting and almost died."

"You can plug a space heater into an extension cord; it just has to be rated for enough amps. Your general, all-purpose, ungrounded with three or more outlets cord won't cut it, but a thick, grounded, single outlet cord may. Or just anything that is 14 or lower gauge wire (the same as your wall outlet)."

"This is why you CHEW your FOOD, THOROUGHLY! Not just a chew and swallow the whole thing, people."

"Also, if you are choking in a public place, do not go to the bathroom to avoid 'causing a scene.' Cause that scene, someone will help you and probably save your life. Most people who die by choking are found in bathrooms because they didn’t want to disturb anybody while they were actively dying."

"Red kidney beans, but probably others, too."

"Lima beans are another. They contain cyanide, but unlike other plants/plant parts (like apple seeds or peach pits), where it would be really difficult to consume enough to have an effect, undercooked lima beans are pretty palatable. Modern, commercial lima beans have a pretty low amount, but it still would only take a couple of pounds.

How do I know this? I used to snack on raw lima beans while I was gardening. Luckily, I learned to stop doing that before I learned the hard way."

"Having held one at Lone Pines, those adorable bastards have steak knives for hands and get scared of falling really easily."

"I was vacationing once in Turks, and the resort had coconut trees everywhere, even by the walking paths. Those nuts were massive bombs, and the trees' height gave them the kill speed they needed. One idiot walked off the path with a cocktail — they took him away the next morning after being knocked out. I have no idea what happened to him, but sheesh!"

"I knew someone who got hit on the head with a coconut. She survived, but had migraines for the next year."

"People should really just stop mixing bleach with anything. There’s a reason it's such a strong cleaner."

"Vinegar should not be mixed with bleach, hydrogen peroxide, ethanol, rubbing alcohol, or baking soda. I just make it a point not to mix my cleaning chemicals, or at least google what is safe to mix, making sure the info is from a reliable source."

"Don't mix bleach and ammonia. A friend of mine died from that. He had his first job in middle school and was mopping the floor and mixing the two chemicals to make a super-effective floor cleaner. Instead, he made chlorine gas."

Submissions have been edited for length/clarity/accuracy.