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What Really Scares You?

The air's too thin at that height, basically. Which is why high-altitude planes have huge engines and massive fuel tanks.
 
'The air's too thin at that height', yup, I do grasp that! :lol:

But why does that make them stall? And why wouldn't they restart?
 
*nods sagely*
Yup, so true.

I have an altitude-related machinery-failure story myself, curiously enough.

Years ago, I went to visit my brother in my diesel-powered van. When it was time to go home, it wouldn't start. We tried all sorts and even got the RAC out, to no avail.

In the end I got a lift home and hitched back there next day for the van, which started first time. :roll:

My bro lived on the top of a high hill, and this was late November. Come evening when it went cold, the diesel had 'gelled'. If Id coasted it down the hill and waited twenty minutes, I might have got home! :D
 
escargot1 said:
...
Come evening when it went cold, the diesel had 'gelled'. If Id coasted it down the hill and waited twenty minutes, I might have got home! :D
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My dad was a bus conductor in the 1950s-70s. During the winter months, buses were extremely reluctant to start first thing in the morning (5 am or so), because the diesel wouldn't readily vapourise in the cold air.

So the fitters (mechanics) would apply some heat - a burning oily rag wired to the end of a stick - either externally, under the fuel tank, or internally, in the fuel tank....

I think that watching someone open the filler cap and poke a burning rag into the tank counts as scary, even if it is actually safe...
 
escargot1 said:
'The air's too thin at that height', yup, I do grasp that! :lol:

But why does that make them stall? And why wouldn't they restart?
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|Oh, I see what you mean :). Jets need a guaranteed volume per second of air to function. At lower altitudes, the air density can supply this with no problems, but in a rarified atmosphere, the turbine can't get enough air in per second, and will effectively start gasping for air: as the turbine also provides the motive power to draw fuel into the engine, if it starts to falter it'll stall.

As for restarting, IIRC fighters can usually manouevre themselves into a dive, and often can restart the engines, but commercial aircraft aren't remotely as nimble and so have to glide and hope for the best. Why it didn't happen in this case I know not.
 
re:face in window

Here's a story that people that fear seeing"the face in the window" should enjoy. I lived with my grandparents from a very young age. We lived in a somewhat suburb area near Syracuse NY. Our part being a bit less suburb what with small forest patches of trees and a small swampy area which were behing my grandfather's workshop. He used to weld and such so in the summer he'd do alot of his work at night when it was cooler. In the back of the workshop were several large windows. One night my grandfather was pounding on a hunk of metal he was welding with a small hand sledge hammer that looked alot like Thor's hammer. It was after dark and the crickets and frogs were all making their sounds. My grandfather started getting that odd creepy feeling up the back when you feel someone is watching you. This kept up for several minutes until my grandfather grew annoyed by this and suddenly spun around to see a face looking at him in one of the back windows where the wooded area was. His reaction was to hurl the hammer throught the window at the face. He heard a loud yelp of pain and the sound of someone crashing through the underbrush. Word got around during the course of the week that this guy that lived in the area had been casing places at night,siphoning gas,ect and apparently wound up in the emergency room with some of his front teeth smashed in :lol:
 
When we were students, 20 years ago, we used to get ourselves spooked, when stoned, by gazing long into mirrors. You exprerience a loss of focus and see strange images of yourselve through the stronger eye. As a youth, I used to sometimes do it with people's faces.
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I had a similar experience many years ago when expirimenting with lsd. I have been told all my life that i look like my father, but as it is when you look at yourself you see...yourself. I always believed people but never saw it. This particular night after taking lsd i was looking into the mirror, and suddenly all at one i saw my father's face, not mine. I wasn't scared at all, i thought it was pretty cool though lol. Another night i was staring at my pal, and his face turned into Jimi Hendrix! Staring long and hard, it's true can cause strange visual effects.
 
Loved the one Mosugoji :lol:

As to seeing your dad in your face. I had exactly the same happening on magic mushrooms. I was standing in our bathroom with the lights off, only light from through the door came in and kept looking at my face which was doing really exciting things [without me moving ;) ], then suddenly I could see all that was my dad in me and it got very strong. I thought it was pretty nifty.
 
I arranged to meet one of my adult kids in an indoor public place a few years ago.

I stood in the appointed spot for a minute or two, waiting, and thinking about nothing in particular.

Then I glanced up towards where I expected my son to appear, and saw my own face moving towards me! :shock:
I thought, why is my face over there, looking at me...

It was of course my son, who is 6' tall, slim and auburn, whereas I'm 5'5", portly and dark.

It was still my own face though. Never realised before how much he resembled me. So it goes both ways. :D
 
DerekH16 said:
I think that watching someone open the filler cap and poke a burning rag into the tank counts as scary, even if it is actually safe...
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Who told you it was "safe" exactly?
 
achocolyptic said:
(My school was great for Public Information Films. I remember one about railway safety where a kid got squished under a train.)
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I remember it well... my primary school used to troop us into the hall and make us watch that one. It was called 'Robbie' and was a cautionary tale about playing on the railway lines.
I can still hear the narrator's voice as he gravely informed us that "He broke every bone in his body... and lost both his feet." I also remember thinking that it must all be complete bunk as one couldn't possibly break every bone in one's body; what, every rib? The little bones in my ear? Every bone in my wrists and ankles and fingers and toes?
It pretty much threw doubt on the whole film for me; luckily there were no railway lines near my home!
 
Got a fright the other night . I was leaving the local hospital about 10pm , and had to go down the stairs . The stairwell was unlit , and I came across an empty wheelchair at the top of the stairs . Totally creeped me out and I made a sharp exit.
 
first post

I'm new to the board, so I thought I'd ease myself in by responding to this post.

I've seen plenty of mentions of TV programmes on this thread, but, so far, nobody's mentioned two classics: The Stone Tape and Threads. I find Nigel Kneale one of the scariest TV writers because he has the ability to turn the screw on you bit by bit, gradually ratcheting up the tension until you think he can't go any further and then, suddenly, without even appearing to blink, he moves into territory that's way scarier than anything you could possibly have imagined yourself.

Threads of course deals with much more down-to-earth fears than Neale's work - although I would love to see Neale's own post apocalyptic work, The Road (now lost, sadly) - but it's the utter powerlessness of the local government officials that makes it truly chilling; as someone who used to work in local government, their incompetence, their petty bickering and their utter lack of preparation is all too familiar. I also find the scene where the mother and father are suffering from severe radiation sickness inside their woefully inadequate (yet government sanctioned) fallout shelter absolutely terrifying. WHY did the government bother releasing those Protect and Survive leaflets? Wouldn't it almost have been more responsible to tell you to stand as near to the blast zone as possible?

Oh yeah... I used to be terrified by Grotbags from The Pink Windmill as a kid, but that's a fear too ancient to put into words :lol:

A couple of non-TV related 'irrational' fears:

  • Giant waves: colossal walls of water towering over me, a lifelong recurring nightmare (I'm 29). (RIP the people who died in the Boxing Day 2004 tsunami)
  • Having my jaw bone torn off. For some reason, this fills me with more dread than I can possibly describe.

Hope I haven't let myself down with this first post...
 
Re: first post

frank_poulankh said:
A couple of non-TV related 'irrational' fears:

  • Giant waves: colossal walls of water towering over me, a lifelong recurring nightmare (I'm 29).
Hope I haven't let myself down with this first post...
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Not at all - I can relate totally to the wave fear. I can think of few things more terrifying than staring up at a huge wall of dark water. Makes me shudder just picturing it. Conversely, I remember a film from distant childhood where a ship was revolving around the steepening sides of an enormous whirlpool, getting drawn deeper in with each revolution. That was awful, really frightening.

I suppose both these mental images relate to the same fear of being suddenly way out of one's depth in an unfriendly mass of water. Likewise, although I'm a strongish swimmer, I don't like to swim in the sea beyond the point where I can still see the bottom. The thing with deep ocean is - you don't know what's down there. Irrational, though? I think not.
 
I agree I think I saw Peter Weir's The Last Wave at an impressionable age.
 
Skynet~ said:
Things that scare me.
around at night,i sometimes hate searching around in radio,
Espically AM,i sometimes pick up weird radio stations and i remember last week finding a station{or some static}containing nothing but heartbeat sounds.
Kinda freaked me out that did.
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I was driving home from work a few nights ago, and decided to turn on the radio (owing to the awesomely crappy condition of the radio, I can only get AM). Whilst searching for something halfway decent to use as traveling music, I heard a few bars of some long-forgotten Bee Gees nonsense and then - YOU ARE GOING TO DIE! YES! YOU! I MEAN YOU! Silence. WTF? The brothers Gibb resumed singing shortly thereafter, but I left it at the same spot on the dial in an attempt to figure out just what I'd just heard. Some more disco-type music, then the same voice inviting listeners to attend his local church.

I think...not.
 
They were obviously opting for the hard sell...
 
Scaring people into piety. Yep, that'll work.
 
Yup, it's quite easy to die when you're driving and something makes you jump out of your skin! :lol:
 
no no no..

live life like you're gonna die,
because you're gonna.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news,
but you're gonna die.
 
I realised that what really scares me is, as I should know better, that I can still behave in a manner that demonstrates that I have not really learnt all the lessons I thought I had. :oops:
 
Re: first post

frank_poulankh said:
Oh yeah... I used to be terrified by Grotbags from The Pink Windmill as a kid, but that's a fear too ancient to put into words :lol:
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There are many things from 80s kids TV that scare the crap outta me.

The Black Rabbit from Watership Down being the No 1, that whole film just fills me with dread and makes me wanna roll up into a ball and die! And it was aimed at kids! :shock:
 
Couple of things that scare me are sudden loud noises, and the thought of losing my mind and having something else (somebody else) take over, but everybody would think it was still me.

:gaga:
 
coldelephant said:
Couple of things that scare me are sudden loud noises, and the thought of losing my mind and having something else (somebody else) take over, but everybody would think it was still me.

:gaga:
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That's what does it for me - worse than death is the idea of going mad.
 
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