20 Everyday Things That Can Be Potentially Fatal If You’re Not Careful

We may not be living in a survivor camp, but there are still many unexpected things that can happen to take us out. Simple everyday acts we engage in can go horribly wrong in just a moment. The best precaution is knowledge and awareness. 

#1 Balloons

Image source: Smart-Deer-72, Madison Oren

Smart-Deer-72 said:
Balloons. Specifically kids. I was watching a video about how a lot of kids die from playing with balloons, you know how kids are all dramatic and breathe really hard in and out to blow them up? Sometimes they suck in so hard that they suck the balloon into their throat, lodging it in there. And cpr doesn’t work once they stop breathing because you’re just inflating and deflating the balloon in the throat and the air can’t pass through. I don’t even have kids but I’ve been telling everyone not to let their kids play with balloons since I learned this. I forget her name but she is a mortician who posts on Instagram about common things that can [end] you that you don’t realize.

2boredtocare said:
My brother is an ER doctor. He drilled it into my head when the kids were younger to never, EVER, let them play with balloons that weren’t already blown up. That and trampolines keep him in pretty good business.

#2 Potatoes

Image source: Zandromex527, Pixabay

Potatoes. They release toxic chemicals when they go bad. People have died from this.

[Edit]: Lots of people seem interested in potato toxin lol. If you want to learn more, check out solanine, which is a type of neurotoxic alcaloid. Alcaloids are a world in and of itself, they’re really interesting to learn about imo.

#3 Vending Machines

Image source: TrailerParkPrepper, Aleksandar Pasaric

TrailerParkPrepper said:
Rocking the vending machine because your Kit-Kat bar got stuck.

C205- said:
In high school, a kid named Garrett kicked the vending machine glass in the cafeteria because his Doritos got stuck. The glass broke and ended up embedding itself into his leg, leaving a bloody mess reminiscent of a horror movie. He ended up having to get his leg amputated along with being expelled from the only public high school in a 50-mile radius. The medics that arrived on the scene were stunned.

#4 Falls, Slips, Hitting Your Head On A Vanity, Or Bathroom Fixture

Image source: illswollowyoursoul, Skitterphoto

illswollowyoursoul said:
Falls, slips, hitting your head on a vanity, or bathroom fixture. Tried to rescue some poor old soul who slipped in the shower and got impaled through the eye by a toilet brush. Must have been there over a week the blood was more like tar on the floor and flies were in and out of his ears and mouth.

357Magnum said:
Falls [end] 32,000 people per year. That’s an incredibly high amount. Yet people still get on ladders without someone to steady it, etc, and think nothing of it. So you’re MUCH more likely to be [ended] in a household fall than a gun accident, but people will spend a lot more time worried about gun safety than general ladder safety. Which is crazy. You should worry about both, and you should be just as diligent in climbing a ladder as you are when handling a firearm.

People will be sure to lock up their gun but then climb a ladder with no spotter. They’ll wear eye protection at the gun range but not when operating power tools, etc.

#5 Driving

Image source: BigMoney5594, Nick Fewings

BigMoney5594 said:
People are not nearly careful enough driving vehicles. You are operating a 2,000lb bullet, please stop texting and pay attention

Catsaretheworst69 said:
Isn’t it frightening to think two people say one 16 and one 75 could be driving their 2000+ lbs vehicles 60mph at each other. Only to be separated by A LINE OF F*****G PAINT ON THE ROAD and not have a care in the world.

MoneyMakingMatt said:
I read once that driving is an agreement between people that don’t know each other to not do anything that will possibly [end] them

Luke_Cold_Lyle said:
Until you encounter someone who doesn’t give a shit about the agreement, and it suddenly turns into one person weaving and speeding through traffic and everyone else accommodating that a*****e out of necessity to avoid disaster.

#6 Poor Dental Hygiene

Image source: SomeRandomUser00, Rudi Fargo

SomeRandomUser00 said:
Poor dental hygiene and gum infections hit the brain fairly quickly and can be fatal before you even knew something was happening.

DumpsterJuice2023 said:
True stuff.. this just [ended] my cousin.

Timely_Morning2784 said:
Omg, I’m so sorry! I’m a Registered Dental Assistant and I’ve been really scared for more patients than you’d believe over my 36 yrs in the field. Sent 2 different ppl directly to the ER when we saw them last year.

alksreddit said:
One of the ways dental infections [cause danger] is by spreading to the soft tissue of the neck. In some situations this literally causes the airway to close and if you don’t get sent to the ER right away, they won’t be able to secure an airway before you choke to death.

cobo10201 said:
Infections in the mouth seed bacteria to the heart, which causes an infection called endocarditis. This does not cause heart attacks but rather can lead to heart failure which is a totally separate disease. Not to mention typical symptoms of infection (fever, chills, etc.)

SomeRandomUser00 said:
Brush your teeth and talk to a dentist, most will try to work with you on the money side if you don’t have insurance. If not try contacting a dental school near you, they are often looking for test subjects, I mean patients to work on for training.

#7 Mixing Cleaning Supplies

Image source: SegaNaLeqa, Kelly Sikkema

SegaNaLeqa said:
Mixing cleaning supplies. Cleaners are usually dangerous chemicals, mixing certain chemicals can create dangerous gases. One of the common cleaner mistakes people make is dish soap and bleach, a lot of dish soaps have ammonia in them, and you don’t want to be around the gas that ammonia and chlorine make. Also, don’t clean your kitty litters with bleach, use chlorine-free disinfectants instead. Cat pee naturally has ammonia in it and can cause a reaction too.

Sea-Kitchen3779 said:
We found out the hard way at work one night that bleach and vinegar do the same thing.

spinachie1 said:
People should really just stop mixing bleach with anything. There’s a reason it’s such a strong cleaner.

#8 Mixing Medication

Image source: StrikeOk9626, SHVETS production

StrikeOk9626 said:
Once read about someone who died when they had the flu – they were medicating with over-the-counter cold and flu medicine and drinking multiple cups of lemsip, one after the other, not realizing lemsip also contained painkillers. they died of an overdose, iirc.

FigNinja said:
Paracetamol? That’s acetaminophen (brand name Tylenol) here in the US. It doesn’t take much above the regular dosage to severely, even fatally, damage the liver. People think it’s totally safe because it’s been in so many over-the-counter preparations for ages. Mixed products like cold relief medicines are an easy way to overdose without realizing it. Here in the US, OD on acetaminophen causes 56K emergency visits, 2600 hospital stays, and 500 deaths on average per year. Many of these are unintentional overdoses.

#9 Blue Ringed Octopus

Image source: Star4259, Rickard Zerpe

Star4259 said:
In Australia, the Blue Ringed Octopus. I did a biology project about these when I was in elementary school.

Interesting_Pudding9
Iirc the reason they’re dangerous isn’t that people aren’t aware that Blue Ringed Octopus are deadly poisonous. It’s because they’re not aware they don’t always have blue rings, they just show them when they’re stressed. So people find little octopuses in tide pools and such and think they must be fine since they don’t have any blue rings.

#10 Hippos

Image source: Famous_Reaction_5383, Vadim Lu

Hippos
Apparently, they [end] about 500 people a year – more than double the headcount for lions?

Plus hippos have stamina. They can chase you for a long time and run at around 18 1/2 miles an hour… Which is faster than the world record pace for the men’s 800-meter race. Which for reference is a f**k load faster than the average Redditor.

TLDR: stay the f**k away from hippos.

#11 Insect Bites And Stings

Image source: Midas_Artflower, Jimmy Chan

Midas_Artflower said:
Bites from the wrong flea/mosquito/tick have been decimating mankind since forever.

BirdsLikeSka said:
If your tick bite gets a bullseye shape around it, go to the doctor, possible Lyme disease

If your spider bite gets raised and white, go to the doctor, possible necrotic lesions from recluse.

Midas_Artflower said:
Lyme disease is absolutely no joke & if left alone long enough, a brown recluse bite will do the kind of damage plastic surgery cannot repair…

Some spiders are extremely beneficial, no matter how much I hate the little dears… My dislike is well-founded, tho, as was bitten once and still bear the scar, decades later…

#12 Fights

Image source: jackthestripper17, alexandre saraiva carniato

Fights
Humans are squishy unless they aren’t. Somehow we have evolved to either have the durability of a bouncy ball or a glass bauble and its a coin flip on whether you bounce or shatter.

So: Fights. People think it’s like in the movies, and sure, maybe sometimes things go okay and you work it out and everythings chill, but if you pick a fight in real life you had better be very ready for the possibility that you could [end] someone, even (ESPECIALLY) if you don’t mean to. If you shove someone and they fall wrong, they can die. If they hit their head, or YOU hit them in the head wrong (if you hit someone in the nose just right, a bone can pierce brain, the temple is a very vulnerable spot, etc), they can die. People don’t always fight fair in real life, there’s every chance they have a knife or keys or rings or even a gun, or they pick up a f*****g shovel and throw it at your head like that video that went viral several years ago. This isn’t a “I’m a badass who could totally [end] someone” thing, it’s more a survivor bias thing. On average? Yeah, you’ll probably be okay. But I’d rather not take the chance, personally.

#13 Taking Selfies

Image source: allhumanstogether, Farhan Ullah Baig

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

#14 Pregnancy And Childbirth

Image source: yogisnark, Leah Kelley

yogisnark said:
Pregnancy and childbirth… it’s literally one of the most dangerous things women can do in their lifetime.

BarnacleGo0ose said:
“The US has the highest maternal death rate of any developed nation, according to the Commonwealth Fund and the latest data from the World Health Organization.”

#15 Fermentation In Confined Spaces

Image source: N3cr0sis_, cottonbro studio

Fermentation in confined spaces. Fermentation releases Co2 and in a poorly ventilated room, it can be fatal.

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 a bit around, and my grandma came to us. She freaked out, told us it’s dangerous and forced us to go out, and 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.

Fermentation is badass in every possible way, don’t f**k with fermentation!

#16 Garage Door Springs

Image source: defyinglogicsl, Tim Vrtiska

defyinglogicsl said:
Garage door springs. Also, garage doors are not as light as people think. They weigh hundreds or thousands of pounds depending on the type and size of a door and all that weight is counterbalanced by tension on those springs. If you don’t know what you are doing do not attempt to repair a garage door.

xmod14 said:
Speaking as someone who has set spring tension in these types of doors, f**k everything about roll-up door springs. I don’t want to be within 5 miles if one decides to detonate.

DisposableTires said:
People seriously underestimate how much kinetic force we routinely just…..hide inside a curly bit of metal.

The springs inside my air brake cans are marked with a warning: “tampering WILL cause serious injury and death”. No weaseling around with maybes for the air can, nope, immediate +5 to the find out scale of f**k around/find out.

#17 Manure

Image source: P44, Rob Bertholf

P44 said:
Manure. When it is collected in a poorly ventilated space and you climb down there for any reason, you can pass out from lack of air. If someone notices this and instead of calling for help, they just follow you, there can be more than one fatality.

Reduntu said:
Speaking of farmer ones, a lot of farmers die when they fall into corn/grain silos and can’t get out.

#18 Elderberries

Image source: CoffeeCactus92, oatsy40

CoffeeCactus92 said:
Elderberries are poisonous until you boil them. My mom works at a school where a teacher let some kids eat them because she didn’t know they were poisonous. Red puke everywhere. I also had a friend post a picture on Facebook of her son eating them.

H_Mc said:
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.

#19 Space Heaters

Image source: deckpumps_n_deldos, HS You

deckpumps_n_deldos said:
Don’t plug your space heater into an extension cord.

TearyEyeBurningFace said:
It’s fine if you get like a 12 or 14 ga extension cord. Those 22ga cheap ones are what bite you.

defyinglogicsl said:
Running a power wire for a car audio amplifier in your door jamb. Every time you open and shut your door you are pinching the wire between two pieces of metal. Eventually, it wears through the insulation and if you are lucky the fuse blows or the battery explodes before your car catches on fire. The wire is supposed to be run through a rubber or plastic grommet in the firewall.

#20 Fire-Related Stuff

Image source: designer_sheets, cottonbro studio

designer_sheets said:
I know of a few things, all fire-related:

* Pinched electrical wires – having, for example, a table leg or something on top of a wire creates a hot spot that can eventually start a fire
* Toasters under cabinets – if you have a toaster on your countertop, and have cabinets mounted above that countertop, leaving the toaster directly under the cabinets while in use is also a fire hazard. be sure to pull it out from beneath the cabinets before use
* Not sure if this one is still unknown by most people, but I’ll add it just in case – water does not put out a grease fire, it makes it worse because the grease/oil is less dense and floats on top of the water and continues to burn, so pouring water on a grease fire is likely to just spread the grease and fire around. baking soda, a lid/cover of some kind, or of course a fire extinguisher will all smother the fire without spreading it around

joshrice said:
Yes, but also 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.