Before the collapse the guy in the middle tries to push back the wall from collapsing and then we can see another person(another camera man) legs who wasn't in hole when the camera man falls into the hole.
What? None of that happened. I just frame by framed the last 3 seconds. Once the camera moves you can't really make out much of anything but there are a few frames with enough lack of motion blur that you can see a few things: once the guy puts his hand up you see one frame before motion where maybe one little piece of dirt clod maybe separate on top, but at the moment of the blur there is no major visible cracking or sinking. Then the phone drops quickly down to the grass, it's all blurry for this part and the next resolved frame is cameraman standing at what looks to be the same height as the guys, probably in the pit, maybe slightly above and he's sitting next to the pit about to slide in to help. Then it blurs and the final frames look like they're back out of the pit but kinda only a foot above the ground and the camera starts moving towards the forest for maybe 3 or 4 frames before the video ends.
My assumption based on what I saw:
The guy in pit wasn't trying to actively hold a breaking wall he saw, he was instinctually reaching to brace it in case more DID fall.
The camera man didn't fall or drop his phone, he jumped into the pit to help, holding his phone in his left hand while doing so, using that hand to brace himself as he hopped down into the pit.
He lands on his feet in the pit with the phone still in his hand, he needs both hands to help so he turns to the right and reaches up and sets his phone in the grass outside the pit. That's why the video cuts where it does, his phone didn't break or anything, it's just the rest of the video is the phone camera facing the ground and recording nothing.
No reason to assume these guys didn't make it out ok. Initial decision aside, everyone helping was acting pretty quickly and intelligently, no bad decision making on their part as far as I can see.
I train novice operators. To make them take the weight of dirt seriously, I have a bucket full of dirt which I get them to lift. Most people can lift it but it’s not light. Then I ask them to imagine maybe 2 or 3 of those buckets on their chest. Then I tell them that 1 cubic meter is equivalent to fifty of those buckets.
I often do work in trenches and confined space entry. Engulfment is a terrifying way to die. The
weight of dirt can compress your lungs so you can’t breath, even if your face is not buried
As a rule of thumb, if there's a specific word for it like that, it's probably something very, very bad. "Deglove" is another particularly nasty example of words-you-don't-want-to-experience.
I’ve heard of suffocation fatalities where they were only buried to the bottom of the ribcage, but there was enough compression to prevent the diaphragm from moving down.”
Engulfment is a race to see which horrible mode of death wins.
Asphyxiation (basically drowning in dirt or grain) still holds first place, then the order is: crushing (which has your example of impeded lung function but also the delightful competition to see if the arteries, heart or brain fails first); lack of oxygen; severe injury (typically a spinal injury).
Even more delightfully, being engulfed whilst wearing a safety harness is just another terrible way to die, as the harness suspends the person whilst the weight of the engulfment kills the person.
I am becoming more and more convinced half the comments on this website are actual shitty LLMs. Because this comment seems like something a Reddit user would say in response to the top comment, but isn’t actually reflected in the video at all. It’s just making a guess. Fuck sake.
I don't disagree, but on the flip side reddit has always had users making terrible assumptions and overconfident statements in response to things they don't know about.
Everyone who knows knows it's going to start May 21st 2033, need to set your reminder farther out. 6 months out is just when the great European firestorm hits that sets the stage
Yep, any trench deeper than your knee can injure or kill you. You might get away with it a few times but if soil conditions change you won’t see it coming.
I assume steepness of the sides is also a crucial factor; presumably it varies depending on soil type, etc, but is there a particular angle of the sides of a ditch where it definitely won't cave in on you under any circumstances if it's at least that shallow?
I believe I recall a story, possibly from a book called 'The Ancient Engineers' by L Sprague De Camp, about some europeans trying to dig a ditch in the desert a specific width and depth and having constant problems with it caving in because they didn't really consider that different soils have different critical angles of repose.
The locals however knew from long experience that sand has an angle of repose of around 33 degrees and just started digging at the surface about three times as wide and tapered in as they dug, so at the depth they wanted the level area in the center was the correct width.
I'm probably misremembering that , but it was a phrase and story that stuck with me for some reason. There's something about knowing a wall will fail eventually, no matter how it is built, and building that failure into the planning, that resonates with me.
I think the point at which it won’t cave in is sort of the defining feature of a “trench,” which is to say a trench by definition has walls steeper than the theoretical tipping point at which collapse isn’t possible.
I'm an environmental scientist and learned this during training. I'm not sure who in the field is allowed to inspect things in holes more than knee deep, but we're not allowed, even with the training.
My friends dad was working construction when the earth collapsed around him. Several broken ribs and broken bones all over the place. He managed to survive though.
Yeah, I realized this when I tried hauling off a dirt pile to my neighbors “free dumping” dumpster. I transported one wheelbarrow of dirt and gave the fuck up.
Yep - and generally the sand holds together because of moisture, but as it is exposed it dries and will eventually collapse.
I actually had a close call as a kid in a similar situation. I got buried up to about the shoulders. Never did that again, and I think it was a total surprise to my parents.
Not just children; a 28-year-old man last year dug into the side of a sand dune while playing with his kids and it collapsed around him and he died... leaving behind his four children who tried to dig him out and couldn't... with his pregnant wife at home... he died traumatizing his entire family. Don't do this. IDK who needs to hear this but just stick to the normal beach activities. Build a sand castle. Do not try to dig yourself a cave.
"If you've got a big dune above you and a lot of that collapses, you've potentially got something that weighs as much as an elephant collapsing on top of you," he told the outlet. "That's obviously very damaging, but also pretty hard to dig yourself out of, especially if you're struggling for air."
"As soon as you start trying to dig someone out, as you dig a hole, the sand fills it back in. It's incredibly challenging to do," he said.
If you were subject to night terrors, it’s the sort of thing you would see above you in bed while you are awake but paralysed. All while feeling absolute dread, helpless and about to die.
Description: SCP-xxxx-KT manifests exclusively during episodes of sleep paralysis or night terror events in human subjects, appearing at the extreme periphery of the visual field and never resolving into direct sight.
Attempts to look at it directly cause it to vanish and reappear at the opposite edge of vision. Subjects consistently describe it as a small, cat-like shape composed entirely of matted, tangled hair strands of indeterminate origin (analysis of recovered fibers, when possible, has yielded human, feline, and unidentified keratin structures in the same sample).
SCP-xxxx-KT does not appear to possess a fixed size, with descriptions ranging from "the size of a housecat" to "small enough to fit in a closed fist," though all subjects agree it never changes size mid-episode.
The entity's defining and most distressing behavior is a fixed, close-mouthed smile that subjects describe as "too wide" or "wrong," paired with an audible, wet, open-mouthed breathing that is not visually synchronized with the entity's sealed mouth.
No instance of physical contact has been recorded, and SCP-xxxx-KT disappears the moment the subject regains full motor control, though in most episodes subjects report a lingering smell of wet hair for several minutes afterward.
Nice! Should this be an "EX" (explained) SCP, from a time where we didn’t know about the sleep paralysis condition? I love those and there aren’t many of them.
This isn't a laughing matter. So incredibly irresponsible and dangerous. I work in HVAC and theres a whole crew of guys at our shop that needed therapy after watching this happen to someone.
They were working on a new apartment complex when one of them was walking back from his van and heard a scream and turned around to see a trench collapsing. He ran into the apartment building screaming "trench collapse and someone's buried! Everyone outside now! Grab every shovel you have!"
The entire construction crew, from the carpenters to the plumbers, ran outside and started digging with shovels and their bare hands. They all listened to the screams and cries of this 18 year old kid from deep under the ground as they frantically dug and the screams got quieter and quieter. They couldn't get to him fast enough. The first person to reach his dead body was another kid that worked for us who was only like 20 and had just started. That was one of his first weeks in the trade—digging up the dead body of a kid his age.
Months later, the first guy that heard the scream and ran inside to get everyone else, broke down in tears one day and said that he can't sleep at night because in his dreams he just digs while he hears the fading sobs of the kid that was buried. He was just sobbing "I couldn't get to him fast enough..."
Honestly, it'd be dangerous to go into that hole, and the one guy who is already in the danger zone can handle it. Might actually be the right move to not jump in. Also, stepping too close to the edge may also destabilise it, e.g. when handing a hand or something.
(Just to state the obvious: That hole can fully collapse any moment and bury everyone in it)
This is why you need shoring. If you are buried up to your waist its basically impossible to get out on your own and the more fluid (can't think of the word, viscosity doesn't make sense) the soil is the worse your struggling will make it. If it's at nipple height you are likely going to die because your chest won't be able to expand, the soul getting tighter each breath. Better hope you got a buddy that can jam an aquarium pump tube down into your lungs or something.
I almost got buried during a waterproofing job where we had to dig a trench over seven feet deep, My foreman kept saying it was fine and to keep working (no reinforcements were implemented during the entire process), so when the wall inevitably caved in next to me and the foreman, I was very pissed. We had a supervisor come out to the site and inspect the cave-in to see fi it was ok to continue digging. He said yes, so we installed a "brace" (a 2x4 and a PVC fitting against the wall of the house) and got back to it. We did that job, and then I quit a day or two later due to college (also the fact that I almost had my head caved in during that fiasco). Never again will I trust a foreman at my age, no matter their experience.
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u/Ammortalz 5d ago
Yeah, stand on him and pull at the same time.