21 Surprising Facts That Are Actually Life-Savers You Never Thought You Needed

Pause, think, then act ... but throw that life-ring TO THE SIDE of the person in the water, DO NOT aim it at their head !

I've heard to do this in quick sand also. Stop moving and eventually you'll float up? Guess I could just altavista it.

A lot of people who drown here in Australia are trying to save someone else. If someone is drowning they panic and grab anything, including their rescuer. If you see someone drwning and don't have a flotation device you are better off trying to find a lifeguard or flotation device rather than just going in.

I'm a pretty good swimmer and I think if I accidentally fell in water I would probably panic, so I don't know how non-simmers would cope.

And learn about and how to recognize rip tides.

Learned ALL about the importance of wool when I moved to a frigid new home a few years ago. Had NO IDEA there were so many amazing products for outdoor rec that are excellent wool and affordable. Also, layers!

It may just be me, but I can't ever imagine myself being in a situation where my clothes are wet and I have the opportunity to dry them, but I'm just like, I COULD dry them, but what the heck?

This is why it's not recommended to bundle up too much in the winter, and wear breathable boots. I live in my runners all winter long, even when it's down to -40C. My toes stay warmer in those than Sorrels with the felt liners because my feet would sweat so bad in them it rendered them useless. My toes were stinging from the cold.

I never thought about it in this way. Some lady approached me at a clinic, saying she saw me opening a car door, which did minorly bump the door of the next car, but I didn't notice anything. This lady was loudly accusing me of denting or scratching this car. But she said it wasn't her car, she just saw and wanted to be nosy. The car owner never came up to me, either. I just said "Okay" and looked at her weird until she walked away, finally. I wasn't alone. My inlaws drove me and were there, too, witnessing all this and they didn't say anything nor knew what she was on about. Now, I'm thinking that was a lady looking for an inopportune moment to do something malicious by getting me to walk outside with her.

Same goes for flyers on the windshield.

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Yeah...in America maybe.

This advice is very bad. A much better idea is to buy a fire blanket and hang it up somewhere in the kitchen where you can see it and grab it easily. https://stafffiretraining.co.uk/how-to-use-a-fire-blanket/

Baking soda works OKish if you've failed to equip you kitchen with a fire extinguisher. If you're going to the trouble of keeping a box of baking soda to hand just in case, go the little extra and buy a suitable fire extinguisher.

when I worked at a food service kitchen in my 20s, I remember we had huge boxes of baking soda and table salt around, so if there was a grease fire we could put it out quickly

If the fire is contained within a pan (for example a chip pan), then a damp (not wet) teatowel is the best thing to cover it with.

We always used salt.

If you're ever in an elevator and it starts falling, don't panic because you'll be absolutely fine. Real-life elevators are not movie elevators; they cannot go into freefall. A movie elevator might have just a single cable and plummet if it's severed but real elevators have multiple cables and, even in the highly unlikely event of them all snapping, the cars are fitted with inertia brakes, so if it descends above a certain speed the brakes deploy against the walls of the shaft, rapidly slowing the car and allowing it to descend at a safe speed. A famous example is one from the early 20th.C when a light aircraft collided with the Empire State Building and severed all the cables on the external glass elevator just as it began it's descent from near the top of the building. The inertia brakes deployed and the elevator made a slow, safe descent to the ground. EDIT: It was a B-25 bomber that hit the building in heavy fog in 1945, and the lift was on the 75th floor. It reached the ground and the sole occupant, the elevator operator, was unharmed.

"lie flat" not "lay flat".

Totally useless if you're not alone. The one time I was stuck in an elevator it was with 9-10 other teenage girls (why yes we were overloaded. How did you guess?) and Dave. Poor Dave was just trying to get to his room after work and us dumb teens thought this was the coolest thing. We kept talking about how we were going to have to climb out through the top of the elevator just like in the movies. Fortunately it never fell. *No Daves were harmed in the making of these teenage hijinks.*

That's quite interesting,,terrifying, but interesting

...and will help distract you from the fact that you are absolutely going to die in a few seconds.

This actually is good advice. Only if you're way too drunk, you're not going to remember. Just don't get way too drunk. But if you really do have to get way too drunk, have a plan for getting home safely. Cold weather and being very drunk genuinely is a deadly combination.

Seems like the way to drunk part is the issue. Don't pass out in a dangerous place is maybe better because drunk snow angels and snowmen are time honoured hilarious fun.

Knowing I get very sleepy when I’m cold, I once decided to check out by having a few mouthsful of vodka and a couple diphenhydramine and laid down under a park bench in a cashmere coat, as there were three feet of snow. Imagine my horror at being awakened by a policeman on a horse the next morning! A freak thaw had come along, ruining my plans. But going to sleep in snow is very, VERY tempting!

Schoolfriend lost her father walking back from the pub in the snow.

If you're really drunk, there is little thought.

Complete BS. I cannot express how much human traffickers do not hang out in remote forests hoping that attractive young women with no family or loved ones just happen to walk by. Traffickers target people who won’t be missed and nearly exclusively via grooming. This is just completely, completely false.

Laughter in the woods? That's a lure for some people?