Drowning Doesn't Look Like Drowning

To this should be added some information for would-be rescuers of drowning people. The instinctive drowning response is a climbing response. What you see are twin splashes as the person's arms flail wide looking for something to grab on to. If they find it the automatic response is to grab it, climb up, and stand on top. The person doing this is panicked and has massively more strength than you think. If you are swimming and a young child does…

Practice spotting someone drowning from real videos of public swimming pools: http://spotthedrowningchild.com/ It's good but not perfect since the lifeguard thankfully rescues them before they drown but it's still a good exercise. I can do this exercise fairly reliably but I'm not perfect either. A few years ago I saved a man from drowning _but_ I very very nearly didn't: https://medium.com/@ideasasylum/i-saved-a-man-from-drowning-...

Just thinking about this terrifies me... When I was 18 I was effectively drowning at sea after (stupidly) swimming out to a bouy (100m from shore) with my friends. I had a panic attack on the way back for some reason and immediately lost control of my movement and voice -- I basically went into autopilot, though I was aware of what was happening. I thought I was flailing around but in hindsight I think I must have looked quite…

Dup: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1492835 Many, many, many comments there. Repeated here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1647662 You've submitted a huge number of items in the last hour or so, and these last two appear to have been pulled from HN's own history. Is this deliberate? It certainly looks so, given that you've added a "#" on the end of each URL, no doubt to avoid the duplicate detection algorithm.