Most dangerous jobs you have had

[IV Hunt]

This gets real dangerous in the dark. Just kinda dangerous when you can see.
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After commercial fishing for 10 years in my youth (with my share of horror stories), I have a great respect for the conditions
the CG has to perform in.

 

[thekillerofmallard]

Taking nightsticks away from the police was the dumbest policy change I saw in my career.

At one time for 2yrs we couldn't touch inmates unless we felt our life was threatened. Oh the fun days.

 

[waterrat]

I spent many years working in all parts of the Oklahoma oilfield. It wouldn't take me long to come up with a dozen dead men that I knew personally (crushing, burning, fall from heights, accidental pressure releases, etc.) and another 50 with missing parts. It turns out an arm is worth $50k to an insurance company. The closest I came to biting the dust was standing at the wellhead under a double/triple drilling rig. They had just TD and we were spotting some acid down the backside. Just then the 30ton elevator snapped loose and dropped an entire string of drill collar downhole nearly snapping the rig in two, which would have killed us all. That one gave me gray hair.

 

[#1WATERFOWLER]

As a kid I got a part time job working on a mink ranch during whelping season. Us kids were hired to catch the pups so they could get inoculated. The dangerous part was getting past momma mink who was extremely violent and pizzed. We were provided leather gloves that extended almost to the armpit and given explicit instruction to ALWAYS grab momma by both the front and back end. NEVER just the back end. First kid up grabs momma by just the back end and promptly has a 3 plus pound furry snake trying to eat him through his armpit. Oh the blood and laughter that ensued! I was up next and apparently damn fast cause I never got bit. Plenty of fleas and mink pizz though.

 

[Valleyhonker]

As a kid I got a part time job working on a mink ranch during whelping season. Us kids were hired to catch the pups so they could get inoculated. The dangerous part was getting past momma mink who was extremely violent and pizzed. We were provided leather gloves that extended almost to the armpit and given explicit instruction to ALWAYS grab momma by both the front and back end. NEVER just the back end. First kid up grabs momma by just the back end and promptly has a 3 plus pound furry snake trying to eat him through his armpit. Oh the blood and laughter that ensued! I was up next and apparently damn fast cause I never got bit. Plenty of fleas and mink pizz though.

That’s a new one to me

 

[BFG]

Sandblasted bridges and painted them while in college working for the County engineer's office. The rig was an old Montgomery Ward furniture delivery truck, big 'ole Ford stick shift and we towed a big compressor behind the thing. We hung makeshift platforms off each side of the bridge (2 lane county road) and then had a 24' x 30" aluminum platform that we chained on each end. We wore coveralls, welding gloves, and a helmet with an air line feed and a 3x5" plexiglass window to see out. We climbed down to the platform and the other guy up top handed down the nozzle and hose. We had no safety harness, and nothing in front, or behind us while out on the platform. At any one time, we would have 20' of hose hanging off the bridge and another 20' laying on the platform with us. Blaster took 3 bags to fill up, and it took us about 45 minutes to run it all out. We took turns all day long. Worked 4 tens, which was probably the best part of the whole job. When you ran out of sand, you laid out the hose on the platform and went back up top to recover for the next hour. Guy up top filled his three bags in the hopper, suited up (yep, the inside of that helmet was gross), and took his turn and tried not to die.

Scariest part was when the hose would fall off the platform and try to take you with it. I have no idea how or why either of us avoided falling off. We used a cheater block inside the trigger guard so you didn't have to hold it down the entire time (really against the rules). We did about 30 bridges per summer. We painted them too. Nasty thick silver paint called "Tectyl" or something like that. The bags of silica sand had cancer warnings all over them. We washed our hands with mineral spirits. When you painted the bridge underneath, the overspray would get all over the platform, making it like walking on an ice rink. We never caught the waste silica and we didn't hang plastic when we painted. If that paint got in the creek/river below...everything was dead around it the next day. We went through several pallets of sand per summer.

We did that for $5.50 an hour, which was .50 an hour more than our buddies who were shoveling stone on the hand-patch crew, and the other guys on the ditch mowing crew, were making. I don't think I had a lunch for four straight summers that didn't have silica sand in my sandwich.

 

[Disgruntled]

When I was a paid firefighter it was water rescues. It was a low frequency, high risk event, usually at night in swift water.

Ive also had several close calls on wildland fires. One resulted in heat exhaustion (was probably stroke but they never took me to a hospital), and another I was really close to getting burned over in a UTV. I actually abandoned it and escaped on foot. Somehow the UTV survived.

 

[Larry Welch]

Taking nightsticks away from the police was the dumbest policy change I saw in my career.

I was never Leo but my great grandfather was on the sheriff's office and when they done away with the slap jacks, I think they were called, he griped alot. The black leather that had a lead object on the end of a spring. He said one pop was all you needed.

 

[Grif]

I was never Leo but my great grandfather was on the sheriff's office and when they done away with the slap jacks, I think they were called, he griped alot. The black leather that had a lead object on the end of a spring. He said one pop was all you needed.

I still carry one.....they'll get your attention.

 

[Sasquatch Hunter]

I spent many years working in all parts of the Oklahoma oilfield. It wouldn't take me long to come up with a dozen dead men that I knew personally (crushing, burning, fall from heights, accidental pressure releases, etc.) and another 50 with missing parts. It turns out an arm is worth $50k to an insurance company. The closest I came to biting the dust was standing at the wellhead under a double/triple drilling rig. They had just TD and we were spotting some acid down the backside. Just then the 30ton elevator snapped loose and dropped an entire string of drill collar downhole nearly snapping the rig in two, which would have killed us all. That one gave me gray hair.

I have seen a few dead men crushed between a 90ft drill string on a offshore rig.