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’Net Junkie Shawn "Speedy" Lopes |
Prepare before that
worst-case scenario hitsSo you find yourself on the banks of the Amazon River, looking to get across a piranha-infested patch of water ...
No, scratch that. You're whipping along on the back of a runaway camel and in likely danger of sustaining a neck-breaking face-plant in the Egyptian sand unless you bring the rampaging beast under control.
Not a likely scenario, you say? Well, if it's not too much of a stretch to imagine yourself taking a leisurely dip on the North Shore, picture this: You're enjoying a pleasant afternoon swim at Sunset Beach. All is well until, out of the corner of one eye, you spy the murky, menacing shadow of a tiger shark quickly closing in on you. What should you do? Stay calm, take a deep breath and try to remember what you learned on www.worstcasescenarios.com.
An online spinoff of Chronicle Books' best-selling reader "The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook," this Web site offers solutions to predicaments most people never give much thought to until it's far too late. It shows, step by step, how to survive if your parachute fails to open (be sure to take a skydiving partner with you), how to avoid being struck by lightning (avoid high places, open spaces, light poles, bodies of water, etc.) and how to land a plane (instructions cover small passenger planes and jets -- commercial airliners are somewhat more involved, as you might imagine), among other things.
Thrill-seekers, rejoice -- stunt people are no longer the only party privy to the secrets of escaping from a sinking car, jumping off a building into a Dumpster, jumping from rooftop to rooftop or off a moving train. Likewise, you don't have to have a background in medicine or law enforcement to know how to use a defibrillator to restore a heartbeat or how to break down a door.
The categories offered on the site, however, are by no means exclusively of the life-threatening variety. There are also such topics as "Work Survival" (surviving an interview, sneaking out of meetings, retrieving candy bars stuck in break-room machines), "Holiday Survival" (dealing with bad gifts, evading a stampede of shoppers, silencing a group of carolers) and "Dating & Sex Survival," which reveals techniques on removing difficult clothing and determining the gender of your date. Just remember, a sensible worstcasescenarios.com student always does the latter before the former.
Note: Web sites mentioned in this column were active at time of publication. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin neither endorses nor is responsible for their contents.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
’Net Junkie drops every Monday.
Contact Shawn "Speedy" Lopes at slopes@starbulletin.com.
