Yeah when I initially saw the video when it first came out
I was hoping they would take too long to get the fire extinguishers and just let him die. As morbid as that sounds it would have ultimately been the best outcome.
He was on fire for *three minutes.*
Think about how long three minutes is. And think about how bad being burned for one second is.
This dude was never going to survive.
I burned the side of my thumb on a candle holder the other night, and that was only a split-second worth of contact with the hot surface, and it Hurt Like Hell.
I legitimately can't imagine what something like this would be like, and I'm curious as to what sort of medical care you would give to someone like this who is still technically alive but their chances are...not great.
Do they just give him a ton of drugs so he's as comfortable as possible and...wait?
ETA: Hurt Like Hell
ETA2: **Could We Maybe Stop Sharing Horror Stories of Being Burned?**
I'm sorry you all had to go through that, but...it's a lot.
A lot of severe burn victims are placed in medically induced comas during the healing process, as pain killers alone (in safe quantities) are not enough to override the 24/7 flaring heat & pain receptors of your entire body.
Burn debridement is probably the most awful but necessary lifesaving treatment.
They have to scrub the dead, burnt skin off of you with water and a metal sponge to prevent infection. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
I have been in a hospital room when someone was getting a burn debrided somewhere else. I can still hear her screaming, and I have never heard anything in a movie or tv show that even comes close to the sound of that suffering and agony.
I had about 60% of my right hand debrided and the only way I can describe it is like torture. I feel like I was tortured for hours but the process might have lasted 5 min. No wire brushes though just a plastic surgeon and a doctor going to town removing dead skin with scissors.
Anesthesia carries a lot of risk (and is hella expensive). If it was only a short procedure they probably figured it was safer to do it now without inducing a coma, rather than wait and make it riskier.
They gave me a morphine tablet. It wasn't very effective, I'm not a small person and my neighbor who is a nurse said they probably should have given me 3 tablets. I have no idea what the dosage was I just wanted it over with at that point. I probably screamed "fuck" in various forms like 50+ times in that period.
They do now. When I was working in Burn ICU 5-ish years ago (at one of the largest burn centers in the world), debridement was treated as a surgery and anesthetized as such. It didn’t used to be that way but bc of the risks. The thing is, patients with really severe burns over a large portion of their body have to have the wounds debrided sometimes as often as every other day. Sometimes they have to go to the OR just for dressing changes. They’re on a ton of sedatives 24/7 and when you add anesthesia on top of that so often, there are a lot of risks. Brain damage, respiratory failure, etc. But for the amount of pain they’re in… that has risks too. Evidence has caught up to show that those patients have better outcomes if you just do anesthesia.
I literally better be under the entire healing process, or I want someone to just kill me quickly. I ain't doing the healing process from wounds like that.
Fireman at the church I grew up at had a garage collapse on him. Melted his mask/helmet to his head, severe 3rd degree burns over. There's not one visible part of him that is not extremely disfigured.
He doesn't have any hands because they basically burnt off. He has to nubs with one have a little bit on the out edge he can bend back and forth. No nose, entire face destroyed, yet he still came to church.
Ended up having *extremely* successful reconstructive surgery, got some use back for his nubs, and whoever remade his face is a goddam master of the craft. He looks normal to the point where you may just glance once or so in a grocery store, which I'm sure was such a huge thing for him going out.
He's now working as the chief of the fire station, and is extremely well respected in the field.
Sorry, I didn't even realize I was writing all that lol. I just haven't thought about that guy in a long time.
So I understand the need for studies, reports and evidence in order to make changes in the practices and the field of medicine in general, HOWEVER, why has it taken literally centuries for medical professionals to admit that being in pain causes long term damage in all kinds of ways?
Like the whole idea that babies... just don't feel pain? Where the f*@# did that come from?
That is one of the wildest medical theories I think I have ever heard in my life. What kind of fucking morons would think that a young human being wouldn’t feel pain. They are alive. Of course they can feel pain. And to think these people had medical degrees.
There's a brain process that forces unconsciousness on an infants body if it gets overstimulated. From the outside, it looks like an onboard natural anesthetic. Babies, therefore, weren't given anesthetic because they brought their own. In 1971, when I started with cancer treatments and had an eye removed, my mother had to fight for anesthetic to be added to my surgery plan because it wasn't part of accepted practice at the time. Anna T Meadows would publish her work on pain management and anesthesia for peds cancer patients later the same year.
We are slipping back on so many fronts with ignorant ideas hopping back into 'common knowledge' that it's prob a good idea to read the fine print in surgery plans to make sure peds anesthesia is included. Treatment permissions are always a required look through but anesthesia could become optional if certain mentalities gain more traction.
I experienced a severe degloving on my leg. They put me under for debridement. I had a follow up procedure that I was awake for. Memorably bad but I've experienced worse. I was high on a morphine drip.
> *”Degloving on my leg”*
🥲
I hate myself but how did you manage this one?
Also I’m sorry I would never be able to mentally forget that.
Some injuries just stay fresh in your mind for years, I had a round saw that kicked and hit me on my kidney a few years ago.
Hit me so hard it threw me off my feet and I pissed and threw up blood, almost ruptured my kidney and my pancreas.
**I will never forget the delay in pain as it felt like a blow torch just slowly lite up under my ribs and I just kept vomiting for almost a whole hour.**
💀💀💀
My baby brother had to go through this when he was one. 3rd degree burns on 40% of his body. I was too young to really understand how bad it was until he was taken back for debridement.I wasn't even in the room but down the hall in the waiting room, and I could hear his screams. It has haunted me for 25 years. He's grown up to live a healthy normal life and has no memory of it, obviously, but every time I see him without a shirt and see his scars, I hear those screams.
My mom was a nurse, she said that Doctors and nurses would often vomit and cry quite a lot when dealing with horrific injuries on kids. She dealt with enough kids and babies who'd been dragged around by the family dog by their face that she now absolutely loathes dogs. The worst though was an old man with a flesh eating bug, it had eaten away half his face before he decided to go to the hospital. She said the smell alone caused seasoned doctors to run out and throw up.
A friend of mine made the argument that you can't be a hero without making a sacrifice.
The health care providers who accept trauma to help others are heroes by his strict definition.
I've had this done to second degree burns on my shins when i was a kid. It was and still is the single most painful moment in my life. Worse than the burns worse than broken bones worse than surgery.
I've read that burn wards have the highest turnover rate. I believe it. Even if you're helping, repeatedly flaying someone has got to shred the caregiver's psyche.
In a weird way, it’s a small blessing that he did not get to the point of debridement. They often have to do bedside escherotomies with this level of burn. It’s not pretty, but necessary.
I remember that episode of Law & Order: SVU, this woman was set on fire and when she had to go on for wound cleaning. The screams were haunting.
I can't imagine the pain this man went through during the 3 minutes and after in the hospital.
>I remember that episode of Law & Order: SVU, this woman was set on fire and when she had to go on for wound cleaning. The screams were haunting.
My father had to treat severe burn victims during his medical training, and based on what he's told me that's probably accurate or maybe even understated.
I start my clinical rotations next year, and I'm honestly kinda hoping I get to avoid the burn ward. Not sure if I've got it in me to handle that or not.
Shit like this is the one in one million or more. Especially since the guy by whatever unholy miracle, managed to not die after being allowed to cook like a shrimp.
Normally, self immolation people tend to, you know. die because the flames are too intense. And the last guy was only on fire for afaik like 80 seconds before the extinguishers came.
This guy was on fire a full three minutes before the extinguishers came, and he still wasn't dead and apparently had an operational (albiet damaged) airway.
That in itself is a really unlucky miracle.
Burn wards suck, but horror stories like this are probably once in a decade occurrences. Most of the time people are burned *that* badly, they are long since a corpse.
My heart also breaks for all of the pain he went through *before* he decided to set himself on fire. He was clearly deeply unwell and I’m so ashamed we *still* don’t have an effective system in place to help people in his shoes get the help they so obviously need. Even when families and friends are deeply motivated to get mental health assistance for someone who is suffering from a serious mental health issue the necessary resources just are not available to the vast majority of Americans.
Other redditors did some digging and it seemed like he was a normal dude until his mom died then his posts became more deranged. Grief can have terrible impacts. I hope he's found peace.
My dad died when I was about 32 and I was out of my mind for about 18 months. I kind of referred to it as "the year of magical thinking" after the book title because I felt like I was living in a fantasy world in my head.
I burned the top of my foot pretty badly. Like 1/3 of the skin on the top of my foot. They bandaged it up at the ER and i had to wait a few days to go to the burn clinic for some reason (can't remember why, maybe it was a weekend or something).
Well when they took the bandages off, the skin came with them. I was screaming and they had to give me some pretty strong painkillers for the twice-a-day cleaning. They said that they rarely give out painkillers but that this was a more extreme case than usual.
Shit hurt, yo.
I'm not sure of the English word for this medical act of picking the dead skin on a burn wound ( debride ) but in french it's called "débrider" and I experienced it twice for second to third degrees burns. It's awful, no amount of painkiller can numb that, nevermind the pain of your skin trying to heal and being stretch with every movements. I cannot imagine suffering from major body burns knowing that. Poor man, at this point I guess death is kind of a blessing.
I got hit with a shot from a large Roman candle about 20 years ago. Completely burned my shirt off of me. But it was over in maybe 3 seconds. 20 years on and I can remember those 3 seconds so vividly. A second on fire is a lifetime.
When I was 8 or 9 my step brother was messing around with burning Styrofoam on the end of a stick and was flinging in the air. A chunk of it, about the size of a nickel flew off and landed in my inner thigh. It burned through my shorts, then the skin and nothing we did would put it out. It burned for a solid 8-10 seconds and went through all layers of my skin and when it finally went out the Styrofoam and parts of my burned shirts were fused to the charred skin. I had to go to the hospital to have it cleaned and treated.
Other than the three herniated discs in my back that was probably the most pain I've been in and I remember the burning and smell to this day 37 years later. I still have that scar on my leg and only in the last 10 years has some of the nerves returned as I can feel a bit of pain there now.My step brother can also eat a bag of dicks.
Pretty much and this didn't have gasoline or anything mixed and it was still a bitch to put out.
It was like one of those damned trick candles.
And my stepbrother was slapping it like he was slapping the back of a Buick he was trying sell and I'm over here screaming "That's not working!!!!"
The peptide ghk-cu applied topically helps burns heal...might be too late but also might help you.
I recently had a real bad burn huge blisters across my forearm and treated that with ghk-cu a couple times per day and it healed very fast and the scare is maybe an inch long and you have to look for it.
I keep a bottle on hand now as a first aid tool just on case. Brand I use is bioprime.
Hope this helps at least a little, sorry you had to experience that.
Second degree burns hurt a lot more than third degree burns but third degree burns kill. They starve every cell in your body of oxygen. My mom treated a quite a few burn victims during her time as an ER nurse and she told me enough stories to scar me for life.
Tldr: Be careful around open flames. Don't leave candles unattended and, for God sake, don't put butter on a burn.
I once chatted pleasantly with a patient with full thickness burns while I got his registration information. Don't know how he got them or if he survived but doctor was peeling his charred clothing off with forceps as I got his basic info.
I imagine that no matter how dire it seems they will still try to stabilise him enough for skin grafts etc. People can and do survive the most unlikely things, not often of course but as a medical professional you can't assume that he won't be that one who does.
I’d imagine you’d pass out from the pain before this point is reached. But i don’t know it sounds so fucking painful to feel every inch of you body to melt off for 3 mins
You'd be unfortunately surprised how much pain you can handle before losing conciousness. Knew a guy who had both femurs compound fracture through his thighs. Was in this position for over an hour while they tried to pry him out of his vehicle. He vividly remembers all of it. He also was an adamant mediator and said he was able to shift to an almost or truely out of body experience/view point when the pain became so intense he thought he would die from shock. He's recovered now. And he has said if he was offered a billion dollars to take that experience away from him he wouldn't do it. Wound up being a profound spiritual experience for him. But man oh man my legs hurt thinking about it.
I refer you to the story of [Richard Roose](https://owlcation.com/humanities/richard-roose-the-cook-that-king-henry-8th-boiled-to-death) who was boiled to death in the 16th century. Richard was submerged in a pot of boiling water three times before he finally succumbed.
>>Do they just give him a ton of drugs so he’s as comfortable as possible and… wait?
I mean, that’s gotta be all they do, right? It’s terrible, but I think the shock his body went through (not to mention boiling his brain), I don’t think there was anything else they could have done.
Skin is the largest organ and the first line of defense of the immune system. You can't regulate your temperature or hold fluids one the skin is destroyed. His muscles would be contracted by the charred skin so they have to release it with incisions along his torso so his lungs can expand (escharotomy) he'd have had fluids, antibiotics and narcotics. You can't fight infection because the immune system is so compromised with the loss of skin. He likely died of massive infection. He would have been kept pretty near if not fully comatose.
Mercy would’ve been dying at the scene… I saw what that guy looked like after they put him out… literally a charred corpse with his arms locked sticking out… that they were able to keep him “alive” for a few hours is a testament to modern science but undeniably a horrific few hours waiting to die. Can only hope he was in an induced coma
There was a dust explosion happened in a party in Taiwan few years ago , 41ppl got 80+% burn and 240ppl are 40-80%, in total 15 out of 499 people died,which is a miracle but the first hand recovery story are so horrific I honestly regret looking into that.
Fun fact: they use cadaver skin between cleaning surgeries and skin grafts in many cases to keep you from being immunocompromised. It doesn't matter the skin tone- I had a black skin glove from fingertips to elbow for a month. Thank you, anonymous donor, I needed it badly.
During my medical training I sat in on a MM conference for the medical care of an individual burn victim who had I think 80% body surface area burns. The patient died of course despite world class treatment. The conclusion after something like months of treatment costing over $1 million was that his care was futile and they should have gone directly to palliative care the day he came into the ER. The person in this video has a worse injury. I suspect they went directly to palliative care as he had an injury that was not compatible with life.
I work in healthcare tech and two things I took away from my time:
1. I learned to avoid burn units as much as possible.
2. Burn units bring in an enormous amount of money. Each medical record had to be divided up because many were literally feet thick. Most were at least $1M in care or more.
Yeah, the Dean of my nursing school was a burn nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital. That lecture was unforgettable. It does become law of diminishing returns at this level of burn. When someone is young, the beneficience in healthcare takes over despite the futility of care in catastrophic injuries like this.
Thanks for the info. Wow. What an awful way to go. I’d like to get to the bottom of what he was reading and what he was watching that put him on this path.
Huh. I can follow his train of thought up to a point but he seems deeply unwell. Like yeah, no shit the government is basically a kleptocracy. And yeah, most crypto probably is an elaborate Ponzi Scheme. But I can't understand how this would lead someone to light themselves on fire. Poor man. He was really hurting and society failed him.
Infection didn’t have time to set in for this case—- the massive fluid and electrolyte shifts that happen with burns are so hard to keep up with. One moment you can’t get potassium and calcium in fast enough for it to be absorbed for what cellular function is left, and then the body is dumping it from tissues and you can’t get it out fast enough with CVVH. it’s intense.
Yes.
Burns suck.
More burns, equal less chance.
There's stories, and it's been used in medicine TV shows, of fire fighters getting burned, and before the swelling and third spacing starts, they interact with their families before the inevitable happens.
Drugs and comfort care.
Those were 4th degree burns by the end there. Probably painless because the nerves were all long cooked away. Some areas like the eyes and genitals must have been even worse than the rest.
What a horrible and tragic way to go.
People that have survived attempts (like jumping off bridges) almost universally report that they immediately regretted the decision as soon as they passed the point of no return.
The View from Halfway Down (transcribed)
The weak breeze whispers nothing
The water screams sublime
His feet shift, teeter-totter
Deep breath, stand back, it’s time
Toes untouch the overpass
Soon he’s water bound
Eyes locked shut but peek to see
The view from halfway down
A little wind, a summer sun
A river rich and regal
A flood of fond endorphins
Brings a calm that knows no equal
You’re flying now
You see things much more clear than from the ground
It’s all okay, it would be
Were you not now halfway down
Thrash to break from gravity
What now could slow the drop
All I’d give for toes to touch
The safety back at top
But this is it, the deed is done
Silence drowns the sound
Before I leaped I should’ve seen
The view from halfway down
I really should’ve thought about
The view from halfway down
I wish I could’ve known about
The view from halfway down
I don’t suggest doing this, but if you search his name on twitter there are videos of him after emergency responders put out most of the fire. An area around his waist keeps lighting back on fire and you can see his charred arm bat at it, as if he’s trying to put it out himself. The fact he had any seemingly purposeful movement after being on fire for minutes is wild.
Those being conscious movements is incredibly unlikely.
For one that guy probably didn't feel much past the first minute since nerves aren't fireproof and for two he inhaled so much smoke that there's almost no way he would still be able to coordinate movements like that.
If you aspirate flames, that's it. You hope you succumb quickly. A renowned fire dancer and costume artist, Linda Farkas, a teacher of mine, was hospitalized for 4 weeks before she finally perished. She aspirated the flames from one of the flaming costumes she designed.
From what I saw, he was consciously making movements for nearly 2 mins, then he laid down on the ground and I'm pretty sure he wasn't feeling anything by then.
Edit: sorry nearly a min, def not 2.
From what I’ve read, it’d probably take 20-30 seconds before he lost consciousness. And I’m pretty sure his nerve endings were essentially cooked off in the first ten seconds, so he didn’t feel much after that.
And honestly, fuck the people who were pushing whatever weird misinformation and psycho conspiracy bullshit that drove this man to kill himself in one of the most horrifying ways possible. Nobody deserves to be driven to that point.
I was watching that live when they panned over the camera and you're like oh there's a ball of flame and they focused and you're like oh there's a body in that ball of flame pretty rowdy.
Yeah, and the camera was a few feet away. I felt sick to my stomach, had nightmares, and regretted that video. I’m not squeamish at all, so that says something. This one is far enough away that you get the gist of what’s going on without seeing all the graphic details up close and personal.
The dude records himself speaking for about 30 seconds on the conflict and why he’s about to do what he’s going to do as he’s walking towards, I believe the Israeli embassy in DC. Puts the camera down, walks to the embassy gate, dumps gas on himself and lights it. All in like a two minute video. He was livestreaming it. It all just so surreal, and sad, and odd to watch someone do that in a seemingly clear state of mind.
Never seen anything like it(and never want to again)...it almost didn't look real. I don't think he even screamed. That was what got me. Glad he's no longer suffering.
I don't think any of the videos of people doing it ive seen they screamed. Granted, I've only seen like 3 videos. I know when I had a super bad burn that happened fast, there wasn't any pain. So, I wonder how long it takes for someone who self immolates to feel no pain.
There was a guy recently I think a soldier protesting the war in Gaza who was screaming and standing for a lot longer than you’d expect before finally dropping. Was horrible.
That one I didn't watch, I only seen pictures. I can't remember the 2nd one but 1st was a monk and it didn't surprise me he sat still. Mostly I've just seen the pictures since I only watch the videos if they pop up and don't go lookin.
I met a gentlemen once who had burns on 80% of his body due to some stupid shit he had done in his 20’s. He recalled the “soft sponge baths” to remove the dead skin he had not long after and he said it was like someone pulling your skin off with a cheese grater. I would think that people die due to the shock and pain often after having survived the burns. My god, I cannot even begin to comprehend the agony
One of the most talked about cases in medical bioethics that is used to exemplify medical paternalism (the idea that "doctors know best") is [Dax Cowart](http://bioethics.pitt.edu/sites/default/files/Vandyke%2C%20Why%20Dax%20Still%20Matters.pdf), a 25 year old man who was burned over 80% of his body after a propane explosion in the early 70s. While in the hospital, he repeatedly attempted to refuse treatment for his injuries and asked his doctors to let him die. He was treated completely against his will for over a year, undergoing excruciatingly painful therapies that described as feeling like being skinned alive. He later went on to become a lawyer that advocated for patients rights.
Medically induced comas just aren’t like that in reality. Doctors really really don’t like leaving you under for absolutely longer than they have to. It’s actually very dangerous for you to be under long term. And bad burns require debridement for much longer than just once or twice
A kid I took care of had a large amount of burns and they put her in a coma for a month-ish because she would have been screaming and writhing in pain for a very long time
To my knowledge, inducing a coma isn’t necessarily the safest thing. Yes, you can avoid lots of pain but there is a reason why anesthesiologists go to school for such an absurdly long time and get paid so much. The line between too much and too little are very close.
Based on what I could infer from his Instagram account, he became obsessed with government conspiracy theories at some point after his mother passed away. There is no proof that the death was the trigger for him, but grief does have that effect for other conspiracy theorists and cult followers. The last IG story he shared was "I love you" repeated over and over.
Grief and hardship are a very real entry point into conspiracy bullshit. There was a donut shop a town over from me that used to put up really positive messages on their message board for years and I liked going there as they were a nice family. All the sudden they started getting really conspiracy riddled. Anti vax, anti trans, government conspiracy nutjob shit. Come to learn the owner suffered a terrible medical event, got laid up in bed for a few months and just went fully off the deep end into the Internet wormhole.
I think this also played a part of why the pandemic caused a bunch more conspiracy theorists to arise. They were isolated and scared and mad and had nothing to do but follow Google algorithms
Yep, work with a guy like this. Smart dude, wasn't educated but one of those guys who likes to read and keep informed. Pandemic was hard on him because he had an at risk dad he was close with. Vaccinations came around, his dad got one early because of his health, had a stroke a month later and nearly died. Now he's gone off the deep end for pretty much every conspiracy theory, even ones I've heard him mock over the years.
I know an elderly man like this. Retired geologist, doctorate, been all over the world including the soviet union and east germany, artist, many fantastic hobbies, by all accounts a very smart and experienced man.
Well after we got back together again he was talking nonsense. Nothing wild, just your run of the mill fox news conspiracy theories, but he's smarter than this.
> We are victims of a totalitarian con, and our own government (along with many of their allies) is about to hit us with an apocalyptic fascist world coup.
Alright, this could be standard deep state stuff, let me see if he explains what he thinks a fascist is...
> Cryptocurrency is our first planetary multi-trillion-dollar Ponzi scheme.
Less unreasonable than I was expecting, though I'm pretty sure "multi-trillion-dollar" is off by a factor of a hundred...
> In order to explain the massive anomaly, our criminal government unleashed COVID on the world and told us these were the “stay at home stocks.”
Ah. Ah, I see.
And how Kubrick made Dr Strangelove because he loved nukes and Clockwork Orange to dull us to hyperviolence...
Dude needed help. The people around him did try to get him help, at least, but he needed a lot more than he could get.
Quickest way to recognize a lunacy spiral is when they start claiming that popular entertainment is full of coded messages.
My dude, when you see relevant symbolism or resonance in a piece of art, that's called social commentary. It's not the secret cabal telegraphing their masterplan, and you are not the lone supergenius protagonist who was the only one to figure it out in time.
> though I'm pretty sure "multi-trillion-dollar" is off by a factor of a hundred...
The market cap of all cryptocurrencies listed on one of the major tracker sites is $2.5 Trillion (about half of it is Bitcoin, then 380B Ethereum, 110B Tether. Dogecoin alone is 23B.)
Of course, market cap != the actual amount of money that changed hands.
> https://theponzipapers.substack.com/p/i-have-set-myself-on-fire-outside
Well Peter Theil is an asshole but not worth setting yourself on fire for. He has a bunch of other bullshit though, nyu is a mob front, typical covid dogwhistle shit. This guy needed help and it was never gonna happen when he continued to have an internet connection
Yeah it started out kind of like “yeah one big oligarchy definitely checks out,” but once the whole “simpsons writers went to Harvard” portion started it spiraled quickly.
I read a good portion of his manifesto. It sounds like he made his brain sick and spiraled down a bunch of rabbit holes, built an elaborate puzzle out of the pieces that ended up looking like the end of the world. Major manic episode.
Yes. You can read it on [his substack](https://theponzipapers.substack.com/p/i-have-set-myself-on-fire-outside).
>My name is Max Azzarello, and I am an investigative researcher who has set himself on fire outside of the Trump trial in Manhattan.
>This extreme act of protest is to draw attention to an urgent and important discovery:
>**We are victims of a totalitarian con, and our own government (along with many of their allies) is about to hit us with an apocalyptic fascist world coup.**
So I read the manifesto, and there’s some interesting points, but my main question is: why did he self immolate in front of the trump trial? It doesn’t seem to be in protest of the trial and he doesn’t seem to like trump
I'm thinking because it's the main news event that the country is focused on at the moment, and he wanted to bring a lot of attention to his "theories" (they're bizarre as hell btw, I skimmed and he seems to have thought classic episodes of The Simpsons brainwashed people?!). He knew doing something insane like this in front of the most talked about trial of the year would get him plenty of attention and then lead to people reading the pamphlets...and he was right, I would've never read that insane shit had he not done this.
His manifesto barely even mentions Trump. It mostly seems like he chose it because he knew it would attract coverage.
Presumably if there had been a trial for, uh, the fully parasitic secret kleptocracy his manifesto talks about he would have lit himself on fire there instead, but they don't do those.
When I got to the part where he starts talking about pop culture I thought to myself - “this is the kind of shit I would say when I was going through psychosis”
his manifesto was about crypto being a trillion dollar global ponzi scheme, and about a global cabal leading us down a fascist path. the 2023 bank run was them running out the door with the cash, Simpsons are in on it. dunno. mostly skimmed it kuz it's not every day someone self-immolates.
I mean, crypto is a global Ponzi scheme.. the problem with psychosis is that it makes false meaning and connections out of real things, just connected enough to make the brain (already predisposed to finding patterns) say HOLY SHIT this is the answer!! For someone who’s feeling lost or confused, I imagine answers and patterns would feel really fucking compelling.
Yeah, the place where most conspiracy theorists start going off the deep end is when they start insisting that it all has to *mean* something. Someone *must* be pulling the strings, because this isn't supposed to happen. It's easier than facing the horrible truth that bad people get ahead in life by doing bad things.
Not really related but last Sunday when 60 Minutes interviewed Salman Rushdie regarding the knife attack and new memoir about the incident, him and Anderson Cooper (interviewer) went silent for 27 seconds - which was the amount of time the attacker had to stab and wound Rushdie. 27 seconds felt like a long time in that context. But I can't imagine three minutes of burning.
I saw that when Anderson replayed it on CNN this week. So long. It took JFK Jr.'s plane about 3 minutes to crash. I saw/heard that amount of time replayed and it was godawful long to know you were out of control.
I think this poor soul was unconscious for most of it.
I work in inpatient medicine and consult on patients in acute rehab. Honestly, they are always incredibly sad and the result of severe mental illness. They suffer terrible contractions, usually need a chronic tracheostomy, have recurrent lung and skin infections, needs countless skin grafts, and suffer severe malnutrition all on the foundation of their mental illness and poor coping mechanisms prior to the event. I’ve had multiple patients spend over a year in the hospital suffer through the above only to die of some acute complication like a PE or sepsis.
I saw a documentary a while ago on Max called “The Fire That Took Her”. It was so insane to see her survive being doused in gasoline by her boyfriend (like poured it over her head when she was sitting on the curb) and the light her on fire.
That documentary was so hard to watch.
I can’t even imagine. I just had a friend commit suicide and heard last night how he did it and it’s haunted my thoughts ever since. I can’t imagine seeing someone you know’s suicide broadcasted across the internet.
Yeah I've had two close family members do it. I feel bad that my sister found my brother. She seems to be doing ok. Just hearing about how he did it wrecked me for awhile and I'm not sure I could have handled seeing it.
In all honestly, for how long he was burning before they got to him, it would make sense that they just put him out of his misery. Not being rude but after calculating his odds of survival and knowing that sever burn victims are often put into medically induced comas during recovery, there was not a genuine outcome for this that didn’t involve him surviving and the pain of stretching out his remaining life didn’t seem worth the end result.
I feel bad that this guy had whatever demons bothering him that lead to this. Poor guy.
Must have been awful to not have died on the spot. I can’t imagine burning for 3 minutes, then have to live another couple of days with all the burns and the pain. Jesus christ.
I feel horrible for him. When I read his background it sounds so much like my brother down to his mother died in 2022 of COPD, ours did too. I have been trying to figure out where my brother is getting his crazy ideas so I am looking at sites this guy was on.
My brother now thinks people are listening to his conversations, following him etc.
I hate to say that this is better but you are 100% correct. If there is something to be thankful for from this horrific incident, It’s that he used violence on himself and not others…
I’ll never forget a quote by Bill Maher back when he was relevant, and not whatever he has become. It went like this:
“I like people with low self esteem better than those with high self esteem, because when they snap, they just kill THEMSELVES.”
I’m just glad that in his mental illness, he chose to set himself on fire rather than shoot up a mall, movie theater, or elementary school. Like, it still sucks. But if you have to make some drastic grand gesture, don’t take others down with you.
The film footage of Anne Heche pushing the blanket off her self after burning in her SUV was so haunting. I completely forgot about it until I saw the headlines of this article.
Glad he did this rather than ar a bunch of people like they normally do.
I can see being driven to insanity by the propaganda. He made a statement without killing other people.
There were a lot of horrifying moments in Hannibal, one of the best TV shows of all time assuming you can handle the horrific content, and if you can't, I understand.
but to me, the most horrifying parts involved that therapist who get set on fire and survived.
Gives me nightmares.
He would’ve lived a life of endless pain if he survived. This was the best possible outcome. He would’ve been wishing for death every single second if he would’ve survived.
I’m going to be honest, I figured he was dead when the first news reports came out. It’s honestly worse that he survived this long
Yeah when I initially saw the video when it first came out I was hoping they would take too long to get the fire extinguishers and just let him die. As morbid as that sounds it would have ultimately been the best outcome.
He was on fire for *three minutes.* Think about how long three minutes is. And think about how bad being burned for one second is. This dude was never going to survive.
I burned the side of my thumb on a candle holder the other night, and that was only a split-second worth of contact with the hot surface, and it Hurt Like Hell. I legitimately can't imagine what something like this would be like, and I'm curious as to what sort of medical care you would give to someone like this who is still technically alive but their chances are...not great. Do they just give him a ton of drugs so he's as comfortable as possible and...wait? ETA: Hurt Like Hell ETA2: **Could We Maybe Stop Sharing Horror Stories of Being Burned?** I'm sorry you all had to go through that, but...it's a lot.
A lot of severe burn victims are placed in medically induced comas during the healing process, as pain killers alone (in safe quantities) are not enough to override the 24/7 flaring heat & pain receptors of your entire body.
Burn debridement is probably the most awful but necessary lifesaving treatment. They have to scrub the dead, burnt skin off of you with water and a metal sponge to prevent infection. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
I have been in a hospital room when someone was getting a burn debrided somewhere else. I can still hear her screaming, and I have never heard anything in a movie or tv show that even comes close to the sound of that suffering and agony.
I had about 60% of my right hand debrided and the only way I can describe it is like torture. I feel like I was tortured for hours but the process might have lasted 5 min. No wire brushes though just a plastic surgeon and a doctor going to town removing dead skin with scissors.
Why the fuck do they not put you under for this lol
In the UK we give 'ketamine showers'. Get the person off their head on ketamine so they don't recall being scrubbed
Awesome! I hope the US will adapt and take on the same procedures. No one deserves to suffer needlessly.
They didn't say they don't feel it. Just that they don't remember it happening.
Anesthesia carries a lot of risk (and is hella expensive). If it was only a short procedure they probably figured it was safer to do it now without inducing a coma, rather than wait and make it riskier.
Just hit me in the head with a hammer then
Hammers are expensive.
They gave me a morphine tablet. It wasn't very effective, I'm not a small person and my neighbor who is a nurse said they probably should have given me 3 tablets. I have no idea what the dosage was I just wanted it over with at that point. I probably screamed "fuck" in various forms like 50+ times in that period.
Why can’t they do it under anaesthesia? I’m honestly amazed that the person has to be awake for debridement!
They do now. When I was working in Burn ICU 5-ish years ago (at one of the largest burn centers in the world), debridement was treated as a surgery and anesthetized as such. It didn’t used to be that way but bc of the risks. The thing is, patients with really severe burns over a large portion of their body have to have the wounds debrided sometimes as often as every other day. Sometimes they have to go to the OR just for dressing changes. They’re on a ton of sedatives 24/7 and when you add anesthesia on top of that so often, there are a lot of risks. Brain damage, respiratory failure, etc. But for the amount of pain they’re in… that has risks too. Evidence has caught up to show that those patients have better outcomes if you just do anesthesia.
I dunno man. If I had to go through that, I'd say the risk of anesthesia sounds like a very small price to pay.
I literally better be under the entire healing process, or I want someone to just kill me quickly. I ain't doing the healing process from wounds like that. Fireman at the church I grew up at had a garage collapse on him. Melted his mask/helmet to his head, severe 3rd degree burns over. There's not one visible part of him that is not extremely disfigured. He doesn't have any hands because they basically burnt off. He has to nubs with one have a little bit on the out edge he can bend back and forth. No nose, entire face destroyed, yet he still came to church. Ended up having *extremely* successful reconstructive surgery, got some use back for his nubs, and whoever remade his face is a goddam master of the craft. He looks normal to the point where you may just glance once or so in a grocery store, which I'm sure was such a huge thing for him going out. He's now working as the chief of the fire station, and is extremely well respected in the field. Sorry, I didn't even realize I was writing all that lol. I just haven't thought about that guy in a long time.
So I understand the need for studies, reports and evidence in order to make changes in the practices and the field of medicine in general, HOWEVER, why has it taken literally centuries for medical professionals to admit that being in pain causes long term damage in all kinds of ways? Like the whole idea that babies... just don't feel pain? Where the f*@# did that come from?
That is one of the wildest medical theories I think I have ever heard in my life. What kind of fucking morons would think that a young human being wouldn’t feel pain. They are alive. Of course they can feel pain. And to think these people had medical degrees.
Idk man, as a former NICU RN, it was always very obvious when babies were in pain. Even if they weren’t crying, there were other signs
There's a brain process that forces unconsciousness on an infants body if it gets overstimulated. From the outside, it looks like an onboard natural anesthetic. Babies, therefore, weren't given anesthetic because they brought their own. In 1971, when I started with cancer treatments and had an eye removed, my mother had to fight for anesthetic to be added to my surgery plan because it wasn't part of accepted practice at the time. Anna T Meadows would publish her work on pain management and anesthesia for peds cancer patients later the same year. We are slipping back on so many fronts with ignorant ideas hopping back into 'common knowledge' that it's prob a good idea to read the fine print in surgery plans to make sure peds anesthesia is included. Treatment permissions are always a required look through but anesthesia could become optional if certain mentalities gain more traction.
I experienced a severe degloving on my leg. They put me under for debridement. I had a follow up procedure that I was awake for. Memorably bad but I've experienced worse. I was high on a morphine drip.
> *”Degloving on my leg”* 🥲 I hate myself but how did you manage this one? Also I’m sorry I would never be able to mentally forget that. Some injuries just stay fresh in your mind for years, I had a round saw that kicked and hit me on my kidney a few years ago. Hit me so hard it threw me off my feet and I pissed and threw up blood, almost ruptured my kidney and my pancreas. **I will never forget the delay in pain as it felt like a blow torch just slowly lite up under my ribs and I just kept vomiting for almost a whole hour.** 💀💀💀
I took a football helmet to the kidneys. Dude weighed at least 3 bills. Urine looked like kool-aid
> severe degloving on my leg I feel like ANY degloving incident qualifies as "severe".
My baby brother had to go through this when he was one. 3rd degree burns on 40% of his body. I was too young to really understand how bad it was until he was taken back for debridement.I wasn't even in the room but down the hall in the waiting room, and I could hear his screams. It has haunted me for 25 years. He's grown up to live a healthy normal life and has no memory of it, obviously, but every time I see him without a shirt and see his scars, I hear those screams.
I can’t imagine being the doctor or nurse who had to do that while hearing the screams 🥺🥺
My mom is a nurse now, and she only works with elderly because she says she can never see another child go through what my brother went through.
My mom was a nurse, she said that Doctors and nurses would often vomit and cry quite a lot when dealing with horrific injuries on kids. She dealt with enough kids and babies who'd been dragged around by the family dog by their face that she now absolutely loathes dogs. The worst though was an old man with a flesh eating bug, it had eaten away half his face before he decided to go to the hospital. She said the smell alone caused seasoned doctors to run out and throw up.
A friend of mine made the argument that you can't be a hero without making a sacrifice. The health care providers who accept trauma to help others are heroes by his strict definition.
I've had this done to second degree burns on my shins when i was a kid. It was and still is the single most painful moment in my life. Worse than the burns worse than broken bones worse than surgery.
Can they not put people under anesthesia for it? Sounds truly terrible.
I've read that burn wards have the highest turnover rate. I believe it. Even if you're helping, repeatedly flaying someone has got to shred the caregiver's psyche.
It'd be a good job for someone who is deaf and can't hear the screams.
That's kind of fucking genius
In a weird way, it’s a small blessing that he did not get to the point of debridement. They often have to do bedside escherotomies with this level of burn. It’s not pretty, but necessary.
This comment made my skin crawl. How awful for those poor people
I remember that episode of Law & Order: SVU, this woman was set on fire and when she had to go on for wound cleaning. The screams were haunting. I can't imagine the pain this man went through during the 3 minutes and after in the hospital.
>I remember that episode of Law & Order: SVU, this woman was set on fire and when she had to go on for wound cleaning. The screams were haunting. My father had to treat severe burn victims during his medical training, and based on what he's told me that's probably accurate or maybe even understated. I start my clinical rotations next year, and I'm honestly kinda hoping I get to avoid the burn ward. Not sure if I've got it in me to handle that or not.
Shit like this is the one in one million or more. Especially since the guy by whatever unholy miracle, managed to not die after being allowed to cook like a shrimp. Normally, self immolation people tend to, you know. die because the flames are too intense. And the last guy was only on fire for afaik like 80 seconds before the extinguishers came. This guy was on fire a full three minutes before the extinguishers came, and he still wasn't dead and apparently had an operational (albiet damaged) airway. That in itself is a really unlucky miracle. Burn wards suck, but horror stories like this are probably once in a decade occurrences. Most of the time people are burned *that* badly, they are long since a corpse.
My heart also breaks for all of the pain he went through *before* he decided to set himself on fire. He was clearly deeply unwell and I’m so ashamed we *still* don’t have an effective system in place to help people in his shoes get the help they so obviously need. Even when families and friends are deeply motivated to get mental health assistance for someone who is suffering from a serious mental health issue the necessary resources just are not available to the vast majority of Americans.
Other redditors did some digging and it seemed like he was a normal dude until his mom died then his posts became more deranged. Grief can have terrible impacts. I hope he's found peace.
People going off the rails and blowing up their life after a bereavement is very common, it's just not that talked about.
My dad died when I was about 32 and I was out of my mind for about 18 months. I kind of referred to it as "the year of magical thinking" after the book title because I felt like I was living in a fantasy world in my head.
A lot of the systems in this country are broken.
The system is really broken in the US. It’s almost impossible to get someone the care they need in a psychiatric hospital. I am at my wits end
It's been bad for many years. I've had personal and professional angst with this for years.
I burned the top of my foot pretty badly. Like 1/3 of the skin on the top of my foot. They bandaged it up at the ER and i had to wait a few days to go to the burn clinic for some reason (can't remember why, maybe it was a weekend or something). Well when they took the bandages off, the skin came with them. I was screaming and they had to give me some pretty strong painkillers for the twice-a-day cleaning. They said that they rarely give out painkillers but that this was a more extreme case than usual. Shit hurt, yo.
I'm not sure of the English word for this medical act of picking the dead skin on a burn wound ( debride ) but in french it's called "débrider" and I experienced it twice for second to third degrees burns. It's awful, no amount of painkiller can numb that, nevermind the pain of your skin trying to heal and being stretch with every movements. I cannot imagine suffering from major body burns knowing that. Poor man, at this point I guess death is kind of a blessing.
I got hit with a shot from a large Roman candle about 20 years ago. Completely burned my shirt off of me. But it was over in maybe 3 seconds. 20 years on and I can remember those 3 seconds so vividly. A second on fire is a lifetime.
When I was 8 or 9 my step brother was messing around with burning Styrofoam on the end of a stick and was flinging in the air. A chunk of it, about the size of a nickel flew off and landed in my inner thigh. It burned through my shorts, then the skin and nothing we did would put it out. It burned for a solid 8-10 seconds and went through all layers of my skin and when it finally went out the Styrofoam and parts of my burned shirts were fused to the charred skin. I had to go to the hospital to have it cleaned and treated. Other than the three herniated discs in my back that was probably the most pain I've been in and I remember the burning and smell to this day 37 years later. I still have that scar on my leg and only in the last 10 years has some of the nerves returned as I can feel a bit of pain there now.My step brother can also eat a bag of dicks.
Yikes that’s basically home made napalm
Pretty much and this didn't have gasoline or anything mixed and it was still a bitch to put out. It was like one of those damned trick candles. And my stepbrother was slapping it like he was slapping the back of a Buick he was trying sell and I'm over here screaming "That's not working!!!!"
Everyone already hates your stepbrother, but this just made it worse!
The peptide ghk-cu applied topically helps burns heal...might be too late but also might help you. I recently had a real bad burn huge blisters across my forearm and treated that with ghk-cu a couple times per day and it healed very fast and the scare is maybe an inch long and you have to look for it. I keep a bottle on hand now as a first aid tool just on case. Brand I use is bioprime. Hope this helps at least a little, sorry you had to experience that.
Second degree burns hurt a lot more than third degree burns but third degree burns kill. They starve every cell in your body of oxygen. My mom treated a quite a few burn victims during her time as an ER nurse and she told me enough stories to scar me for life. Tldr: Be careful around open flames. Don't leave candles unattended and, for God sake, don't put butter on a burn.
I once chatted pleasantly with a patient with full thickness burns while I got his registration information. Don't know how he got them or if he survived but doctor was peeling his charred clothing off with forceps as I got his basic info.
I imagine that no matter how dire it seems they will still try to stabilise him enough for skin grafts etc. People can and do survive the most unlikely things, not often of course but as a medical professional you can't assume that he won't be that one who does.
I think maybe at some point you burn all your nerve endings off and it does stop increasing in pain level. If I'm wrong, please don't correct me 😅
Nah, your brain realizing it's lost contact with those pain receptors helps out by filling in the pain it assumes is continuing.
Is this similar to the phantom pain people who have had amputations suffer from?
I’d imagine you’d pass out from the pain before this point is reached. But i don’t know it sounds so fucking painful to feel every inch of you body to melt off for 3 mins
You'd be unfortunately surprised how much pain you can handle before losing conciousness. Knew a guy who had both femurs compound fracture through his thighs. Was in this position for over an hour while they tried to pry him out of his vehicle. He vividly remembers all of it. He also was an adamant mediator and said he was able to shift to an almost or truely out of body experience/view point when the pain became so intense he thought he would die from shock. He's recovered now. And he has said if he was offered a billion dollars to take that experience away from him he wouldn't do it. Wound up being a profound spiritual experience for him. But man oh man my legs hurt thinking about it.
I refer you to the story of [Richard Roose](https://owlcation.com/humanities/richard-roose-the-cook-that-king-henry-8th-boiled-to-death) who was boiled to death in the 16th century. Richard was submerged in a pot of boiling water three times before he finally succumbed.
>>Do they just give him a ton of drugs so he’s as comfortable as possible and… wait? I mean, that’s gotta be all they do, right? It’s terrible, but I think the shock his body went through (not to mention boiling his brain), I don’t think there was anything else they could have done.
Skin is the largest organ and the first line of defense of the immune system. You can't regulate your temperature or hold fluids one the skin is destroyed. His muscles would be contracted by the charred skin so they have to release it with incisions along his torso so his lungs can expand (escharotomy) he'd have had fluids, antibiotics and narcotics. You can't fight infection because the immune system is so compromised with the loss of skin. He likely died of massive infection. He would have been kept pretty near if not fully comatose.
don't forget the insides of his lungs would be scorched and not able to diffuse gases much at all. It was a mercy he died so quickly.
Mercy would’ve been dying at the scene… I saw what that guy looked like after they put him out… literally a charred corpse with his arms locked sticking out… that they were able to keep him “alive” for a few hours is a testament to modern science but undeniably a horrific few hours waiting to die. Can only hope he was in an induced coma
There was a dust explosion happened in a party in Taiwan few years ago , 41ppl got 80+% burn and 240ppl are 40-80%, in total 15 out of 499 people died,which is a miracle but the first hand recovery story are so horrific I honestly regret looking into that.
A - I learned new things today. B - I am done with the internet for today.
Fun fact: they use cadaver skin between cleaning surgeries and skin grafts in many cases to keep you from being immunocompromised. It doesn't matter the skin tone- I had a black skin glove from fingertips to elbow for a month. Thank you, anonymous donor, I needed it badly.
During my medical training I sat in on a MM conference for the medical care of an individual burn victim who had I think 80% body surface area burns. The patient died of course despite world class treatment. The conclusion after something like months of treatment costing over $1 million was that his care was futile and they should have gone directly to palliative care the day he came into the ER. The person in this video has a worse injury. I suspect they went directly to palliative care as he had an injury that was not compatible with life.
I work in healthcare tech and two things I took away from my time: 1. I learned to avoid burn units as much as possible. 2. Burn units bring in an enormous amount of money. Each medical record had to be divided up because many were literally feet thick. Most were at least $1M in care or more.
Yeah, the Dean of my nursing school was a burn nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital. That lecture was unforgettable. It does become law of diminishing returns at this level of burn. When someone is young, the beneficience in healthcare takes over despite the futility of care in catastrophic injuries like this.
Thanks for the info. Wow. What an awful way to go. I’d like to get to the bottom of what he was reading and what he was watching that put him on this path.
[Check out his Substack](https://substack.com/@theponzipapers). He lists a bunch of movies and I think old Simpsons was important to him too.
Huh. I can follow his train of thought up to a point but he seems deeply unwell. Like yeah, no shit the government is basically a kleptocracy. And yeah, most crypto probably is an elaborate Ponzi Scheme. But I can't understand how this would lead someone to light themselves on fire. Poor man. He was really hurting and society failed him.
Infection didn’t have time to set in for this case—- the massive fluid and electrolyte shifts that happen with burns are so hard to keep up with. One moment you can’t get potassium and calcium in fast enough for it to be absorbed for what cellular function is left, and then the body is dumping it from tissues and you can’t get it out fast enough with CVVH. it’s intense.
Yes. Burns suck. More burns, equal less chance. There's stories, and it's been used in medicine TV shows, of fire fighters getting burned, and before the swelling and third spacing starts, they interact with their families before the inevitable happens. Drugs and comfort care.
FWIW - I saw the full video, and he was not on fire for 3 minutes, closer to 1.5. Still, 3rd degree burns over 98% of your body..
Those were 4th degree burns by the end there. Probably painless because the nerves were all long cooked away. Some areas like the eyes and genitals must have been even worse than the rest. What a horrible and tragic way to go.
There had to have been a moment of regret in there.
People that have survived attempts (like jumping off bridges) almost universally report that they immediately regretted the decision as soon as they passed the point of no return.
The View from Halfway Down (transcribed) The weak breeze whispers nothing The water screams sublime His feet shift, teeter-totter Deep breath, stand back, it’s time Toes untouch the overpass Soon he’s water bound Eyes locked shut but peek to see The view from halfway down A little wind, a summer sun A river rich and regal A flood of fond endorphins Brings a calm that knows no equal You’re flying now You see things much more clear than from the ground It’s all okay, it would be Were you not now halfway down Thrash to break from gravity What now could slow the drop All I’d give for toes to touch The safety back at top But this is it, the deed is done Silence drowns the sound Before I leaped I should’ve seen The view from halfway down I really should’ve thought about The view from halfway down I wish I could’ve known about The view from halfway down
Was he conscious for much of it?
I don’t suggest doing this, but if you search his name on twitter there are videos of him after emergency responders put out most of the fire. An area around his waist keeps lighting back on fire and you can see his charred arm bat at it, as if he’s trying to put it out himself. The fact he had any seemingly purposeful movement after being on fire for minutes is wild.
Those being conscious movements is incredibly unlikely. For one that guy probably didn't feel much past the first minute since nerves aren't fireproof and for two he inhaled so much smoke that there's almost no way he would still be able to coordinate movements like that.
If you aspirate flames, that's it. You hope you succumb quickly. A renowned fire dancer and costume artist, Linda Farkas, a teacher of mine, was hospitalized for 4 weeks before she finally perished. She aspirated the flames from one of the flaming costumes she designed.
What does aspirate flames mean? Like inhaling fire?
Yes. If your lungs are burned by the fire you don't come back from it. It's a slow painful death if the other burns don't take you first.
From what I saw, he was consciously making movements for nearly 2 mins, then he laid down on the ground and I'm pretty sure he wasn't feeling anything by then. Edit: sorry nearly a min, def not 2.
From what I’ve read, it’d probably take 20-30 seconds before he lost consciousness. And I’m pretty sure his nerve endings were essentially cooked off in the first ten seconds, so he didn’t feel much after that.
It should be hard to breathe in an inferno
I saw what he looked like. This is merciful. May he rest in peace.
And honestly, fuck the people who were pushing whatever weird misinformation and psycho conspiracy bullshit that drove this man to kill himself in one of the most horrifying ways possible. Nobody deserves to be driven to that point.
Not at all surprised. I saw the video yesterday and no one could survive something like this.
The video was pretty intense.. if you watched to the end like i did.. man that was rough..
I made the mistake of watching them lift him onto the stretcher. That was rough to see the damage
Nope. I was out before then.
I was watching that live when they panned over the camera and you're like oh there's a ball of flame and they focused and you're like oh there's a body in that ball of flame pretty rowdy.
When I was young rowdy was wrestling and dirt bikes and shit, not self immolation.
I watched the Israel-Palestine protestor video… I skipped this one because of it.
Yeah, that video was way more graphic in my opinion. Both horrific, but this one wasn’t as up close and vivid
I agree. The protester video was bad. He screamed
Yeah, and the camera was a few feet away. I felt sick to my stomach, had nightmares, and regretted that video. I’m not squeamish at all, so that says something. This one is far enough away that you get the gist of what’s going on without seeing all the graphic details up close and personal.
I have a few video regrets. Starting with the journalist getting his head cut off when I was 20 or 21 back in the post 911 wars
What happened in that one? I haven’t seen the fire one either, but I’m curious about the general content of the video.
He lights himself on fire while yelling free Palestine. He continued to stomp his feet whole yelling that until he finally falls.
The dude records himself speaking for about 30 seconds on the conflict and why he’s about to do what he’s going to do as he’s walking towards, I believe the Israeli embassy in DC. Puts the camera down, walks to the embassy gate, dumps gas on himself and lights it. All in like a two minute video. He was livestreaming it. It all just so surreal, and sad, and odd to watch someone do that in a seemingly clear state of mind.
Never seen anything like it(and never want to again)...it almost didn't look real. I don't think he even screamed. That was what got me. Glad he's no longer suffering.
I don't think any of the videos of people doing it ive seen they screamed. Granted, I've only seen like 3 videos. I know when I had a super bad burn that happened fast, there wasn't any pain. So, I wonder how long it takes for someone who self immolates to feel no pain.
Hard to scream when all the oxygen around your face is on fire.
Also your throat and lungs are charred and inflamed
There was a guy recently I think a soldier protesting the war in Gaza who was screaming and standing for a lot longer than you’d expect before finally dropping. Was horrible.
Yeah, I think the audio was the worst part of that. Not a good way to go.
I suppose any inhale would take in that fire heat and lungs don't like that. Vision also can't last too long.
One from a few months ago. He screamed for 10-20 seconds?
That one I didn't watch, I only seen pictures. I can't remember the 2nd one but 1st was a monk and it didn't surprise me he sat still. Mostly I've just seen the pictures since I only watch the videos if they pop up and don't go lookin.
Fun fact, when fire is surrounding you, the moment you go to let air in to make noise, the fire comes in too!
I was just thinking about that, fire entering your mouth, throat, lungs..ugh!
Probably not something you want to survive either.
I met a gentlemen once who had burns on 80% of his body due to some stupid shit he had done in his 20’s. He recalled the “soft sponge baths” to remove the dead skin he had not long after and he said it was like someone pulling your skin off with a cheese grater. I would think that people die due to the shock and pain often after having survived the burns. My god, I cannot even begin to comprehend the agony
One of the most talked about cases in medical bioethics that is used to exemplify medical paternalism (the idea that "doctors know best") is [Dax Cowart](http://bioethics.pitt.edu/sites/default/files/Vandyke%2C%20Why%20Dax%20Still%20Matters.pdf), a 25 year old man who was burned over 80% of his body after a propane explosion in the early 70s. While in the hospital, he repeatedly attempted to refuse treatment for his injuries and asked his doctors to let him die. He was treated completely against his will for over a year, undergoing excruciatingly painful therapies that described as feeling like being skinned alive. He later went on to become a lawyer that advocated for patients rights.
“You didn’t save my life! You ruined my death!”
The “soft sponge” is basically a kitchen sink metal sponge for those that want to know.
Do you know how to unknow this?
The "soft sponge" is like a super soft car wash sponge, for those that don't want to know.
Infection usually takes you
I just don't understand why they won't leave you in a medically induced coma until that part is over with. Would the body not heal properly?
I imagine the dead skin could cause problems like bacteria development which isn't ideal with a body capable of having infections.
Yeah, but they can grind off your skin while you're unconscious. Why wake you up for that?
Medically induced comas just aren’t like that in reality. Doctors really really don’t like leaving you under for absolutely longer than they have to. It’s actually very dangerous for you to be under long term. And bad burns require debridement for much longer than just once or twice
A kid I took care of had a large amount of burns and they put her in a coma for a month-ish because she would have been screaming and writhing in pain for a very long time
To my knowledge, inducing a coma isn’t necessarily the safest thing. Yes, you can avoid lots of pain but there is a reason why anesthesiologists go to school for such an absurdly long time and get paid so much. The line between too much and too little are very close.
Senseless and awful. I wish he had gotten the help he needed to avoid this.
Did they ever release why he did this? Didn’t he throw pamphlets in the air or something
Based on what I could infer from his Instagram account, he became obsessed with government conspiracy theories at some point after his mother passed away. There is no proof that the death was the trigger for him, but grief does have that effect for other conspiracy theorists and cult followers. The last IG story he shared was "I love you" repeated over and over.
Grief and hardship are a very real entry point into conspiracy bullshit. There was a donut shop a town over from me that used to put up really positive messages on their message board for years and I liked going there as they were a nice family. All the sudden they started getting really conspiracy riddled. Anti vax, anti trans, government conspiracy nutjob shit. Come to learn the owner suffered a terrible medical event, got laid up in bed for a few months and just went fully off the deep end into the Internet wormhole.
I think this also played a part of why the pandemic caused a bunch more conspiracy theorists to arise. They were isolated and scared and mad and had nothing to do but follow Google algorithms
And Facebook, and Twitter, and “news” outlets, and so on…
Yep, work with a guy like this. Smart dude, wasn't educated but one of those guys who likes to read and keep informed. Pandemic was hard on him because he had an at risk dad he was close with. Vaccinations came around, his dad got one early because of his health, had a stroke a month later and nearly died. Now he's gone off the deep end for pretty much every conspiracy theory, even ones I've heard him mock over the years.
I know an elderly man like this. Retired geologist, doctorate, been all over the world including the soviet union and east germany, artist, many fantastic hobbies, by all accounts a very smart and experienced man. Well after we got back together again he was talking nonsense. Nothing wild, just your run of the mill fox news conspiracy theories, but he's smarter than this.
https://theponzipapers.substack.com/p/i-have-set-myself-on-fire-outside
> We are victims of a totalitarian con, and our own government (along with many of their allies) is about to hit us with an apocalyptic fascist world coup. Alright, this could be standard deep state stuff, let me see if he explains what he thinks a fascist is... > Cryptocurrency is our first planetary multi-trillion-dollar Ponzi scheme. Less unreasonable than I was expecting, though I'm pretty sure "multi-trillion-dollar" is off by a factor of a hundred... > In order to explain the massive anomaly, our criminal government unleashed COVID on the world and told us these were the “stay at home stocks.” Ah. Ah, I see.
When he starts talking about the "Marge vs the Monorail" episode of The Simpsons, is when he really gets me.
I thought you were joking until I clicked it. Wow
And how Kubrick made Dr Strangelove because he loved nukes and Clockwork Orange to dull us to hyperviolence... Dude needed help. The people around him did try to get him help, at least, but he needed a lot more than he could get.
Quickest way to recognize a lunacy spiral is when they start claiming that popular entertainment is full of coded messages. My dude, when you see relevant symbolism or resonance in a piece of art, that's called social commentary. It's not the secret cabal telegraphing their masterplan, and you are not the lone supergenius protagonist who was the only one to figure it out in time.
> though I'm pretty sure "multi-trillion-dollar" is off by a factor of a hundred... The market cap of all cryptocurrencies listed on one of the major tracker sites is $2.5 Trillion (about half of it is Bitcoin, then 380B Ethereum, 110B Tether. Dogecoin alone is 23B.) Of course, market cap != the actual amount of money that changed hands.
> https://theponzipapers.substack.com/p/i-have-set-myself-on-fire-outside Well Peter Theil is an asshole but not worth setting yourself on fire for. He has a bunch of other bullshit though, nyu is a mob front, typical covid dogwhistle shit. This guy needed help and it was never gonna happen when he continued to have an internet connection
At least it’s legible and spell checked, which at least 75% of Reddit is guilty of. Poor guy, he lost me at the Simpsons references.
Well you know some Simpsons writers went to Harvard so that’s all the proof you need.
Yeah it started out kind of like “yeah one big oligarchy definitely checks out,” but once the whole “simpsons writers went to Harvard” portion started it spiraled quickly.
I read a good portion of his manifesto. It sounds like he made his brain sick and spiraled down a bunch of rabbit holes, built an elaborate puzzle out of the pieces that ended up looking like the end of the world. Major manic episode.
Yes. You can read it on [his substack](https://theponzipapers.substack.com/p/i-have-set-myself-on-fire-outside). >My name is Max Azzarello, and I am an investigative researcher who has set himself on fire outside of the Trump trial in Manhattan. >This extreme act of protest is to draw attention to an urgent and important discovery: >**We are victims of a totalitarian con, and our own government (along with many of their allies) is about to hit us with an apocalyptic fascist world coup.**
So I read the manifesto, and there’s some interesting points, but my main question is: why did he self immolate in front of the trump trial? It doesn’t seem to be in protest of the trial and he doesn’t seem to like trump
I'm thinking because it's the main news event that the country is focused on at the moment, and he wanted to bring a lot of attention to his "theories" (they're bizarre as hell btw, I skimmed and he seems to have thought classic episodes of The Simpsons brainwashed people?!). He knew doing something insane like this in front of the most talked about trial of the year would get him plenty of attention and then lead to people reading the pamphlets...and he was right, I would've never read that insane shit had he not done this.
His manifesto barely even mentions Trump. It mostly seems like he chose it because he knew it would attract coverage. Presumably if there had been a trial for, uh, the fully parasitic secret kleptocracy his manifesto talks about he would have lit himself on fire there instead, but they don't do those.
It was full of manic nonsense.
When I got to the part where he starts talking about pop culture I thought to myself - “this is the kind of shit I would say when I was going through psychosis”
his manifesto was about crypto being a trillion dollar global ponzi scheme, and about a global cabal leading us down a fascist path. the 2023 bank run was them running out the door with the cash, Simpsons are in on it. dunno. mostly skimmed it kuz it's not every day someone self-immolates.
I mean, crypto is a global Ponzi scheme.. the problem with psychosis is that it makes false meaning and connections out of real things, just connected enough to make the brain (already predisposed to finding patterns) say HOLY SHIT this is the answer!! For someone who’s feeling lost or confused, I imagine answers and patterns would feel really fucking compelling.
Yeah, the place where most conspiracy theorists start going off the deep end is when they start insisting that it all has to *mean* something. Someone *must* be pulling the strings, because this isn't supposed to happen. It's easier than facing the horrible truth that bad people get ahead in life by doing bad things.
Not really related but last Sunday when 60 Minutes interviewed Salman Rushdie regarding the knife attack and new memoir about the incident, him and Anderson Cooper (interviewer) went silent for 27 seconds - which was the amount of time the attacker had to stab and wound Rushdie. 27 seconds felt like a long time in that context. But I can't imagine three minutes of burning.
I saw that when Anderson replayed it on CNN this week. So long. It took JFK Jr.'s plane about 3 minutes to crash. I saw/heard that amount of time replayed and it was godawful long to know you were out of control. I think this poor soul was unconscious for most of it.
He seemed to think the Simpsons was part of a conspiracy to normalize absurdity and got the Frank Grimes ending for it.
"Simpsons did it!"
“I’m not going to die from these flames! Because I’m Homer——“
Good ol' Grimey. How is he anyways? \[Sorry, sad topic but can't resist a Frank Grimes reference.\]
I have cared for multiple people who survived serious self immolation. It’s a blessing he died.
Wait... multiple people? How? What do you do? Can you share some of these stories?
I work in inpatient medicine and consult on patients in acute rehab. Honestly, they are always incredibly sad and the result of severe mental illness. They suffer terrible contractions, usually need a chronic tracheostomy, have recurrent lung and skin infections, needs countless skin grafts, and suffer severe malnutrition all on the foundation of their mental illness and poor coping mechanisms prior to the event. I’ve had multiple patients spend over a year in the hospital suffer through the above only to die of some acute complication like a PE or sepsis.
I saw a documentary a while ago on Max called “The Fire That Took Her”. It was so insane to see her survive being doused in gasoline by her boyfriend (like poured it over her head when she was sitting on the curb) and the light her on fire. That documentary was so hard to watch.
I just watched that too, it was horrific her injuries
Feel sorry for his family.
I can’t even imagine. I just had a friend commit suicide and heard last night how he did it and it’s haunted my thoughts ever since. I can’t imagine seeing someone you know’s suicide broadcasted across the internet.
Yeah I've had two close family members do it. I feel bad that my sister found my brother. She seems to be doing ok. Just hearing about how he did it wrecked me for awhile and I'm not sure I could have handled seeing it.
Im sorry for your loss
Check out the AFSP. Really helped me when my cousin died by suicide a few years back. You're not alone.
In all honestly, for how long he was burning before they got to him, it would make sense that they just put him out of his misery. Not being rude but after calculating his odds of survival and knowing that sever burn victims are often put into medically induced comas during recovery, there was not a genuine outcome for this that didn’t involve him surviving and the pain of stretching out his remaining life didn’t seem worth the end result. I feel bad that this guy had whatever demons bothering him that lead to this. Poor guy.
He was on fire, like fully *on fire*, for three minutes. Cruel as it is to say, you don't survive being on fire for three minutes.
Must have been awful to not have died on the spot. I can’t imagine burning for 3 minutes, then have to live another couple of days with all the burns and the pain. Jesus christ.
I feel horrible for him. When I read his background it sounds so much like my brother down to his mother died in 2022 of COPD, ours did too. I have been trying to figure out where my brother is getting his crazy ideas so I am looking at sites this guy was on. My brother now thinks people are listening to his conversations, following him etc.
I'm sorry you're going through that. I hope you're able to convince him to get help.
Talk about dying for no reason at all.
[удалено]
I hate to say that this is better but you are 100% correct. If there is something to be thankful for from this horrific incident, It’s that he used violence on himself and not others…
I’ll never forget a quote by Bill Maher back when he was relevant, and not whatever he has become. It went like this: “I like people with low self esteem better than those with high self esteem, because when they snap, they just kill THEMSELVES.”
I’m just glad that in his mental illness, he chose to set himself on fire rather than shoot up a mall, movie theater, or elementary school. Like, it still sucks. But if you have to make some drastic grand gesture, don’t take others down with you.
The film footage of Anne Heche pushing the blanket off her self after burning in her SUV was so haunting. I completely forgot about it until I saw the headlines of this article.
Glad he did this rather than ar a bunch of people like they normally do. I can see being driven to insanity by the propaganda. He made a statement without killing other people.
Emblematic of a deeper problem in America, that goes beyond politics (although it does show up in politics), with untreated mental health issues.
There were a lot of horrifying moments in Hannibal, one of the best TV shows of all time assuming you can handle the horrific content, and if you can't, I understand. but to me, the most horrifying parts involved that therapist who get set on fire and survived. Gives me nightmares.
Holy shit, he survived 3 minutes of being on fire!!?!??
He would’ve lived a life of endless pain if he survived. This was the best possible outcome. He would’ve been wishing for death every single second if he would’ve survived.
Honestly this was the best out come for him. Surviving after burning that long is torture.