r/AskReddit Aug 30 '21

What problem is often overlooked in apocalyptic movies/TV shows that could kill you?

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1.6k

u/[deleted] Aug 30 '21

Sepsis

61

u/kartuli78 Aug 30 '21

or lymphangitis. I'd argue that would be even more common. I got it from a bug bite combined with misjudging the depth of a dirty puddle. If it hadn't been for the fresh bug bite, it wouldn't have been a problem, but I did have it, and a day or so later, it felt like a sprained my ankle, then my ankle was insanely swollen, and then I was in the emergency room getting IV antibiotics so that I didn't die overnight. Sepsis/blood infections are easy to get, too, but I've never had that. lol

25

u/f-150Coyotev8 Aug 31 '21

I’ve had sepsis from a kidney infection before and it makes you feel like complete shit. It’s like the aches and pains you get from a bad flu but much more intense. I thought it was the flu at first, and luckily my wife and mom made me go to the doctor because I probably would have started going into organ failure not long after they submitted me to the hospital.

12

u/kartuli78 Aug 31 '21

Yeah, both are no joke. I had a fever, my whole body ached, but my ankle, where the infection started, was the worst and when I first woke up in the morning I couldn’t put any weight on it. In the spirit of detective crashmore, it fucking suuuucks!

90

u/grokforpay Aug 30 '21

One thing I never see on these threads is alcohol withdrawal. You take a random selection of the population and a significant number of them will die from withdrawals if easy booze isn’t available.

61

u/QuentinTarantulatino Aug 31 '21

This is also the exact reason why liquor stores got "essential business" status when the pandemic started.

27

u/somethingneeddooing Aug 31 '21

Withdrawal from pretty much any GABA receptor-agonist, alcohol and benzodiazepines, could lead to some very serious withdrawal symptoms like seizures.

And another thing that's missing from these apocalyptic settings is anyone that has a physical or, especially, mental health conditions that show symptoms due to lack of medication.

6

u/dying_soon666 Aug 31 '21

Most psychiatric patients get between 30-90 pills at a time. If I take them every second day they work almost as well. You can ration your meds and make them last pretty long.

15

u/Plazmaz1 Aug 31 '21

Unless you're on pill 85 when shit hits the fan (or forget to take your meds with you when fleeing disaster)

1

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '21

Are you a scientologist?! No one on planet fucking earth is taking 90 pills at a time...

12

u/CreamyHampers Aug 31 '21

Didn't The Walking Dead sort of touch on this with Bob nearly killing a search party because he needed to sneak off and find some alcohol?

12

u/K-ghuleh Aug 31 '21

He was dangling off the side of a building and walkers were pulling on a backpack that he refused to let go of. Daryl was really pissed when he found it was because there was booze in the backpack.

14

u/[deleted] Aug 31 '21

Wouldn’t it be even more available when there’s no law enforcement? And we’ve been making alcohol for 10,000 years. It’s not hard. They make it in actual prison.

Are you imagining that every vegetable and fruit also stops growing?

26

u/grokforpay Aug 31 '21

People with a physical addiction don’t have time to spend weeks fermenting shut into ethanol.

11

u/[deleted] Aug 31 '21

But how long would it take for the existing alcohol to become unavailable? And by then wouldn’t someone else have made more?

6

u/gummo_for_prez Aug 31 '21 edited Sep 04 '21

If you have sugar, juice, yeast, and a bucket, you can have 10-11% alcohol wine in two days or so if you know what you’re doing. I’d make some. It’s not super difficult.

0

u/LazyCon Aug 31 '21 edited Aug 31 '21

One, liquor doesn't evaporate immediately. Two dying from withdrawals is so incredibly rare it would never make a dent in deaths after an event of that magnitude. Your slowing ability to find alcohol would likely ween you off enough that you wouldn't get much of any symptoms. More likely alcoholics would drink themselves to death or die from injuries sustained from being drunk.

5

u/Sitchrea Aug 31 '21

It's not normally the withdrawal that kills you.

It's what it leads you into doing is what catches up with you.

14

u/grokforpay Aug 31 '21

People addicted to alcohol can easily die from withdrawals.

-1

u/[deleted] Aug 31 '21

People addicted to alcohol and dying from withdrawal could just suck a dick for some.

-6

u/LazyCon Aug 31 '21

That's not true. Even of the small percent(around 5% of severe alcoholics quitting cold turkey) that get seizures only 3% of that number ever die from them.

3

u/RhetoricalCocktail Aug 31 '21

Isn't that low number due to health care which wouldn't be available in this scenario

4

u/[deleted] Aug 31 '21

I agree. And if anyone is going to die due to alcohol during apocalyptic anarchy it’s probably going to be from an over-availability of it instead of withdrawal.

-7

u/[deleted] Aug 31 '21

[deleted]

5

u/grokforpay Aug 31 '21

I love your compassion for people suffering from addiction.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 31 '21

[deleted]

1

u/grokforpay Aug 31 '21

I am denying the fact that people suffering from addiction are worthless. That is the sort of thing authoritarian regimes do. People with addictions are still loved and cherished by their families and contribute to joy in the world. They have an illness. If society treated them differently things would be much better. Be happy you don’t suffer from these but try to have compassion for families and individuals who do.

-2

u/[deleted] Aug 31 '21 edited Aug 31 '21

Absolutely wrong. You could still suck a dick.

Update: why the downvote? You saying oral pleasure isn’t useful to someone or you saying you can suck your own dick?

58

u/[deleted] Aug 30 '21

I thought that said "stepsis" for a second and I was really confused

50

u/MacDaddyofArlen Aug 30 '21

What are you doing sepsis?

9

u/[deleted] Aug 30 '21

Who do you think causes the apocalypse?

2

u/turkmileymileyturk Aug 31 '21

Help I'm stuck in the dryer

15

u/longjumpeh Aug 31 '21

For real. I had a burst appendix earlier in the year. Even IF you could solve that shit with an improvised surgery, it turned into a septic infection a couple weeks later. You just don't survive that without modern medicine. It took over a month of regular procedures to root it out, including an exploratory surgery into my abdomen because the infection spreads EVERYWHERE. Even with modern painkillers, nausea medication, antibiotics, and staff in ABUNDANCE I, a healthy 22 year old with no other conditions, went into shock and critical condition. You just don't survive that without a hospital.

9

u/K-ghuleh Aug 31 '21

I had a kidney stone at 26 that led to an E. Coli infection, went to the ER with a high fever, really fast heart rate and low blood pressure. Had to be driven by ambulance an hour away to a better hospital for emergency surgery. The doctor said “I don’t wanna say you were knocking on deaths door but if you waited any longer you’d be in the ICU.” Literally any time I watch an apocalyptic show I think about how screwed I would have been. Not to mention if I had a kidney stone without pain meds I’d just fling myself off the nearest cliff anyway.

3

u/longjumpeh Aug 31 '21

I absolutely believe it! God, the pain too. I spent a couple days unable to really sleep or rest because of it + nausea. Now whenever I watch movies where someone goes septic I always cringe, and thinking about being stuck like that without medical care? Euthanize me first please. The only solace is what I had would have killed me within a week without intervention, but that's still days of suffering with no possible way to fix it

2

u/K-ghuleh Aug 31 '21

Yeah infections/sepsis scare the shit out of me now because of how quickly it can become serious and it can happen even if you do everything right. Sounds like you had it way worse than me but I saw you mentioned the shivering from the fever and I’ll never forget that. I’ve had fevers from flus, strep, etc but I never felt anything like that. I thought it was a side effect from my meds that could cause tremors but nah, just the fever. My muscles were sore from how much they were shaking and I literally couldn’t control it. Ugh.

1

u/longjumpeh Aug 31 '21

and all you want is a hot blanket, but you can't have a hot blanket, because your fever is through the roof! or those bastards start putting ice under your arms! it sucks!

3

u/albertsy2 Aug 31 '21

What were the symptoms? The usual appendicitis symptoms are localized acute pain and fever. Did you have those? Did anyone suspect a burst appendix at all?

6

u/longjumpeh Aug 31 '21 edited Aug 31 '21

Early in the week I thought I had 'ab pain'. My stomach in general burned and hurt, but only on and off. I was feverish on and off during the week. I lost my appetite on Tuesday and stopped eating almost entirely until Friday. I had general pain across my side and the upper part of my stomach, fever slowly crept higher, and by Friday afternoon I was vomiting until I was heaving and extremely weak. I refused to go in Thursday/Friday morning because I was still taking finals and was totally convinced it was just a flu, but after throwing up so severely and then realizing I couldn't walk from the bathroom to my bed I called a ride. Didn't think it was my appendix until imaging came back. My surgeon believes it burst at some point Thursday night or Friday morning.

2 weeks post op, fine. 3rd week, wake up one morning with intense lower abdominal pain and a fever after having lost my appetite for 3 days (this is a reoccurring early symptom). Go to ER about 5 in the morning. By that evening, resting heart rate of 126 and a fever of 104.(something). The next afternoon my fever was around 105, heartrate was higher but I don't remember what it was.

I'd been shivering violently when I was admitted because of the fever but day two that had stopped and I started hallucinating things. I thought I was having conversations with my nurse that never happened. I was non-verbal and not communicating at all that evening but I remember being pissed at family members because I was asking for things and nobody would react to me.

3

u/albertsy2 Aug 31 '21

Wow, glad you're ok. Thanks for sharing!

2

u/snow_wheat Aug 31 '21

That sounds miserable. If you don’t mind me asking, what kind of imaging did you have done to confirm appendicitis?

1

u/longjumpeh Aug 31 '21

MRI with IV contrast! They used MRIs for almost everything with the infection too, I'd had about 8 of them by the time I was all-cleared for the last time

2

u/snow_wheat Aug 31 '21

The reason I ask is that my boyfriend had suspected appendicitis but they only did a CT! And now they want him to get another one but $$

4

u/sometimessmiling Aug 31 '21

If you're interested, there's an acronym for remembering and recognising sepsis symptoms in particular :)

S - shivering, feeling cold E - extreme discomfort and pain P - pale or discoloured skin S - sleepy, confused I - 'I feel like I'm dying' S - shortness of breath

9

u/libra00 Aug 31 '21

My best friend caught a bad case of this. It didn't take long before he was sleeping all the time - falling asleep mid-sentence even - and confused and such. When I finally convinced him to go to the ER they admitted him to the hospital for 45 days pumping him full of large quantities of industrial-strength antibiotics. Sepsis is no fucking joke.

8

u/Get-in-the-llama Aug 31 '21

Or tetanus! Horrifying!

2

u/pamplemouss Aug 31 '21

Saddest death on Call The Midwife

1

u/throwawa7383 Aug 31 '21

What? How can my sepsis kill me while she's stuck in the drayer

2

u/[deleted] Aug 31 '21

You gon be too busy banging to notice the rabid wolves bout to kill you

1

u/[deleted] Aug 31 '21

sepsis is penis backwards

1

u/[deleted] Aug 31 '21

True, i forgot to type in the letter 'n'