Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. (AP) — Investigators on Tuesday were trying to figure out what caused a homemade rocket attached to a skateboard to explode, killing a Southern California high school student and injuring his friend.

Bernard Moon, 18, of Thousand Oaks died after the blast Monday night. A 17-year-old had minor injuries and was hospitalized in stable condition Tuesday.

The two senior honor students were from Thousand Oaks High School. The blast took place in a courtyard at Madrona Elementary School in Thousand Oaks.

The teens were experimenting with a skateboard attached to a homemade rocket as an engine, authorities said. The rocket was about a foot long and three-quarters of an inch in diameter, Ventura County sheriff's Capt. Garo Kuredjian said.

"It wasn't meant to go up into the sky," he said of the rocket. "It was meant to go horizontally to propel a skateboard."

The blast appeared to be "a tragic accident," he said.

It was unclear whether anyone was trying to ride the skateboard at the time, he said.

Details of the rocket's design and the chemicals used were not immediately released.

Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts were meeting at Madrona Elementary when the school suddenly shook.

"Nobody could really discern what it really was because it was a huge explosion. It was just all at once. Just a 'boom!' " Tammy Coburn, who was attending the meeting, told reporters.

A nurse who was attending the meeting tried to help Moon, but he died at a hospital.

"Our hearts are broken," said a posting on Thousand Oaks High School's Twitter account. "The bonds of faculty, staff, & students will bring healing."

Moon had placed in the Ventura County science fair in 2015 and 2014. This year's fair was scheduled for April 20.

The experiment at the elementary campus wasn't sanctioned by any school, and the victims likely were using the courtyard because it's an open space, Kuredjian said. Classes at the elementary school northwest of Los Angeles were canceled Tuesday.

Unlike these two.

I poured over five gallons of gas onto a pile of wood to get a bonfire started. Used a Strike Anywhere match on a brick out lining the burn pit. Found out how fast and fiery fumes can go up.

I jumped over a rather large puddle once.

Dang.....my 15 ft alligator was recently killed in FL....his favorite puddle to

Growing up we lived in a quad level home. My brother and I drug the sleds up to the highest point on the roof. We went down from the bedrooms to the living room/kitchen area, over the garage OFF the garage landing on a van parked on the side of the garage and down to the road. It was so fun at the time but looking back we could and should of been seriously injured

I once teased a slightly annoyed hedgehog.

 Gitkikka wrote:
I once teased a slightly annoyed hedgehog.

Had a friend of mine at Campbell kept shooting a bull in the nut sack with a pellet rifle.

Shamefully little. I've voluntarily had my back broken, but not achieved much in terms of destruction.

Stupidest thing I ever did...

Tie between two things.

Sat on a wall four feet away from a small car that was on fire, watching it burn more and more.

A large white staffy/pitty dog was charging towards my dog-phobic boyfriend with its owner running in the distance screaming and waving. I dropped to my knees and held out my arms.
Thankfully it turns out the dog was deaf and extremely friendly, so I just got kisses.

I once rode my bike down a fairly steep and very long slope while doing a 25 km biking race (though I wasn't in it to compete, I just used it as motivation). I was steady at about 50 kph (just above 30 mph) when I tried to bike up on a bump in the road. However, my angle of approach was far too steep and my bike toppled to the side, flinging me off it. I struck the ground head first and slid on the road a considerable distance before coming to a halt.

My bike was a bit roughed up but I had no externally visible injuries. It was painful, naturally, and my helmet was utterly destroyed (a bit of it had been sandpapered away from the friction to the ground, and the rest was broken), but that was it.

I was very happy to both have a bit of luck and because I had the presence of mind to bring a helmet - otherwise I would probably not have posted this today.

I've done very many dumb things and not gotten hurt when I should have. From surfing during a hurricane to jumping out onto the turret then hull of my tank to fix some MILES belts that had come loose, while the tank was hauling ass across the desert floor at NTC to drunken rappelling from the 7th floor of my college dorm, to using gasoline and arty simulators to get rid of a pesky gopher problem, and very very many more.

I don't know if taking a walk through a minefield qualifies as a stunt but luckily I came out with all limbs intact.

Played with lawn darts as a kid and no one died or was dismembered. #dangerousman

 Ahtman wrote:
Played with lawn darts as a kid and no one died or was dismembered. #dangerousman

I've done that to lay on the ground and roll left or right watching the dart come down...then get up and toss it really high back at them

My minor claims to fame involve jumping off waterfalls and bridges, passing on blind curves, driving through flooded areas, various paintball high jinks, putting a picnic table on top of a gazebo, not properly securing a climbing hunting stand, making styrofoam rafts to drift around the lake shore on, fishing/swimming during thunderstorms, and trying to jump a jet ski over waves too big for my britches.

Typical Lake/Country boy fare.

 Ashiraya wrote:
I once rode my bike down a fairly steep and very long slope while doing a 25 km biking race (though I wasn't in it to compete, I just used it as motivation). I was steady at about 50 kph (just above 30 mph) when I tried to bike up on a bump in the road. However, my angle of approach was far too steep and my bike toppled to the side, flinging me off it. I struck the ground head first and slid on the road a considerable distance before coming to a halt.

My bike was a bit roughed up but I had no externally visible injuries. It was painful, naturally, and my helmet was utterly destroyed (a bit of it had been sandpapered away from the friction to the ground, and the rest was broken), but that was it.

I was very happy to both have a bit of luck and because I had the presence of mind to bring a helmet - otherwise I would probably not have posted this today.

My Dad once shredded his back by doing almost exactly that. Rode down a steep hill, hit a small pothole, flipped and skidded like 15-20 feet on his back

Now me personally? Hmmm... Not much really. I really am not that much of a daredevil. Biggest was probably jumping off the swing and flying 15 feet ending with only a small bloodblister
Most of the risks I take are virtual.

Once at a Christian bible camp I went to in my young years, I was peer pressured into trying a front flip off of a shed about 12-15 feet tall. It took alot of balls to try it but I actually did it, and landed just fine!

One slip and a fall on my head into the sand could definitely have done alot of damage, perhaps even paralysis, and looking back on it now I have alot of trouble understanding how my Counselors got away with peer pressuring the kids into dangerous stunts. The games we played were sometimes violent or dangerous as well, all organized and invented by the counselors. One of the games resulted in the "losers" being forced to do whatever the counselors asked them the next day, which i'm sure sounds a bit strange, and it should. When I got home from the camp I was covered in various wounds. My parents were rather unhappy.

On an unrelated note, at the same camp, I won a box of chocolates for winning a bible knowledge contest thing, and a kid in my cabin thought it would be funny to strip completely naked and eat all my chocolates while maniacally laughing, thinking I wouldn't do anything to him because he was naked. I first told the counselor about it, who literally did nothing. Then I grabbed his shoulders and flung him out of the room into the sun so everyone could see his dumb, naked self rolling around in the dust trying to get up. Then he tried to fight me, clearly embarrassed. This is the time my counselor decided to actually do something with himself, and i almost got kicked out for fighting.

 CptJake wrote:
while the tank was hauling ass across the desert floor at NTC

When I was stationed there, I would run up some of the hills surrounding the base, just explore the austere nature of the place. Went out one day for a run and realized I did some piss poor planning for this particular jog. Less then 24 hours after some alcohol infused fun and didn't bring any water, plus minimal pre-hydrating and over confidence in how much I was acclimated to the temps. I felt like I was going to die, and probably would've if I had rolled an ankle or some such. I was probably just me panicking, but I still think I would've been coyote food had I went further out.

Got a killer tan though.

Lots of folks complain about NTC, but I enjoyed living there. It probably sucks if you have to be one of the units that visits and trains there.

This wasn't intentional, but I still can't believe I survived it. When I was a kid me and my older brother were on a roller coaster (The Grizzly at Kings Dominion), and shortly after the ride took off the bar that secures you in place unlocked and we could not get it to lock back down. Me and my brother thought we were both dead but managed to hold the bar down for the entire ride. Maybe it felt like a scarier situation than it actually was, but that's probably the closest I've come yet to biting the big one.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ashiraya wrote:
I once rode my bike down a fairly steep and very long slope while doing a 25 km biking race (though I wasn't in it to compete, I just used it as motivation). I was steady at about 50 kph (just above 30 mph) when I tried to bike up on a bump in the road. However, my angle of approach was far too steep and my bike toppled to the side, flinging me off it. I struck the ground head first and slid on the road a considerable distance before coming to a halt.

My bike was a bit roughed up but I had no externally visible injuries. It was painful, naturally, and my helmet was utterly destroyed (a bit of it had been sandpapered away from the friction to the ground, and the rest was broken), but that was it.

I was very happy to both have a bit of luck and because I had the presence of mind to bring a helmet - otherwise I would probably not have posted this today.

You're very lucky, a similar accident happened to a friend of mine in college and his injuries and road burns were so severe he had to drop out for the semester and couldn't work or go back to school for over a year. He did not have a helmet on, unfortunately for him.

 Frank&Stein wrote:
I don't know if taking a walk through a minefield qualifies as a stunt but luckily I came out with all limbs intact.

Yeah, I had to lead my recon hummer through a minefield once. It was supposed to have a lane marked, but an arty barrage had blown the lane all to hell, about 10 meters into the 100+m field I had my driver STOP because an AT mine was laying unexploded on its side in the middle of the 'cleared' lane. At that point I realized what we had gotten into. It definitely delayed us a tiny bit as I walked and probed ahead of my ride.

Not a fun day.

Got extremely drunk, fell down a rocky gully and landed on a cactus. Somehow came out of that with nothing worse than a bad hangover!

I almost died on my first day of snowboarding.

Last year I tried out snowboarding for a change. I was kind of proficient on skis already, but never had any lessons or anything, it was mostly learning by doing as a teenager. Nevertheless, after a while of trying the snowboard out on the idiot's hill on my own, I thought maybe one or two lessons for a proper teacher, then onto the real slopes!

So, the teacher was quickly content with my level of skill I guess, so we decided that, for the last part of the lesson, we'd go down the "real" slope for the first time! Yay! At first, it went pretty well, the turns also worked, I was getting confident in turning and braking and all that...TOO confident maybe?

So, almost at the end of the mountain slope, I really mucked up a turn - I got too fast too quickly - there was no way I could turn over to the other side and even braking and falling seemed out of the question. So I approached the edge of the slope with kind-of rapid speed - and this edge had a slight rise to it, almost like a little ramp. And there was nothing but solid, German fir tree forest behind that. Due to that little rise, I actually JUMPED up while going off the slope, did a half back-flipe mid-air so that I was basically approaching the row of trees head-first and backwards.

At this one, short, moment I realized that this is how those ski and snowboard injuries happen where they need to call in a helicopter and people end up paralyzed...

...but with a big WHOOMPH I simply landed on the fluffiest part of snow I could imagine, with my back and head first. No pain, no twisted limbs, no nothing, I couldn't really believe it at first. When I dared to lift my head, I realized my head had landed literally inches away from the trunk of a large fir tree - my helmet wouldn't have done anything to prevent the kind of kinetic stress on my cervical vertebrae had I crashed just a tiny bit further into the forest. My teacher came to a grinding halt at the edge of the slope and screamed at me to not move anything!!! He had only seen my semi-backflipping body disappear off the slope at rapid speeds and feared a fractured spine himself - it took quite some time to convince him that I was not in pain and could move all limbs without problems! After that, we finished the slope and had a good laugh of relief at the end of it.

I continued snowboarding for a week after that, but I was very, very careful in doing so.

Reading that scared the gak out of me! Skiing and snowboarding sounds so dangerous to this lowland dwelling schlub.

I've been involved in 13 (I think, kind of lost track) automotive accidents. Some as passenger, some as driver. One involved multiple 360 degree spins before coming to a halt, one involved climbing out of the passenger door because my own door was lying on the road.

Not exactly stunts, but the worst I've done is cut a finger on broken glass. By cut, I didn't even need a plaster, it just bled for a bit.

 Azreal13 wrote:
I've been involved in 13 (I think, kind of lost track) automotive accidents. Some as passenger, some as driver. One involved multiple 360 degree spins before coming to a halt, one involved climbing out of the passenger door because my own door was lying on the road.

Not exactly stunts, but the worst I've done is cut a finger on broken glass. By cut, I didn't even need a plaster, it just bled for a bit.

Remind me to never accept lifts from you.

 Da Boss wrote:
Reading that scared the gak out of me! Skiing and snowboarding sounds so dangerous to this lowland dwelling schlub.

I'm from Lübeck in the north of Germany myself, so I'm also more of a lowlander. I wouldn't call myself an experienced alpine athlete for sure, maybe I'm doing a ski or snowboard trip once every two years for a week...

When I was a kid I had the bright idea of setting up a ramp to jump the front steps of my building. It wasn't very high, just 3 steps down, but as a result I jumped from a between two buildings with virtually no forward visibility at a fairly high speed directly into the street 5 feet ahead of me. This was not a well considered plan, and I was immediately hit by a car.

My bike was wrecked, but I was completely uninjured. Drunks and young children indeed.

 Avatar 720 wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
I've been involved in 13 (I think, kind of lost track) automotive accidents. Some as passenger, some as driver. One involved multiple 360 degree spins before coming to a halt, one involved climbing out of the passenger door because my own door was lying on the road.

Not exactly stunts, but the worst I've done is cut a finger on broken glass. By cut, I didn't even need a plaster, it just bled for a bit.

Remind me to never accept lifts from you.

That doesn't even count the near misses or the times where nothing got broke, but eggs and omlettes dear boy, these days I'm still as quick an A to B driver as you'll find, but I haven't broken anything in aaages.

I even raced (and beat) a train between stations once when roadworks delayed getting to the first station and the young lady who I was transporting didn't die or nothing. That was long before Top Gear started doing that sort of gak too!

 Ouze wrote:
When I was a kid I had the bright idea of setting up a ramp to jump the front steps of my building. It wasn't very high, just 3 steps down, but as a result I jumped from a between two buildings with virtually no forward visibility at a fairly high speed directly into the street 5 feet ahead of me. This was not a well considered plan, and I was immediately hit by a car.

My bike was wrecked, but I was completely uninjured. Drunks and young children indeed.

OMG.....Pipe ramps....

Put my head through a frosted glass window while drunk.

It was the bathroom window, and I was going number 1 and passed out on my feet. Fell forward and crash.

No injuries, not even a scratch, which confused me.

 CptJake wrote:
using gasoline and arty simulators to get rid of a pesky gopher problem

Are you the basis for Bill Murray's character in Caddyshack?

When I was young, I learned that stunts were not my thing. I'd hit a ramp on a bike or skateboard and either the ramp would break (poor engineering) or the skateboard would abruptly halt and I would keep going.

I never was injured more than scrapes and bumps but I got tired of being the only one getting punked while trying stunts.

 VorpalBunny74 wrote:

 CptJake wrote:
using gasoline and arty simulators to get rid of a pesky gopher problem

Are you the basis for Bill Murray's character in Caddyshack?

No, but in all honesty it was before I had seen Caddy Shack. My grandfather told my uncle and I (he was only a couple years older than me) to 'do something about those damned gopher destroying his crops'.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Breotan wrote:
When I was young, I learned that stunts were not my thing. I'd hit a ramp on a bike or skateboard and either the ramp would break (poor engineering) or the skateboard would abruptly halt and I would keep going.

I never was injured more than scrapes and bumps but I got tired of being the only one getting punked while trying stunts.

I did some tremendously stupid things on skateboards and bicycles, and saucer sleds in the winter.