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submitted 3 weeks ago by scuppie to c/eli5@lemmy.world

I've had a couple of articles come up for me like Darwin award winners walking into helium balloons while they're still being filled at ground level, or people walking into buildings (is it far underground?) and just asphyxiating before they realise.

How do these conditions come about? What about cave diving? Where do you get areas open to the environment where oxygen doesn't reach? I get with helium balloons the gas is being forcefully displaced. How else do you encounter oxygen absent scenarios?

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[-] Wrufieotnak@feddit.org 4 points 2 weeks ago

One story that was told to us as kids is in the past some people put the barbeque grill back into the storage cellar still with red-hot and smouldering coals. Those would produce CO2 and more dangerously carbon monoxide, CO. Next person going in the cellar dies from CO poisoning, as does the next 2 people who go to check why the other ones take so long to get something from the cellar.

[-] scuppie 1 points 2 weeks ago

Oh yeah, that does ring a bell

this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2025
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