It’s the late 90s. I’m 13 years old, living with my family in an old house out in the sticks. I’m home alone late at night (a very uncommon occurrence) and I put on the movie Full Metal Jacket, which I had never seen before.
Spoilers ahead (Do I need to call out spoilers for a movie made 40 years ago?)
The main character, “Joker,” is in boot camp. While on night watch, he finds a squad mate, “Pyle,” sitting on the toilet holding his rifle. Pyle is slow and has been getting bullied throughout the movie. He puts a magazine in his rifle and says some creepy shit… he has clearly lost it. Joker tries to talk him down, then gets the drill instructor. The drill instructor yells at Pyle. Pyle smiles, then shoots the drill instructor dead. He points the rifle at Joker then sits back down on the toilet, puts the barrel in his mouth, and blows his brains out.
I’m not exaggerating here: the power goes off at that exact moment; I see a close up of Pyle blowing his brains out all over the tile wall behind him then everything goes black… pitch black. Like I said, I’m in the sticks. There are no streetlights or nearby houses providing any light, and not much moonlight; It’s all just darkness.
Im 13, alone, and freaked out. I can’t see shit and don’t know where a flashlight is. I stumble around for a while and finally find one. Old house bonus: the house has a crusty old fuse box, not a circuit breaker, and the fuse box is outside. I find a fuse and muster up the courage to go out there. I go out to the creepy, spider infested corner where fuse box is, find some more courage (or maybe desperation), and start swapping fuses in the hopes that one is blown. I just about start crying with relief when I find the right one and the lights pop on.
I did not finish the movie that night.
Vincent D’Onofrio is so good in everything.
I was “don’t take that kid to a store full of expensive fragile shit” age and disposition.
My mom took me through the expensive fragile shit section of Dillards or some other mall store.
Pitch black. The first thing everyone heard was my mother, standing next to me and holding my hand with a death grip, yelling “STRANGER DONT FUC-UH-SHITTING MOVE GODDAMIT”
My soul rocketed out my ass directly through my pants and I did not fuckuhshittingmove.
Growing up in an area with frequent lightning storms, the number of times i remember being left with no light and no water (because well pump) in the middle of a shower is very high
Northeast blackout of 2003. People started to talk to their neighbours again and play cards instead of watching TV
They also called the cops because there were lights in the sky they’d never seen before.
The lights were stars.
The machine I was hooked up to that was draining my fluids after surgery thankfully had a battery backup, and the power was only out for 3 hours. After talking with the nurses, we had come up with a plan to express the fluids manually if necessary, but thankfully that didn’t end up happening.
I’ve got 2:
Playing phasmophobia. The ghosts hands reach around my screen signifying I’m about to die. As my head is snapped back the power shuts off and everything goes black. And thunder clapped outside. Properly scared the shit out of me.
Another time, power went out and fried my Seagate hard drive mid write. No clue what was happening but pre power outage it worked. Post it did not. Now I’m scared to buy more Seagate drives.
I’ve never had good luck with Seagate drives. They die much sooner than my favored brand, Western Digital Black. I have WD drives that are 14 years old that still run.
For every anecdote like this, there’s another with different/reversed brands.
Aside from some particularly bad runs (like the IBM “Deathstar” or WD Greens), no brand is much more reliable than another.
There is, however, a big difference when you get to Enterprise drives. Often SAS but not always. They are a lot more expensive, but with much higher MTBF ratings. But even within this, the brands are pretty close.
I was busy getting absolutely sloshed on scotch at home alone because I was an alcoholic, the power went out, and I thought “I’ll light some candles and read a book in bed!”
Promptly passed out and woke up to the smoke alarm going off with flames crackling up the wooden bedside cabinet and the mattress starting to smoke, burning my forehead and some of my hair.
The only reason I didn’t die is because I forgot to close the bedroom door, the smoke detector was out in the hall. If the door was closed, the room would have filled with smoke and killed me before the alarm went off.
Remind me to never drink alone
Or at least drink alone without any open flames.
Wow. Thank you for sharing. I hope you’re doing much better these days!
Haha thanks, I’ve been sober nearly 4 years, and all my candles are battery powered now.
If nothing else, do put a smoke detector in your bedroom. There are non-blinking ones.
I hadn’t saved my game for a VERY long time.
Watched the horror movie [REC] (the original Spanish one, not the remake). It’s sort of a found footage type thing where it’s all told from the POV of a reporter’s camera.
The climax of the scene…
Mild Spoiler
takes place in pitch black for the characters and a night vision filter on the camera.
After the film ended, friends went home, and within a couple minutes of them leaving, all the power went out in the neighborhood. I’m not normally scared by horror movies, but I went and hung out in my car for a bit.
I had a vacation cancelled when I was a kid because of the 2003 blackout.
Mid 1990s, winter storm, roads largely unusable, then an ice storm, trees fell over, power outage for days
My brother was on a mountain road in California during a forest fire. He didn’t realize how close it was, and it suddenly broke through the trees along the side of the road. As he was trying to escape--i.e. driving like a madman--a large tree fell across the road behind him just as he passed, like in a movie.
Whatever I was doing I remember many times that happened I just got to watch the night sky
Am I the only one who never had a power outage at home? I guess I am sorry that I live in a country with a somewhat maintained electricity grid ;)
But hey, remember this the next time someone says that renewables are what will make the grid unstable… Seems to work well in the US, amiright?
To be fair, I had one while being at a friend, when a lighting hit a transformer on his street.
Working on a project, and I hadn’t saved for a few hours.
After that I now save after every small addition to my projects.
I was playing stardew the other day and it only saves after you sleep for the night. Had an epic in game day. Character is getting into bed, power goes out. Welp, there goes my auto petter.
I was in traffic 30 minutes away from home when the 2003 blackout started. That was a long drive home.
