Another how not to die of carbon monoxide tip: Don't fall asleep in a car below decks on a ferry that has trucks idling. I was poisoned into unconsciousness, but revived with oxygen.
This could have been much shorter and more straightforwardly written, while being even more engaging.
It's kind of amazing the number of foundational assumptions we have to make to lead productive lives in modern society without being paralyzed by irrational fear.
Any time you're in a building (or really any elevating or sheltering structure), you have to assume a certain amount of structural integrity both above and below you created and presumably certified by fallible people whose credentials may be completely unknowable to you.
Almost anything you buy to eat has been handled and processed by people and machinery that has very likely come into contact with and may still be in proximity to toxic chemicals, poisons, or objects (sometimes sharp!) that ought not to be consumed.
Traveling in ways that interact with other people, either because they're controlling the mode of transportation or because they're controlling other modes of transportation that could cause lethal collisions in general requires coming to grips with barely contained chaos. Just because you're not drunk doesn't mean the pilot isn't.
This isn't intended to be sarcastic or satirical. It's also not intended to induce paranoia. I just think it's important that we recognize the social contracts that border on religiosity that prevent us from dying in most situations. It gives even more weight to the idea that reporting weird things is indeed cool af.
1On the topic of not dying: Let's not forget that many cancers today are manageable if caught early. I have seen several people suffer and sometimes die of colon, prostate, breast cancer that could potentially have been caught early. I am not a medical doctor, so I will write non-technically. Maybe others can improve the list.
If you are over 40 and have a prostate, get it checked. Today you can do that radiologically. If a urologist ten needs to check it by hand, s/he will.
If you are over 45, colonoscopy. Not fun, but can alert and deal with one of the most preventable cancers. I am supposed to have one in the coming months. Not looking forward to it, but I am also not looking forward to cancer.
Cervical Pap/HP for those with a cervix (over 30, apparently)
Breast exam (self exam + mammogram)
Another item I see often among people my age (50 and over) is heart related issues. A general practitioner can do one of those treadmill/bicycle exam, where they measure ECG and blood pressure. Easy and quick and can detect something fatal. More than once I have heard things like "oh, he was always very fit and then one day he collapsed while playing tennis"
These items may seem obvious to some of you. But I do now and then talk to smart and health-conscious people that postpone these tests.
Any percent point that you can shave off the probability of dying of cancer or heart attack is worth considering, particularly for those 45 and older.
While it's true that cancers today are more manageable if caught early plenty of what gets diagnosed as cancer disappears without intervention and gets very harmful surgical interventions like amputations if diagnosed. During the Obama administration they purposefully reduced cancer by policy testing to reduce the amount of false positives.
Colonoscopy is not a risk-less procedure. There's no evidence that the advice of getting a colonoscopy if you are over 45 reduces all-cause-mortality. The biggest modern randomized colonoscopy trial (NordICC) enrolled ages 55–64 found no reduction in all-cause-mortality.
For health-conscious people "I do only things that are proven to help with the goal of not dying" is a perfectly reasonable way to relate to the topic of these kinds of tests.
I think I'd add: ask any medical doctor friend (or AI) to review the medication you take in a year. It can reveal bad habits like taking NSAID for bad reasons. Some people take them for any kind of pain and it can really flare up infections to a deadly point.
Not sure it fits in here but it came to my mind.
1I'm glad you survived a real danger to your life, and major kudos for writing up your experience!
Regarding this essay, I expected to upvote it based on the title alone. But having read it, its particular advice feels weak to me and sounds more like a general exhortation to Be Vigilant (or paranoid) of X, which isn't at all sustainable in a world full of X's one could Be Vigilant about. So it seems to me that a stronger version of such an essay almost must be rooted in base rates or something.
The kind of structure I'd expect would look more like: brainstorm or LLM-generate a list of "in my environment, what things could kill me". Then guesstimate or google likelihoods for those, then brainstorm or look up or LLM-generate countermeasures for these threats, etc., and finally land on a list of top threats & suggested efficient countermeasures. Plus an understanding that one cannot drive all risks down to zero.
Finally, such a list should probably also consider cryonics (as a way to kind-of-survive many otherwise unpreventable causes of death), as well as non-individual risks of death like war, pandemics, or x-risks.
Any person working on a building (which is where you plausibly spend most of your time) should have at least a background check. Electrician, gas, HVAC, piping, water, masons… It’s Ok to be annoying with these people : after all, it’s about your life. If you’re renting a place and the landlord takes care of this, politely ask them explanations on where they found the services, for how long do they know them, etc. We’re talking about the Elven Guard of Life. Their Skill and Grace should be Known About in Legends of Great Deeds and By Masters of Unmistakable Craft.
It seems plausible that this is a good idea, but I don't think you have made an argument that it's a good idea. In particular, why do you believe that your background check will be able to distinguish those workers who might produce safety problems from those that don't?
Down in the basement, our boiler outlet pipe was disconnected. Two of us saw it, separately. There wasn’t a gaping hole, rather, it was odd, just slightly out of place, but nothing screamed "urgent!" Neither of us acted. Neither of us sent a picture to the group to say "Hey, this looks weird."
Asking a AI chatbot along with the a photo sounds to me like a better general habit than escalating things like that to a group chat.
Firefighters ? Medical emergencies ? Police ? Ambulance ? You should have the gesture of calling them with a phone carved in your brain (see here for a refresher).
During a real emergency, dialing 911 can be surprisingly difficult. You're emotionally frazzled, possible panicking, and just hitting the right sequence of buttons on the phone can become hard (this was easier before we had to do things like unlock our phones or remember the sequence to do to bring up a screen to dial 911 without unlocking). I don't know of a great solution here, since to train you actually have to dial 911, but it's something to be aware of.
Agreed, and especially true during carbon monoxide poisoning. During this event I was the one dialling the emergency, but I could hardly explain what was going on to the person on the phone. I barely had any thoughts anymore, and was going at a pace of about one word per second. When the lady asked me if there was a smell in the room, I just could not parse the question and I resorted to repeating it to the people around me and eventually gave the phone to Elisa.
1You could practice just to dial 91. I would expect that if you have that trained well, finishing it won't be a problem.
Nice that some newer devices make it even easier (fall detection on smartwatches, for instance). Remember, it's actually pretty easy, though, if you just put it to music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWc3WY3fuZU
One of the best things you can do to prolong your life is exercise, both muscle-building as well as cardiovascular. This was mentioned in the post, but Id like to stress just how crucial this is for a community most likely to die as a result of heart disease (assuming no species-ending disaster).
Both muscle mass and endurance have been proven to be hugely beneficial for prolonging lifespan, so hit the gym bare minimum once a week. (Its also great for mental health and improves thinking and productivity)
I feel like this post treats vigilance and paranoia as free. To act generally differently in my life to be a lot more paranoid and a lot more careful about things like getting background checks on people who work on buildings that I work in, I'd want to be convinced that this is actually a good use of time, and that a lot of people in my reference class should actually be doing this. I want to compare the micromorts to the amount of time it will take me plus some sort of fuzzy measure of social capital lost, the cost of being anxious, etc. I don't personally know of anyone who has died whose life would have been saved by any of the things you recommend — it might still be worth it, certainly some people do die whose lives could have been saved by the things you recommend, but the numbers matter.
Some advice to avoid dying is actually really good. But a lot of people make their lives a lot worse with paranoia, hypochondria / health anxiety, and caution about the wrong things. I didn't like this post because I don't think it provided good evidence to its readers that it was accurately discerning between what's worth doing and what isn't worth doing (even if it was in fact doing so)
One year ago, we nearly died.
This is maybe an overdramatic statement, but long story short, nearly all of us underwent carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning[1]. The benefit is, we all suddenly got back in touch with a failure mode we had forgotten about, and we decided to make it a yearly celebration.
Usually, when we think about failure, we might think about not being productive enough, or not solving the right work-related problem, or missing a meeting. We might suspect that our schedule could be better organized or that one of our habits really sucks. We might fear not to spot an obvious psychological flaw or a decision-making issue.
We often forget that the single most important failure prior to all of these is dying. Yet even if we think about dying, the first picture that comes to mind can be a disease, or a car accident. We only have a few clichés loaded in our accessibility bias, instead of the full methodical A-B-C of death any human attempting life should know by heart.
Sometimes, checking back on the basics can be helpful. Since we found we didn’t do this nearly enough to avoid undergoing a definitely lethal threat, we decided to update you on How Not to Die : The Basics edition. Happy New Year, everyone.
This is far from polished (we haven’t even included the base rate of each incident). Feel free to suggest lessons or additional tips in the comments.
Lesson 1 : Detect Death
Smoke detectors. CO detectors (buy here). Radon detector (depending on where you live). You have all the death detectors you can dream of in our day and age : buy them. A hundred dollars or so isn’t a lot if it can prevent you from dying. If you’re a true rationalist, you should have the ultimate collection of death detectors, because sitting on a pile of utility means pretty much being alive.
If they run out of battery (they’ll beep with a very short beep every minute or so), put back a battery in them. Do not turn them off. Worst case scenario, buy a new one. If you already turned a detector off in your life, put a small sticker reading “Turning This Off Endangers Your Life” on the detector as a kind reminder.
You should also know where your enemy dwells: you should be able to locate the system that organizes your heating, the one that distributes electricity, the one that distributes water. Where are its vaults and what keys, if any, are needed to access them?
Lesson 2 : Carry Your Anti-Death Weapons
Firefighters ? Medical emergencies ? Police ? Ambulance ? You should have the gesture of calling them with a phone carved in your brain (see here for a refresher).
Buy a fire extinguisher if you don’t have one, then learn how to use it. If you have one, everyone should know the use conditions, and be able to walk to it by instinct. Buy a first-aid kit.
Lesson 3 : Prepare to Fight
Have an escape plan. Have a routine plan in case of fire / CO / whatever hazard may befall you in your close environment etc. Drill it.
Each year, take a few minutes to refresh your knowledge of first-aid techniques.
Shout five random words from the entrance of your home at a random time. If someone in any place of the house can’t report them clearly, it means you need a better plan than shouting "gas leak" (and yes, in the middle of a busy day, « il y a une fuite de gaz » -French for "there is a gas leak" - is random enough for one of us to mishear it as « altruisme efficace ». Don’t ask. He’s too deep in.)
Lesson 4 : Learn the Signs of Silent Killers.
If you feel wounded, it might be that Death bruised you with its blade. It can be anything like headaches, fainting, confusion, nausea, dizziness, weakness, chest pain, vision problems, or fever. Do not discard severe and unusual happenings - such as lying on the ground - as temporary issues with a quick fix.
Even if you live in an EA/rat house, don’t assume it’s necessarily chill if some of your flatmates are crawling on the floor, laughing/crying with an overwhelming feeling of universal love, or leaving their room in the middle of a meeting (this one was the actually weird happening that had us convinced something was going on).
Lesson 5 : Don’t Make A Sound
In Dune, the hero is taught not to walk with a regular foot pace, because it otherwise attracts Shai-Hulud, giant sand worms that eat you up.
SANDWORMS ARE REAL. They’re invisible, and here are the sounds that alert them :
Lesson 6 : Ask Strangers for their Guild Blason
Any person working on a building (which is where you plausibly spend most of your time) should have at least a background check. Electrician, gas, HVAC, piping, water, masons… It’s Ok to be annoying with these people : after all, it’s about your life. If you’re renting a place and the landlord takes care of this, politely ask them explanations on where they found the services, for how long do they know them, etc. We’re talking about the Elven Guard of Life. Their Skill and Grace should be Known About in Legends of Great Deeds and By Masters of Unmistakable Craft.
Pro tip : take a picture of their work and ask an AI if anything’s wrong.
This proved to be a sensitive failure point in our case - you might think guardians of your life are carefully sifted through, but by default this is far from being the case.
Lesson 7 : Practice reporting maybe-not-quite-bugs (or, Listen to the Wind)
Reporting weird things that aren’t actually weird can feel uncool and paranoid. It might also feel tiring and ugggh-y. It’s also just really hard. But honestly, reporting slightly unsettling things is cool af. You’re safeguarding your life and that of other people. An obvious death threat would be noticed and disposed of pretty quickly. A not so obvious one is much more dangerous. « Not being obvious » is a feature of serious death threats, so be open and curious at reporting them.
Down in the basement, our boiler outlet pipe was disconnected. Two of us saw it, separately. There wasn’t a gaping hole, rather, it was odd, just slightly out of place, but nothing screamed "urgent!" Neither of us acted. Neither of us sent a picture to the group to say "Hey, this looks weird." We did not notice our confusion. And then came the CO leak. That tiny, almost silent detail—the pipe—was certainly the cause. Death rarely screams; it whispers, hides in subtle things, and waits for inaction.
You’re not supposed to have false positives everywhere, but you’re definitely supposed to have the least practical amount of false negatives.
Thankfully, none of us suffered any after-effects from the poisoning. ↩︎