What constitutes an emergency?

[The Chairman]

YES. And I HATE all spiders as well.

I kill them to keep the daughter sane. Except for the black widow, I find them fascinating. I had just pulled a bunch of "stuff" out from my table saw, and that guy just popped out ready to do war. I wish I had taken a picture before I squashed him. Jet black and the hourglass was so clear. But, I had gotten a bit too close to that, and he had to go. I kind of exaggerated my response, but you get the idea. We also have a lot of ground based spiders, with no obvious webs and my daughter never sees them.

 

[NAM001]

any situation that if not dealt with will result in loss of life

loss of air
loss of bouyancy with no acceptable hard bottom or clear overhead (boat traffic)

 

[boulderjohn]

There's a spider in the bathroom.

 

[dmaziuk]

YES. And I HATE all spiders as well.

I wish I had taken a picture before I squashed him.

Whimps and wussies. Back Down Under we don't hate them and we don't look. First you spray the wheel well and the underside of your car with raid. Then you push the jack under, start undoing the nuts and all that. After you're done, you can move the car and count the dead redbacks and whitetails... but mainly to see if you see any funnelwebs: with those, you may want to consider nuking the entire neighbourhood from orbit.

 

[happy-diver]

Well considering that the example of when the mother is at work and the child
who spills the porridge figures that its world is caving in, as the father who is
now faced with not having enough money to buy a box of beer and a carton
of cigarettes, if he has to buy more porridge, has already been used up

I would suggest any occurrence, no matter how major or minor to whom
that gets your sphincter grasping for air is an emergency requiring attention

However the biggest emergency by far, comes from the diver who postpones
seeking assistance until escalation makes the occurrence far less controllable
and that for lack of understanding, but mainly for the fear of embarrassment

 

[Seaweed Doc]

@tbone1004 :

I disagree a bit, but I think you had the perfect definition of emergency in one or two of your posts: "butt pucker moment"

Although I could be convinced that it's not really an emergency until you have a "failure to pucker"

 

[seeker242]

I would define an emergency as any situation that presents an immediate threat of serious injury or death. And of course this will be different depending on the person so it would cover both beginners, very experienced people and everyone in between.

 

[The Chairman]

I disagree a bit, but I think you had the perfect definition of emergency in one or two of your posts: "butt pucker moment"

Before I started diving with an SPG, I had pucker moments on most every dive. I would then reach back, pull the rod on my JValve and breathe again. Sometimes, but not too often, I would get that second, albeit a much darker pucker moment as I realized that the rod was already down and I was OOA. A quick trip to the surface and all was well again. Only once did that ever seem to rise to the level of being an emergency. To whit, I stopped diving for a long time after that as it made me re-evaluate my participation in the sport. BCDs and SPGs allowed me to jump back in.

 

[northernone]

Having been on the response end of an emergency phone line I eventually started to notice one person's grave emergency was another's typical Saturday afternoon.

 

[dmaziuk]

Having been on the response end of an emergency phone line I eventually started to notice one person's grave emergency was another's typical Saturday afternoon.