Warning, Warnings
The Leash Goes Slack
Robert, an experienced sky diver, was readying himself for a jump when he spotted another man outfitted to dive wearing dark glasses, carrying a white cane and holding a seeing-eye dog by a leash. Shocked that the blind man was also going to jump, Robert struck up a conversation, expressing his admiration for the man’s courage. Then curious, he asked, “How do you know when the ground is getting close?”
“Easy,” the blind man replied. “The leash goes slack.”
Contributed by Taylor Yu Zhong, Reader’s Digest, July, 1996, p. 66
Batman Outfit
Americans are getting warned to death. Manufactures are growing increasingly wary of being sued when their products are misused, so they are attaching warning labels to hundreds of items.
For example, a Batman outfit bears this caveat: “Parents, please exercise caution—FOR PLAY ONLY. Mask and cape are not protective; cape does not enable user to fly.”
Our Daily Bread, March 20, 1998
Mount St. Helens
Many residents of Washington remember exactly where they were and what they were doing on the morning Mount St. Helen’s blew wide-open. The shock wave rattled windows for hundreds of miles around.
Prior to the eruption, scientists monitoring the peak didn’t know when it would go off or how big the blast would be. But all the signs of a live volcano were evident. It was just a matter of time.
Local media issued warnings and faithfully reported St. Helen’s vital signs. But as time elapsed and the big eruption did not occur, people became less wary and more bold. Campers, photographers, and others moved in to get a closer look.
Then on May 18, 1980, the mountain that had been dormant since 1857 spewed ash skyward and killed at least thirty people. They had failed to heed warnings, and they died needlessly.
Christine Dallman, The Quiet Hour, December, 1997, February, 1998, p. 77
Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster
The Winter 1991 issue of the University of Pacific Review offers a chilling description of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster:
There were two electrical engineers in the control room that night, and the best thing that could be said for what they were doing is they were ‘playing around’ with the machine. They were performing what the Soviets later described as an unauthorized experiment. They were trying to see how long a turbine would ‘free wheel’ when they took the power off it.
Now, taking the power off that kind of a nuclear reactor is a difficult, dangerous thing to do, because these reactors are very unstable in their lower ranges. In order to get the reactor down to that kind of power, where they could perform the test they were interested in performing, they had to override manually six separate computer-driven alarm systems. One by one the computers would come up and say, ‘Stop! Dangerous! Go no further!’ And one by one, rather than shutting off the experiment, they shut off the alarms and kept going. You know the results: nuclear fallout that was recorded all around the world, from the largest industrial accident ever to occur in the world.
The instructions and warnings in Scripture are just as clear. We ignore them at our own peril, and tragically, at the peril of innocent others.
Tom Tripp, Colusa, California, quoted in Leadership, Fall Quarter, 1993, p. 56
Hurricane Warning
The following story is told by E. Schuyler English:
A man who lived on Long Island was able one day to satisfy a lifelong ambition by purchasing for himself a very fine barometer. When the instrument arrived at his home, he as extremely disappointed to find that the indicating needle appeared to be stuck, pointing to the sector marked ‘HURRICANE.’ After shaking the barometer very vigorously several times, its new owner sat down and wrote a scorching letter to the store from which he had purchased the instrument. The following morning on the way to his office in New York, he mailed the letter. That evening he returned to Long Island to find not only the barometer missing, but his house also. The barometer’s needle had been right—there was a hurricane!”
P.R.V. Our Daily Bread, April 28
If You See Me Running…
My brother detonates explosives for the police department’s bomb squad. He came to my house one day sporting a distinctive T-shirt. The front read: “Hazardous Device Technician.” When he turned around, I read the back: “If you see me running, try to keep up!”
Contributed by Jodie L. Nida Reader’s Digest, May, 1995, p. 132
Sometimes the Way Up Is Down
Sometimes the way up is down. John Moorlach learned that lesson.
In June of 1994, he ran against incumbent Robert L. Citron for the post of treasurer of Orange County, California. During the campaign, Moorlach condemned Citron’s risky investments. At the time, Moorlach’s warnings were written off as campaign rhetoric, and Citron won his seventh four-year term by a 3–2 vote ratio.
When Citron’s investment of county funds suffered severe losses and Orange County went bankrupt, Moorlach sounded like a prophet. The man who had lost the election was unanimously appointed by the Orange County Board of Supervisors to serve as treasurer.
Today in the Word, September 16, 1995, p. 23.
Hurricane Warning
In 1969, in Pass Christian, Mississippi, a group of people were preparing to have a “hurricane party” in the face of a storm named Camille. Were they ignorant of the dangers? Could they have been overconfident? Did they let their egos and pride influence their decision? We’ll never know.
What we do know is that the wind was howling outside the posh Richelieu Apartments when Police Chief Jerry Peralta pulled up sometime after dark. Facing the Beach less than 250 feet from the surf, the apartments were directly in the line of danger. A man with a drink in his hand came out to the second-floor balcony and waved. Peralta yelled up, “You all need to clear out of here as quickly as you can. The storm’s getting worse.” But as other joined the man on the balcony, they just laughed at Peralta’s order to leave. “This is my land,” one of them yelled back. “If you want me off, you’ll have to arrest me.”
Peralta didn’t arrest anyone, but he wasn’t able to persuade them to leave either. He wrote down the names of the next of kin of the twenty or so people who gathered there to party through the storm. They laughed as he took their names. They had been warned, but they had no intention of leaving.
It was 10:15 p.m. when the front wall of the storm came ashore. Scientists clocked Camille’s wind speed at more than 205 miles-per-hour, the strongest on record. Raindrops hit with the force of bullets, and waves off the Gulf Coast crested between twenty-two and twenty-eight feet high.
News reports later showed that the worst damage came at the little settlement of motels, go-go bars, and gambling houses known as Pass Christian, Mississippi, where some twenty people were killed at a hurricane party in the Richelieu Apartments. Nothing was left of that three-story structure but the foundation; the only survivor was a five-year-old boy found clinging to a mattress the following day.
Christian Values Qs Quarterly, Spring/Summer, 1994, p. 10
Obeying the Laws of the Light House
In U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, the magazine of the Naval Institute, Frank Koch illustrates the importance of obeying the Laws of the Lighthouse:
Two battleships assigned to the training squadron had been at sea on maneuvers in heavy weather for several days. I was serving on the lead battleship and was on watch on the bridge as night fell. The visibility was poor with patchy fog, so the captain remained on the bridge keeping an eye on all activities.
Shortly after dark, the lookout on the wing reported, “Light, bearing on the starboard bow.”
“Is it steady or moving astern?” the captain called out.
The lookout replied, “Steady, Captain,” which meant we were on a dangerous collision course with that ship.
The captain then called to the signalman, “Signal that ship: ‘We are on a collision course, advise you change course twenty degrees.’”
Back came the signal, “Advisable for you to change course twenty degrees.”
The captain said, “Send: “I’m a captain, change course twenty degrees.’”
“I’m a seaman second-class,” came the reply. “You had better change course twenty degrees.”
By that time the captain was furious. He spat out, “Send: ‘I’m a battleship. Change course twenty degrees.’”
Back came the flashing light, “I’m a lighthouse.”
We changed course.
In the Eye of the Storm by Max Lucado, Word Publishing, 1991, p. 153
Red Flag
Some years ago a fearful railroad wreck took a dreadful toll of life and limb in an eastern state. A train, loaded with young people returning from school, was stalled on a suburban track because of what is known as a “hot-box.” The limited was soon due, but a flagman was sent back to warn the engineer in order to avert a rear-end collision. Thinking all was well, the crowd laughed and chatted while the train-hands worked on in fancied security. Suddenly the whistle of the limited was heard and on came the heavy train and crashed into the local, with horrible effect.
The engineer of the limited saved his own life by jumping, and some days afterwards was hailed into court to account for his part in the calamity. And now a curious discrepancy in testimony occurred. He was asked, “Did you not see the flagman warning you to stop?”
He replied, “I saw him, but he waved a yellow flag, and I took it for granted all was well, and so went on, though slowing down.”
The flagman was called, “What flag did you wave?”
“A red flag, but he went by me like a shot.”
“Are you sure it was red?”
“Absolutely.”
Both insisted on the correctness of their testimony, and it was demonstrated that neither was color-blind. Finally the man was asked to produce the flag itself as evidence. After some delay he was able to do so, and then the mystery was explained. It had been red, but it had been exposed to the weather so long that all the red was bleached out, and it was but a dirty yellow!
Oh, the lives eternally wrecked by the yellow gospels of the day—the bloodless theories of unregenerate men that send their hearers to their doom instead of stopping them on their downward road!
Illustrations of Bible Truth by H. A. Ironside, Moody Press, 1945, pp. 62-63
It Pays to Heed a Warning
Argentinean race driver Juan Manuel Fangio discovered that after the opening lap of the 1950 Monaco Grand Prix. As he approached a dangerous bend for the second time, Fangio noticed that something was wrong. The faces of the spectators, which he usually saw as a whitish blur as he drove by, were all turned away from him. “If they are not looking at me,” Fangio thought, “they must be looking at something more interesting around the corner.” So he braked hard and carefully rounded the bend, where he saw that his split second assessment had been accurate. The road was blocked by a massive pileup.
Today in the Word, February 9, 1993
Storm Signal Ignored
I was in the north of England in 1881, when a fearful storm swept over that part of the country. A friend of mine, who was a minister at Evemouth, had a great many of the fishermen of the place in his congregation. It had been very stormy weather, and the fishermen had been detained in the harbor for a week. One day, however, the sun shone out in a clear blue sky; it seemed as if the storm had passed away, and the boats started out for the fishing ground. Forty-one boats left the harbor that day.
Before they started, the harbor-master hoisted the storm signal, and warned them of the coming tempest. He begged of them not to go; but they disregarded his warning, and away they went. They saw no sign of the coming storm. In a few hours, however, it swept down on that coast, and very few of those fishermen returned. There were five or six men in each boat, and nearly all were lost in that dreadful gale. In the church of which my friend was pastor, I believe there were three male members left. Those men were ushered into eternity because they did not give heed to the warning. I lift up the storm signal now, and warn you to escape from the coming judgment!
Moody’s Anecdotes, pp. 115-116
Ship Sunk by Missile
During the 1982 war in the Falkland Islands between England and Argentina, the Royal Navy’s 3,500-ton destroyer HMS Sheffield was sunk by a single missile fired from an Argentine fighter jet. It caused some people to wonder if modern surface warships were obsolete, sitting ducks for today’s sophisticated missiles. But a later check revealed that the Sheffield’s defenses did pick up the incoming missile, and the ship’s computer correctly identified it as a French-made Exocet. But the computer was programmed to ignore Exocets as “friendly.” The Sheffield was sunk by a missile it saw coming and could have evaded.
Today in the Word, May 12, 1992
Danger of Drugs
Teenagers are much more inclined to take warnings about steroids seriously if the drugs’ muscle-building benefits are acknowledged in the same speech, say doctors at Oregon Health Sciences University. That was the case when the doctors lectured nine high school football teams on the effects of steroids. They found that football players who heard a balanced presentation on steroids were 50 percent more likely to believe that the drugs could harm their health than those who were told just of the dangers. This isn’t the only instance where scare tactics have been known to fail. In spite of a massive, ongoing campaign on the hazards of cigarette smoking, millions continue to light up. Health experts might be more successful if they acknowledged smoking’s pleasurable aspects. Then once they had a smoker’s attention, they could let loose on why it’s time to quit.
Spokesman Review, 11–13-91, p. C1
First Major Victory of the War
During the Revolutionary War, a loyalist spy appeared at the headquarters of Hessian commander Colonel Johann Rall, carrying an urgent message. General George Washington and his Continental army had secretly crossed the Delaware River that morning and were advancing on Trenton, New Jersey where the Hessians were encamped. The spy was denied an audience with the commander and instead wrote his message on a piece of paper. A porter took the note to the Hessian colonel, but because Rall was involved in a poker game he stuffed the unread note into his pocket. When the guards at the Hessian camp began firing their muskets in a futile attempt to stop Washington’s army, Rall was still playing cards. Without time to organize, the Hessian army was captured. The battle occurred the day after Christmas, 1776, giving the colonists a late present—their first major victory of the war.
Today in the Word, MBA, October, 1991, p. 21
Israel Bissel’s Ride
Thanks to the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, everyone has heard of the “midnight ride of Paul Revere.” But few have heard of Israel Bissel, a humble post rider on the Boston-New York route. After the Battle of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, Bissel was ordered to raise the alarm in New Haven, Connecticut. He reached Worchester, Mass., normally a day’s ride, in two hours. There, according to tradition, his horse promptly dropped dead. Pausing only to get another mount, Bissel pressed on and by April 22 was in New Haven—but he didn’t stop there! He rode on to New York, arriving April 24, and then stayed in the saddle until he reached Philadelphia the next day. Bissel’s 126-hour, 345-mile ride signaled American militia units throughout the Northeast to mobilize for war.
Today in the Word, October 1, 1991
Didn’t Believe the Barometer
On September 21, 1938, a hurricane of monstrous proportions struck the East Coast of the United States. William Manchester, writing about it his book The Glory and the Dream, says that “the great wall of brine struck the beach between Babylon and Patchogue (Long Island, New York) at 2:30 p.m. So mighty was the power of that first storm wave that its impact registered on a seismograph in Sitka, Alaska, while the spray, carried northward at well over a hundred miles an hour, whitened windows in Montpelier, Vermont.
As the torrential 40-foot wave approached, some Long Islanders jumped into cars and raced inland. No one knows precisely how many lost that race for their lives, but the survivors later estimated that they had to keep the speedometer over 50 mph all the way.” For some reason the meteorologists—who should have known what was coming and should have warned the public—seemed strangely blind to the impending disaster. Either they ignored their instruments or simply couldn’t believe them. And, of course, if the forecasters were blind, the public was too.
“Among the striking stories which later came to light,” says Manchester, “was the experience of a Long Islander who had bought a barometer a few days earlier in a New York store. It arrived in the morning post September 21, and to his annoyance the needle pointed below 29, where the dial read, ‘Hurricanes and Tornadoes.’ He shook it and banged it against the wall; the needle wouldn’t budge. Indignant, he repacked it, drove to the post office, and mailed it back. While he was gone, his house blew away.” That’s the way we are. If we can’t cope with the forecast, we blame the barometer. Or ignore it. Or throw it away!
Source unknown
Quotes
• On a laser in a physics laboratory: “Don’t look into laser beam with remaining eye.”
• On Arkansas farmer discourages trespassers with this admonition: “Please do not trample the poison ivy or feed the bull.”