Latest news with #survival
Bloomberg
an hour ago
- Politics
- Bloomberg
China Builds Influence in America's Old Pacific Backyard
'In a desert, an oasis is life saving. And in a vast ocean of blue, a little spot becomes extremely important for survival or defense or power projection,' Cleo Paskal, a senior fellow at the Washington-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), explained in a podcast this month. Japan was well aware of this axiom in the early 1900s, when it acquired the administration of a vast stretch of the central Pacific Ocean — offering a series of outposts from which it could cut off its rival, the US, from east Asia. Today, it's China that's eyeing economic and diplomatic inroads into a pivotal area stretching east of the Philippines, from Palau to Micronesia to the Marshall Islands.
Daily Mail
3 hours ago
- General
- Daily Mail
How to survive a nuclear explosion: Expert reveals the safest things to do if they see a detonation
An influencer specialising in financial and trading advice took a break from his usual content to educate his followers on how to best survive a nuclear detonation. Michael Taylor claimed that in our lifetimes we are likely to witness a nuclear explosion due to an increased potential of an accidental detonation. In the comment section, the trader explained that he made the video after seeing that 'an ex-General warned that the UK should prepare itself for missile strikes.' Despite being shaken by the warning, the influencer admitted that he thinks 'this is highly unlikely and accidental detonation somewhere [else] in the world is more likely.' Michael begun his video by claiming: 'You'll probably see a nuclear bomb explosion before you die because accidental detonation is far more likely than nuclear war.' He went on to explain in detail how best to respond in this situation in order to increase the chances of survival. The trader said: 'Most of the damage comes from the shockwave so if you do see a bright flash you've got eight to ten seconds to lie on the ground and close your eyes. 'Keep your mouth open and breathe through your teeth because closing it can burst your lungs, rupture your ear drums and cause other organs to explode.' Michael then moved on to the next phase of survival; getting underground. He said: 'Once the shockwave has passed you've got around ten minutes before the fallout starts to settle. 'You need to get underground here and put as much concrete and steel between you and the surface as possible.' And if this already didn't seem complicated enough Michael warned that those wanting to survive will need to remain underground for at least 48 hours. He said: 'You now need to stay here for 48 hours because if you go outside for 20 minutes you'll probably die of radiation poisoning. 'Once this has passed you need to get as far away from the blast zone as you can taking off any outer clothing as well to remove some of the radiation.' However, Michael's tips did not only include what to do immediately after a nuclear blast but also included details on how to pack a 'nuclear backpack.' The influencer said: 'The best way to prepare for this is to create a nuclear backpack with some water, packaged food, a hand crank radio, raincoats, and rubber gloves and a map.' Realising for a moment how ridiculous his clip sounded, Michael added: 'Yes, whilst some people might call you crazy when you're in the shelter and they don't have any water you'll have the last laugh.' Several viewers in the comments wondered why anyone would want to survive a nuclear blast. One person wrote: 'Why would you really want to survive a nuclear detonation?' Another said: ' I appreciate how he prefaces with 'If you want to survive…' Thanks! I'm good. But thanks for the tip and I'll make sure to close my mouth. Best of luck to the rest of you.' Others were surprised at Michael's dramatic shift away from his usual videos. One viewer said: 'We interrupt this *not financial advice* with an important public safety information reel. Nice.' A second added: 'Not the content I was expecting today!' A third hilariously wrote: 'Any stock that'll do well in this situation?'
Telegraph
6 hours ago
- Automotive
- Telegraph
Rishabh Pant's car blew up and he stared death in the face, says surgeon who saved him
'Rishabh Pant was extremely lucky to be alive – extremely lucky.' Dr Dinshaw Pardiwala, the orthopaedic surgeon who treated the Indian cricket superstar after his car crash, is in no doubt about his fortune. 'To be in an accident like this, where the car actually overturns and blows up, the risk of death is extremely high.' On December 30, 2022, flamboyant wicketkeeper Pant – who made history by scoring two centuries in one Test against England at Headingley – drove from Delhi to his home town of Roorkee. At 5:30am, Pant lost control of his car on the Delhi-Dehradun highway. His vehicle skidded for 200 metres before hitting the road divider. While the Mercedes burned, Pant's right knee twisted at 90 degrees. 'My time in this world is over,' Pant thought to himself, he later said. He was just 25 years old – a year older than James Dean when he suffered his fatal car crash. But Pant and two passers-by broke open a window to allow him to escape before the car set on fire. Pant was hospitalised with major injuries to his head, back and feet. After a week in local hospitals, Pant was airlifted to Mumbai. 'When he first came in, he had a dislocated right knee,' Pardiwala recalls. 'He also had an injury to his right ankle, lots of other minor injuries all over. He had a lot of skin loss, so his entire skin from the nape of the neck down to his knees was completely scraped off in the process of that accident. Then getting out of the car – that broken glass scraped off a lot of the skin and the flesh from his back.' If Pant's first great fortune was to be alive, his second was that he still had his right leg at all. Injuries so grievous he could not brush his teeth for weeks 'When your knee dislocates, and all the ligaments break, there's a high possibility of the nerve or the main blood vessel also being injured,' Pardiwala explains. 'If the blood vessel gets injured, you typically have about four to six hours to restore the blood supply. Otherwise, there's a risk of losing your limb. The fact that his blood vessel wasn't injured despite having a severe high-velocity knee dislocation was extremely lucky.' When he met Pardiwala in Mumbai, Pant's first question was: 'Am I ever going to be able to play again?' His mother's first question to Pardiwala was simply: 'Is he ever going to be able to walk again?' ' We had a lengthy discussion about the fact that these are grievous injuries – we would need to reconstruct the entire knee,' Pardiwala recalls. 'Once we reconstruct the entire knee, we're going to have to then work through a whole process of letting it heal, letting it recover, then get back the basic functions – the range, the strength and the stability.' On January 6, 2023, two days after he arrived in Mumbai, Pant was put under general anaesthetic. Over the next four hours, Pardiwala performed surgery on his right knee, reconstructing three ligaments and repairing tendons and meniscus. For several weeks after the surgery, Pant's movement in his upper body – the area which had been far less affected than his legs – remained so debilitated that he could not brush his teeth without assistance. 'He lost a lot of skin, and so he couldn't really move his hands. They were completely swollen. He couldn't really move either of his hands initially.' It was weeks until Pant could even grip a glass safely to drink water without assistance. For four months after the accident, Pant could only walk with crutches. 'Typically, when we reconstruct these patients they are happy just to get back to normal life,' Pardiwala explains. 'If they can walk and do some minimal amount of recreational sports, they're happy.' But Pant's sights were altogether higher. Pardiwala 'really didn't know' whether Pant could play for India again. 'I said: 'We can certainly make sure that he walks again. I'm going to try my best to make sure that we can get him back to playing again.' 'We didn't really want to offer him too much initially, but we did want to give him hope. So I said: 'We'll break it down into steps.' Step one, of course, has to be the surgery. 'When we discussed it just after the surgery, the way I told him is the fact you're alive, the fact that your limbs survived – that's two miracles down. If we get you back to competitive cricket, that's going to be a third miracle. Let's just hope for everything, and then take it a step at a time. 'His question then was: 'OK, assuming that we do manage to get there, how long is it going to be?' I said: 'Probably looking at 18 months to get back to competitive cricket.'' After surgery, Pant remained in hospital for another 24 days until he was discharged. He remained in Mumbai for a further three weeks, staying in a hotel near the hospital. Then, Pant moved into accommodation by the National Cricket Academy in Bangalore, by the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium. This would remain his home for most of 2023. Pant returned to the Academy gym virtually every day, doing two sessions with physiotherapists or strength and conditioning coaches. Initially, these sessions were two hours each; within weeks, at Pant's request, they extended to 3½ hours each. The regime was a combination of strenuous exercise in the gym and long sessions of aqua therapy in the swimming pool. The programme had three phases: restoring range of movement; strengthening muscles; and finally regaining balance and agility. 'His whole aim was 'Get me back to normalcy as fast as possible',' Pardiwala remembers. 'And we were trying to make sure that we were doing just the optimum, not too little, but not too much. 'His recovery was much faster than we had anticipated. He was like: 'Nothing is too much.' He pushed harder than normal people.' Pant defied prognosis by four months From the very first discussions that he had with Pardiwala in Mumbai, Pant made it clear that he intended not only to return to elite cricket, but also to regain his place behind the stumps. This aim made his recovery programme more onerous. 'As a wicketkeeper, you have to squat hundreds of times a day,' Pardiwala explains. 'So we needed to get that capability.' Pardiwala recalls a conversation between Ricky Ponting, who was then his head coach at Delhi Capitals, and Pant. Ponting suggested that Pant initially return as a specialist batsman alone. 'Rishabh turned around and said: 'No, there's no way that I'm getting back to elite-level cricket as just a batsman. I want to enjoy my keeping and so I'm not going to get back just as a batsman, I will get back when I can bat and when I can keep wicket too.'' Pardiwala had originally told Pant that the best scenario was to make a full return within 18 months. Yet he made his return in a warm-up within 14 months of the crash. In March 2024, 14 months and three weeks after the accident, Pant returned to professional cricket, in the Indian Premier League. Pant got an emotional standing ovation as he walked out to bat for the first time. Unassumingly, he regained his form from before the crash, averaging 40.5 in the 2024 IPL season and keeping wicket in every match, too. 'He was diving around like crazy,' Pardiwala recalls. When he made his Test return, against Bangladesh, Pant marked his comeback with a century. WELCOME BACK TO RED BALL CRICKET AFTER 21 LONG MONTHS, RISHABH PANT...!!! - A swashbuckling 34 ball fifty by Pant. — Mufaddal Vohra (@mufaddal_vohra) September 7, 2024 While Pant, now 27, is as ebullient on the field as before his crash, he is a subtly different person off the field now. 'He recognises the fact that he was extremely lucky to be alive,' Pardiwala says. 'He's so motivated as a cricketer. 'If you knew the Rishabh before this happened, he's a much more mature human being. He's very philosophical now. He appreciates life and everything that goes around it. That typically happens to anyone who's faced death in the face. Someone who's had a near-death experience often gets life into perspective.' Pant's enforced break could ultimately mean that he plays more for India. Shane Warne's year-long absence from international cricket, for very different reasons – he was banned for a year for taking a banned diuretic – lengthened his own career. 'I'm sure he's going to be fitter now because he's realising the importance of it. A lot of athletes become much better after a big surgery than ever before. 'The difference is fitness levels. They were never exposed to those kinds of high levels of fitness and rehabilitation; even if they were exposed to it, they didn't understand the importance of it. 'He always worked at his fitness, I'm sure, but I think he worked more at his skills initially, and probably a little less at the fitness part of it. But now he realises the importance of fitness. So he's working out and making sure that all aspects of his body are strengthened enough. I think that gives him then the confidence to do what he does on the field.' So much confidence, indeed, that Pant celebrated the first of his twin centuries at Headingley with a hand spring: the same celebration that he used to mark a century in the IPL last month. The pyrotechnics reflect one of Pant's childhood loves. Rishabh Pant reaching 100 in the Rishabh Pant way 🔥6️⃣ "This fella is BOX OFFICE." 🍿 — Sky Sports Cricket (@SkyCricket) June 21, 2025 'Rishabh trained as a gymnast – and so although he looks large, he is quite agile, and he does have a lot of flexibility,' says Pardiwala. 'And that's why he's been doing those somersaults of late. 'It's a well-practised and perfected move – unnecessary though!' But not to a man with Pant's sense of theatre.
Yahoo
16 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
9 Movies And TV Shows With Competitions As Twisted As Squid Game
After three seasons and a little under four years of making us question what we would do for millions of dollars, Squid Game has come to an end. The final season debuted earlier today, and in a disturbing way I'll address with my therapist in the future, I want more of those twisted mind games. And I know a lot of you do too. Squid Game was an elite depiction of how human morality becomes fluid in the face of self-preservation and greed. Gamifying survival is the basis of almost every video game, but it becomes terrifying to watch when real people are involved. In movies and shows like the Saw franchise and Black Mirror, normal people will sacrifice children, vote for strangers to be killed, and rip people's guts out—just to save themselves. If you want more of the type of deadly competition that made Squid Game Netflix's most popular non-English TV series ever, here are nine movies and TV shows to scratch that sick itch of yours. Before dystopian mindfucks like Black Mirror and Squid Game turned survivalism into lethal games, Saw had people desperately ripping keys out of other victims' stomachs to unlock bear traps poised to rip their own heads off. Created by the twisted minds of James Wan and Leigh Whannell, the franchise mostly centers around sociopath Jigsaw (Tobin Bell), who kidnaps morally flawed people and forces them into deadly games to test their will to live. People have tried to gouge their own eye out to retrieve a lock combination, crawl through a furnace to recover a syringe with a nerve gas antidote, and even fill a bucket with their own blood to survive. Squid Game turned childhood games into nightmares. Saw turned nightmares into living hell. In Escape Room, six strangers are tricked into a game of survival after being invited to participate in what they believe is a fun, immersive puzzle game for a cash prize. Each room is a deadly trap crafted sadistically around their past traumas. One person survived a plane crash, so one of the rooms heats up like a plane fire. Another person survived a car accident, so the room simulates a smoky, toxic crash environment. All of this is happening while they're being watched and manipulated by a shadowy organization (sound familiar?). Similar to Squid Game, players have to balance common human decency with staying alive—and that usually leads to people sacrificing someone to save themselves in an icy cabin, or letting someone fall to their death in a zero-gravity room. If you miss the interpersonal turmoil of Squid Game, run to Escape Room. The first time I watched Funny Games, I was 9. I'm now 37, and I had a nightmare about it last night. Put simply, Funny Games is Squid Game if the torture was more targeted and there was no cash prize to assuage the pain. In the film, a family's vacation is terrorized by two young men who force them to play sadistic games—like a deadly round of 'Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moe' in which their lives hang in the balance. In Squid Game, the twisted logic that governs who lives and who dies sometimes gives way to no logic at all, as when remaining players are forced to sleep in the same quarters and even the time between 'games' becomes a deadly free-for-all. Similarly, in Funny Games, the rules can shift on a whim, with bone-chilling consequences. Make sure you watch the 1997 version of the film after you're done with the final season of Squid Game to enjoy one of the best psychological thrillers ever. Not every Black Mirror episode is centered on a deadly test of human morality dressed up like a game. But, when the dark futurism of the Netflix series is conveyed in lethal competitions, it exposes unsettling truths about the humanity we all share. There's the episode 'Shut Up and Dance,' in which blackmailed people have to complete humiliating and illegal tasks like fight another blackmailed victim to the death or unknowingly be the getaway driver for bank robbers. Another episode has people ride stationary bikes to exhaustion in order to earn virtual currency to enter a televised talent competition. Squid Game gamified survivalism, while Black Mirror made it less of a competition and more of a sick test with no winners. There's workplace drama in corporate America, and then there's The Belko Experiment. The Greg McLean-directed psychological thriller pits 80 American office workers against one another as they're trapped in a corporate building and forced to kill each other—or be killed—before the end of numerous countdowns. All human decency goes out the window when four people's heads explode after no one is killed before the first countdown is done. By the final countdown, the only person who can live is the one with the highest kill count, essentially transforming office workers into killers by manipulating their primal instincts to live. There's no Red Light, Green Light kids' game or sleeping quarters for socializing like in Squid Game. But The Belko Experiment does mirror the Netflix juggernaut in its depiction of the moral degradation that slowly happens as people realize their fellow man's death directly affects the betterment of their own life. Squid Game's perverse competition takes place on a secluded island hidden from the outside world. In Alice in Borderland, Ryohei Arisu (Kento Yamazaki) and his friends fight for their survival in a parallel world called Borderland. That similarity alone illustrates how divorced from reality one must be in order to do the inhumane to win a game. In the series, people play deadly competitions to earn 'visa days' that help them stay in Borderland. If their visa expires, a laser shoots from the sky and kills them instantly. People will lock others in a room to burn them alive, form alliances even though only one person can win, and voluntarily keep playing after being given a chance to escape—because they feel they have no life in the outside world. As we see in Squid Game, when societal norms are no longer around to keep people in line, their true selves roam free in the deadliest ways. This Amazon Prime teen thriller series is one of the most underrated shows of the 2020s. Based on the Lauren Oliver novel of the same name, the show follows a group of graduating high school seniors so entitled, they engage in an illegal and, yes, deadly game to give themselves some excitement in their lives before they go off and become boring adults. These kids willingly get buried in a coffin, jump off a cliff into pitch-black water, and enter a cage full of venomous snakes—all for a chance at winning $50,000 in a competition no one knows who runs. And this is a yearly tradition. As weird as it may sound, The Prisoner is one of my favorite comfort TV watches. Sure, it's a psychological thriller about a former British Intelligence agent who is psychologically tortured on a creepy island. But Patrick McGoohan's performance as Number Six has some of the greatest emotional range you'll ever see on a screen. The Prisoner doesn't have the deluge of blood and gore that accompanies the morality tests of Squid Game. It does, however, showcase a similar stripping of one's mental stability as those in control work to expose their subjects' true, carnal motivations in life. In one of the best episodes of the show, Number Six is placed in an Embryo Room where he's forced to relive different stages of his life—or possibly die. Unfortunately for Patrick, there is no cash prize at the end of his torture, just an ambiguous future he may never escape from. Circle features the type of social experiment that would fit perfectly in Squid Game. In the film, 50 strangers are unable to move from their spots in the dark room they mysteriously wake up in, and are forced to collectively vote on who dies every two minutes. If they don't, a sinister device in the center of the room randomly kills someone. They only have 120 seconds at a time to essentially play God. The most depraved aspect of the show is the logic they develop for determining who deserves to die. Some align on the thinking that children and the elderly should die because they're weaker. Others choose people based on their race. They even turn on a pregnant woman. These mind games have real consequences—like they do in Squid Game—and it begs the question: Are you really a winner in a game where you lose your humanity? 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Bloomberg
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Bloomberg
Squid Game's Final Season Asks What Remains of Our Humanity
As Squid Game barrels toward its bloody conclusion, the black-masked Front Man who orchestrated the life-or-death contest offers Player 456 a choice that can finally end the battle for survival. 'Do you still have faith in people?' he asks as he awaits a decision. Will the gambling-addict protagonist abandon his convictions, or does he pursue the path of goodness one last time? The third and final season of Netflix Inc.'s anti-capitalist parable, which premiered on June 27, offers no easy answers — only uncomfortable questions. It's not just a matter of who lives and dies, but why we live in a system where such choices feel inevitable, how far people are willing to go to fight against the established order, and what remains of our humanity if survival demands cruelty.
