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It may recover with time. When I was a teen I dismantled a shotgun cartridge and removed the shot and paper charge (lots of tiny paper discs). I stuffed them d

It may recover with time. When I was a teen I dismantled a shotgun cartridge and removed the shot and paper charge (lots of tiny paper discs). I stuffed them down the thick end of a car telescopic antenna cut to about 4” with the end folded over. I threw in a couple of pieces of lead shot, tamped it down with a piece of paper, stuck the tube under a rock and set up a paper target 6” away. I was optimistic. Then, with a friend, held a lighter under the closed end. Fortunately I was to the side. Predictably it fired out the back... it was very loud. Possibly the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. It could have gone wrong is so many way. The adolescent brain is a strange thing. The ringing lasted a few years but went away.

timonovici 9y ago
Oh, I just took a shotgun cartridge (the one used for hunting, but the old kind, made completely out of brass), flipped in with the primer up, and hit it with a hammer. Good thing my father stored those ones without the lead. The bang and flash made dizzy, and as I heard my father coming from backyard, I took cartridge to hide it - it was freaking hot, burned my hand as well.
- ficklepickle 9y ago
  I took all the powder out, wrapped it in tinfoil, and put it in the fireplace. I was impatient, and sprayed it with cooking oil spray. The instant I closed the door again, boom. Makes me cringe to think I was only 7 or 8 years old. Shortly after that, a retired cop saw us throwing rifle bullets down cement stairs with rocks taped to the primers, trying to set them off. He very calmly and sternly told us how dangerous that was. It is amazing that any boys survive to adulthood. I don't think I could have kids, knowing what I got up to.
  - komali2 9y ago
    The other obvious question I think is why all of y'all had access to live ammunition at eight years old.
    - robotrout 9y ago
      I think you have never met any eight year olds, if you think they are really that stupid that it would be a problem. Unless you sheltered the poor kid to the point of making him a mushroom, he's more than rational enough to understand any hazard you take the time to tell him about. My daughter is 8, and I would have no worries with her encountering ammunition around the house because I would tell her how it works, which part of it causes it to explode, and how to handle it. A kid that does stupid things has probably not had the 5 minutes spent with him, telling him the possible hazards. Kids (and adults) also do stupid things because they know the hazards but feel like they are smart enough to overcome those hazards. Doing hazardous things that are known to be hazardous is no more likely at 8 than at 18. In fact it's less likely at 8. We get braver and do stupider things ("Hold my beer for a minute and watch this") as we get older.
      - bigiain 9y ago
        This probably seems strange to non US readers. Not that we couldn't get access to "ammo" at all here in Australia in the 70's, but my sources were mostly nail gun cartridges (stolen from building sites) and shotgun blanks used for the local sailing club's starting cannon. We'd also steal those explosive things rail workers put on tracks to warn of inbound trains. One thing living in a country with somewhat stricter control on guns and ammunition (at least for us "city boys") - it meant we learned how to make our own explosives. We'd steal pretty much any sodium ad potassium nitrate the chemistry labs had for making gunpower - and there was significant "liberation" of nitric and sulfuric acid from the school chemistry labs too, and we had more or less success in producing home made gun cotton, tnt, and nitroglycerine. It eventually led to careers in chemistry for two of my high school co-conspirators from the time.
    - weinzierl 9y ago
      I grew up in a country with very strict gun control (Germany) and did almost the same thing that timonovici did. We used to collect blanks in the woods, thrown away by NATO troops during maneuvers. I don't remember what I was expecting, but I too remember the bang being so loud to make me dizzy - I think I wasn't sure for a few moments if I was dead or alive. Just a few days ago I wrote a comment [1] about a boy who used to live a few kilometers from my house when we were children and lost half of his hand doing experiments in his parents basement. I think fire and exothermic reactions in general are much too interesting for children to not find a way to experiment with them at one time or another, but parents should take care that children don't do it alone and that they do it in a safe way. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16698251 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16698251
  - nopassion 9y ago
    It’s fairly straightforward to get your children to survive if you don’t let them have access to live ammunition.. I think it just requires good parenting. I mean, I was a boy and I somehow realized that all of these things are incredibly bad ideas.
  - bfuller 9y ago
    none of that is really that dangerous
- jackaroe78 9y ago
  My experiment was on a .22 round, and when they say it's a rimfire type cartridge I can tell ya they're not kidding. Not sure how I survived childhood, but I grew up to be a productive & well rounded member of society. More or less
  - microcolonel 9y ago
    > ...but I grew up to be a productive & well rounded member of society. More or less It's almost as though play, of the sort which could end your life, is a natural part of growing up (perhaps especially for boys). Then again, I don't really remember doing any very stupid things as an adolescent, probably due to spending more time in nature, trying not to die by falling, drowning, hypothermia, or impalement.
    - sp332 9y ago
      Sure, but what do you say to the friends and family of the ones that die? Or to the ones who end up maimed and disabled for life? "Oh, it's just natural, don't sweat it"
brandall10 9y ago
I'm 42 years old and spent much of my teens and early 20s going to loud rock shows, raves, etc. I was rather stupid and always tried to get right up to the PA speakers at the front. I did not wear hearing protection. Many times I left shows with ringing for hours and that feeling like there is cotton stuffed in your ears for days. Not a handle of times - dozens of times. By my mid 20s it appeared I had tinnitus around the 8k area, which really freaked me out and immediately caused me to change my habits. Also around this time I got into headphone audio in a big way. I got an SPL meter and made sure to never go above 85dBs for extended listening sessions. By my mid 30s the tinnitus had dissipated considerably. Now it's effectively gone, at least that I can tell (ie. not aware if there is psychological compensation happening). My hearing is great too, right ear at 17.5 kHz, left ear at 16.9. http://www.electronicbeats.net/can-we-cure-tinnitus-by-listening-to-music-or-using-an-app/ http://www.electronicbeats.net/can-we-cure-tinnitus-by-liste...
- biggieshellz 9y ago
  FYI, if you lose hearing from noise exposure, you'll generally lose it around 4 KHz (noise notch). You generally lose the really high frequencies (20 KHz on down) due to presbycusis, hearing loss due to aging. Even if you can still hear the really high frequencies, you could still have a noise notch around 4 KHz. If you haven't already, go get an an audiogram. It's cheap (<$100) and will give you a baseline on how your hearing is.
  - louprado 9y ago
    > FYI, if you lose hearing from noise exposure, you'll generally lose it around 4 KHz I used http://www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/ http://www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/ to quickly profile my hearing and found significant loss around 4.0kHz. I have ridden a motorcycle most of my life and it is much worse in the ear that is on the same side as the exhaust. I am not sure what a spectrogram looks like for a motorcycle but I would have assumed that most of the energy is in the lower end of the spectrum, given the steady cruising RPS is around 40Hz-70Hz. But, your comment seems to suggest that there is not a direct correlation between the frequency of the noise exposure and the hearing loss frequencies.
polack 9y ago
When I was doing my military service another conscript fired his rifle down into the ground as we where standing close together without any hearing protection on. Seconds later our captain orders us to put the hearing protection on and leads us down to a completely dark cellar with beds in it. We then had to lay there for 48 hours in complete silence with noice canceling ear protection on with only breaks for toilet visits and quick supervised snacks. Two weeks later we all took hearing tests that got compared with the tests we took when we joined the military and none of us had any permanent damage. Not sure the complete silence helped with healing, but the science behind the decision to have us do that was that the little hairs in the ear heals faster if it’s not stimulated. To this day I still think about not exposing myself to too much sound after I have heard some high noice, like someone dropping a metal weight in the gym.
- andyjohnson0 9y ago
  Do soldiers wear hearing protection in live combat conditions? Seems like they'd quickly end-up with severe hearing damage if they didn't.
  - polack 9y ago
    Yes, modern soldiers wear “comtac” hearing protection with integrated microphones that pick up speech but block out the noise. So you can still communicate decent by shouting even though there is heavy fire going on around you.
    - Bromskloss 9y ago
      What about before such things were available? Did everyone get damaged hearing the first day?
      - polack 9y ago
        My grandfather told me on his first day in the military he had to stand (without any hearing protection) next to the anti-aircraft cannons when they opened fire to “train” the ears. He did not have much hearing left when he was older...
kbenson 9y ago
Since we're sharing... One summer when I was 8 or 9, I used a nail to scrape out the inside of a model rocket engine or two ("D" if I remember correctly) from my older brothers model kit into a pile on the concrete garage floor, then used a broken cord (literally a wall plug, a couple feet of cord, and two exposed ends) to ignite it by hand using the electric spark from the live leads. After fleeing the garage in terror and slight pain (lucky not to have either electrocuted myself or burnt the detached structure down), I hung out doing nothing for a few hours and acted like nothing had happened. It was little use, though. Upon arriving home, my mother immediately know something was up. Not only was my face a little singed, I had burnt my eyebrows off. Funnily enough, I'm fairly to heavily conservative when it comes to dangerous activity as an adult. I don't even drive all that fast usually.
badpun 9y ago
> The ringing lasted a few years but went away. In my case, it also went away completely after two years, only to come back after another five. I'm stuck with it since :/

timonovici 9y ago

Oh, I just took a shotgun cartridge (the one used for hunting, but the old kind, made completely out of brass), flipped in with the primer up, and hit it with a hammer. Good thing my father stored those ones without the lead. The bang and flash made dizzy, and as I heard my father coming from backyard, I took cartridge to hide it - it was freaking hot, burned my hand as well.

ficklepickle 9y ago
I took all the powder out, wrapped it in tinfoil, and put it in the fireplace. I was impatient, and sprayed it with cooking oil spray. The instant I closed the door again, boom. Makes me cringe to think I was only 7 or 8 years old. Shortly after that, a retired cop saw us throwing rifle bullets down cement stairs with rocks taped to the primers, trying to set them off. He very calmly and sternly told us how dangerous that was. It is amazing that any boys survive to adulthood. I don't think I could have kids, knowing what I got up to.
- komali2 9y ago
  The other obvious question I think is why all of y'all had access to live ammunition at eight years old.
  - robotrout 9y ago
    I think you have never met any eight year olds, if you think they are really that stupid that it would be a problem. Unless you sheltered the poor kid to the point of making him a mushroom, he's more than rational enough to understand any hazard you take the time to tell him about. My daughter is 8, and I would have no worries with her encountering ammunition around the house because I would tell her how it works, which part of it causes it to explode, and how to handle it. A kid that does stupid things has probably not had the 5 minutes spent with him, telling him the possible hazards. Kids (and adults) also do stupid things because they know the hazards but feel like they are smart enough to overcome those hazards. Doing hazardous things that are known to be hazardous is no more likely at 8 than at 18. In fact it's less likely at 8. We get braver and do stupider things ("Hold my beer for a minute and watch this") as we get older.
    - bigiain 9y ago
      This probably seems strange to non US readers. Not that we couldn't get access to "ammo" at all here in Australia in the 70's, but my sources were mostly nail gun cartridges (stolen from building sites) and shotgun blanks used for the local sailing club's starting cannon. We'd also steal those explosive things rail workers put on tracks to warn of inbound trains. One thing living in a country with somewhat stricter control on guns and ammunition (at least for us "city boys") - it meant we learned how to make our own explosives. We'd steal pretty much any sodium ad potassium nitrate the chemistry labs had for making gunpower - and there was significant "liberation" of nitric and sulfuric acid from the school chemistry labs too, and we had more or less success in producing home made gun cotton, tnt, and nitroglycerine. It eventually led to careers in chemistry for two of my high school co-conspirators from the time.
  - weinzierl 9y ago
    I grew up in a country with very strict gun control (Germany) and did almost the same thing that timonovici did. We used to collect blanks in the woods, thrown away by NATO troops during maneuvers. I don't remember what I was expecting, but I too remember the bang being so loud to make me dizzy - I think I wasn't sure for a few moments if I was dead or alive. Just a few days ago I wrote a comment [1] about a boy who used to live a few kilometers from my house when we were children and lost half of his hand doing experiments in his parents basement. I think fire and exothermic reactions in general are much too interesting for children to not find a way to experiment with them at one time or another, but parents should take care that children don't do it alone and that they do it in a safe way. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16698251 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16698251
- nopassion 9y ago
  It’s fairly straightforward to get your children to survive if you don’t let them have access to live ammunition.. I think it just requires good parenting. I mean, I was a boy and I somehow realized that all of these things are incredibly bad ideas.
- bfuller 9y ago
  none of that is really that dangerous
jackaroe78 9y ago
My experiment was on a .22 round, and when they say it's a rimfire type cartridge I can tell ya they're not kidding. Not sure how I survived childhood, but I grew up to be a productive & well rounded member of society. More or less
- microcolonel 9y ago
  > ...but I grew up to be a productive & well rounded member of society. More or less It's almost as though play, of the sort which could end your life, is a natural part of growing up (perhaps especially for boys). Then again, I don't really remember doing any very stupid things as an adolescent, probably due to spending more time in nature, trying not to die by falling, drowning, hypothermia, or impalement.
  - sp332 9y ago
    Sure, but what do you say to the friends and family of the ones that die? Or to the ones who end up maimed and disabled for life? "Oh, it's just natural, don't sweat it"

brandall10 9y ago

I'm 42 years old and spent much of my teens and early 20s going to loud rock shows, raves, etc. I was rather stupid and always tried to get right up to the PA speakers at the front. I did not wear hearing protection. Many times I left shows with ringing for hours and that feeling like there is cotton stuffed in your ears for days. Not a handle of times - dozens of times. By my mid 20s it appeared I had tinnitus around the 8k area, which really freaked me out and immediately caused me to change my habits. Also around this time I got into headphone audio in a big way. I got an SPL meter and made sure to never go above 85dBs for extended listening sessions. By my mid 30s the tinnitus had dissipated considerably. Now it's effectively gone, at least that I can tell (ie. not aware if there is psychological compensation happening). My hearing is great too, right ear at 17.5 kHz, left ear at 16.9. http://www.electronicbeats.net/can-we-cure-tinnitus-by-listening-to-music-or-using-an-app/ http://www.electronicbeats.net/can-we-cure-tinnitus-by-liste...

biggieshellz 9y ago
FYI, if you lose hearing from noise exposure, you'll generally lose it around 4 KHz (noise notch). You generally lose the really high frequencies (20 KHz on down) due to presbycusis, hearing loss due to aging. Even if you can still hear the really high frequencies, you could still have a noise notch around 4 KHz. If you haven't already, go get an an audiogram. It's cheap (<$100) and will give you a baseline on how your hearing is.
- louprado 9y ago
  > FYI, if you lose hearing from noise exposure, you'll generally lose it around 4 KHz I used http://www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/ http://www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/ to quickly profile my hearing and found significant loss around 4.0kHz. I have ridden a motorcycle most of my life and it is much worse in the ear that is on the same side as the exhaust. I am not sure what a spectrogram looks like for a motorcycle but I would have assumed that most of the energy is in the lower end of the spectrum, given the steady cruising RPS is around 40Hz-70Hz. But, your comment seems to suggest that there is not a direct correlation between the frequency of the noise exposure and the hearing loss frequencies.

polack 9y ago

When I was doing my military service another conscript fired his rifle down into the ground as we where standing close together without any hearing protection on. Seconds later our captain orders us to put the hearing protection on and leads us down to a completely dark cellar with beds in it. We then had to lay there for 48 hours in complete silence with noice canceling ear protection on with only breaks for toilet visits and quick supervised snacks. Two weeks later we all took hearing tests that got compared with the tests we took when we joined the military and none of us had any permanent damage. Not sure the complete silence helped with healing, but the science behind the decision to have us do that was that the little hairs in the ear heals faster if it’s not stimulated. To this day I still think about not exposing myself to too much sound after I have heard some high noice, like someone dropping a metal weight in the gym.

andyjohnson0 9y ago
Do soldiers wear hearing protection in live combat conditions? Seems like they'd quickly end-up with severe hearing damage if they didn't.
- polack 9y ago
  Yes, modern soldiers wear “comtac” hearing protection with integrated microphones that pick up speech but block out the noise. So you can still communicate decent by shouting even though there is heavy fire going on around you.
  - Bromskloss 9y ago
    What about before such things were available? Did everyone get damaged hearing the first day?
    - polack 9y ago
      My grandfather told me on his first day in the military he had to stand (without any hearing protection) next to the anti-aircraft cannons when they opened fire to “train” the ears. He did not have much hearing left when he was older...

kbenson 9y ago

Since we're sharing... One summer when I was 8 or 9, I used a nail to scrape out the inside of a model rocket engine or two ("D" if I remember correctly) from my older brothers model kit into a pile on the concrete garage floor, then used a broken cord (literally a wall plug, a couple feet of cord, and two exposed ends) to ignite it by hand using the electric spark from the live leads. After fleeing the garage in terror and slight pain (lucky not to have either electrocuted myself or burnt the detached structure down), I hung out doing nothing for a few hours and acted like nothing had happened. It was little use, though. Upon arriving home, my mother immediately know something was up. Not only was my face a little singed, I had burnt my eyebrows off. Funnily enough, I'm fairly to heavily conservative when it comes to dangerous activity as an adult. I don't even drive all that fast usually.

badpun 9y ago

> The ringing lasted a few years but went away. In my case, it also went away completely after two years, only to come back after another five. I'm stuck with it since :/