How "My Weight Doesn't Affect You" is Bullshit. Your Fat is a Hazard to Us All. Hello my gorgeous shitlords and beautiful shitladies. So this little shower thought was inspired by this submission earlier. Recently, whenever I read about fats in congested areas or venues, I find myself wondering how much of a death trap they can make their surroundings were there a fire. I'm doing some independent research for a somewhat morbid topic a friend of mine has been invited to compile a small book on. It's mainly to do with fire safety and how far (or little), we've come along in the past few years.  The reports I have come across have been deeply harrowing and 2 of the incidents that really stick out to me are the awful Station Nightclub Fire in Rode Island in 2003 and the horrific Stardust nightclub Valentine's day fire in Artane in Dublin in 1981. In both of these horrendous events, tens of people died (100 in Station Nightclub, 48 in Stardust), and hundreds were injured (no figures yet on how many in Station Nightclub, but 215 reported for Stardust). In the case of the Station Nightclub, some exit doors were locked and the majority of bodies of those who didn't escape the fire were found trapped in the hallway leading to the front doors. Those people died because too many people surged to one area to escape. (In the Stardust fire, people fleeing the flames and smoke confused the men's bathroom door as the main entrance door, and many died as efforts to break the windows above cubicles with firemen desperately attempting to remove metal railings on the exterior of the windows heart-breakingly failed.) If we were to now factor in modern day fats, and their ever expanding waistlines, I honestly believe that so many places we frequent are total death traps now (plus fatty's have more fat deposits, they might work as an accelerant too)  I find myself in a club or a busy bar or shop and a fat will lurch through a door, all but dragging themselves through holding onto the doorframe. They push into me when I'm queuing to order my diet coke (no longer a drinker) and take up the same amount of space as 4 normal sized men (normal sized being the average size of a man in his 30s-50s from USA circa 1950s). Fat fucks in the womens bathroom can hardly squeeze through cubicle doors, and their saddle bags flank them, spilling over into other people's sinks and mirror space.  These monsters are a ticking time bomb in an incident where calm and collected evacuation is key to survival.  One. Their sheer mass is so obtuse and intrusive that were you to trying to flee a fire, attempting to overtake something like this sack of gluttony and poor life choices might prove impossible (and the last thing you see is a fat fuck before you die. 0.0)  One a. You might genuinely end up stuck behind a slow and lumbering sack of crap no matter how fast you yourself can run. This creature's awful calorie consumption is now the cause for your death, through no fault of your own.  Two. Fats are never calm at the best of times. The excess sugar and shit they gorge on makes them either excitable, or when they crash, super lethargic and irritable. Attempting to evacuate a densely populated area calmly would be impossible with fats present. They will REEEEE and squeal and shit themselves in their confusion and fear and will totally undermine any efforts of remaining calm and collected. Like farm animals, they will work themselves into a frenzy and their fear will be instantly contagious, turning an evacuation into a frantic scramble and fight for life (with many others being caught up and injured in the madness and left behind). Three. Fats are fat. They are heavy, they are looming, they are wide. They can use their ample mass to dictate what happens to others (refer to points 1 and 1.a.). Fats are also extremely unsteady. If a fat was trying to flee a fire and fell, that lard of shit will wipe out others in its path. Three a. Fats are not adverse to fucking other people over and will do so without a second's thought if its for their own self interest. A fat won't heed advise to file out calmly, not they will surge forward and topple others, whip up an air of terror and then trample those who fall below its trotters. Being trampled to death is one of my worst fears. I can easily imagine that fats trying to save themselves will push and shove regardless for others' lives and as grim as this sounds, I honestly believe that in future tragedies involving fires, reports of death by trampling over smoke inhalation or succumbing to fire injuries will have increased. Four. Fats make everything about themselves. In the case that most people do manage to successfully escape the fire, it will be fats commanding the attention of fire men and rescue personnel. Used to making everything about them, they will exaggerate minor injuries and distract medical personnel from more pressing, serious injuries others have sustained. Fats will also waste most resources, whether it be oxygen tanks, emergency blankets, stretchers or even just rescue service people themselves. They will require more hydrate and demand more immediate care. Others who might not have succumbed to their injuries may very well do so whilst waiting for aid that the fats are refusing to relinquish.  It might sound a bit extreme, but I honestly do believe that with the extra weight so many fucks are packing on, and the fact that society is normalising this and dictating that we can't comment on overweight people and the dangers they inherently cause to themselves (and us), clubs and venues are inadvertently allowing too much 'mass' in. It's all well as good to say a bar has the capacity to accommodate 180, 00, 120, 200, 230 people etc, but those numbers mean nothing if some of those people are the width of 2 to 4 other people!  The elevator short movie was recently posted up on here, and I think the same logic can be applied to venues. There are museums in Dublin city that have been renovated, the balcony floors reinforced, widened or sometimes replaced entirely, because visitors are too fucking fat to squeeze up the stairs or along the wooden corridors predecessors from the 1920s onwards easily navigated, there are parts of the (very) old University I worked in whose floors bow underneath certain selectively sized POS. I have seen hundreds of years old dust cascade down from old ceilings*, because a fat decided to jump up and down in excitement on the floor above.  Look how they move, how they register their surroundings (rarely if ever. Recognition only appears to occur in the presence of food), these bumbling waddling lumbering Tweedlees and Tweedloos of this horrific modern world are unsightly, sickening inconviences in many ways other than being a drain on medical funds. They are slow, they are stupid, their sight is affected by diabetes or folds of fat. These lumbering behemoths are a genuine danger to society.    *Building I was working in was built in 1732. Lot of dust throughout the years.