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AN ENGLISH ESCAPOLOGIST almost came to a horrible end during a ‘buried alive’ escape attempt at a charity event.
Escape-expert Antony Britton was trying his hand at escaping from being buried, handcuffed, beneath six feet (six tonnes) of soil without a casket when he got into severe difficulty.
The event was being run at the in aid of Britton’s Escape for Life charity at the Slaithwaite Spa Park Festival in West Yorkshire, England, last Saturday 5 September.
The ‘buried alive’ escape is one that has confounded many escapologists, most famously Harry Houdini who came as close as breaking the topsoil with his hand before having to be rescued in 1915.
Antony Britton / TwitterLet the Challenge commence Saturday 5th #BuriedAlive @itvthismorning @itvnews @BBCLookNorth @BBCLeeds @bloodwise_uk pic.twitter.com/uLYMeDr0as
— Britton (@AntonyBritton) September 3, 2015
After Britton had been buried for nine minutes and his colleagues could no longer hear him breathing they dug him free using a mechanical digger.
After several minutes he was successfully revived by paramedics. He sustained cracked ribs and a collapsed lung during the ordeal.
“All I remember is, literally your life goes before your eyes. Really. And then I just passed out,” Britton told the Guardian.
The soil was landing on top of me and around the side of me. It was compacting and crushing me. Every single time another bucket came it was getting worse.
It’s unclear whether or not Britton will attempt the escape again, with some reports suggesting he is happy to leave it as a bridge better left uncrossed.
The Escape for Life Facebook page begs to differ however and says “Antony has vowed not to be beaten and that he will try the escape again”.
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Oh great. Now we’ll be hearing from all the armchair experts with blindingly simple solutions that the programmers didn’t think of because they were too busy eating their liga and colouring in with their crayons. I can’t wait.
@8bitplebian: I don’t eat liga when I’m coding lol
@Scorpionvenomm: Sorry, Farley’s.
They should turn it off and on again
“British Airways HAVE apologised to ITS customers…”
@Harry Whitehead: British Airways is the name of the company, singular. The airways themselves haven’t actually apologised.
If you are going to be pedantic, at least be right.
@Michael Doyle: If British Airways is to be treated as a singular noun, the correct verbal agreement would be HAS, not HAVE. Try reading it again.
@Harry Whitehead: Exactly. That’s why your original correction was incorrect.
My heads hurt.
@Neal Ireland Hello.: Err…mine wasn’t a correction. I was directly quoting the article. I used capitals to highlight the mistake. Either ‘has + its’ or ‘have + their’.
@Harry Whitehead: Lol, show how much the Irish care about the stranded passengers
@Harry Whitehead: maybe the article has been fixed since you read it first. Further down I do see “British Airways say” , which is conflicting.
@Michael Doyle: Yeah you’re right, it’s been fixed.
@Harry Whitehead: That explains it. Now we can get back to worrying about the group of passengers that are/is stranded.
@Michael Doyle: *WORRY WORRY WORRY WORRY WORRY WORRY WORRY…*
@Michael Doyle: Sorry, couldn’t resist.
I’m glad we got to the bottom of this, gentlemen.
There’s some good deals in pc world, maybe they should get down there
Resilience and redundancy plans anyone??
Probably cloud-based….
Look up its an empty sky.
go back to old system with ticketing, technology is weak, all it takes is one system to go down and the hole lot falls down, flights delayed, or cancelled no good to people travelling or missing connecting flights! then they dump you outside the airport to fend for yourself!
@Stephen Finn:
There is a whole lot wrong with that suggestion.
@Nick Allen: and yet you aren’t arsed pointing out exactly what is wrong with it.
I think you will find they were hacked, but not admitting to the fact. It seems impossible that they would have no redundancy or contingency plan if a data centre was struck by lightning.
Hugo Drax involvement I’ll warrant .
The cancellations also hit flights to Heathrow and Gatwick, I’m in Miami and two flights from here today were cancelled. The staff on the desks said nine flights from New York were also cancelled, they were still suffering a lot of computer glitches while trying to transfer us to alternative flights with different airlines. I was in a queue for about 90 minutes and it then took about another 20 minutes for the desk agent to convince his computer to book me onto a new flight.
I somehow read the hashtag as ‘competence outage’.
Word on the street is the Indians screwed up!!!!!!
have your say