Flashlight Stories

[RJ]

During a dimly lit, crowded church service, an old guy goes down right next to me.

Quick check, no pulse, no breathing. Initiate CPR. Someone runs for the AED. When they get back with it it is so dark we can't see instructions.

Pause CPR.

Toss Zebralight to bystander who lights up the scene.

Continue CPR.

The guy revives! EMS transports him and he surprisingly lived.

That is fucking outstanding.

[voodoo_man]

During a dimly lit, crowded church service, an old guy goes down right next to me.

Quick check, no pulse, no breathing. Initiate CPR. Someone runs for the AED. When they get back with it it is so dark we can't see instructions.

Pause CPR.

Toss Zebralight to bystander who lights up the scene.

Continue CPR.

The guy revives! EMS transports him and he surprisingly lived.

Respond to a call in the back of the projects.

Zero light, they shoot out the bulbs.

Guy is bleeding like crazy from his arm, he took a machete to it about a minute ago. Girl is holding him screaming. I put my gloves on as I run over asking radio for a bus asap.

I give the light to the screaming girl and whip out a cat TQ, before we had sof t's or anything....

It's pitch black, I can't see my hand in front of my face with a flashlight and the girl is shaking so bad it's all over the place.

I get a single AAA streamlight mini out and attach it to the cap the guy was wearing, telling him to look at his wound.

I cranked on that plastic stick until he started screaming and he bleeding stopped, securing it.

Grab my flash light and started pushing the guy towards the bus that was pulling up.

Two is one.

[Wayne Dobbs]

There is a very certain sound made by a Magcharger striking noggin that most folks will never know....

So true, which is why I used that term "tonk", since that's the closest word in the English language to convey that sound!

[Coyotesfan97]

That's a good word for it

[Clusterfrack]

Tibet, 1990. I was doing some work that involved taking samples around Lhasa. One night I took a bicycle taxi several miles out to a ruined temple. The taxi guy wouldn’t take me all the way up the road for some superstitious reason, so I paid him half and told him to wait there until I was done. It was getting late and was already pretty dark, and so I packed my gear up and headed down to find the taxi.

Guess what? The fucker was gone. Well, I was prepared to spend the night so I figured there were worse spots. Just as I was thinking this, it began to rain hard. All attempts to get a fire started failed, and I ended up huddled under some rubble in one of the ruins wet and freezing my ass off. Then the dogs started howling. I should mention that there were thousands of semi-feral dogs in and around Lhasa, and they were dangerous—especially in packs. I had to get a rabies vaccine for that very reason. Screw it, I thought. I’m not going to get any sleep anyway, so I might as well be cold and miserable hiking back to Lhasa.

I started off toward the city thinking about how I was going to find that bike taxi guy and kick his ass. Then the battery in my rechargeable 3D Maglight died. There was no moon and it was really freaking dark. I blundered my way along trails and roads and through fields toward the city lights, and by the time I got to the outskirts, I was pretty beat up and seriously pissed off. Then something made me stop. I turned and heard a low growl very close to me. I raised the Maglight overhand and hit the button. There was enough charge to light up a pack of feral dogs. The one that was leader, or maybe just the hungriest, had its teeth bared and I remember that they were mostly black. I swung down and hit it in the head with the flashlight. It sounded like a home run. That dog fell and I sprinted toward the city as the light died again. I guess the rest of the pack didn’t think it was worth following, which was a damn good thing.

I spent the night in my room, and first thing in the morning I got my translator and went to find the bike taxi guy. Of course he had an excuse: he saw a ghost. He told the translator that I was very blessed to have survived going to that cursed temple. When the wheel of life turned for me I would ascend to Nirvana. I’m sure he made all that up so I wouldn’t kick his skinny ass, but it made me feel better at the time.

[11B10]

Tibet, 1990. I was doing some work that involved taking samples around Lhasa. One night I took a bicycle taxi several miles out to a ruined temple. The taxi guy wouldn’t take me all the way up the road for some superstitious reason, so I paid him half and told him to wait there until I was done. It was getting late and was already pretty dark, and so I packed my gear up and headed down to find the taxi.

Guess what? The fucker was gone. Well, I was prepared to spend the night so I figured there were worse spots. Just as I was thinking this, it began to rain hard. All attempts to get a fire started failed, and I ended up huddled under some rubble in one of the ruins wet and freezing my ass off. Then the dogs started howling. I should mention that there were thousands of semi-feral dogs in and around Lhasa, and they were dangerous—especially in packs. I had to get a rabies vaccine for that very reason. Screw it, I thought. I’m not going to get any sleep anyway, so I might as well be cold and miserable hiking back to Lhasa.

I started off toward the city thinking about how I was going to find that bike taxi guy and kick his ass. Then the battery in my rechargeable 3D Maglight died. There was no moon and it was really freaking dark. I blundered my way along trails and roads and through fields toward the city lights, and by the time I got to the outskirts, I was pretty beat up and seriously pissed off. Then something made me stop. I turned and heard a low growl very close to me. I raised the Maglight overhand and hit the button. There was enough charge to light up a pack of feral dogs. The one that was leader, or maybe just the hungriest, had its teeth bared and I remember that they were mostly black. I swung down and hit it in the head with the flashlight. It sounded like a home run. That dog fell and I sprinted toward the city as the light died again. I guess the rest of the pack didn’t think it was worth following, which was a damn good thing.

I spent the night in my room, and first thing in the morning I got my translator and went to find the bike taxi guy. Of course he had an excuse: he saw a ghost. He told the translator that I was very blessed to have survived going to that cursed temple. When the wheel of life turned for me I would ascend to Nirvana. I’m sure he made all that up so I wouldn’t kick his skinny ass, but it made me feel better at the time.

Simply a great tale, Cluster!

[willie]

In that place, a human there alone at night was a phenomenon that the dogs could not process. Hence, they thought that you were crazy and feared you. Otherwise....

[Clusterfrack]

In that place, a human there alone at night was a phenomenon that the dogs could not process. Hence, they thought that you were crazy and feared you. Otherwise....

Looking back, I think they weren’t wrong about the crazy part...

[MistWolf]

Back in the days before LED lights or halogen bulbs and flashlights were incandescent and fragile, we were experiencing heavy monsoon rains in Southern California, the kind that fell in sheets for days straight and washed Malibu all the way out to Catalina island. Water was pouring down from the hills outside of town and raged through the part of The Wash that ran behind my parent's house. Here, the concrete banks were steep and it was narrow. We were young, having just graduated high school and equipped with all wisdom and immortality that comes with being of that age. We all had ATC 110s, the balloon tired three wheeled off-road cycles Honda made and sold. They were a blast and I wish I still had mine.

One night, my cousin and our best friend rode their ATCs up to the end of my street where you could drop down into The Wash. The Wash was a drainage system that ran behind houses, shopping centers, parks and so on. You could use The Wash to go anywhere and as there was no police presence and you could travel without being seen from the streets, we rode our ATCs through there all the time. However, with all the heavy rains, the water flowing through our part of The Wash was running high and fast enough to knock you down and carry you away. They wanted me to go with them, but I knew it was too dangerous, even for my tiny teenaged brain. I tried to talk them out of it, but they wouldn't listen.

When they rode off to go up to the end of the street, I drove down to the nearest cross street and parked where the street crossed over and waited. I didn't have a flashlight, but I did have a spotlight that plugged into the cigarette lighter. It was called a A Beam and it's tight beam was rated at 1 million candle power and it was BRIGHT.

When I could make out the headlights of the ATCs coming down The Wash through the rain, I lit them up with the Q beam. Thinking I was the police, they stopped, fought the heavy flow to horse their ATCs around in the narrow confines between the banks and fled back the way they came without coming unseated or swept away. I heaved a sigh of relief. If I hadn't been able to turn them around, they would have confined downstream where the water flowed deeper and more powerfully and they would have been swept away and died as they would not have been able to climb the steep banks and escape.

[Cypher]

Working as a security guard for the local utility, my job was to do security checks on various electrical substations.

One night I pulled into a substation on the east edge of town and back up to the gate to do my checks (walk around the fence and check gates and look for holes). I had time to call in my location and annotate my log and another car pulls in to the Substation.

I call that in and step out of my car to investigate. The driver shines a spot light in my face and gets out.

Now before I go further let me explain that buying used cop cars is a fad in Colorado Springs, as is assaulting security guards and taking their guns. Let me also explain that security vehicles are required to be CLEARLY marked and guards are required to wear a distinct uniform. They way I was parked the spot had my car fully illuminated and who ever was in the car KNEW I was security and who I worked for.

So I'm blind and I pull out my Fenix UC35 (960 lumens) and put it right in the guy's face and he goes off. He starts yelling that my light is a threat to him and I need to get it out of his face. I tell him that his light is a threat to me and I can neither see nor identify him. He decides to go badge heavy and tells me that he's a Sheriff's Deputy and that he pulled in to "investigate" my vehicle. I reply " You mean my CLEARLY MARKED SECURITY vehicle?" He starts to get badge heavy again and I remind him that he's on private property and ask if he's responding to a call for service or has a warrant. Then I remind him that it's the middle of the night and we're in the middle of no where, he made no attempt to identify himself or even turn on his overheads and that of the 2 of us I'M the one authorized to be there and acting as an agent of the property owner and that I had every right to take precautions for my safety.

About that time his supervisor pulls in, listens for about 2 minutes and turns to the other guy and tells him to leave NOW. I then explained to the supervisor who I was and why I was there and that he could expect to see guards at that substation every night. Then he left.

I'm not normally an asshole like that but there's no way that cop didn't know who I was. He just wanted to play roust the security guard and got it handed back to him