Boy Scouts at it again

[Pk_Ranger]

"FARMINGTON, N.M. — A 15-year-old Boy Scout on an overnight camping trip died after he was thrown from a raft and swept away by a harsh undertow, authorities said"

That was yesterday, the 30th of June. On the 22nd, a 17 year old scout died using a zipline in Idaho. On the 24th in Yellowstone Park at 13 year old was swept into a river and is presumed dead. On the 17th an 11 year old disappeared from his camp and was missing for 4 days.

Now I spent 13 years as a girl scout, participated in Alabama, Germany, Utah and Alabama, did numerous camp outs and other events like road tripped to Savannah with my troop, and not once did we ever have any problems like this.

I'm not saying that the girl scouts are perfect but do you realize that in exactly two weeks 2 boy scouts have died, possibly a third, and one disappeared and could have died. What does this mean?

[DRD2001]

Wow. I've been a little amazed at all of the incidences lately. What especially surprised me was the lost scout failed to ask people for help. However, my father ran a boating camp for the boy scouts for several years and there was never an incident. So maybe this is just a run of bad coincidences.

[AgentSun]

as they say... no one reports in the nightly news that no planes crashed.

[Pk_Ranger]

DRD, it was reported that the little boy hid from the searchers. Now far be it from me to say talk to strangers when you're lost, but if there is a lot of people calling your name, I would kind of think to say hey here I am.

Call this paranoia, but I think it's a little fishy. The death that occured yesterday the leader said the boy was swept into the water, and the current pulled his lifejacket off. Which to me sounds like someone didn't do a check of the lifejackets to make sure everyone had their's on properly. Falls to the leader's responsibility (sp). Secondly, with the 17 year old that died using the zip line, I've run zip line points at girl scout camp and never once had a problem like that. I know this could all be a coincidence, but as paranoid as this sounds, something is not adding up.

P.S. what does "no one reports in the nightly news that no planes crashed." mean?

[AgentSun]

"no one reports in the nightly news that no planes crashed" means that the news doesn't report what didn't happen -- that as frequent as all these occurances are at the moment, a lot of people are going to express shock and horror mostly because they haven't heard it before.

soon you're going to hear "all this happening all the time" like it was gang violence or something.

there have been accidents for years. not with the boy scouts but with people hiking, children getting injured, etc.

i do agree that the boy who avoided searchers...::shakes head:: i understand what he was taught but the kid was just stupid.

[Pk_Ranger]

Ohhhhhhhhh I'm going to have to remember that one. It's just with what's going on with the boy scouts a lot of these incidents seem to fall into the category of this could have been prevented. Like I said with the one yesterday, it sounds like the lifejacket wasn't properly put on. The zip line, well, don't even get me started on that. The kid that was swept away, just sounds odd in the sense of you'd have to be pretty damn close to be swept.

This hasn't been the greatest year for boy scouts, with forgery and everything else. I'm looking at this story as a squad leader in the Army, and a former girl scout and just something doesn't seem right

[AgentSun]

it's like how some people are so afraid of flying because they're afraid that the plane is going to crash cause they think it happens 'all the time'...when in actuality, they only think it happens all the time is because the only time they hear about a plane crash is...when it crashes! it doesn't click that thousands of planes go out and come in every day without incident. and because the anchor doesn't get on the news and go 'today nothing happened at the airport' people think it happens all the time because it's all they see.

like when people around here thought the sniper thing 'happened all the time' and that these men 'terrorized the area for a long time'....yes it was nervewracking for all of us but it was 23 days and there were actually 10 victims and 3 wounded, not like 15 to 25 like a lot of people were believing in their minds. and that admittedly, even though i hated going to get gas, no one thought to figure that there are MILLIONS of people living in the VA, D.C. and MD areas where these snipers were. so if your chance is 1 in 4 million. sometimes people get the wrong card but most likely you won't be it.

[Pk_Ranger]

Man you're one smart cookie ;)

[AgentSun]

hey, you get smarter after two guys in a caprice try to take out some people in your town.

i think if it had gone on any longer, the gangs would've rallied to track them down. even the suburban gangs...as odd as it sounds.

[Pk_Ranger]

I got smart after a jarhead pushed me off of a rappel tower, does that counrt?

[AgentSun]

yes it most definitely does. now the question is, did you push the jarhead back?

[Owlman]

As far as the news not reporting anything:

Why does the media ignore Aryan/White Power gangs that are tearing the nation apart, thanks to their meth trade that is destroying whole communities. You never heard about them. You always hear (at least in Texas/National News) about La eMe, The Cartels, Black Gangs, and of course, The Mafia. The Aryans now have junior members that are still in middle school! The meth epidemic makes the crack trade look good.

[AgentSun]

it has a lot to do with what is available. it's one thing to say 'we're going to report what's important out there' but it speaks a lot when the american public doesn't care and you can't put out what is important because to a lot of america, things that are IMPORTANT aren't neccessarily important to them.

in news you're taught 5 things that determine whether a story is newsworthy:

prominence: is it someone worth mentioning? (example: pope, presidents)

timeliness: is it important to today's society? (file sharing, environment)

proximity: is it important for the people of (insert town name here) this town?

without going into the others, you see how a lot of america is not going to care so much about things on big scopes like this. it's a shame really but a lot of it has to do with america and it's attention span.

i am nostalgic for the days before People became a tabloid and when most Rolling Stone covers had musicians.

trust me, i used to be one of those people to go 'why won't they report this? it's important' but the thing is, just because it's important to me and it's what i think everyone needs to know, isn't exactly what they want or would listen to. and if you just blindly put out what you think the world should read, you're not going to get any readers cause they may not be things they care about. they're more likely to care about the gas prices rising and child day care than more death in south africa. and it may seem like a bad thing, like we're supposed to care about everyone and all..but i doubt the south africans care about our gas prices or child day care, so it's all full circle.

[Nutty_Angel]

I'm never really heard of anything like this happening in Kent, if not in England, but thats probably cos it just wasn't reported.
The death that occured yesterday the leader said the boy was swept into the water, and the current pulled his lifejacket off.
Gotta agree with PK_Ranger that it was negligence on the part of the Scout leaders but also of the people running the Rafting if it was run by an outside company. A lifejacket is designed to not come off, so it couldn't have been on properly.
I've been with the girl guides (the eqivilent (sp?) of Girl Scouts in the UK) since I was born, and nothing like this has ever happened, in my area because the leaders check that everyone is safe before they us do anything. Also there are checks done by the Guiding Guild on every camp site and adventure centre that we are recommeded to go to.

and well you notice its only happening to the boys!!! ;) :)

[sny]

i do agree that the boy who avoided searchers...::shakes head:: i understand what he was taught but the kid was just stupid.

Erm... if I remember correctly, there was a news story that hinted perhaps he may have had some slight developmental problems. He was born several weeks premature, and it's possible that he was a little behind his peers as a result of that.

And even if he wasn't, you do have to remember that by the time searchers got close enough for him to hear them and see them, he had been without food and/or water for several days, and he had been sleeping in a crouched position, with his sweatshirt pulled down over his knees, so he was probably suffering from exposure and sleep deprivation, as well. By the time they recovered him, he was dehydrated and hungry enough that he was talking a bit out of his head, slightly delirious. Or so quoth one of the searchers in the story in my local paper after he was recovered.

The poor kid was only ten, and he wasn't operating on all cylinders by that time. I doubt he was entirely rational.