Charged

[Strychnine]

One of the best documentaries I've seen in a while, and I watch a lot.

Ed is an outdoorsman, bowhunter, accomplished chef, etc. He was out hiking near his home in Montana and had a fucking horrible accident.

Backstory: Out in the backcountry he came across an old rusted barrel, half buried, that had a dead/decomposing bear cub in it. He had no idea how it got there, why the barrel was there, etc, but it was decomposed enough that he thought he could easily take a claw or two back home - so he pulled out a knife and reached down. Next thing he remembers is coming back to consciousness while walking down the mountain. His memory goes from reaching for the bear claw to hearing his feet shuffling down a gravel road headed down the mountain. As he's walking he's trying to piece together what happened, and he realizes he REALLY FUCKING BADLY injured... like, REALLLLLLY fucking badly. He has exposed bone/tendon on his arm and leg, hole in his head, blown out ribcage, etc

Turns out (and I don't think this was explained well in the film) that

"Malcom Forbes, you know, Forbes 500, had a cabin up at the top of Beattie Gulch, and they brought power to that cabin via the road (in the 1960s). When they dug the road in they buried the [power] line. At one point the road takes a big dog-leg out, and instead of running cable up gully they just shot cable up the switchback. On the rollout, going up this drainage, they ran out of cable., so they brought in a new spool and they spliced it, but instead of burying the splice the just put a barrel on it. Basically it was a [2400 volt] junction box.

The lid was secured on 3 sides, but the welds, the tabs that had the holes through them to keep the lid attached had become compromised over time... the tabs became compromised and then over time one broke, and another broke... and maybe a bison rubbed its ass on it one day or sloughing snow downhill started to move it over time, and then of course the lid fell off and it gathered dirt and grass..."

So he took 2400 volts in one hand and out nine places on his body. At the time he had already been capturing a ton of film for a series about his cooking, so when this happened they took some of that as the 'before' then just kept filming to eventually make this documentary.

It's his story of life before the incident, his multi-year recovery (during which they also found out he had cancer), and how he got his life back, etc. Powerful stuff (no pun intended).





Steve Rinella (The Meateater Podcast) posted a 90 min interview with Garcia just a couple days ago that has a lot more detail, so if anyone actually heeds this and watches the movie also go listen to this (i think I'd listen before watching):

http://www.themeateater.com/podcasts/ep-091-surviving/

You know, if you get bored.

[Baba Ganoush]

I listened to that podcast, remarkable story. I like how he said his mind was already 2 miles up the hill, this was a passing decision. Take more time to do everything when you’re way out. Great lessons in there. His recovery was nothing short of a miracle.