Nightclub Deaths: Fireworks, Massacre, Red Bull And Drugs

Like Brett and Jemaine from Flight of the Conchords in this clip, a nightclub can be a merry time.When you are sipping your vodka and coke or getting jiggy with it on the dancefloor you would not think of graveyards, yet every year hundreds of people in nightclubs all over the world die. If you are unlucky it can be a real war zone and not just from binging and puking your guts or assholes starting fights.

A few causes of Nightclub tragedies:

This is Chloe Leach, a third-year social work student, she drank four cans of Red Bull and wine before hitting a club. Later on that night she collapsed on the dance-floor. RIP Chloe.

A celebrity death here is a detailed account of River Phoenix's death at a night club:

A few minutes before 1 AM (Halloween morning), River had been in the bathroom of The Viper Room, a club owned by Johnny Depp at 8852 Sunset Boulevard, doing drugs with some drug dealer friends and someone offered him a snort of high-grade Persian Brown. He was told it would make him feel fabulous. As soon as he snorted it he started trembling and shaking in front of the sink, screamed at his friend and then vomited. Someone tried to help by splashing cold water on his face and then gave him a Valium. (Nothing helps someone O.D.ing than to give them more drugs.) He staggered back into the bar and over to actress Samantha Mathis and his sister Rain. He complained he could not breathe and briefly passed out. When he came to, he asked Mathis to take him outside. Mathis first called River's friend and assistant Abby, then Mathis and River's brother Joaquin took him outside. River then collapsed on the sidewalk. After that he started going into seizures and had three before a photographer, Ron Davis, went to call 911 at the nearby payphone, and so did Joaquin. "He looked like a fish out of water," said Ron Davis, who was standing outside the club. He was "thrashing spasmodically, his head flopping from side to side, arms flailing wildly." Rain had since come out and thrown herself on River to attempt to stop the seizures. It seems after 8 minutes of seizures they stopped and River was still, at which point Joaquin said he was not breathing. At 1:14 a.m. he was in cardiac arrest when paramedics arrived and Paramedic Ray Ribar of the LA County Fire Department began to administer CPR. They rushed him to Cedars Sinai Medical Center where they arrived at 1:34 am. When they got there, his skin was dark blue, but his body was still warm. The ER physicians did everything to revive him, even inserting a pacemaker. He was pronounced dead at 1:51 am.

This is real footage of someone inside a nightclub in Perm, Russia where it went up in flames after an indoors fireworks display, resulting in the death of 106 people. The fireworks display caused the ceiling to ignite. "It all happened because of pyrotechnics," one club-goer, Andrei, told the Ekho Moskvy radio station. "There was a fireworks display of "rain" in the form of sparks that leapt one and a half metres into the air. A spark obviously hit the ceiling, which is completely made of woven brushwood. It ignited. The electricity went off instantly, the place began to fill up with smoke, the lights went out, and people started to rush for the exit."

Here is a horrific image from outside a Bangkok nightclub. Once again fire was the killer.

10 people were killed in a nightclub in Mexico’s Pacific coast resort of Acapulco. Acapulco a getaway for Hollywood celebrities is becoming less and less popular with massacres such as this.

None of these people will ever get to dance again. Amen.

Fun Places to Work

Let's face it, it's about time people started to realise that the monotone, monochrome and mundane cubicles and offices that most people are forced to work in are far from ideal. They crush creativity, dilute inspiration and dampen stimulation. So I bring to some of the coolest places in the world to work in. Now they are not the coolest jobs, moreover they are the coolest office spaces that you could work in. Psychologists have already shown that in environments that are colourful, vibrant, relaxing, playful and interactive, that employees are far more innovative, creative and productive. Let's start with one of the biggest and baddest examples. The Googleplex.

There is an overall sort of green, eco-friendly vibe too the office, but considered the most entertaining things in most offices, is the water cooler, you have got to admit that it looks like a lot of fun. When Ideo a design and innovation consultancy firm was founded, the companies general manager, Tom Kelley said how he wanted every employee to be his best friend and that would be the basis of the company, sounds like a great idea to me. In Ideo they embrace the idea of play and how play facilitates creativity and thinking outside the box, all around the office you will find, paint, play-do, plasticine, modelling clay, along with many other craft supplies, the idea being that if you have an idea and you want to show, a visual presentation will be much more successful. They also have this really cool VW conference van. 

The offices for Disney Pixar's studios are also a cut above the rest, little huts, fairy houses and sheds. Slides are another big one and the red-bull HQ in London and the Google Zurich, have both added in slides for good measure to help get there employees from one floor to the next. 

And skeptics can say whatever they like but Google, Ideo, Red-Bull and many of the others who have adopted these relaxed, fun and playful working model are reaping the rewards for it financially. We all know how important it is to be happy in your job, stimulating and engaging environments like the above breed happy workers. People who work for the company and not for themselves. What I would really love is to see this model being transferred to all offices and then making it's way from there into colleges (which has begun) but then most importantly back into secondary and primary education, where it is needed the most. Instead of boring and 'blanding' the minds of the next generation we should be stimulating them and encouraging them to be playful, resourceful and innovative. So many societies take themselves so seriously, adhering to meaningless conventions, stereotypes and social norms. If we can work productively and innovatively by throwing in a little play and a little fun well then I say go for it. If it feels good do it.