Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Most Dangerous Jobs in the U.S. - Fun to list those that you have lived through.

They forgot about being a diplomat for this administration.

Adding the risks from Obama's incompetence to the long suspected risks from working for the Clintons does seem to be a recipe for an early and horrible death.

Sure. Lots of stupid people do a lot of those jobs. That should not be condescending to those who aren't...they would agree.

Having done six of those jobs, including one that you except from being a task only for the stupid, I take serious exception to your tone and assertion.

Since I no longer work (Still play at several.) at any of these, I have neither ego nor pecuniary interest in the personal or public perception of danger in any of these fields. I do recognize that those in a couple safer fields do have very strong ego and pecuniary interests in cultivating a false personal and public perception of them as the most dangerous.

Both my brothers were iron workers, my oldest went in the hole twice. Wasn't expected to the fist time. Brock his back the second time. He is still with us, but in a lot of pain.

Good luck surviving your recreation.

Worked 25 years for the power company. Several as lineman and trouble shooter. Two co workers electrocuted the first two years I worked there. Two more lost an arm from high voltage contact a few years later. Thankfully safety standards are much better now. The greater use of bucket trucks plays a big role in safer work conditions now.

I do #5 on a regular basis even tho it's not really my job. I have to climb and measure all the stuff in refineries and chemical plants that rotted out and needs replacement.

You do begin to wonder at some point when you go out like this week to some measurements in a furnace they shut down a week ago (it will still pretty freaking hot) and you have to wear steel toe boots, full nomex, a repirator, carry an escape respirator, chemical googles, a hard hat, safety glasses, a harness with an automatic yoyo lanyard which all together equals 40+ pounds AND basically have a team of people looking out for you, someone who signs you in personally, another who signs you out, someone who is sationed at the door permanetly while you are in, another who is taking constant gas readings, one who is hold the other end of your tether line to find your way out......

and then they tell you it's perfectly safe lol.

Of course I'm not sure why I worry. I mean it's not like the stack coming out of the furnace a few hundred feet tall is leaning, then they shake the crap out the furnace by pulling pairs of 80' 6" pipe out of it with a winch and it vibrates the hell out of the thing while at the same time taking down the guy wires on the stack because it was in the way of machiery pulling out the pipe lol.

I could never work around high powered electricity. No way Jose.


That or continuous 'elevated' work.



Some of the local ranchers around here have small airplanes.


I can think of 3 who crashed and died.



Good, trustworthy co-workers make a big difference.

You also see the bus loads of contract workers entering the same facility, half who can't speak english and the other half with their boots on the wrong feet.

I personally don't mind the ones that are in your control like iron workers, roofers etc...it's the jobs where you get killed and never see it coming like mining etc...

While it's possible to die as an iron worker because of someomne else I would guess most die from something they could have prevented.

Guys at the plants say my job is more dangerous because I climb - but I only climb rarely and with lots of "advisors" and specialist and only go to the job site rarely and it comes to a standstill normally waiting on me. I figure it's much less dangersous than being out there 40 hours a week even if you are just sitting in a chair all that time in an explosion resisstant office.

I've done 10, 9, 5, 4 and Numbah One. Ugh, me proud.

except you now just get crushed by someone powered by hydraulics....

In the steel fabrication business we do a LOT less manual labor than we did even 20-25 years ago but we replaced them with machines that kill you just as fast and never slow down while doing it if you aren't careful.

Played this game for many years. My second boy came along and made me rethink it though.

Have a wave coming over the bow of my 120' trawler.



While Blowing 96kts

True, it is getting much safer. Ending the derbies helped out a bit. Out of 700 or so trollers in SE AK, I'd say on average we lose 1 a year.

Locally we have several in the logging industry killed per year. Logging trucks going over the side, fallers taking a tree the wrong way and choker setters being hit from falling debris are typical examples. Not on a per hundred thousand employee basis, but on a per hours worked basis, it would be interesting to see the rate for wild land forest fire fighters. They have a very tough and unpredictable job.

The big issue for me has always been exposure, and being able to turn it "off" when the voices of doom get too loud.
If you can tie off it's not too bad, and if you are "graceful" then you can get away with the unavoidables. I got off the iron when my reflexes began to slow and confidence went away.
And I got away from roofs after my second get-off, which involved a complete forward flip onto my feet into glorious soft mud and snow.
I could not hack being on the ocean at mercy of the elements and no port in a storm.

I spent 2 days off of work a week ago, followed by a Sunday visit to the ER for confusion and lack of focus and extreme dizziness. I knew the day I returned I would get the call to go out and measure something. That's the way it goes, go 3 months sitting in an office and then....

I was right. My boss said I looked a little slow going up the ladders lol.

We had a big pow wow on the ground with a bunch of people and one of them said "is that the first time off the ground for that guy?". I must have really looked bad haha. I must have really looked like a "green"horn.

Anybody notice the causes of death? Loggers must cut themselves, or each other, a lot.

Hidden defects in trees or cables are / were the logger killers that I saw.