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For those not aware, that first story implies he had to wait five days in a general ward in the hospital before he could get into a burn ward with the doctors and equipment to properly treat his burns at a high level - not that they waited five days to seek help because it was just too far away.

Buying safety equipment doesn't just help the channel with money. It also slightly increases viewership.

"a solid 20kg of potassium"
"waist deep water"
I'm going deaf just reading that. Imagine the bang that would make 😮

A little info was left out that i am just now realizing.  I didn't wait 5 days to go to the hospital.  I went to the hospital immediately after it happened.  But the hospital here does not have its own burn ward.  So I was forced to make an appointment with them and 5 days later was the earliest they could get me in.  I sought help immediately after it happened.  I just know that it doesn't read like that from the messages.  I was in  the hospital for what felt like an eternity waiting for the burn ward appointment.  The burn ward appointment was absolutely the most painful thing I've ever been through in my entire life and if you know my life, that's surprising.  

If anyone has any questions, feel free to reply to this comment and I will answer them as I find time to do so.  And yes, I know I'm a total idiot.  That's been established already, but this was years ago and I am much wiser now and we now do things very, very differently in my lab/business. We now have employees to worry about, quarterly inspections from the FBI and DEA, a reputation as a trustworthy chemical and elements supplier to worry about, etc.  No need to remind me of my stupidity when I was younger and more ignorant than I am today..

You know it's a special episode when the guy who got his hand covered in molten white phosphorus doesn't earn the yikes award.

I just realized today that helicopters are essentially just really big ass flying lawnmowers

My story is pretty simple comparatively: I was moving a crucible of molten bronze and the crucible failed (I suspect an air bubble, as the crucible had been dried for 4 hours in a 300c oven just the previous day.)  The crucible broke right where my tongs were holding it and ~3kg of bronze splashed all over as the rest of the crucible shattered when it hit the brick floor.  I was splashed with molten bronze from my shoulder to my shoes. All the natural fibers in my clothing were unblemished. All the artificial ones melted. . . into the natural fiber clothing beneath. My shoes were destroyed but my wool socks were utterly unscathed.
Anywhoo, I jumped back the instant I dropped the Crucible and immediately doused the area with my safety bucket.   This was the last time I wore sneakers while moving molten metal.  I managed to escape without a single burn though I got a nice case of the Adrenalin shakes.  Fortunately my working area was devoid of any tripping hazards (I choreograph my movements VERY VERY carefully when moving molten metal, so I'm very cognizant to remove any hazards in the area, an path of emergency egress.)  
I will say, molten bronze is a great way to clean aged brickwork. When I peeled off the layer of spilled bronze, the brick underneath looked brand new, and the grout was the cleanest I've ever seen it!

1:18 I choose to believe this was simply a bad dream

RE kitty litter: those blue flecks are, or at least used to be, cobalt chloride, serving as a moisture indicator.

You won't get rid of them with organic solvents.

This isn't chemistry related but I made a mistake that cost more than my salary when I was an apprentice machinist at a factory. I accidentally destroyed a massive press die by continuing to operate the press while my mentor was away despite the bottom being slightly misaligned. If I remember correctly the tool and die engineer said it would probably cost the company ~$100k to replace. I made ~$25k. Fortunately it was taken as a learning opportunity and I wasn't disciplined.

Regarding the hotplate, my brother in law works in a metallurgy lab and has a hotplate that's got to be kept at 300°C. They test it by dropping water onto it

This is not my story, but something that happened a good while ago in my uni. Still insane.

Back in the day, in lab classes for the 1st years people would just throw into the sink all of the liquid waste, since the freshmen didn't work with organic solvents or metals (save for Cu). They advised, of course, to let the faucet running a good while when doing so to dilute the waste so it didin't react in the plumbing. Turns out 18yo fresh faces often don't hear things, and ended up throwing stuff without diluting enough. One day, because of whatever unholy concotion brew in those sewers, the pipes started spewing fire into several of the ground floor labs simultaneously for nearly a minute.
Unsurprisingly, after that incident, they started using the proper waste containers for EVERYTHING. The problem is that, because of the really screwed up way that the building was built, it's nigh impossible to replace the underground pipes without pretty much halting the whole class labs for at least a year, which is unfeasable. So, as far as we know, those pipes can be cracked and leaking the wastewater into the soil, and we wouldn't know. However, the floor in the hall is slightly bumpier in the middle.

Your story of the leaking waste barrel reminded me of one of my old workplaces. I was working as an electronics engineer in a workshop at a university, helping the scientists maintain their equipment aswell as fabricating custom equipment to their needs.
Anywas we had the need to upgrade our workshop and got it completely rebuilt, everything from ESD flooring to custom made furniture and so on.
One day the principal of the university showed some other higher ups around, including some goverment officials. The principal also wanted to show our almost completed new workshop, so while me and my colleagues were in the workshop, talking with some of the electricians about some minor changes, the principal along with a small group of other people, suddenly showed up in our workshop.
We were a bit startled but greeted them and talked abit bout our ideas for the new workshop and so on. Shortly after the maintenance director of the uni, wanted to show our new mains switchboard that had just been installed, so he called the chief electrician over to demonstrate it. The chief electrician turned on the main breaker and an ear deffening loud bang sounded from the room next door (which was our storage room for the workshop), out from that room came an apprentice of the electrician, who was in the middle of installing some three phase outlets when the chief electrician turned on the main breaker, having forgotten all about his apprentice working. That poor apprentice was white as a sheet and still held, shakingly, onto a pair of halfmolten cutting pliers.
The looks on everybodys face were priceless. Fortunately the apprentice didn't endure any enjuries except for perhaps on his mental wellbeing.

I work in a distillation setting. Somehow, I ended up getting a single drop of high purity MEK on my right eye. It dropped PERFECTLY between the tiny gap in my eye-pro SOMEHOW. It was incredibly unpleasant, and it left that eye temporarily blind for a few hours and it was super dry. Stuff happens, but thankfully it wasn't serious.

I once got conc. Sulphuric acid on my hand. I was expecting itching or irritation, but it felt like someone was torching my skin like it was a creme brulee. Luckily I got the tap running and ran my hand under it, no lasting effects but it discoloured my skin and nails.

I cannot imagine the pure agony of getting White Phosphorus on my hands like that guy. WTF.

Good gravy....using ozs to measure white phosphorus is scary as heck. It isn't weed lmao.

Oh, this is a fun game I can participate in!

Not a chemist, but a biomedical story. During my bachelor, I was working in a lab on some bacterial spores (cool fellas, but not important) with 8 other students, a few PhD students working/baby sitting us and our lab tech. All of a sudden we all heard a muffled boom, the sound of glass breaking and then the door of our incubator being flung open by a 40L flood of the foulest smelling… anything I have ever encountered, shards of glass of all sizes and everyone’s petri dishes.
Turns out, some genius from another lab had gotten permission to run an experiment in our incubator where he filled a 120L glass vat with 40 L of his culture to accumulate the gasses for over a week and had left to go on vacation. The problem was that he did this without a pressure release valve, so it had turned into a pressure bomb and went off. The scary part, apart from the cleanup, was that my partner had pulled some petri dishes out of that incubator 3 minutes before it went off. If he had timed that a bit worse, he might have gotten hit by that. Or it might have gone off at night and damaged electronics, etc.

The good news is that we could all hear our lab tech chews this guy out, it was not pretty but well deserved. That explosion destroyed about 12 weeks of PhD student and 20 weeks of bachelor student work, which was not fun.

My PI warned me about making sure all solvent from column silica was fully evaporated before disposing of it. Apparently a previous student had failed to do so and emptied all silica into the (EHS approved) plastic jug, sealed it, and left for the day. The warm summer day. At some point during the evening, despite the air conditioning, the heat in the lab caused the residual solvent in the closed container to go boom. Fortunately, the container was stored in a location where the only damage was to the drywall, and the fine layer of silica deposited around the room.

It's very rare that one mistake will kill you, but all too often the first mistake it choosing to be in a situation where one more mistake (by anyone) will kill you.