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Video Game Addiction Saves Lives
EzRag writes "Here's a nice bit about a guy who saved a household of people from a fire, all thanks to his late-night video game addiction. Does this mean I can count all my hours of playing Chron X as community service work?"
I lived on a groundfloor suite during College. And a friend of ours had become addicted to NetHack and came over to play all the time.
Well, one afternoon after everyone is finally awake up (he's still playing) we notice that one of the window screens is broken, and the Lava Lamp has is out on the sidewalk, broken (it was a few feet away from the window, as if someone tried to steal it, but burnt themselves on the hot-lava).
So, we ask our friend what happened, as he'd been awake the whole time. He had heard people talking nearby, heard someone scream and something break, but didn't bother to get up or anything...
glad out place wasn't burning down.
...back in 1986.
I was playing videogames (first it was the Colecovision/Adam baseball game with a friend, then I switched over to Ultima IV on the Commodore 64 when he left). When I finally went to bed I smelled smoke. I went downstairs and found an apartment on fire (a burglar had apparently set it on fire to cover his robbery). Then I called the fire department and woke up the rest of the people in the building (which turns out to be kinda hard to do at 3a.m., but the 911 operator gave me some tips).
It never once occurred to me to credit the videogames. I guess that's because we were so backwards in the '80s. We didn't know we needed to come up with excuses for our addictions.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.