Heroic Deeds

Associate
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Chatting about this at work the other day and I realised that the most heroic deed I can recall is stopping a young school kid from getting squished by a slow reversing car, so pretty uninspiring and not very exciting. I did help chase after a hit and run suspect but others managed to get to him just before I did (we saw his car hit another head-on, this other car having a Yorkshire Terrier that flew off the rear seat and hit the centre console, sadly killing it :(). One ex-colleague saw a baby's buggy rolling down the street, slammed on his brakes, jumped out of his van, sprinted after it and grabbed it just before reaching a busy junction, trumping my effort by quite a margin.

It goes without saying that nurses, doctors, firefighters, police officers, soldiers, etc are obvious "heroes"*, but I'm talking about the extraordinary feats of human sacrifice, you know, running into a burning building to save lives, taking on an armed assailant mugging an old lady, grabbing someone about to throw themselves in front of a train, taking the controls of a bus that cannot drop below 50mph or else it will blow up, etc - events where your actions have literally saved someone's life.

So...anyone prepared to share their stories?

No prizes I'm afraid, just the knowledge that you are a truly unselfish human being and the totally deserved respect and praise of everyone.

Edit: * I didn't mean to have a debate on what constitutes a hero per se, I accept that they place themselves in careers that have a much greater exposure to life threatening situations, hence why I wanted to hear about ordinary Joe Public.
 
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Underboss
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Cut a 19 year old prisoner down after he tried to hang himself, was touch and go for a few hours as the way he made the noose outsmarted our Home Office approved ligature cutters so we had to improvise.

Didn't give me a warm, fuzzy feeling then but I hope he managed to turn his life around somewhat. He had just become a father and his other half said she was moving away and he would never see his child.
 
Man of Honour
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I think it's heroic for anyone in a customer services job to not crack up and starting running around screaming incoherently until they collapse from exhaustion, especially if they work for a large business.

I also think that "heroic" is a very over-used and ill-defined word that's probably best not used at all.
 
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After a severe brain wracking, I can't think of anything, I have led a sheltered life, never witnessed or been involved in an emergency situation.

I'm not quite sure that firemen, police, RNLI , military, are all automatically heroes, it's a job that they willingly chose, the routine
enactment of deeds of heroism isn't in their contract of employment.
 
Associate
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Yep i get sick of seeing folk fawn over fire/plod/military/doctors ect calling them heros... they are doing a job, a hard one and a good one but a job at the end of the day. They are not heroes.

I like to think of heros as the ordinary folk that find themselves in extraordinary situations and do what is needed - these are heroic imho.
 
Caporegime
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Yep i get sick of seeing folk fawn over fire/plod/military/doctors ect calling them heros... they are doing a job, a hard one and a good one but a job at the end of the day. They are not heroes.

I like to think of heros as the ordinary folk that find themselves in extraordinary situations and do what is needed - these are heroic imho.
So not the people who do those great things every day, then?

That's a pretty hot take, my dude.
 
Soldato
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It goes without saying that nurses, doctors, firefighters, police officers, soldiers, etc are obvious heroes,
.

Actually, while I would not wish to diminish the courage that people in these roles display, I don't really feel that they should automatically qualify as "Heroes"


just the knowledge that you are a truly unselfish human being and the totally deserved respect and praise of everyone.

And that's why not..

For me, for somebody to qualify as a Hero, their action really should not only be "Heroic" It should ALSO be outside their job description and have little or no self interest involved.

Soldiers, for instance, put their lives on the line and are expected to be brave, honorable and loyal because they are Soldiers and it is their sworn duty to be so and they are paid to do it too. A Soldier will not get a VC for doing his expected duty no matter how onerous or dangerous. S/He has to go well beyond that to qualify as a "Hero". As in "VC=Above and beyond the call of duty"

And so it should also be in any other situation for somebody to qualify as a true Hero.
 
Soldato
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tbh it depends on your definition of heroic, sure dramatic acts of bravery or charity can make for good stories, but the real heroes are the people who do the long term.

people like foster carers, or the doctors and nurses of the nhs, who put themselves out on a regular basis to help people when they could be doing other things.
 
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like foster carers, or the doctors and nurses of the nhs, who put themselves out on a regular basis to help people when they could be doing other things.

Again, you are not understanding the concept of heroism, does a nurse or doctor put their life at risk when taking duty ?

It's their job, and, to be fair, while GPs are horrendously overpaid and underworked, junior hospital doctors and nurses are overworked and underpaid.

This is heroism, ordinary Joe jumps into a freezing river [ 59 seconds in ] to save a woman survivor from a crashed airplane.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDE4asNTbwg
 
Soldato
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Again, you are not understanding the concept of heroism, does a nurse or doctor put their life at risk when taking duty ?

It's their job, and, to be fair, while GPs are horrendously overpaid and underworked, junior hospital doctors and nurses are overworked and underpaid.

This is heroism, ordinary Joe jumps into a freezing river [ 59 seconds in ] to save a woman survivor from a crashed airplane.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDE4asNTbwg

heroism is self sacrifice for the benefit of others, just because you aren't putting yourself in mortal danger doesn't mean that you aren't sacrificing something.
 
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