We can all agree that sometimes when you want something done right, you just have to do it yourself.
What's interesting is that some of the greatest moments in history were built upon that concept, though that's not usually how the events are presented in public school classrooms, if they're presented at all.
Curious, Redditor EmergencyPsychology5 asked:
"What is the greatest 'f**k it, I'll do it myself' moment in history?"
Crash-Testing Human
"John Stapp: Air Force doctor who was convinced that more pilots could survive if their seats didn't disintegrate on crash landings. He proved it by strapping himself into a MythBusters-style rocket sled and not dying. His work led to safer planes and cars."
"By riding the decelerator sled Stapp demonstrated that a human can withstand at least 46.2 g (in the forward position, with adequate harnessing). This is the highest known acceleration voluntarily encountered by a human, set on December 10, 1954. Stapp reached a speed of 632 mph (1,017 km/h), which broke the land speed record and made him the fastest man on Earth."
- Hirmuinen6
New Surgical Device Patents
"Famous writer Roald Dahl ('Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,' 'The BFG,' 'James and the Giant Peach,' etc.) developed and patented a surgical device to treat children with traumatic brain injuries."
"Dahl had no medical training, he just did it."
"Dahl's four-year-old son was injured in a car accident and developed dangerous pressure on his brain due to swelling. Surgeons installed a shunt in Dahl's son's skull to drain fluid and relieve pressure, but it kept clogging."
"There was no better solution on the market so Dahl worked with a toy maker to design a new shunt that drained fluid without clogging. Dahl was able to patent the design and it was subsequently used to treat thousands of children."
- hiro111
"He was also a huge supporter of measles vaccines after his daughter died from measles."
- ExistentialistOwl8
Revenge Via Job Automation
"The man who invented the automatic switchboard (switchboards used to require a person to physically move a cable to connect the call) did so because his funeral home wasn't getting any customers."
"The lady operating the switchboard was the wife of his rival and was redirecting the calls to her husband."
"Instead of complaining to the phone company, which would have probably gotten her fired if they found sufficient evidence, he took matters into his own hands and made her entire job obsolete."
- Lugbor
"'You know what? F**k you.' (automates your job)"
- Reach-for-the-sky_15
Studying For Medical Discoveries Instead Of Tests
"Dr. Tracy Dixon-Salazar went and got her PhD in neurobiology because her daughter was having seizures and nobody could tell her why this was happening and nobody could treat her daughter."
"She found a treatment when nobody else could. Incredible woman."
- emilyashford22
"Martine Rothblatt was similar. Her daughter had pulmonary hypertension (blood pressure so high it damages organs), for which there was no real treatment. So she developed one, and it's still used today."
- NixMaritimus
Nobel Prize-Winning Sacrifice
"Dr. Barry Marshall for infecting himself with H. pylori to prove they were the cause of ulcers. He earned a Nobel prize for his efforts."
"Seriously, go watch old TV shows and movies. There's always some guy chugging Pepto or mainlining ulcer medicine because they're 5 minutes past the deadline. Dr Marshall killed the billion-dollar ulcer medicine industry."
- AudibleNod
Self-Surgery... (Shudders)
"The doctor who had to do his own appendectomy in a mirror because he was the only one who could do it in Antarctica."
- Random-Gif-Bot
"The first guy to remove bladder stones via the urethra decided he didn't want to die (that was highly likely with the operation going through the perineum), designed his own tool, and practiced smashing up nuts in his pockets with it. Then he jammed it up his own member and solved his own problem. I forget his name."
- Cornthrowaway78
Hack The Hackers
" North Korea attempted to hack someone who used to do cybersecurity for the Department of Defense in an attempt to steal some of his hacking software."
"He notified the FBI, and after waiting a year for nothing to come of it, he decided to hack into servers and routers of North Korea and effectively took down their internet as well as virtually all of their sites for many days."
- poluting
Radiation Exposure
"General Vladimir Pikalov. Didn’t want his men exposed to radiation during the Chernobyl disaster, so he personally drove around the perimeter of the power plant to get exact radiation levels and exposed himself to 137 rems."
"A lot of people think that this was just a part of the show, but this man really made a necessary sacrifice and should be acknowledged as a hero."
- Confusionitis
Moving Mountains For The People He Loved
"In 1959, Dashrath Manjhi's wife died from injuries resulting from trying to cross the mountain to access the closest hospital. There was no road so he, over the course of over two decades with a hammer and chisel, moved the f**king mountain!"
"His country (India) made a postage stamp with the madlad's face on it. Dude swore vengeance on a d**n mountain and won!"
- n00by91
A Win-Win Situation
"The guy who invented rubber gloves for surgeons was himself a doctor whose nurse (also his wife) was suffering from contact dermatitis from all the chemicals they used to create an antiseptic environment."
"So he designed some rubber gloves and asked Goodyear to make them for him, accidentally Inventing the beginning of aseptic surgery in the process."
- Careless_Piano5447
Tremendous Mind At Work
"John von Neumann was one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. However, he kept being frustrated by the physicists never being able to build a properly working computer to do his calculations. So in 1945, he basically said ‘f**k it, just do this’ and described the architecture which is basically the foundation of all modern computers. Which is referred to as ‘von Neumann architecture.'"
"Dude was also part of the Manhattan project, a pioneer of game theory, and did analyses that preceded the discovery of the structure of DNA. An absolute monster of an intellect."
- ElToro_74
Something Like That
"Didn’t Lamborghini start making supercars because the owner tried to buy a Ferrari and they wouldn’t sell to him?"
- rw890
"He thought the clutch was garbage. Met with Enzo Ferrari to complain about the clutch and what he believed could be done to make it better. Enzo dismissed him, saying that he should stick to building tractors."
- guy_incognito784
The Earliest Steps To A Key Vaccine
"English doctor Edward Jenner noticed that milkmaids who had caught cowpox, a close genetic relative of smallpox with significantly reduced virulence, did not seem to catch smallpox when outbreaks would occur."
"As a result, he hypothesized to other physicians that infection with cowpox could be used to prevent smallpox, but they didn’t buy it and essentially laughed him out of the room. Jenner proceeded to infect his gardener’s eight-year-old son with cowpox and, after the boy recovered, exposed him to smallpox repeatedly, effectively demonstrating his initial hypothesis to the initially skeptical medical community."
"Jenner’s 'On the Origin of the Vaccine Inoculation,' wherein he published his results, set the foundation for the first smallpox vaccine and, eventually, the eradication of the disease altogether."
- Sworn-Sword
Instant Revenge
"Linus Torvalds and the birth of Git. Don't change license terms for software Linus relies on; he will write you out of business."
- Groundskeepr
"Same with Linux. He just wanted a free operating system to use. The GNU project had all the parts except a stable kernel. So as a summer project, he just writes his own Kernel."
"He did the same thing with subsurface. He is an avid scuba diver and was unhappy with the current logging software, so he wrote subsurface. It’s extremely popular."
- degoba
From Mystery To Calculus
"Newton inventing calculus."
"He was trying to solve problems that were unsolvable or very tedious to solve. Instead of trying to solve them with the help of his peers, he simply invented a new branch of mathematics to solve them. And then he basically discarded his invention after he achieved his goal because he moved on to other problems."
"Later there were rumblings about a new way to solve problems, and he’s like, 'oh, yeah, I did that years ago, it’s in some of my journals over there.'"
- digiornio
It's so interesting to think about the discoveries that have been made, either because of simple curiosity, medical need, or just a big dose of spite. It's a great reminder of what you can accomplish when you want it enough.
