Yesterday when I went back to my hometown, I met my cousin, he knew that I had often collected some folk tales to write recently, and he said that he had encountered a dangerous experience, and if he could write about it, it might be helpful to everyone, and I readily agreed! Actually, my cousin is only 5 years older than me, and we used to play together a lot when we were kids, and now he is a grandfather. Here's what my cousin told about his personal experience, which I'll briefly sort out:
In the past, the countryside was relatively poor, and the problem of eating was not easy to solve, so almost every farmer here planted sweet potatoes, because sweet potatoes have high yields, they can be roasted and eaten, and some people make sweet potatoes into dried sweet potatoes and process them into sweet potato flour steamed nests to eat! In order to store sweet potatoes, almost every family digs a sweet potato cellar. The so-called sweet potato cellar is to dig a round hole vertically down on the flat ground, the larger the diameter the lower it is, about 3-5 meters deep, dig it flat at the bottom, and then dig a few holes horizontally, these horizontal holes are the main space for storing sweet potatoes. Every year after autumn, farmers store the harvested sweet potatoes in the sweet potato cellar, so that the storage time is very long, and the sweet potatoes will not rot! Usually, the opening of the sweet potato cellar is covered with corn stalks, and it is only opened when you need to take the sweet potato!
My uncle usually asks my cousin to go to the sweet potato cellar to get sweet potatoes, my uncle ties a rope to my cousin's waist, slowly puts him in the sweet potato cellar, and unties the rope himself at the bottom, and then my uncle uses this rope to put down a basket, my cousin puts the sweet potatoes into the basket, and after the basket is full, I pull the rope out! Once, my cousin went to the sweet potato cellar to get sweet potatoes again, but this time my cousin felt a little out of breath after entering the sweet potato cellar, and his heart was stuffy, but his mind was still clear, so he called out to my cousin, but unfortunately my cousin put my cousin in the sweet potato cellar and found that he didn't bring a basket, so he went home to get the basket! My cousin felt more and more uncomfortable in the sweet potato cellar, and he didn't have any strength in his body, and he couldn't stand on his feet at all and fell to the ground! (The following narrative is what my cousin heard from my cousin, and my cousin only remembers that he fell, and he has no memory in the future).
After my uncle took the basket, he pulled the rope out of the sweet potato cellar, and then put the basket down with the rope in the cellar, and he stood at the mouth of the cellar with a rope in one hand and a cigarette in the other. In the past, the basket was filled in a minute or two after putting it down, but this time it felt very slow, so my cousin called my cousin's name, and found that there was no response in the cellar, so he lay down at the mouth of the cellar and looked in carefully, and found my cousin lying on the ground! My uncle felt that something was wrong, so he quickly took off his coat, tied one end of the rope to a tree, and called the neighbor who happened to pass by here to help pull the rope outward! My uncle grabbed the rope and quickly jumped into the sweet potato cellar, tied the rope around my cousin's waist, and the neighbor pulled my cousin out of the sweet potato cellar! The neighbor threw one end of the rope into the cellar again, and my uncle grabbed the rope and climbed out of the cellar!
My cousin was put in the cellar and regained consciousness after about ten minutes, and he was able to sit up slowly! Uncle Tang regretted it very much, in the past, every time he took sweet potatoes, he would first open the cellar mouth, and then light an oil lamp and put it in the cellar, if the light was not extinguished, he could enter the cellar to get sweet potatoes. But every time the lights are on, there is no danger, and then I am careless, and every time I go to the sweet potato cellar, I no longer use the oil lamp to try, so my cousin also has this dangerous experience!
Villagers said that the sweet potato cellar is often covered with the mouth, and the outside air is isolated, sweet potatoes are easy to produce carbon dioxide in the cellar, when its concentration is too high, people are easy to coma after entering the cellar, if the time is too long, it will even cause death, my cousin's experience, should be caused by too high carbon dioxide concentration! Although sweet potato cellars are rare now, there are still some vegetable cellars or other confined spaces, and we must be vigilant to prevent accidents!
Regarding my cousin's accident, is it carbon dioxide poisoning, what do you think?