Did you ever feel you needed more proof that the world was a dangerous place and that you should be allowed to stay home protected by bubble wrap? If you did, here it is: Beaches are death traps.

Jeff Harris was on a beach in The Outer Banks, N.C., with friends, kicking a soccer ball in the surf. Diving for the ball in shallow water, he hit his head on the sand with such force that he couldn't move. He kept trying to lift his head but it became so tiring that he just let it dangle in the surf. He eventually passed out.

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Harris, 30, is now paralyzed from the neck down.

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Jesse Billauer, 34, was surfing in Malibu, Calif., riding a wave into one-meter-deep water when he was thrown into a sandbar, severing his spinal cord. Chad de Satnick, 36, was riding a wave in Cape May, N.J., when he hit shallow water, flew off his board and into the sand, fracturing his sixth and seventh vertebrae. Patrick Durkin, 59, was body surfing in Ocean City, Md., when he was caught unexpectedly by a wave close to shore. He rode it in but was thrown into a wall of sand that broke his neck. The list of bathers with spinal injuries goes on.

The article puts forth an ER doctor's hypothesis that beach replenishment was a possible factor in all of these spinal injuries, but nobody knows for sure what the cause is. All i know is that next time we are at the beach and fnord12 asks me if i want to go in the water, the answer is going to be "Hell, no! Are you out of your mind? Do you want to end up paralyzed?? Sit down and read your book, goddammit!".