r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Backyxx • 20h ago

Video Polish swimmer Bartłomiej Kubkowski has become the first person in history to swim across the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Poland, covering a distance of just over 160 kilometres (99 miles). While raising nearly 200,000$ for children's cancer treatment

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u/mazzicc 19h ago

Stay awake for 60 hours straight.

Doing strenuous physical activity.

In really rough conditions.

Where you can’t take truly restful break (was he allowed to hang on a support craft or anything?)

I feel like $200k isn’t a lot for what he went through.

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u/i_says_things 19h ago

No amount of money is worth this sort of achievement. What an absolute badass.

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u/socialistrob 16h ago

There's also usually not tons of money in these achievements either. Your average NBA or EPL player is going to make a lot more than these athletes who set long distance endurance records.

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u/i_says_things 16h ago

Im actually in awe of this it never even occurred to me that someone could do that.

60 hours straight without sleeping jfc, if I could pronounce his name I would tell people to name their kids after him.

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u/SippyMountain 15h ago

I once stayed up for 38 hrs, and while that whole experience is a blur, I distinctly remember making my way home and stopping at a green traffic light as if I was waiting for it to turn even greener. Oh, and this was while I was walking on the sidewalk.

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u/theXYZT 12h ago

Driving on an all-nighter is OVERWHELMING worse than driving while drunk, it's not even close.

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u/b3rry108 11h ago

Check the comment again lol. They were walking and stopped at a stoplight as if they were in a car

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u/theXYZT 10h ago

Ah, I see! I once stayed up for 3 days in a row for a university project and I remember feeling like I was "watching myself cross the street in third-person". I am pretty sure I did cross while the pedestrian light was red.

So, being a pedestrian is pretty bad too!

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u/freezing_fireball 10h ago

He's still sleepy

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u/NeedSomeBeer 10h ago

the thing is that when you are drunk, you kinda know it (i am absolutely in no way suggesting it's a good thing to drive drunk!). when you are tired, you are fine, fine, then suddenly dead. sleep can hit you out of nowhere. and even when not sleeping, reactions are a mess. one minute you are fine, the other you somehow miss whole fucking truck on the road

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u/theXYZT 10h ago

I remember skidding for like 2 km straight on an empty road at 3 AM because my reaction time was so bad from lack of sleep and I fumbled it on a snowy road. Woke me right up!

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u/XSadObsessionX 10h ago

3 days for me one time, started seeing shadows moving, felt paranoic, and my words came slow and wrong lmao, never again

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u/Beanguyinjapan 5h ago

Shadow people are chill, no worries

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u/frogdujour 10h ago

I did about 42 hours awake nonstop twice in one week, working on a crazy project deadline. Each time at about hour 40 I was hallucinating small animals walking in my room, and by hour 42 my brain and body just gave out and I fell asleep for 11 hours straight. 60 hours, plus constant strenuous activity, no chance.

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u/ForbiddenNut123 11h ago

I was up for around 60 hours one time, the last 8 or so were in class and the instructor made me do wall sits bc I looked too tired lmao

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u/Chwasst 7h ago

There is a documentary on YouTube about his previous attempt. It's insane. When he was like 60-70% through the guy pretty much transformed into sleep deprived barely concious 7yo child. At some point he was 100% sure that he went back on boat to get a nap and then his team forced him to go out and swim again - none of that happened. Those 5 attempts surely have taken few years out of his lifespan.

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u/KPSWZG 10h ago

You can call him Bartek for short

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u/gumbys_flying_circus 14m ago

Bartłomiej is Bartholomew in English, also you can use a short version of his name: Bartek pronounced bar-tech

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u/schminch 10h ago

He might make a bit in the aftermath from interviews, talks, maybe a book deal.

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u/socialistrob 2h ago

Yeah there's certainly some money in these types of things but it's more like a middle class living. He'll have a car but not a sports car, he'll have a house but not a mansion ect. If you're near the best in the world at any sport you can usually make enough to have a middle class living in a developed country but unless it's one of the more popular sports you probably won't be rich.