Swear this happens every year. Someone either gets gored by a bison or tries to go swimming in a geothermal pool and gets boiled alive and then dissolved.
Some people just do not grasp the concept of National Parks. They're not zoos or amusement parks. The things in here can and will kill you and there is almost nothing in the way stopping you from committing suicide in a horribly painful fashion.
Tom Scott was discussing this in his latest video on Bear Proof garbage containers. they're designed to keep bears out, but some clueless people can't open them either.
It's the great divider. The smartest bears get to eat the garbage and the dumber bears get to eat the dumb people who can't figure out how to throw their garbage away and keep it in their tent instead.
They're literally just dumpsters with a little airlock chamber on top so that trash stink can't escape and attract animals. If you've mailed a package at the post office and had to use one of those weird chutes, you can figure out a bear can.
Possible Baader–Meinhof phenomenon. The real fun one is if this is your first time hearing of the phenomenon and you see it again in the next couple days.
This does happen fairly often at Yellowstone, so it's not widely reported when it does. It actually happened very close to me when I was there last year because a bison was laying very near a popular walkway near old faithful, but people still didn't stop walking by it 🙃
I visited Yellowstone last year. The National Parks Service has an excellent walkway system which allows visitors to get an close-up view of the hot springs. All along the walkways are signs that say something along the lines of: “Step off this walkway and you will be boiled alive.”
The sheer number of people visiting these areas on an average day, and the quality of workmanship put into the park walkways projects a false sense of security. A few times I had to remind myself that I was standing above something that could kill me. Imagine being in a crowd of people seeing and experiencing something beautiful. Nobody there is unhappy, everyone is strolling along taking pictures and enjoying spectacular views of the hot springs. But in reality, it is a bunch of people standing on heat-resistant walkways above boiling lakes of death.
These warning signs are placed every few feet, but I can completely understand how idiots and children would ignore them and get themselves killed. Some walkways have railings, others don’t. Yellowstone is one of the most beautiful places on earth. The possibility of getting killed is not something actively going through your mind while you experience it.
Also, people taking photos of bison are incredibly cavalier about distance and safety. It makes sense that attacks and deaths are common enough not to make headlines.