^ yep, eventually people will be able to access the next page when there's enough posts, but the current page for whatever the faulty post is will never be able to be accessed.
the only thing i can figure is possibly this can be happening if people are hotlinking (posting an image from an external site). some sites have codes in place to prevent people from doing this because if it gets posted on a busy enough site, it can suck away your bandwidth. most will just have the picture not work or be replaced by a decently sized photo that says "no hotlinking" or whatever. but some jerks replace it with a monstrosity that can crash browsers, like an invisible gif that measures 12000x1 pixel. perhaps that's what's happening and it crashes the forum's server.
i tried disabling images once and loading a page but i guess the images still try to load (which is stupid) because it didn't work, and i think it was trying to access sites where the images (even the okay ones) were located.
but anyway, if anyone has an idea as to what post it is that's causing the thread to not work, i can remove the post. not an ideal fix but it will at least mean the entire thread can be accessed.