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So I was wondering, anyone have any life experiences that were close-call, near-miss, holy cr@p moments that made you say, "Whew! That was close!" and yet, you (obviously) lived to tell the tale?
What's the tale? Tell it, if you will.
I can't really claim to have ever been in a truly life-threatening situation myself. The only thing that qualifies is having been bitten by a Brown Recluse spider when I was two years old.
As my parents recounted the tale, my arm was so swollen from the poison that you could not see my hand. They rushed me to the emergency room where the doctors were stumped for a while. They had to reference illustrated journals to figure out what bit me.
Anyhow, a few mega-shots of cortizone, and here I am 33 years later.
Second Place goes to being bitten by a Copperhead when I was eighteen years old. Spent two nights in the hospital, and my friends came by after school to laugh at me.
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just the other day, I nearly drowned while surfing...twice
I am in my late 30's. I have lived in California for most of my life, usually a stone's throw from the Pacific Ocean, and it never occurred to me to try surfing.
Recently, a friendly neighbor was concerned about my mild depression and suggested surfing as a spiritual workout. All I can say is :"It works!"
There are so many things I could actually say about it, but in relation to this thread, let me just say that there's nothing that can make you feel more alive than a brush with death :)
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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I don't know if this counts but here goes:
When I was around 14 or so (I will be 33 in 2 months) I was going away to a camp on a Coach (Large Cross-Country Style Bus). We were travelling overnight and this guy fell asleep in his car with his family and swerved onto the wrong side of the road into the oncoming Coach, hitting it head on. I was sitting right behind the driver of the Coach at the time and was thrown underneath his seat, smashing my left leg into the framework of his seat.
All four people in the car died, but the worst injury on the Coach was whiplash. I had a lot of bruises, but the worst ran from all over my left butt cheek, all the way down my thigh to my knee. It wrapped almost 2/3 of the way around my leg.
To this day I still don't know how the driver and myself got off so easily. The entire front half of the car was crushed under the front of the Coach, but the Coach only had moderate structural damage to the frame.
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In Philly, I got caught in the crossfire of a guy robbing a store who shot wildly as he fled. When I went back later I saw bullet holes in the walls of the buildings right around where I was standing before I ran like hell.
This reminded me of another experience. I was in college at UNC, and I was walking from my off-campus apartment to an afternoon class. There was a guy standing in front of the open trunk of his car (parked on a side street) opening a case holding a rifle. He looked at me and nodded, casually, I nodded back.
As I walked to campus, I thought to myself, "man that guy is gonna catch hell from the police for carrying that rifle in the middle of town."
About 20 minutes later, someone ran into my class, saying that some nutjob was walking down the middle of Henderson Street with a rifle, shooting randomly at people.
It turned out to be the same guy, a mentally unstable law school student who quit taking his meds.
There were so many what-ifs in that moment. What if I had been walking by five minutes later? What if I had been more alarmed by him (he seemed sane enough), and called the police? I still think about the number of alternate realities that could have spun from that moment.
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Some people could have an ideological problem with this, so it's going to be spoilered:
The first time, I downed a bottle of my own antidepressant medication. Thanfully, the bottle was only a third full (about eight doses), and the dosage itself was quite low (10 milligrams), so all it did was get me really high for a while. Still, not fun.
The second time, I tried to hang myself from a high shelf with a phone cord. However, the cord was too long, and I just kinda stood there propped on air with my own bodyweight. Then the shelf broke, my head hit the wall, and I blacked out. I'm a f$**ing moron.
I've since been through a lot of therapy (I came close to a relapse into my old spiraling pattern of self-loathing last spring- you might remember my little breakdown), and will probably never try suicide again. Still, it's a scary feeling being comfortable with the thought of ending one's own life.
Most recently, I live in Texas, which means that drunks and guns are exceptionally common. Put the two together, and me in the room, and, yeah, I've felt like it's been pretty "iffy." I dislike having anything pointed at me -- much less a cocked 9 mm pistol, by a hick who's 10 ft. away and is so drunk he thinks he's "showing off" something really cool.
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So we had this old television aerial beside the house. It was about 60 feet high. One day, my father decided that it needed to come down. We tied a rope to the top, had my buddy pull, and he cut the base.
That's when it hit the tree. So his (and my) plan was for me to climb up the detached aerial, and start to cut the branch that it was caught on... while I was on it. Honestly, I never felt like more of a toon in my life.
When the branch finally broke, I went flying, holding onto this thing. I hit the ground, flew 6 feet in the air, and landed beside an upturned, sharp branch.
I was fine, but the fact I nearly skewered myself still gives me the willies.
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Some people could have an ideological problem with this, so it's going to be spoilered:
** spoiler omitted **
man mr. shiny you make
Near death experiences I've had a couple of 'em I don't really see the hubabaloo about them, they pass by super quick, afterwards you're like man I coulda died. I've never had that great appreciation of life that comes with them.
My first was when i was about 6-7 and we were at a camp in some mountain town. We were riding our bikes on a steep downhill slope and I couldn't get my brakes to work (they were fine, all I had to do was pedal backwards, but I had built up so much speed and was so young I couldn't get it to work to stop). Well I crash into one of those barbeque grills you know the tiny ones on a thin post cemented into the ground at parks and stuff. That turned out to have been the only thing that stopped me from riding my bike off of a ledge about 30ft away with a drop that coulda had me looking at the top of a redwood tree (the normal trees the tops of way below).
Then I grew up in a hunting family, lets just say that there was once or twice I got really lucky to not have lost life or limb to accidental firings.
Then when I was a teenager a week after getting my liscence I lost control of my car going eighty while not wearing a seatbelt. Ricochetted off of a tree, rolled three times (my head hitting the roof each time), and landed upside down in a ditch that was as deep as I am tall. I had to crawl out the busted back window because all the doors were wedged shut. After we pulled the SUV out we saw that the roof had been indented enough that it could have crushed my skull, all I had was a minor concussion.
Then just two years ago I was driving my motorcycle to work, I turned onto a busy road, just gotten up to speed, and got T-boned by a DHL delivery van. My leg was shattered, now I have a titanium rod running from knee to ankle inside the bone of my leg, and I had to re-learn how to walk. But other than that I had no serious injuries (yeah I always wear a helmet).
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When I was going through Navy training in upstate New York (around Saratoga Springs) my roommates and I were staying in a rented house off in the woods. It was a good 30 min drive back from base and down winding dirt roads.
Anyway, one evening I was coming off swing shift and driving back home in the wee hours of the morning. I remember turning off onto the dirt road and the next thing I know is my car is IN the air sailing towards a tree. To this day I can still remember the tree rushing at me. Cops estimated I was going about 55 when I dozed off, missed a turn and kept on driving right off the road.
Car was TOTALLED and I somehow (by the grace of God I guess) walked away with nothing but severe seatbelt bruises on my chest and neck.
Don't think I've gotten in a car without putting on my seatbelt since then. :)
Couple of bullets dodged (1 literally) -
Worked at a steel plant in '83. A coil of steel sprung and the end flapped out and picked me up by by face and threw me. Only got a broken nose and whiplash out of that.
Was a store manager in '85 when there was a shooting in our mall. I'm standing there yelling for people to get under cover. Didn't even think to get under cover myself. A teenager was shot outside our storefront and a couple of rounds went thru displays in front of me. Thankfully I was about 20' back from the front. Weird seeing/tending to the wounded kid in my store. Stomach wound didn't bleed much. He survived, but to my knowledge they never caught the shooter.
When I was 26 years old, I had an emergency surgery for a goiter that was pushing my throat closed. When I woke up in Intensive Care, the doctor told me that it wasn't a goiter after all, it was Cancer.
My company had been going through rounds of layoffs for about a year at that point, and my first thought was, "Yes! Now they can't fire me!"
(Turned out they could get rid of me and my entire department, though...)
Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. And, Yay me! for 12 years cancer-free!
I was once caught in the middle of a micro-burst that was throwing trees around like they were matchsticks.
Also, one time I was staring at an overheated engine that suddenly burst into flames a foot or two away from my face.
I think that's about it.
No, wait, now that I think about it - when I was three I swallowed a bottle of nail polish remover.
Director of Sales
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A few years ago (before I moved out here to Seattle), I was celebrating New Year's by party hopping (No, this isn't a drunk driving story).
Each new party brought a new group of friends and another round of drinking, so by the fourth or fifth party (I'd lost count) at about 2am, I had already drank myself well past any reasonable stopping point. I was very drunk.
At this party I was chatting with an acquaintance whom I knew as a pill-popper and a frequent drug user. I am not. In any fashion. Even in my wild youth, I limited myself almost completely to alcohol. I am not judgmental toward those who indulge in the past time, but it isn't something I ever got into.
So I still, to this very day, have no idea what I was thinking when this guy pulled a small white pill out of his pocket, offered it to me, and I just took it. Just popped into my mouth, swallowed and continued with my conversation.
No idea what it was (although I have a couple of theories). I also am not clear on how I made it home that night. But I did. My memories of the night go from shortly after the pill to waking up at home, in bed, fully dressed. Many items in my room were moved around, so I know that I was ambulatory, but the time is simply deleted from my memory. I have never blacked out from drinking before or since.
I am so very lucky that I woke up that morning. So lucky. That is, without a doubt, the single stupidest thing I have ever done. I am SO lucky to be alive.
Last summer I had an asthmatic attack that nearly did me in. My breathing shut down and I went into full respiratory arrest. The medicines that I use couldn't open me up. Luckily, the paramedics got my breathing going again. People that don't have breathing problems can't possibly understand how terrifying it is when you can't get a breath of air.
Last summer I had an asthmatic attack that nearly did me in. My breathing shut down and I went into full respiratory arrest. The medicines that I use couldn't open me up. Luckily, the paramedics got my breathing going again. People that don't have breathing problems can't possibly understand how terrifying it is when you can't get a breath of air.If you don't mind my asking, what did they do to get you breathing again? I ask because my wife has asthma and sometimes she seems cavalier about taking her medication for it.
The drug Epinephrine. It's only to be used in emergency situations because it gives a hell of a kick to your nervous system. Your wife doesn't need to be cavalier about taking her medicine. The inflammation in the lungs can cause permanent damage to the bronchial tubes even if she isn't feeling asthmatic symptoms. What meds is she on?
The drug Epinephrine. It's only to be used in emergency situations because it gives a hell of a kick to your nervous system. Your wife doesn't need to be cavalier about taking her medicine. The inflammation in the lungs can cause permanent damage to the bronchial tubes even if she isn't feeling asthmatic symptoms. What meds is she on?Last summer I had an asthmatic attack that nearly did me in. My breathing shut down and I went into full respiratory arrest. The medicines that I use couldn't open me up. Luckily, the paramedics got my breathing going again. People that don't have breathing problems can't possibly understand how terrifying it is when you can't get a breath of air.If you don't mind my asking, what did they do to get you breathing again? I ask because my wife has asthma and sometimes she seems cavalier about taking her medication for it.Pulmacort.
Is Epinephrine the drug in an Epi-pen.
Yes, it is. I now keep an Epi-pen around my house just in case of an emergency. Pulmacort is a good drug. Your wife has to take it everyday in order for it to be effective. Don't let her skip a dose. The best suggestion I can give is for her to have an asthma specialist to help with her condition. Do not rely upon a general practitioner.
Almost drowned once...age 5 or so...
Got caught in a blizzard while snowmobiling and the snowmobile quit on me and I couldn't get it restarted....started walking home....age 14
Almost got struck by a semi while riding by bicycle on a bridge going to work...age 19
Driving my car when the engine caught on fire...age 22
Did some rock climbing before I hurt my back...got stuck on the cliffside...decided there was no way to go down so I took my chances and climbed up....about a 75' cliff, pretty much straight up. Very scary!...age 22
Things have been pretty quiet since then.
Things have been pretty quiet since then.
I hear you... I intentionally didn't mention anything from before the age of 21...
Things have been pretty quiet since then.I hear you... I intentionally didn't mention anything from before the age of 21...
The stupid things that most of us do in our youth it's a miracle any of us make it to adulthood.
I've been shot at several times: Gulf War in '91, hunting in '93 (and I don't even look like a deer!), and some other situations I won't elaborate on.
Evaded an RAF (Red Army Faction) protest/riot while in Germany.
I faced down a band of skinhead nazis, protecting friends when the cops wouldn't.
A few very near misses on the freeways, as well.
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Does being-still born count? Three months premature and I just started breathing while a nurse was wheeling me to the morgue or wherever they were taking me.
I guess if I had been born in Greyhawk of the Realms I might have been stoned as being some demon-spawned fiend. Or was that just before 3.X and the new slew of PC options?
When I was 26 years old, I had an emergency surgery for a goiter that was pushing my throat closed. When I woke up in Intensive Care, the doctor told me that it wasn't a goiter after all, it was Cancer.
My company had been going through rounds of layoffs for about a year at that point, and my first thought was, "Yes! Now they can't fire me!"
(Turned out they could get rid of me and my entire department, though...)
** spoiler omitted **
Congratulations on being cancer-free!
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Worked at a steel plant in '83. A coil of steel sprung and the end flapped out and picked me up by by face and threw me. Only got a broken nose and whiplash out of that.
My uncle was working in his barn, and had a garage door spring snap about five feet away from where he was standing. The spring passed so close to his face that he could feel the air move past him, and impacted a wooden beam, shattering it. If the spring's trajectory had changed a fraction of an inch, my uncle would have been killed.
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Almost got struck by a semi while riding by bicycle on a bridge going to work...age 19
When my dad was a junior in college (1980), he was hit by a car after it swerved onto the sidewalk. Apparently, the driver had momentarily fallen asleep at the wheel. My dad ended up with a broken nose and cheekbone, as well as two ruptured discs, a concussion, and a three-inch gash down the side of his face. Ever since, he's had weird mood swings and memory problems.
During a break when I was in college, I went with my roommate to his hometown. We spent the night at some of the bars and on the way home went to get some beer at the liquor store before it closed. We pulled into the parking lot, tried to determine if it was still open because the lights were on but we couldn't see anyone through the window, and decided it was late enough that we would just go home and go to bed. We found out the next day, the store was being robbed at that time and the robber had ended up killing everyone in the store.
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OK - here I go...
Most recent: I was hit by a car while crossing the street on a bycicle (cardrivers fault) although he slowed down considerably I was thrown of the bike. When I hit the ground I miracoulosly didn't breake a single bone, but while I was in the air I thought I saw the end coming...
3 Years ago I had a gun pointed at my head and I really feared the reaction of the robb when I had to tell him that the rest of the money was in the deposit safe that I - a mere salesman - couldn't open...
When I was 18 a couple of neonazis dragged me of my bike and started hitting me with fists and boots - I never had a chance to defend myself. unfortunately I remained concious while they cracked one rib and bruised a kidney. I don't know if they would have stopped if someone hadn't called the police.
OK - here I go...
Most recent: I was hit by a car while crossing the street on a bycicle (cardrivers fault) although he slowed down considerably I was thrown of the bike. When I hit the ground I miracoulosly didn't breake a single bone, but while I was in the air I thought I saw the end coming...
3 Years ago I had a gun pointed at my head and I really feared the reaction of the robb when I had to tell him that the rest of the money was in the deposit safe that I - a mere salesman - couldn't open...
When I was 18 a couple of neonazis dragged me of my bike and started hitting me with fists and boots - I never had a chance to defend myself. unfortunately I remained concious while they cracked one rib and bruised a kidney. I don't know if they would have stopped if someone hadn't called the police.
Looks like we need to make a pit stop on the way to New Canaan, guys. Beating up neo nazis is a good way to gain experience and levels before we hit the town.
Sadly there are others, but the two most relevant:
1. While I was dating my wife (Lynora) we were driving in Lansing in my new Saturn and a city bus ran a red light ahead of us. We drove head on into it doing at least 40. The tow truck driver said he had never seen anyone live from an accident that bad, but we were very lucky to walk away with only a few back issues.
2. Last year, while bowling on a very competitive league in front of 100 of my closest 'friends', a ball stuck to my thumb until it was straight up in the air. Then the ball popped off went 4' straight up. Since I was off balance I ended up underneath the ball as it landed on the back of my head (on my cerebellum). The doctors said 2" either way and I would have been dead. I ended up in the hospital for several days with a major concussion and have long term effects lasting at least until the present day, but I'm thankful to be alive. Never thought you would hear a near-death bowling story, now did you? :)
i have lots of near death experiences.
all over the world.
many countries and many different cultures have tried to kill me off.
im 41 now.
i will tell the stories later
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Three years ago I was doing topographical measurements of the Ticino riverbed, near the omonimous lake.
After a couple of days, we (three men team) found ourselves just under the Miorina weir dam, used to regulate the water flow from the lake to the river.
You can see it here (second image, scroll down a bit):
http://www.mondointasca.org/attualita/articolo.php?ida=633&articlePAG=2
When I had to jump from the small boat we were using to land on the concrete embankment, the boat suddenly swinged sideways, and I found that my jump was just a few feet short. So I found myself well into the cold river waters, and I was caught in a strong current just under the surface that propelled me a hundred feet downriver until I hit a large submerged rock, and then kept me underwater for a while.
Best way to describe it is like someone with incredible strenght grabbed my legs, threw me around and pinned me in place.
Not nice at all.
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Looks like we need to make a pit stop on the way to New Canaan, guys. Beating up neo nazis is a good way to gain experience and levels before we hit the town.OK - here I go...
Most recent: I was hit by a car while crossing the street on a bycicle (cardrivers fault) although he slowed down considerably I was thrown of the bike. When I hit the ground I miracoulosly didn't breake a single bone, but while I was in the air I thought I saw the end coming...
3 Years ago I had a gun pointed at my head and I really feared the reaction of the robb when I had to tell him that the rest of the money was in the deposit safe that I - a mere salesman - couldn't open...
When I was 18 a couple of neonazis dragged me of my bike and started hitting me with fists and boots - I never had a chance to defend myself. unfortunately I remained concious while they cracked one rib and bruised a kidney. I don't know if they would have stopped if someone hadn't called the police.
WOOHOO!
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Two near-death experiences, one stupidity got me into, one stupidity apparently got me out of.
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My grandma raised big cats for an animal park in Arkansas, so we had tiger cubs, lion cubs and a big ol' jaguar (and not the kind Tawny Kitaen does backflips on) around the house. We would visit other people in that line of work from time to time, and one of them, a lady in Missouri, had a mountain lion that she had raised from a kitten in her house that was the tamest de-clawed most well-behaved thing ever (her husband was a psychiatrist, and had trained the cattle on their farm to come on command, to lay down when pointed at, and, I would not be terribly surprised to learn, to do the laundry and drive the kids to school...).
I went into it's pen to play with it, while they were inside talking.
Unbeknownst to me, the wildlife/game people had recently captured a wild distempered mountain lion somewhere upstate, and, not knowing what to do with it, brought it to her to see if it was save-able, and it was in a very similar cage...
Obviously I went in the wrong cage, because as I turned around after closing the cage door, I looked up and saw the thing in mid-air coming at me. By some freak of luck (since I have the worst reflexes in the world), I sidestepped and it slammed into the side of the chain-link enclosure. Again, by some cosmic fluke, since I'm pretty slow-witted in a crisis, I put one hand on the back of it's neck and the other on the small of it's back and pressed it as hard as I could against the side of the enclosure, so that all of it's pointy bits were occupied holding it on the wall. It started climbing up the side of the wall with it's claws, me supporting it's weight, unintentionally, trying to keep it pinned. I realized that when it reached the angle where the ceiling of the cage met the wall, it would be able to twist free and turn me into kibble, and it was freakishly strong, so I couldn't stop it from climbing.
Instead I reversed and pushed along with it, causing it to sail up, over and across to the other side of the cage, while I opened the door (which was right next to me) and left. In the second it took me to get out the door, the thing had flown across the cage, recovered, and leapt all the way across the cage to slam into the door I had just closed.
Having survived that bit of stupidity, I decided not to tempt fate by playing with any of her white tigers (she had several). I sat in the car, hyperventilating, instead.
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My other near-death experience was waking up in a strange house with some shouting ***hole pointing a shotgun at my face and yelling something about his girlfriend or wife or something. I was 14 and had just worked a 17 hour Labor Day shift as a busboy (under the table, obviously), and my brain was completely fried. I told him to keep it down, I was trying to sleep, and pulled a couch cushion over my head.
I woke up a few hours later, alone, and quietly left, since I was supposed to have been back to work a few hours before.
Strange, strange days.
Once nearly drowned when I was about two years old (I'm 25 now)
My family was living just outside of Dallas Tx at the time (moved back to Canada maybe 6 months later or so) right around Christmas and my parents were stringing up lights around the pool in the back yard and I wandered too close to the pool and fell in. My dad jumped down, rushed over and yanked me out one handed. I don't actually remember the incident (given that I was 2 at the time) but my parents have told me of it more than once.
Worked at a steel plant in '83. A coil of steel sprung and the end flapped out and picked me up by by face and threw me. Only got a broken nose and whiplash out of that.My uncle was working in his barn, and had a garage door spring snap about five feet away from where he was standing. The spring passed so close to his face that he could feel the air move past him, and impacted a wooden beam, shattering it. If the spring's trajectory had changed a fraction of an inch, my uncle would have been killed.
Oh yeah, I can relate. If that sheet had caught me an inch different it would have been real bad....
It can certainly be addicting, being shot at and having explosives lobbed at you, it gets the adrenalin pumping.
Jumping out of a perfectly good airplane is great fun as well, but spy-rigging had to be my favorite, just google it. The joys of being a scout/sniper (HOG) in the Marines.