Thread: Tell me how close you've been to death

1) I'd gotten one of those pocket-bike motorcycles when I was five and one day, when I was eight, I was driving it down the sidewalk. My neighbor was backing out of his driveway and didn't see me. I tried to stop by hitting the breaks, but I was going fast enough to where my momentum carried me right behind him and he backed over me. I was stuck under his car with my head a good 3 inches away from his back tire. If he hadn't felt the impact and stopped when he did, my head would have been crushed.

2) I've been within a couple of yards of a few lightning strikes.

3) I was playing in a tree once, and I went to jump from one limb to swing on another. The limb I swung on broke and I fell out of the tree, landing on my back. The tree had some wooden planks around it, since it wasn't planted there as a seed, and my head had landed a good 5 inches away from a sharp piece of rebar that was sticking straight up out of the ground.

4) I was riding a horse back at a ranch in Texas, when I was about 9 or 10. A little ways away from the training circle was a fence that separated the barn area from the grassy field where they let the horses go to graze. Well, this horse that I was on suddenly made up her mind that she wanted to go graze, and that I was not about to stop her from doing so. She took off running toward the fence with me on her back, sprinting, full speed, toward the thin break in the fence which was the only way in and out of the grazing area. What I didn't realize was that there was a thin piece of metal wire that ran across the top of the break in the fence. (Why it was there? I have no idea.) Well I was already freaking out on top of this horse, and I didn't see the wire until after the horse had ducked her head under it. It was heading straight toward my neck - which, at the speed she was running, and as tight as I was holding on to the reigns, probably would have decapitated me, or at the very least snapped my neck.
Instinctively, I let go of the reigns and reached up, catching the wire in my hands just as it touched my throat, basically clotheslining myself on it. I did a backflip off of the horse, which kept on going, and I landed on my stomach on the rocks.

..it was a few days before I got back on another horse.

5) Another time, I was learning to do a backflip off of the edge of a pool. I cut it too close and smacked my head against the concrete. I was unconscious, underwater, and people had to jump in and pull me out.

6) I was riding my dirtbike through a field, and hit an old tire track embedded in the ground that I didn't know was there. It ran at an angle so it instantly turned my front wheel, ejecting me off of the bike and making me fly over the handlebars. I landed on my head, but was wearing a helmet.

7) Before hurricane Charlie ripped through here (back in '05 I think?) I was coming home from work. The storm had gotten up to the outer Orlando area, and was headed my way. I was in a phone room, so they made us work all the way up until the last minute, even though the storm was headed for us, and many of us had some pretty long drives to get back to our houses.
On the way home, I had to stop and get gas, right before I got on the interstate. Everybody was gassing up, so the place was really packed. While pumping, with the storm closing in, a huge blast of air blew through the gas station. It felt like a tornado had dropped right on top of us. Sand, rain and debris were litterally coming in sideways, and I was almost blown off of my feet. The people inside were so freaked out, that they pre-set the pumps as "paid in full", leaned out the doors and told us all to get the hell out of there. When I got on the interstate and headed home (which was in the opposite direction that the storm was coming), I'd heard on the radio that a funnel cloud was spotted right in that area.

I'm not sure how close I was to dying or not, but standing at a fuel pump is definitely not where you want to be when a twister lands on top of you. At the very least, what had dropped on us was a microburst. But, still.

8) I was doing about 75mph down the interstate with a friend of mine, and we were.....we'll say "not sober." Suddenly my front, passenger-side tire blew. My car veered to the right, cutting across the lane beside me. Luckily I was able to take control and keep it from either slamming into the guard rail or flipping over.

That's about all I can think of, for now.

Originally Posted by Oneironaut

5) Another time, I was learning to do a backflip off of the edge of a pool. I cut it too close and smacked my head against the concrete. I was unconscious, underwater, and people had to jump in and pull me out.

That's a YouTube moment right thar

Seriously though you should be more careful Oneironaut

Originally Posted by Identity X

That's a YouTube moment right thar

Seriously though you should be more careful Oneironaut

Lmfao. Yeah, I know. We were all young and dumb at one point...just some of us moreso than others.

Heh.

Proof that Moderator status grants user with invicibility?

I once went swimming across a lake, about two years ago, I have two of my friends with me It was a small lake. The one was an ok swimmer the other was not. It started to rain, it was rain we thought nothing of it. As we got to the middle of the lake we heard thunder!.so being that we were with a swimmer who wasn't a stong one we decied to yell for help from the people on the beach. The decied that since we were out of the beach bondariays we were swimming at our own risk ( which is totally true, but would you sit back and watch?) The stayed on the beach, they would have been safe had they come out on a kayak. The two girls started panicing, I was worried to but i have this weird ability to stay perfectly calm in a situation like that. The weak swimmer started saying how we were going to die and da da da... the other girl agrees... i stated gabbing on and ended by saying "I don't know about you guys but I WILL NOT DIE TODAY" (they have never let me live it down... i would have done the same in a reverce situation though) I sent the stonger swimmer ahead.I stayed back with other girl. it took us about 20 minutes and she gave up and asking me to"let her die" quite a few time but we finally got to a raft I climbed on the raft and helped her up. The second her last toe left the water lighting hit the lake.

Originally Posted by Siиdяed

Proof that Moderator status grants user with invicibility?

Haha. Too true.

Proof that Moderator status grants user with invicibility?

Perhaps, but if he were a cat it looks like he'd be down to his last life.

I can only think of one instance in which I really felt the panic of possibly buyin' it: I was at a public pool with some friends and one of my buddies had this sister who had a crush on me (I was in my early teens at the time). They thought it would be funny to see if I mocked a drowning if she would "come to the rescue". So, my friends started dunking me underwater, which would have been ok- except we forgot to come up with some sort of signal for me to let them know when I needed air.

I remember freaking out as I tried to come up but they kept "playing along" and dunking me back underwater. I think I passed out for a couple seconds - next thing I know I feel myself resting on a pair of big boobies in my friend's sister's arms. Plan worked - too bad she wasn't exactly a Pamela Anderson.

...wait, Moderators get invincibility AND girls?

You h44xx0rz.

I almost got flattened by 12 tons of Cement.

When I was a wee lad, my car door swung open on a turn, I held onto the door, but my body fell out, since it was a turn, my legs slung under the car, somehow, I came back into the car... Completely unharmed... my legs should have been broken...

Another time, my family and I were in come caves on a tour, we got to one part where there was this thin little hallway like thing, which ended with a giant pool of water... the guide was telling us how it was bottomless or something like that. but because the cave got so thin, people were shoving so they could see it, I was in front, and just barely standing on a crappy rusty grate that went only about two feet over the water, leaving enough room for me to fall in if i were pushed. I couldn't swim at that age, and someone shoved again, I was pushed forward, and just barely caught before hitting the water. I wanted to kill everyone in the cave...

I was in the woods with two pals of mine, we started running to whatever we were heading for, and we were moving fast down hill, I tripped, caught myself, but I was centimeters away from a large jagged branch sticking out of the ground... It was pointed directly at my chest, had I not caught my self... I would have been stabbed through the heart... when I noticed this, I promptly shit myself. (Not really.)

You guys are seriously accident prone.

I can't say I've had any really close calls with death, unless living under the authority of a drunken sociopath through my teenage years counts. The sociopath's son once shot at me with a rifle, but that was more a coercion thing. A kid came at me with a switchblade outside a convenience store by some projects in Delaware, but I used my book bag as a shield and stood him off with a 'neither frightened nor aggressive' stance that works pretty well against any aggressive animal, and eventually his friends got him out of there. I've had one dog come at me with serious intent, but again, 'neither frightened nor aggressive' and used my bag as a shield. I've gone airborne from a bicycle in numerous situations that could have ended badly, but didn't.

The only time I remember feeling like, "I almost died there," it was suicidal ideation. I was pretty depressive in my teens and sometimes indulged in suicidal thoughts and kind of kept that option open, and there came a time in my early 20s when I was feeling pretty alienated and like I "missed the starting gun"--and I'd just been dumped by a girl I never liked that much I hadn't thought about suicide in a long time, and it just crept up on me, until I was laying on my couch for at least thirty minutes very calmly planning it out, having given myself completely over to this purpose of ending my life. I reached the point of, "Well then, that's all set, guess we better get to it," and the impulse to action snapped me out of it for a second, and I reviewed what I'd been doing and about to do, and I was horrified. It's hard to express how this purpose of killing myself just took me over completely, like for that time it was all I was, a machine for destroying itself.

I was emotionally exhausted from both the circumstances leading up to the ideation and the bout itself, and the moment of clarity finished me off. I just sagged back on the couch and cried myself to sleep When I woke up, I was really grateful to be alive.

Originally Posted by Taosaur

You guys are seriously accident prone.

Oh, I could do way more... Those were just 3 of my favorites.

There was the BB incident... Dogs, Cats, and Birds... Water... Ice... Pointy Ice... I've almost been hit by about 5 cars... I have had my foot run over by a car 3 times... I could keep going.