Were there any times in your life that you came close to dying?

[TedTheLed]

couple of army helicopters just buzzed my house. thought I was going to die in plane accident, covered my head rolled into a ball held my breath for the end, just end of the world horrible roaring. luckily they missed the house roared on downward out of the canyon..what does one do after that? complain to the police?

 

[TEEJ]

Batman or Elmer Fudd?

Maybe Fuddman?

BTW - Moose will attack during rutting season...they get VERY aggressive, and you do NOT want to be around a riled up moose...they do not have to be defending anything...just really really pissed off at the world due to a huge dose of hormones/testosterone that run their lives about then.

Moose Roid Rage is something to avoid.

 

[kaichu dento]

BTW - Moose will attack during rutting season...they get VERY aggressive, and you do NOT want to be around a riled up moose...they do not have to be defending anything...just really really pissed off at the world due to a huge dose of hormones/testosterone that run their lives about then.

Moose Roid Rage is something to avoid.

I was walking down a trail a few years back and there was one bull off to the right about 70' and another about 10' to the left. They'd been hanging out around that area for a while, but usually not so close as the one on the left.
Thought I'd do my normal thing and just casually and un-aggressively slip on by, but the behaviour of the closer one (focusing hard looking my way, and worse yet, laying its' ears down while lowering the antlers) I chose a longer route home that night.

 

[TedTheLed]

Re: E. Fudd, just beause things frequently turn out badly for him, especially when he's out hunting..but he always survives.

 

[Johnbaz]

Hi all

Back when I was 15 years old ('73) I was fighting with my younger brother when my hand went through the bathroom window, it cut the artery and blood was squirting all over the walls and ceiling, I shouted dad and and went very faint!, my knees buckles as my life whizzed before me!..

My dad opened the gash and put his thumb inside which probably saved my life..

Second occasion was in '84, I was driving with my wife and two kids to my parents for a visit, I was in a 1966 Humber Hawk which was a big-ish british car (weighed 35CWT or one and three quarter tons)..

I was doing 40mph and a couple of young lads in a Ford Escort doing around 60mph hit us head on at a junction..

The seat belts weren't the inertia type, mine was adjusted very loose, the wife's very tight and the kids didn't have any on in the back..

Upon impact I hit the steering wheel and broke some ribs, the kids were thrown in to the back of the front bench seat bending the whole lot forwards and trapping the wife very tightly, she had to have the seat belt cut away as the buckle was pushing so far in to her belly that it couldn't be opened..
It turned out that the buckle had ruptured her liver, the hospital missed it and she came very close to dieing due to internal bleeding, three weeks in intensive care saved her life (this was at a different hospital)..

A couple of years ago we were pouring 180 tonnes of molten iron in to a sand mould in the foundry that I work at and stepped backwards off the (short) plate that was used for the staging, I fell sideways on to a steel shutter and busted a load of ribs again but bounced in to the pit that the iron was being poured in to, had it come to the top of the mould whilst I was down there I would have burned to death..
As luck would have it my mate at the time was like a big grizzley bear, I'm 16.5 stones and he pulled my out of the pit by the shoulders of my coveralls!!! (strong as an OX!!!)


Cheers, John

 

[LGT]

Way back when I only had my drivers license for about six months, I tried to see how fast I could travel down a hill, not taking into consideration that a 40 degree bend immediatly followed this hill. My memories only recall the sounds of glass breaking and metal crushing before I was standing there watching my car still spinning around on it's hood. How I was thrown from this car needing only 14 stitches from a cut on the forehead still boggles my mind.

 

[Tumbleweed48]

About 40 years ago, as a sub-500 hr VFR pilot with no instrument training whatever, I survived eight minutes on a basic panel. Needle ball and airspeed, and an artificial horizon. I was in the Canadian Arctic in a Cessna 180 'hugging the tundra' under a low overcast, trying to follow the pole line between Tuk and Inuvik. I got caught in a snow squall and inadvertently turned out over a lake in an attempt to GTFOOT. The only place to go was up, so I banged the wings level and climbed for eight minutes until the cabin was full of sunshine....took another five minutes for my eyes to refocus and get my fingers loose off the yoke! You can learn a lot from the stuff that doesn't quite kill you.

 

[HighlanderNorth]

About 40 years ago, as a sub-500 hr VFR pilot with no instrument training whatever, I survived eight minutes on a basic panel. Needle ball and airspeed, and an artificial horizon. I was in the Canadian Arctic in a Cessna 180 'hugging the tundra' under a low overcast, trying to follow the pole line between Tuk and Inuvik. I got caught in a snow squall and inadvertently turned out over a lake in an attempt to GTFOOT. The only place to go was up, so I banged the wings level and climbed for eight minutes until the cabin was full of sunshine....took another five minutes for my eyes to refocus and get my fingers loose off the yoke! You can learn a lot from the stuff that doesn't quite kill you.

Wow! You had 500 hours of flight time with NO instrument training? I havent taken any REAL flight training, but a friend owns a Cessna 4seater, and we went for a 40 minute flight to get some lunch at another airport then flew back, and on the way back, my friend had me sit up in front with his friend, who's an instructor, and he just let me fly the thing! Taking off was easy, cruising to the runway before taking off was relatively easy, and once we got in the air, the first thing he did was teach me the 3 main gauges, the artificial horizon, altimeter and compass. I was flying by them 95% of the time, because I couldnt hardly see over the ridiculously high dash on that plane, plus I was constantly worried about scaring the other 3 passengers, due to my complete inexperience, but it was uneventful and nobody was scared and no crash, however, I turned the controls back over to the other guy when it came time to land, because I wasnt having ANY of that!! But I was literally flying by the instruments almost the whole time, because if I didnt, I noticed that you could easily go off course or lose altitude gradually and maybe not notice it so easily(especially since you cant see over the dash and its hard to see the ground). If you go off course just a few degrees and fly for several minutes like that, you can end up pretty far away from your destination, so learning to fly by gauges early on is crucial I would think.. Of course where I was flying was flat and unremarkable from a geographic standpoint with almost no landmarks, and again, I couldnt hardly see the ground anyway!

But I'm surprised they didnt teach you to fly by the gauges right from the beginning.

 

[RCM]

1. When I was young, I was in and out of the hospital a lot, right from when I was born. I went through heart failure, and a few years later went in with a 110 degree fever! To this day, nobody knows what it was. I am 24 now, and still have medical issues. A cyst that seems to be getting larger on a kidney, a chiari malformation, high functioning autism, and an enlarged heart with what appears to be thinning tissue between 2 chambers.
2. Riding my bike home one day from the corner store, I hear a car behind me that really didn't seem to be slowing down. I jerked my handlebar to the right, right into a curb! Road rash all over my face, a split in my forehead gushing blood, I actually got back up, got back on and got home! Then 8 hours in the ER, 7 stitches later, and a doctor who really shouldn't be helping someone with special needs, I'm out and home!

 

[GLOCK18]

I'v been shot twice and still here to tell about it. Once in the back in a bank shot outand once in the leg almost bleed to death on the leg wound.