Closest you ever came to dying

Nothing to close, probably coming down with the earlier stages of altitude sickness in Sikkim and having to quickly trek back down in altitude during the night to stop it getting worse. I probably set the record for biggest difference in acommdation on a holiday as a result.

The people in charge of booking the hotel in Calcutta messed up with a norma, 3-4 star option and had to book me into the Oberoi Grand...
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Trekking down overnight I ended up sleeping in the mud floored storage area under some villagers house...

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A few close calls in Iraq as a Marine. I was definitely lucky being in a tank though... we lost very few guys compared to most other combat arms jobs. We were at a train station in Fallujah, Iraq doing refueling and this was doing the big push into Fallujah in 2004-2005 called Operation Phantom Fury. Anyways, we usually did our resupply / refuel at night but this was about 10 days in and we ended up doing it during the day. We were refueling my tank when a big explosion happened off to my side in the middle of the area with nothing around... seemed strange but nobody really seemed to care. About 10 seconds later an Am-Trac (amphibious tractor) about 25 feet away from us gets hit by a mortar or rocket (never knew for sure) and unfortunately a few Marines were standing on top of it at the time... those guys on top were completely obliterated and the guys who were inside were messed up pretty bad. This one really stuck with me because during refueling we're on the top of the tank and fully exposed, so it was one of the very few times on my tank where I felt unsafe.

We had our fair share of ambushes and IED's but my crew and tank always fared pretty well... we did hit what the combat engineers said was a triple-stacked anti-tank mine which blew our track apart and did some good damage to the front of the tank. Again, everybody was OK, but I'm glad we did our due diligence and followed protocol. Somehow we had gotten into this area without being hit by anything, but on our way out we hit the triple stack, and then the combat engineers came out and found another 4-5 mines in about a 20 meter radius. Lucky for us the combat engineers were close enough to get there before we got out and started walking around trying to assess and repair the tank (as best as possible).

Some scary ass stories in this thread involving car crashes... some of us are just lucky SOB's.
 
Have you ever met a great white shark?

Seen one as we were about to roll off the boat a few km's out (spearing dolphin fish) we all freaked the fuck out and that was the spearfishing done for the day.

I have run into multiple sharks while spearing reefs offshore, they usually leave you alone. But just seeing the size of a white its like a bus in the water, they are ridiculously big.
 
First wife fell asleep at the wheel, killing herself and injuring me badly. I was in CCU for a month and then had a lot of physical and occupational rehab. I still have epilepsy from the head injury and osteoarthritis is starting to get irritating.
 
First wife fell asleep at the wheel, killing herself and injuring me badly. I was in CCU for a month and then had a lot of physical and occupational rehab. I still have epilepsy from the head injury and osteoarthritis is starting to get irritating.

Fuck me, very sorry mate thats rough
 
Had a bike accident that broke my right leg. And havent sleep for 6 days because of meth,i was extremely dehydrated. lmao but yeah i survived
 
Grade 10 , a buddy was over and I bet him I could swallow a pickle , I tried to swallow it and it of course got lodged in my throat, he thought I was joking for the first 45 seconds before realising I was choking , this was long before the Heimlich so he starts pounding me on the back , I was close to blacking out when it came out , I figure I was about 30 seconds away from ending on one of those stupidest ways to die shows
Heimlich has been around for over 40 years, you must be one of the oldest members here.
I was wade fishing about 50 feet below a roll over dam once, water was only a little over my knees. Took another step and fell into a channel over my head. Current was way too swift to swim, plus I had gear around my waist and fishing rod in my hand, so it swept me downstream until I managed to grab onto a bridge piling. Rested there for a while then had to jump back in. Rode the current downstream and finally washed up on a sandbar.
 
Fell of a cliff, saved by some bushes. Almost rode my bike off the side of a mountain in France in 1998.

Good times.
 
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First wife fell asleep at the wheel, killing herself and injuring me badly. I was in CCU for a month and then had a lot of physical and occupational rehab. I still have epilepsy from the head injury and osteoarthritis is starting to get irritating.

I'm sorry to hear that you experienced that.
 
I was just reading about cholera, so probably the time I so sick to my stomach. The best I can describe it is that, that day seemed similar to a cholera infection that I've read about. 24 hours of that and I thought I was done. It's remarkable how much abuse the body can take.
 
I was on a school trip and we were standing near a cliff edge and this scrawny Mauritian kid tried to do the whole joke kids do when they pretend to push you into a road/off a cliff and then stop you and say "saved your life". Clearly, he didn't take into consideration that I was bigger then him and I almost fell off the edge of a fucking cliff!! Literally had to use all my strength and balance to stay on the cliff edge.
 
First wife fell asleep at the wheel, killing herself and injuring me badly. I was in CCU for a month and then had a lot of physical and occupational rehab. I still have epilepsy from the head injury and osteoarthritis is starting to get irritating.

Jeez. That's fucked. Sorry to hear that.
 
Was going to go to this club in Tel-Aviv and we ended up smoking too much hashish and got lazy and said fuck it. Later that night there was a suicide bombing in the lineup of that very same club. The bomber attached nails to himself, it ended up being real bad.
 
Still god dam!

Good on you rebuilding! your made of strong stuff!
It took the nurses telling me I had to go because I was healthy enough to leave. I was scared, homeless, essentially without possessions (we traveled in one van with our stuff going from concert to concert : Deadheads), but it was a go or no go decision.

I did have a book of addresses that I used and got in touch with my best friend, who along with his wife took me in until I could get back on my feet.
There's no saying how close we are.
 
Jeez. That's fucked. Sorry to hear that.
If you have to quit on the stool, it's a last resort and only acceptable if you really gave what you had to get up again.

I knew that whatever life I could make is better than the alternative.
 
i threw up on the wheel while drunk one weekend, and my truck merged two lanes before hitting a fence. if i had thrown up five seconds after i did, i would have either hit a car, or i would have gone about sixty feet over a cliff.

i swear i could not sleep for at least the next month after that incident. i couldn't get over the fact that i was that close to not being here. for anyone who has had an experience like that, i almost couldn't believe that i didn't die. it was almost like i did die, but i didn't know it. anyone ever felt that way?
 
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