What is the closest you have been to being killed?

[classical_hero]

I am just thinking about this because a friend of mine recently suffered an experience that no one would ever want to have happen to them. The situation was that he was sleeping in his room and in the room next to him his room mate got shot at. Thankfully the room mate, whom was the target, did not get hit, but obviously they are both shaken up.

As for myself I have not been close to death at all. I have had a few car crashes, but nothing serious for me, so I can be grateful for that.

 

[Synobun]

Do you mean death or literally being murdered?

 

[Kyriakos]

Interesting topic

I think that i have been close to getting if not killed then seriously injured a few times.

-The oldest one is a very vague memory. I must have been at most 7 years old, and i was getting dizzy while looking at an empty swimming pool (it was just the chasm, no water in it at all). I think that i almost fell inside it, but found my balance at the final moment. I never told my parents, believing i would be punished.

-When i was 9 or 10 i was used to climbing walls in the buildings around my house. At one time i had climbed a very tall one, and then tried to get back in the opposite way, fearing that the entrance of the building might have been locked, or that there were other kids blocking the way out. So i begun my descent, but thought of a very bad way to do it, namely with my head first, hanging down. I felt like letting go, and thought of my head being crashed in the stone pavement below, but mastered enough resolve to just climb back and probably leave the traditional way, from the entrance...

-When in London, when i was 19, i must have been in danger of being hit by cars at least three times. I recall one of them, the car literally stopped inches from me. I was carrying a Blavatchky book at the time, so thought as a joke to myself that it was a sign from an unhappy deity

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Only thing I can recall is my parents telling me that when I was a toddler, I almost fell off the ledge at the Grand Canyon.

Only other time, is having fallen on a sharp rock somewhere and recieving a huge cut in my leg, which left a permanent scar.

I have no memory of either of the events themselves.

 

[classical_hero]

Do you mean death or literally being murdered?

Any type of death.

 

[Tahuti]

I once biked underneath a crane that carried a full garbage wagon: The carne was attempting to empty the contents of the garbage wagon into an open-top truck. Suddenly, the crane lost grip over the garbage wagon and it fell. I just passed a few miliseconds earlier from the spot and I realized that if that happened only a few miliseconds earlier or I took longer, the falling garbage wagon would have crushed me.

Ever since then, I think twice before driving underneath anything.

 

[Synobun]

Well, in that case... I had every children's disease within a one month span before I was a year old. In Europe though, there are house-call doctors so I never had to go to the hospital, however there was a doctor by my side for well over a week and it was common for me to stop breathing momentarily.

Whenever I was 5, I almost fell over the railing at Niagara Falls.

I have been shot at before by a crazy guy in my town.

I have almost fell off a hanging bridge.

I can't really think of any others at the moment, but near-death experiences isn't particularly a surprising thing in my life, especially now that every day can be considered a near-death experience.

 

[stormerne]

To death: having meningitis and pneumonia at the same time when I was 11.

To being killed: mysteriously having to drive an extra 360° round a large roundabout to get to my exit, then finding, a minute later, that if I'd got the exit first time I'd have been obliterated by a truck that crossed over into oncoming traffic.

 

[Akka]

When I was about 14, we had the habit of going to a lake, which had a sand beach and a nice island in the middle of it.
One day, I decided to swam to the island, as I never had been here before. It was not really far, but I was not at all into sport at the time. So I reached it okay, and was happy, and was about to swim back. But I thought "hey, let's explore it a bit before". Got out of the water... and then realized I was exhausted and could barely stand on my leg - I really didn't realized it while I was supported by the water.
I rested a while, and went back. I had a very hard time reaching the beach, extremely tired and often nearly unable to move. If I hadn't had this second thought, I would not have rested, and most certainly have realized only when in the middle that I was not going to make it. Was rather scared about it after the fact.

The other near-death situation I have been were two (different) times when I was driving my motorbike, and some [censored] that I would gladly have killed did something insanely dangerous with their car.
One guy overtook me while I was already going at the maximum allowed speed and overtaking someone else on the fastest line - which mean he went BETWEEN me and the border of the road at more than 150 km/h, only avoiding me by one or two centimeters.
One other simply made a U-turn (he was driving on the opposite road, and switched to my road) while I was at barely 20 meters from him. Had to drive outside of the road to not crash into him at 90 km/h. Even then I nearly killed myself by avoiding by a hair the roadside. I had to stop and roll into a ball for ten minutes before I could gather my nerves back.

None of these bastard even looked at me. I seriously would have smashed their head against a wall until they were a bloody pulp if I could have put my hands on them.

 

[warpus]

I was camping with some friends at the top of a cliff, overlooking Lake Huron. We overindulged in something or other and right afterwards decided to go on a hike.

Next thing you know the guy leading the expedition is going nuts.. He found something! Some sort of a head a bit lower down the steep incline! What? He points his flashlight towards the "head" but we can't really see anything. So like the dumbasses that we are, we start a slow descent. The guy with the flashlight first, another guy second, me last.

Then I slip.. and I start sliding down, towards the "head". past my friends.. and I end up on the very ledge where this 'head' was. It was made out of clay, and we could see that someone carved a mouth, eyes, etc. on it and sculpted ears, a chin, etc. The head broke my fall and I ended up basically kicking it off the cliff. My friends were annoyed, but the head broke my fall and I didn't end up falling all the way down the cliff.

The next morning we climbed all the way down to check out the beach. We made our way towards the spot where we were hiking the night before, and started looking for the head, if it actually existed. We find the head! and.. we look up. . and see dozens upon dozens of heads, all on different ledges, all on the cliff.. staring back at us.

It was weird.

 

[Kyriakos]

I was camping with some friends at the top of a cliff, overlooking Lake Huron. We overindulged in something or other and right afterwards decided to go on a hike.

Next thing you know the guy leading the expedition is going nuts.. He found something! Some sort of a head a bit lower down the steep incline! What? He points his flashlight towards the "head" but we can't really see anything. So like the dumbasses that we are, we start a slow descent. The guy with the flashlight first, another guy second, me last.

Then I slip.. and I start sliding down, towards the "head". past my friends.. and I end up on the very ledge where this 'head' was. It was made out of clay, and we could see that someone carved a mouth, eyes, etc. on it and sculpted ears, a chin, etc. The head broke my fall and I ended up basically kicking it off the cliff. My friends were annoyed, but the head broke my fall and I didn't end up falling all the way down the cliff.

The next morning we climbed all the way down to check out the beach. We made our way towards the spot where we were hiking the night before, and started looking for the head, if it actually existed. We find the head! and.. we look up. . and see dozens upon dozens of heads, all on different ledges, all on the cliff.. staring back at us.

It was weird.

Nice climax of the story So, did you find out who made all those carved overseers of the beach?

 

[NovaKart]

I once seriously overdosed on pills and vodka and I was extremely sick for the next couple of days. I could barely move without feeling horribly naseous and I couldn't focus my eyes on anything. Just trying to dial a number or send a text message took a great deal of effort. When I finally got better I went to McDonalds and I couldn't even taste the food, it took a few days to get the taste for food back, it was like my taste buds just didn't register.

Once I got through that it really terrified me how I could have died and the damage it would have done to my family who still have no idea about this and probably never will.

 

[History_Buff]

I once managed to break both arms in my left arm after I flew over the handlebars of my bicycle. There's a dent in that helmet a couple centimeters deep (I still have it), and the doctors anecdotal opinion is that I would have died had I not been wearing the helmet, though he may have said that to reinforce good habits.

Aside from that, I once surveying the top of a house foundation that was still freshly excavated, filled with gravel around the outside. Almost fell off of there while moving around on it. Rather unlikely to be fatal, but if I'd landed on my head, who knows?

But that's all just the stuff you notice. I'm sure I've been in traffic situations more dangerous than that (no real collisions though).

 

[Berzerker]

The Zodiac killer or a copycat shot at my friends and I as we walked across a football field at night. We were just kids and didn't report it but adults at the gym did, the guy was shooting at them too.

It was very surreal, we were about 100 yds from a long staircase leading up to the gym when we heard what sounded like flying insects (bees) hitting the ground near us at very high speeds. It took 2-3 shots before we realized some ahole might be shooting at us from the school several hundred yds away perpendicular to our direction. We ran and as we climbed up the hill we heard a few more bullets hit the concrete staircase. To this day I dont know why we didn't call the cops. Like I said, it was so strange we weren't really sure what happened.

 

[NovaKart]

Did this happen in the SF area in the 60s?

 

[emzie]

Pretty close, though I think it's against forum rules to talk about it.

 

[Berzerker]

early 70s (maybe '72), it happened at a brand new HS in SF up on the hills near that giant white cross in the movie Dirty Harry (we got to watch them film that ) and was around the time of the Zodiac killer, but his M/O didn't really match up with long range sniping. This guy used a silencer and just plugged away from long distance, which is why he missed 5 targets with a dozen of so shots, thank God.

 

[warpus]

Nice climax of the story So, did you find out who made all those carved overseers of the beach?

We never did.. This was at an undocumented/illegal camping site by a bunch of farms, far outside of the city. It was a perfect camping site - I bet it was just some high/drunk kids who did it cause they were bored.. Or maybe some sort of an evil cult .. then again probably not

 

[Antilogic]

Closest to death... traveling to Saudi Arabia?

Okay, on a more serious note--I've never been shot at or anything extreme like that. Back in my middle school days, my best friend and I used to hang out, go to parks and climb trees, etc., typical kid stuff. We were playing around, climbing up and down this one particular tree. I forget exactly what happened, but I ended up going home while my buddy's parents let him climb up one last time. Turns out the branch broke, he tumbled over and landed on his head. He didn't make it through the rest of the weekend, and I found out on school Monday that my friend had passed away.

He was a little heavier than me (so he was more likely to break branches), but even still, it was frightening. The exact same tree I was climbing on, same day, same everything. And it possibly came down to a 50/50 chance who was going up when the branch snapped.

 

[mythmonster2]

When I was just 3, I was in a store with my parents, running around as a kid does. Then I ran face-first into a calender rack. It ended up missing my eye by less than half an inch, and though I don't know whether it jamming into my eye would have killed me, it's certainly as close as I've ever come to death. Fortunately, it missed, and just left me with a (now faint) scar just under my eye.