Probably closer than I know more times than I know.

I have a buddy who was a Bradley commander and his gunner was killed by a sniper right next to him. They were both up out of the turret and bang, his gunner took the hit. They found a scope cam sort of video of it on one of those weird al jazeera type listservs or whatever and he said the triggerman brought the reticle right across him before he settled on his gunner and fired.

Shook him up something awful for a bit. It truly was mere chance that the sniper decided that he wanted the gunner and not the officer that day.

I'd have had a damn hard time putting my head up again were I him. Testament to the training that he was back out there the instant they tabbed him. I can't even imagine how that felt.

In 1975 my first wife and I each bought new Kawasaki street bikes. She had never driven a bike before, but she picked it up quick. The first day she wanted to ride it to her job at Albertson in St. Petersburg, about a ten mile ride. I rode with her and she got there OK. I went back down to ride home with her at 4pm rush hour. We were about halfway home and a car turned left behind me and in front of her. She ran into the side of the car, but went in at the wheel well and was going only about 25mph. Very little damage to the bike and her.

About a week later, her bike is fixed and were out riding around in Largo, north of St. Pete, we're on a 4 lane divided road going 55mph and I'm about a 1/4 mile ahead. We enter a big curve and as I lean left into the turn I lose sight of her in the mirror, and a car was in the left turn lane. I looked back over my left shoulder to see her, and when I look back my front wheel is hitting the curb. I rolled off the back of the bike into the dirt and concrete medium and was skinned up on both legs and arms but no broken bones. I had on shorts and a t-shirt when didn't help. Fortunately I had on a helmet with a full face shield which did help since and all the snaps on the shield were totally flat.

I had some incidents where those around me got killed. In 1970 I was stationed in Korea in the DMZ and it was a usual night, I was playing cards with the guys at the coffee shop. The next day, the SSgt that was playing at my table went hunting with the Colonel in one of Hueys, just imagine Mash and it's for real. The Sgt stepped on a land mine that was planted 20 years earlier during the Korean War and was killed.

March 1977 I was working as a air traffic controller at St. Petersburg/Clearwater Control Tower and I was the tower controller for all 3 intersecting runways. I had departures leaving on Rwy 35R and 35L, I had full stops on Rwy 9 and I had touch & goes on Rwy 22. The touch & goes were mostly students flying Grumman Americans out of Nat'l Aviation Academy. I had 4 Grumman in right traffic on Rwy 22 and I saw one turn base too early and was at about 900' on final and directly above the aircraft he was following. I could of sent him around but since he was still at pattern height and there wasn't anyone on downwind, I told him he was overtaking his traffic and to make a right 360 and re-enter on final. I looked back at my other traffic on Rwys 9 & 35 and I heard an ELT (Emergency Locator Transmitter) go off. This happens a lot, radio shops are always testing them, but it did get my attention, so I looked back at final for Rwy 4 and I didn't see the aircraft that should of been rolling out of his 360 by now. I had sheriff helicopter inbound, so I asked him if he could go down south and look around for the aircraft.

My union rep relieved me from the position and I went over to the back of the tower and was looking with binoculars for the aircraft when the phone rang. I picked it up and the voice said, "This is Arch Deal of Channel 8 Reports, Live on the Air, what information can you give us about the aircraft that just crashed on 49th Street." I grew up in St. Pete, and knew Arch Deal since I was a kid, and now he's on the phone telling me this aircraft has crashed. I told him, no comment, and hung up. Both pilots, the student and the Vietnam Vet former Army helicopter pilot were both killed.

About a year later in May 1978 I was working in Pensacola Approach Control (radar controller). Our ILS Runway was closed for repaving and we had no instrument landing available other than a controller instructed Surveillance Approach to Rwy 9/27. We had heavy thunderstorms coming through the area and National 193 from Tampa was inbound and wanted a surveillance approach. My team was working that night, the controller next to me was handling final approach. Most of us never do surveillance approaches, or at least not since our military days. It's where you give detailed instructions to the pilot and he follows those instructions until he sees the runway. His altitude is determined by already published altitudes, the MDA for this approach to Rwy 27 was 520 feet. Runway 27 final is over Pensacola Bay for about 5 miles with the last mile over houses and the shoreline is rather step for Florida, it's like California with a 100' cliff. Around two mile final the pilots mistook a barge and it's lights in the bay for the runway, and with gear and flaps down made a perfect landing on the water. Fortunately only 3 people died, they drown but the barge was able to pick up most of the survivors. The aircraft did not break up and was sold about a month later for a $1 million dollars and floated up and taken away.

Had crash happened a mile later, it would of been a total disaster.

http://www.pensapedia.com/mediawiki/...ational193.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ionalcrash.jpg

I was a crazy teen.

Street drag racing, totaled 4 cars before I was 22yrs old.

Fights, knives, guns. I almost died twice, for real.

Life flight and emergency ICU surgeons were my friends.

I was assuming some sort of David Carradine scenario.

I was working overnights full time during my last semester at KU. I worked off of Barry Road and 169 in KCMO while living in Lawrence. Typically, I averaged about an hour of sleep a night between Friday and Wednesday. On my days off from work, I would sleep 15+ hours.

On my nightly trip along 435 N to 152, I fell asleep once. It wasn’t like I drifted off for a second, I completely passed out.

My car swerved off the road and those concrete ruffles woke me up. I’m so lucky there was no one around me. Had those not woken me up, I definitely would’ve died that night.

I still get nervous when I think about it.

Darn, I had forgotten one, I was driving a 10 wheel milk tanker on day, say 1977, maybe 1978? I had left a farm just south of Butler Mo.and as I got on the asphalt, I had just gotten the truck up to about 40 MPH around a long winding curve. Not sure about now, but back in the day when you had a state highway that started with a " letter of the alphabet " you better keep all wheels up on the blacktop.

This lady was coming around a curve too fast, she was in part of my lane. As she got closer I was expecting her to get it under control ( bad mistake, never assume ). This didn't happen, then I could see kids in the car. As I said, I was on a Mo. Hwy ( Letter) on my way toward US 71. and no shoulder to get over on. I had about 5/8 of a tank full of milk on. I got over as far as I could, giving her as much room as possible. I didn't want to let my right side steering tire/duals drop off the edge of the road.

Well, it happened, she swerved to the right as my tires dropped off on my right. It was about a 6-8" drop off and I'm holding the truck on the edge, holding on for dear life and then I see it, a "BIGGER DROP OFF " I'm talking like a good 12" more, knowing I'm gone if I hit that part, I pulled it hard left. Yikes, Now I have that milk shifting right, now left with momentum!:eek:

I recover with the truck heading towards the left ditch at about a 10 O clock position. OK, I'm going to slam on the air brakes, try to lock this bitch up. Well, before I could do that, the milk is taking a death roll to the left. That was it, over, and over. A total of 2.5 turns rolling over, landing on the driver side. Not wearing a seat belt was/was not a mistake, you can tell me later. You see in the front seat and floor board of that truck, 3-20 ton jacks, a 150 lbs tool box that had enough tools to do truck repairs along the road,a a big hammer and pry bars for breaking down split rims and a 30' coiled up air hose, as well as 4 or 5 small blocks for the jacks/tire repairs. All of this heavy stuff that could crush the brain.

All I had wrong was much bruising and about 60 stitches in 2 places. Either the tool box, 1 of the 20T jacks, hammer, blocks or bar could have seriously hurt or killed me.

Lucky or God had a plan for me!

I'm sure of this, it's something we can all relate to.

I died for 30 seconds when the Chiefs traded up to draft Mahomes.

A bunch of really, really dumb shit driving as a kid. But the closest I've ever been to death is a night of drinking capped off by doming pain killers. Buddy bought a bunch of 100mg morphine from a dude dying of cancer. Me, my brother and two of my buddies decided we wanted to really party after we got home from the bar. Decided that eating them wasn't good enough for some pros like ourselves. Ended up lying in bed unable to move or function; gasping for air like a fish and telling myself to breathe while praying for hours.

I fell asleep at some point not knowing if I was really gonna wake up.

I never knew how this mishap occurred.

Does giving Death a melvin count? :shrug:

5/5/1997 I was in an accident snowmobiling in the mountains I went off a cliff and dropped about 40 to 50 feet breaking my back at t12, (that is about right in the middle of your back) because it was a very steep slope I tumbled another 75 to 100 feet further causing the small broken parts of my vertebra to chew up my spinal calum rendering me paralyzed from the waist down. They was able to life flight me to one hospital when they realized they couldn’t help me they then life flighted me to the university of Utah hospital where they found out I had a broken hip they had to put a big screw in my hip along with two rods down each side of my spine also spent 5 weeks in the hospital. That next January is when Derrick Thomas broke is back then passed so it was close to home for me.

Chapter two 4 years later I was at the sand dunes and rolled my 4 wheeler causing the 4wheeler to roll on top of me breaking my pelvis but because I have no feeling I didn’t know it and just thought I was sore later that night started to turn grey and wasn’t coherent so they took me to the emergency room where they life flitted me to Provo were the doctor prepared my wife that I would not make it through the night I was in a coma for 3 weeks but obviously made it through.

Chapter 3 I was riding my 4 wheeler up in the mountains and stopped were I dropped my hat when I leaned over to pick it up by femur exploded into about 20 pieces because of complications with my paraplegia my bones in my legs have osteoporosis because they aren’t weight bearing and low Blood circulation I had to ride my 4 wheeler out when they moved me to my truck my leg was like jelly making my son about pass out, they had to put a big rod down my leg so the bones could heal no one could figure out how a sharp piece of bone didn’t puncher an artery.

Chapter 4 3 years ago I got infection in my leg had to spend a week in the hospital getting iv antibiotics and then again one year later with the other leg.

Needles to say I have a lot of metal inside of me and some day an infection will take me I take an antibiotic every day but eventually it will become resistant to antibiotics.

But I am still here and still very active I snowmobiled 12 years after I got hurt the first time until it got too expensive, I still am very active outdoorsman have a rzr and still work on my farm we have over 150 animals,
I have always been a chief’s fan since I think 1986 or 87

I was at a bar with a couple of friends. A guy jumps me from behind. I flipped him off on to the floor. I landed 1 good shot before I felt this pain in my leg ass area. I got one more in and I felt that pain in my ribs and I couldn't breathe. Dude stabbed me on the inside of my thigh and in my left rib cage which punctured my lung. I had to have surgery to repair my saphenous vein which included a transfusion. They put a chest tube in to hold the sack around my lung open where my lung could still operate properly. After 2 days they went in my back and scraped my chest cavity with a laser. It created scar tissue to hold the sack around that lung open so it could not collapse because of the size of the hole.
A little over 4 months later I am over at my girl friends house we are being intimate. All the sudden I hear click click. It scared me and as I turned dude shot me. A graze if you will. It sure bled like It did some real damage. Dude stood there and told me "The knife didn't work but this will!" She whacked him from behind with a flashlight and took the gun from him.
She was trying to get divorced from this dude. I had no idea she was married. Well he went to prison and she got divorced.
We met up again a little over a year later, dated for a year, got married and now are in the home stretch of getting a divorce.

:eek:

Pack it in boys, this guy just won the thread. Holy shit bud.

Congratulations???

I just feel sorry for the guy that's about to get stabbed and shot at now.

Jesus. Some of you guys are ****ing nuts.

Nice.

Is your 1st name Lucky?

Another time I was 19 and in Vermont, on a rail welding contract. Just finished a major portion of the contract and went to a local bar with my boss and coworker. Got pretty loaded on beer and shots of ouzo. At closing time I got into it with a local out in the parking lot. At some point he got ahold of a broken beer bottle. I swung on him pretty hard and he swung that bottle to block it. I felt something then when I stepped back something squirted me in the face, then it happened again. Thats when I noticed the stream of blood squirting out of my wrist. Lucky for me my coworker used to be an EMT. He ran up to me, pulled his shirt off and tied it around my wrist and held it there..
We hopped into my boss's truck and headed to the only hospital we knew about, flashers on and hauling ass. On the way there was this car with a couple guys and their dates in front of us.. They thought it would be funny to go real slow and not let us by. When we came up to a stop light my boss and coworker hopped out, ran up to the car, one on each side and leaned in and punched the shit out of them. LMAO They then let us pass.:D
We didn't know the hospital we were headed to didn't have an emergency room. By the time we figured that out and got directions to the other hospital I had been bleeding quite a bit. I passed out before we got there. The next thing I knew I was in a hell of a lot of pain and came to. I was in surgery and there were a few hemostats/clamps sticking in my wrist and a surgeon sewing something up. I was yelling for some anestesia then I passed out again. Turns out my BAC was so high they wouldn't give me any.
It turns out I'd cut an artery and two veins and lucky to be alive.

Back in 1994 or so, I was a student at SMSU. Some of the guys on my floor were doing these medical studies and making good cash. Since I was a broke ass college student, I decided to try it. Basically, you went to the facility on Friday night, woke up at 6 am to take the drug, and you had your blood drawn every hour or so until Monday morning when they released you.

First study I did was a new antihistamine pill. The study lasted about 5 weekends. Went in Friday night, played SNES, did homework and watched tv. It was boring but I got about 2 grand for basically doing jack shit.

Fast forward a couple weeks later, I get a call from the place asking if I wanted to participate in the same antihistamine study again. Hell yes I do! So, the next Friday night my roommate and I both show up expecting everything to be the same. Which it was. Saturday morning at 6, we all get up, take the pill, get out blood drawn, grab some breakast, and go sit in the common room to watch some TV.

30 minutes after I had taken the pill I was sitting in a recliner watching the TV and I noticed I was having a hard time focusing on the screen. I then notice it wasnt just the tv I was having trouble focusing on, it was everything in the room. My breathing wass off, I could feel tingling all over my body, and my chest felt like it was beng crushed. I stood up and the last thing I remember was, "why am I staring at the ceiling lights??"

I woke up a short time later from the most excrutiating, searing, terrible pain in my chest. I was on a bed, stripped down to my boxers with shit sticking out of the veins in my arms, and chest. I look around and there was some guy screaming at me from above, holding the shock paddles in both of his hands. Everybody was asking me how I felt, and all I could think of was, "what the **** just happened to me?"

Ambulance arrived and took me over to Cox South where I spent the day in ICU. Turns out I had several "cardiac arrest" situations and they had to bring me back with the shock paddles, which was the horrible pain I had experienced. The next morning I see some more doctors and went over some of the tests. It was then that I found out I am really, really, horribly allergic to antihistamine.

The medical experiment place was more than happy to cut me a check for double the amount I would have received for the whole study as long as I signed a waiver saying I would not sue. When I asked them why this shit didn't happen the first time I went through the study they said it was because the first time I was in the placebo group, this time I just got unlucky enough to get the real thing.

Twice.

Once when I was a little kid, I was dumb and thought it would be a rush to climb a tree that overhanged over a 150 foot - 200 foot gulley into sharp rocks. I was almost to the top of the tree when the branch broke and I came tumbling down the tree, through branches. I got almost to the last branch and I managed to grab it without falling to my death.

Second time I was going to a girlfriends house who lived in the country. Pitch black. No lights. One lane in each direction road and some dumb mother ****er was driving on the wrong side of the road, without lights, in the dark. I have no clue how I managed to avoid him but I swerved onto the shoulder, my car was 80% off the road at an angle, fish tailing back and forth and I ended up unscathed.

It looks like 50% of us on here were lucky to make it past 25. :eek:

hmm, there's a few. I'll give one.

TLDR version - almost got ejected from my car and thrown over a cliff to my death.

Full version

It was a car accident when I was about a week out of basic/AIT. Got home and was driving from Beach, ND to Medora, small town in the Badlands. If you know the badlands, it's basically just buttes, ravines, etc. for miles and miles. I was on Old Highway 10(yep, that's the name) because I had picked up my buddy who lives on that road. I hadn't been on that road for a good year at least. I knew a turn was coming up so I was keeping my eyes open for the sign showing a bend in the road. It essentially is a 90 degree turn, should really have one of those 35 mph signs or something. It was a rainy morning. Just as I came over a hill, there was the turn, the sign showing a bend in the road was actually halfway through the bend rather than beforehand. I tried to slow down for the turn but hydro-planed and went right over the edge into the wet grass. There was about 50 feet between me and a ravine and there were 2 trees. I hit one tree with the side of the car and ricocheted off it to hit the other tree dead in the center of my grill, right at the edge of the cliff.

My brother was in the front seat with me, my buddy in the back. He had reached forward to try and grab my brother since none of us were wearing seatbelts. When it was all said and done, there were 2 big bulges in the windshield where my brother and my heads hit it, thankfully we didn't get ejected. My brother had a concussion and a bunch of cuts. I had bent the steering wheel forward with my chest and had broken my arm in multiple spots. I also had a bad concussion. My buddy told me I had gotten out of the car and was holding my wrist saying I thought I broke my ankle. My buddy had fractured a vertebrae in his back. A truck driver picked us up and dropped us off at the Medora exit(don't think he wanted to get involved in the crap of dealing with an accident). My buddy's dad was actually going to work and saw us walking towards Medora and picked us up. I don't remember any of it except once we got to town and were waiting on the ambulance. My brother was going into shock and I calmed him down and told him he was ok and only had a couple cuts and we were all going to be fine. I then walked around the corner so he couldn't see me collapse and pass out. We all lived, car was totaled.

Forgot about this - one night when I was 18 some friends were at my apartment, and we decided to go for a drive (can't remember if it was a specific destination or just boredom). Anyway, there were six of us, and three cars, so that would generally mean two to a car - I started to get in the car with my friend Chris, but he drove off as I was walking toward the car. The douche. Anyway, this was 1983, and everybody was driving a crappy secondhand 70s car, and Chris's car was far and away the crappiest - an old Dodge Colt. Somehow his car became last in the group, and as we were driving on a dirt road outside of Kirksville at some point I noticed that his headlights were no longer behind us. I figured he had just decided to go home, since he'd been in a shitty mood all night anyway, but my friend Alan had a bad feeling and wanted to go back and check, which we did.

We topped a slight hill, and saw Chris's car, upside down with the roof crushed in, lying in the middle of the road. I'll never forget how that looked with the headlights illuminating the wreck through the dust against the darkness of the open country. It was surreal. From the look of the vehicle we all assumed he had to dead. But when we got there, we couldn't find him, and there was a little blood, but not major injury/death level blood. Turns out that his steering had failed, which caused the wreck. He wasn't wearing a seat belt, and so as the vehicle was rolling he bounced first to the passenger seat, and then into the back seat. He was bruised, and cut himself getting out of the car, but other than that he was miraculously unhurt, and had already started walking to a nearby farm house for help when we got to the scene. (Yes, not wearing a seat belt saved his life. Go figure.)

Of course, had I been in the car with him, when he bounced into the passenger seat, he would have just bounced into me instead, and we would have both absolutely been killed.

Thanks for being a moody prick, Chris. It saved both our lives! :D

Right?

I have motorcycle wrecks and falling asleep at the wheel and dodging lunatics on the road kind of stories and Imma just keep those in my pocket.

Because some of y'all have seen some shit.

Damn.

First job I ever had as a teen was at a saw mill. Out in the sticks on a county road. We had a wood chipper right by the road to chop up our wood scraps into sawdust.

It was my job every day at the end of the day to change the blades on the chipper.

One day about 15 minutes after I got done, like 10 cop cars went screaming past, lights and sirens blazing. Turns out 2 guys who had been up on meth for 5 days decided to start killing anyone they encountered. They had killed 4 people by the time they passed by my job, literally minutes after I had finished working right next to the road. I have no doubt they would have killed me if they had seen me.

They ended up killing two more people before the cops caught up with them in the next state. One killed himself and the other got life in prison.

1) I was born dead. Breached and ended choking on the umbilical cord on the way out. Revived after a couple of mins.
2) Fell out of a tree when I was 5 and got impaled on a fence post. If it had been 2 inches to the right it would have went through my stomach and killed me.
3) Surfing during a storm in high school I wiped out and my leash snapped. I was stuck in 10 foot surf in a wicked rip current. I tread water for about 5 mins and was nearing exhaustion from being battered by the waves and trying to tread water. Felt a hand reach out to me right as I was about to give up. There was a guy sitting on the beach who grabbed my board and paddled out on his board dragging my board by what was left of my leash out to me.
4) Early 20's, Worked a double shift and was exhausted on my way back to the plant with the work van @ 3am on an 8 lane freeway. Passed out at the wheel. Hit a puddle and spun out. Woke up mid spin and finally got the van under control and ended up facing the wrong way on the freeway. If there were any other cars on the freeway at that time I have no doubt I'd be dead.
Im old now so no risky stuff anymore as I am fully aware of my mortality.

Nearly died during childbirth and was close to get hospitalized with pneumonia as a toddler.

Do you have any theories on how they would have killed you while you were maintaining the wood chipper?

Just one of mine, I was passenger in a car and we got pulled over for driving left of center. I had my mini-14 with a 30 round mag in laying across the dash, The officer walks up and I'm reaching up trying to pull the mag out and the officer has his gun on me yelling to drop it, but Jack daniels told me to continue what i was doing. I could have easily been shot dead.

Sounds like terfenadine.

Yes it is a good thing.

I'd wager on it being a compound name like Carl Ray or Bad Judgement.

No but I definitely had someone looking out for me.

No compound just a standard English first and middle names with a standard Scottish surname.

Abdul Muhammad MacTavish?

ROFL

It definitely sounds like the guy knocked out your Psycho Early Warning System in his first attack. :D

She disabled that with her innocent charm and not telling me that she was going through a nasty divorce.
I should have known that I was blinded by her charm and never married her.

Been there done that. In my case, the guy called my house and said he was going to kill me. I gave him my address and told him I'd be waiting.

Never showed. :)

I had a near death experience that would rattle the bravest man to the core.

When I was 20 years old I went to South Padre Island for spring break. My father used some of his frequent flyer miles to assist with the cost of air fare, but an unintended consequence is the we arrived on Sunday night which was the day most people had checked out but a day before the next wave checked in. This meant that we were a part of a small intimate collection of spring breakers attending the bar that night. On the plus side, it made it extremely easy to connect with the few women that were in a similar predicament. My buddy Scott and I zeroed in on 2 beautiful young ladies, and by all accounts they were looking for the same thing we were and were fully on board with partying with us for this one lonely night on the island.

The conversation was the stuff of Hollywood, the perfect blend of laughter and sexual tension. So imagine our surprise when some random asshole approaches them, whispers in their ear, and they proceed to follow him to the 2nd floor of the bar without a word of explanation. After exchanging dumbfounded looks, Scott and I decided to follow to determine what the hell just happened. As we arrive on the second floor, there sit our two future conquests on the lap of a massive tan, sandy blonde man. My buddy instantly grabs me and exclaims "Tommy Gun!", as I look at him with confusion. He proceeds to explain that this mountain of muscle is Tommy Gunn from the most recent Rocky movie, which I had not seen. Despite all our attempts to regain the attention of the fine young ladies, it was hopeless. Tommy left with on on each arm. That night Tommy undoubtedly slept with them both. As you may know, Tommy Morrison also contracted AIDS.

That, my friends, is the story of how Tommy Morrison saved my life. That hero of a man jumped on an AIDS grenade for me that night, and I forever grateful.

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

Quick story.

I was 16/17 and my best friend had a crazy little bro who had a full 750ml of some type of vodka. Short story even shorter/ my friend scooped vomit out if my mouth before passing out and I woke up in the hospital. Bac was like.24 and I was like 130 soaking wet

Pussy must have been phenomenal

Welp. This thread confirms that my life is ****ing boring. For some reason I'm cool with that.

Death is the first enemy and the last.