"I Can’t Get Into The Water": 30 Spine-Chilling Survival Stories From People That Were Caught In Catastrophes

On my 16th birthday my dad, friend and I were leaving my friends ranch in Texas ( had a guys weekend to celebrate) in our families Piper Cherokee 180. All of our friends were lined up alongside the runway watching us takeoff to head home. Everything was going fine and then once we got up over the trees about 300ft in the air the wind turned at was at our back and took all of the lift away from us, so the plane started falling really fast, not gliding, there was absolutely no lift so we just fell. There's nothing you can do in that situation in this plane with such little power either. We hit the trees and the wing on my side ( passenger side) of the plane got completely torn off leaving a huge hole in the fuselage where I was sitting, then the plane rolled because the wing was gone and we landed nose down upside down in the woods. The next thing I know I'm hanging upside down in my seat and its the weirdest feeling ever. I describe it like in war movies when a bomb or grenade goes off and suddenly its silent, ears ringing, everything seems to be in slow motion. That's exactly what I felt like until slowly I started hearing my dad yelling to get out of the plane, I didn't realize his side of the plane was going up in flames, very fast. So I went to crawl out of the plane but my seat belt was stuck on something and for the life of me I couldn't get it undone but my dad said he looked up and the only thing he saw, like it was glowing or something was my belt buckle stuck on the strap so he reached up and ripped it off and out I went. Then my dad went to escape and said he heard my friend yelling that he was stuck in the backseat because the seats wouldn't fold forward. They were jammed because the roof had crushed down on top of them not allowing them to fold forward and out of the way. My dad says he doesn't remember this part but my friend says he will never forget it, he says my dad reached back and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and pulled him through the seats and threw him out of the plane. He has no recollection of that. So by this time the cabin of the plane is completely engulfed in flames and my dad is still inside, he doesn't know where we are, he thinks we got stuck in a tree or something so when he goes to escape he does a weird dead fish dive out of the side of the plane, so seeing that he's on fire and still half way inside the plane I ran back into the fire and pulled him out and we all took off running. We made it about 40ft away when the gas in the wing on the other side of the plane that hadn't been ripped off caught fire and exploded blowing us all on the ground. All of this sounds like it took a while, but we were out of the plane in 15 seconds after hitting the ground. The only injuries were to my knee and all I needed were 20 staples and some stitches and I'm completely fine today. The FAA said they've never seen a crash like ours that 1. anyone has walked away from and 2. that EVERYONE walked away from and without almost any injuries. Its a complete miracle that were alive today!!!

I was stuck in a bushfire in Australia. My S.O., myself, and our infant son were in the car evacuating on the only road out of our small town. We got very little warning as the fire moved so fast. The fire was coming on the right side of the road, and smoke was everywhere, so we could hardly see. My S.O. was driving and luckily saw the truck in front of us and stopped just in time before hitting it. The fire started to blow across the road and ignite the bush on our left. Embers were raining down on our car; we just stared at them bouncing off the car bonnet. I saw a flashing red glow in the smoke beyond the truck, and it took a minute or so to work out what I was seeing; it was a fire service truck. I had to fight every bit of instinct I had in me, which was screaming at me to grab my baby, hide him inside my clothes, and run toward the red lights.
I doubt I'd have made it. A semi-trailer truck (18-wheeler) had jack-knifed in the road and was blocking the way. We couldn't see if anyone was in the truck, and I was going to go out and check, but the fire was now at the roadside on our right, and years of fire safety education had taught me you stay in the car.

The fire was literally blowing around in front of us, but damn if that wasn't the strongest instinct I've ever felt. I just sat there in the car repeating over and over to myself, 'Stay in the car; stay in the car.' My S.O. managed to contact the firies on the UHF to alert them to our presence. They sprayed water over us while a secondary truck drove through the burning scrub around the big truck to reach us, and then the rest all was a blur, being transferred to their truck and driving out of there watching the bushfire raging behind us. Saw the news in the hospital where they reported two deceased people found in that semi-trailer truck. Volunteer firefighters saved our lives

I was working in a lab full of compressed gas and many chemicals. I always followed safety protocol which definitely save my life that day. I was asked to return an nearly full 6,000 pound Argon tank to the chemistry department that day. We had not been trained in cylinders, and my understanding was that screwing the valve closes the bottle. The delivery company had tired of returning cylinders so they had put a special bypass around the regulator to make refills easier. Long story short-I basically detonated a 6,000 pound mom next to my face.

I remember a small hiss, and thinking "now that is strange, I don't recall that ever happening". The next thing I remember is waking up in the hallway in the fetal position, screaming in pain. I had been knocked completely unconscious and the Argon had displaced all the air on the floor. A lab mate drug me out by my arm. I had sustained a severe concussion-so much Argon had been forced through my skin and into my brain, when I touched my skin it was like foam, full of tiny sacs of Argon. I required an overnight stay in the ICU and 20 staples to my head. The metal had just grazed under my chin, cutting it. My throat was nearly ripped through by a piece of metal moving with the force of a rifle slug (my labmates calculated that for me!). The explosion was so loud, I could not hear anything for at least several minutes and my ears ring to this day, years later.

If you're out there Phil-thank you. You saved my life that day.

Coming into this late, but I was living on Japan's Tohoku coast when the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami hit.

I was actually taking a bath when the earthquake hit. I can't even tell you how intense it was; I literally couldn't stand up. It was the first earthquake that had actually frightened me since I came to Japan (I grew up in Alaska, so they were nothing new to me), and it was the first one that actually shook things down from my shelves. Japanese earthquake engineering is something else, I'm telling you.

I knew it was a bad one, so I got out of the bath and dressed as quickly as I could. Since I lived right on the coast, I was already getting ready to leave when the "Get the hell to higher ground" tsunami alarm started. I threw a few necessary things into a bag, pulled on my winter coat, and headed for the hills, quite literally. There were already officials on the ground directing people to safe places (the Japanese have this earthquake thing wired, yo), and I ended up high on the hillside at a community rec center with a few hundred of my neighbors.

20 minutes after the quake, the tsunami hit. It was unreal, the sheer volume of water that came in, and the power of it. I watched it destroy my neighborhood. The noise is what I remember most, how loud it was.

I had to spend the night at the rec center, because it wasn't safe to go down. It was one of the more miserable nights of my life. There were constant aftershocks, the rec center was cold and loud, and I couldn't make any calls, so I knew my family had to be going nuts.

I walked out the next day. There's no way to describe the destruction. I didn't even recognize the place I'd lived for over two years. My apartment building was completely gone.

I ended up staying with friends on the less-damaged side of town for the next week. It took almost three days for me to be able to get a message to my family that I was alive. The US government was useless, btw. I finally managed to hitch a ride to the prefectural capital with some American Army people, and my company helped me by giving me my paycheck early and arranging a place to stay (which they also paid for). My family had some people working on things back home, and they got me a plane ticket. It took a bit of doing to get to Tokyo (a lot of rail lines were down), but I was able to get to Narita in time for my flight.

It was more traumatic than I even realized at the time. When I got home, I heard a helicopter and had a full-on flashback. It took a long time for me to come to terms with it, but ultimately, I feel fortunate to have survived.

I was in a plane crash in 2013. Three friends and I had taken a Cessna to interior British Columbia for a long weekend. One friend even had their private pilot's license. The day we were heading home, it was quite hot, and the plane was, according to investigators, over-loaded and over-fueled for the heat/altitude. Once we reached maybe 2,000 feet above takeoff, we began losing airspeed. The pilot panicked and did some steep turns in an attempt to gain some speed, but it scrubbed nearly all our altitude pretty much instantly. Now at a few hundred feet and descending rapidly, the pilot aimed for a farmer's field. They managed to level out at around tree height, but we were quickly running out of field. Maybe a hundred or so meters before the end of the field, they dropped the plane to the ground, the nose dug in, and we flipped end for end. I ended up walking away essentially unscathed, with minor bruising from the seat belt and some small scratches. The pilot had a pretty good cut and bashed their knee up on the dashboard. The front passenger (my girlfriend) took pretty much the brunt of it all. Her seat ripped off the floor, smashing her against the roof. It shredded the ligaments in one side of her neck, compressed her spine, and concussed her badly. The ligaments were bad and are still causing issues now, years later. But the post-concussion issues were far worse.

Watching someone I love lose the ability to read, remember what they had for breakfast or whether or not they HAD breakfast, maintain any semblance of emotional stability, or even do something like play a board game to pass the time (learning and remembering rules was too stressful) is the worst thing I have ever experienced. It took a solid two years before things started returning to what I could call normal.

When I was 9, we were traveling from our cabin back to town with a open boat. This was right before easter. About a 45 min trip. The seas were rough and the boat had a built in flaw that caused it to break in two pieces due to the pounding on the waves. I sat faced towards the back, so I didnt see it break, just suddenly had water up to my waist. When I turned around the nose was floating a couple of meters away from the boat. My moms husband at the time just said "jump" and so we did, into the black 2 deegre water of the northsea, as far away from the boat as possible. This was by far the scariest moment. Her husband managed to launch 2 emergency rockets before the boat vanished below him. He was a very poor swimmer, and even though we tried to hold on to him, he got away from us due to large waves constantly covering us. After that it was about 10 min of trying to swim to shore which was about 400m away, before realizing we were never going to make it. After that we basically dodged waves and made bad taste jokes. We saw people on the shore, cars stopped on the highway. The last thing I remember before blacking out is a boat aproaching. Then I woke up in the hospital basically trashing around from the cramps of my body trying to warm up. Apparantly I had a temp of 27 degrees when they brought me in. My mom was awake the whole time. She lost control of her limbs right after I blacked out, and gripped a rope from my lifewest with her teeth so I wouldnt float away. Even though though this is a scary story there are some awesome elements to it. An old fisherman in a house by the shore saw the whole thing. He was desperatly trying to get a hold of rescue services, but noone was where they were supposed to be. His wife having lost both her previous husband and also a son at sea had some kind of a health issue while watching us swim around. So he had to take care of her, and try to get us help. The most bad**s part of the story is how we got rescued. One of my moms husbands friends got a call about what was happening. Got in his boat with his 8 month pregnant wife, and went full speed to our location. The boat he had was not designed for high seas. It was a summer type cabin cruiser. So he had to stear it towards the waves at all times. His wife then proceeded to pull 3 fully clothed people up to safety. Including an unconcious me. If anyone has ever tried to pull someone out of the water, you know how difficult it is. We all survived, I was totally fine, aside from my balls swelling up to 3 times the normal size for a couple of days. Mom tore a bunch of stuff in her back. Husband swallowed about 4 liters of saltwater and was sick for week. TLDR: Boat broke i two, cold water, amazing rescue.

My husband survived an EF 4/5 tornado that went directly over his back.

He was driving on the highway. Rural WI. Noticed a funnel cloud barreling down behind him. He could not out drive it.

He pulled over, grabbed his dog, lay down as flat as he could beside the highway, clutching a log and protecting the dog.

He said the debris pelted his body. The trees nearby were plucked up vertically and sent horizontally like arrows. The high tension wires failed and flailed. The wind/suction picked up his truck 4 feet off the pavement and moved it 20 feet ahead.

The wind/suction picked up his legs like a baby, flailing above his head as he continued to clutch the dog and the log.

He said he had enough time to contemplate if he could hang on any longer. The thought of losing his dog made him hang on until it was over.

When he got to his truck, all the windows were imploded. When I saw him the next day, every square centimeter over his entire body had shrapnel marks. His dog lost her hearing. He lost partial hearing in one ear.

His truck, was like a Monet. From far away, it looked fine! Close up, every single inside and outside surface had dings and scratches complete with the grass/straw wedged into and sticking out of unusual crevices that defied logic. Totaled.

PTSD for a good year after that.

I survived a nearly EF-5 tornado.

A few years ago, living in rural Arkansas, the weather got bad. This is hardly an uncommon occurrence. My now-fiance and I had just gotten a puppy that very day, and we also had two cats at home. We lived in a duplex. Around, 7:30ish? our phones started alerting to severe weather, and we switched on the TV to watch the radar. Tornado. Heading our way. I threw my cats in the bathroom, while my partner went outside to watch the weather. It was pouring rain. Never heard such heavy rain before. And then - the rain stopped. He rushed in, threw everything out of the innermost closet, and we hunkered in there with the puppy. He texted his parents: Tornado. And we waited.

They say it sounds like a freight train, and they're right. The building was shaking, and there was this roar. I was terrified. Holding the puppy and my phone with one arm/hand, holding my partner's hand with the other, just waiting for the building to collapse on me. He said he was quite certain we were about to die.

And then... it stopped. We came out of the closet, and out of the house to look around, dazed, just like the neighbors. I called my parents a few towns over - they owned the property, so I was telling them what was damaged. Our duplex was fine, some minor stuff only. A tree had fallen within inches of both another duplex and a neighbor's vehicle. Another tree had fallen on a third duplex - that one was totalled by the insurance company, it's an empty slab now. But no one in our immediate neighborhood was killed or injured. A lady in the destroyed one had been luckily sheltering in her bathroom, as the tree came down right over her bed.

We were all unhurt, but it was the most terrifying experience of my life, because the tornado - which did cause several deaths elsewhere - had literally jumped over our little neighborhood. Had it stayed on the ground, we'd surely be dead now.

I am from Syria, about 5 years ago when I was 9 I think, me and my brother were preparing to go to school. Then suddenly we hear a loud exlposion, all the glass in the windows shattered and the doors leading to the balcony were locked so the locks broke and the doors slammed open. After that we heard a lot of shooting. I wouldn't stop screamimg so my mom covered my mouth to shut me up and we all hid in a room that had no windows so it would be safer and waited for things to calm down. We got a lot of calls meanwhile from people who found out that the bombing was so close to us and were concerned. I don't recall how long it took for things to calm down but when it finally did we found it that it was a suicide bombing very close to where we live. Roughly 4 years ago I was lucky enough to immigrate to Sweden, very nice country with nice people

I got buried in an avalanche a few years ago. Three of my friends and I were skiing, and the area we were at received about 4 feet of snow in a matter of a day or two. Long story short, I was behind my friend, and he triggered the slide, but I got caught in it. I tried skiing out of it, but there's not much you can do. I got flipped over, and snow rushed down over the top of me. I thought I was a goner, as I was literally stuck and not able to move any part of my body.
Fortunately, I was able to wiggle my left hand free, which allowed me to get my arm to move around enough for my friend, who happened to notice what happened, to see where I was and dig me out.

So when I was a very young child, I lived in South East Asia. One day early in the morning I was just playing, my parents must have been doing their morning prayers and the next thing I knew the entirety of the ocean was spilling over itself. We lived on the coast at this time and it was like the whole ocean had just lifted out. My dad grabbed me and ran towards a block of apartments at the end of the street. I don't know what happened to my mum but she must have been unable to run fast enough because I'm pretty sure she got overwhelmed by the tide and survived by holding on to a tree. I'm not entirely sure how she survived actually, because looking back on the extent of the 2004 tsunami she should have been swept away completely by the force of the water.

So now I'm on the top of this roof and my dad goes back in, swimming to our house to retrieve our passports and documents, while the water keeps creeping up. I think it was a 4 or 5 storey building and the water must have reached the second or 3rd floor. He must have been a really strong swimmer because he got pretty much all of our documents in between the waves (and probably saved my mum as well???)

After this we were able to stay with friends some distance away after this, but everything in the town got destroyed. In fact I realised the reason why my parents don't bring up my childhood friends or try to keep in contact with their families is because they're dead. This is pretty much the only really vivid memory I have from that age, and my parents still kind of had a fear of the sea for a long time after that (they still can't handle videos of flooding)

When I was 10 or 11 years old, I was involved in a scary sailboat mishap. My father and I rented a small sailboat to take on the local lake. It was a nice day; however, there were strong wind gusts in the middle of the lake. It is important to note that my father is not an experienced skipper despite his exuberant confidence. While trying to be like his New England buddies, my father had me get on the same side of the boat that he was on, shifting all the weight to one side. That was a grave error. Suddenly, a burst of wind tipped us right over, and as we fell the boat came over on top of us into the water. Now stuck under the boat, I had to swim through the sail and rope blocking my path to the surface. I am still amazed to this day that I did not get tangled in the rigging, potentially drowning myself. The biggest thing that helped in this scenario was staying calm and collecting my thoughts

My husband's parents lived on a boat off the coast of Asia for a while about 20something years ago. Well when my mother-in-law was about 8 months pregnant with my brother-in-law, the boat sank in the middle of the ocean. It happened slowly, over the course of a day or so, so the couple sent out a bunch of distress calls, packed the important things, and camped out in the lifeboat while the ship sank. They saved a few nice things for their eventual rescuers: a nice canned ham and a good bottle of wine. Well, they were eventually picked up by the Exxon Valdez, which was fortunate. Unfortunately, at the time the crew was entirely Muslim, and as such the canned ham and nice wine weren't ideal gifts

Here's a question I can honestly answer: I survived an airplane crash. The story: My mother owned a few aircraft and hangar at our small town's airport. I spent a lot of time at the airport as I was growing up spending summer washing airplanes, sweeping out hangars, etc. One warm summer afternoon in the mid-1980's we planned to take a short flight in her Piper J-3 Cub. This plane was built in the mid-1940's and had an aluminum skeleton covered in fabric and tandem seats, one in front, one in back. I sat in front due to the better view and my mom, the pilot, sat in back. I remember the pre-flight, and some taxiing to the runway, but nothing else. Now the rest of the story I received second hand. Neither my mom nor I remember anything of the actual accident due to the massive head trauma we both received. But what I've heard from family and the ambulance drivers who arrived on the scene is that on take off (the most dangerous part of any flight, imho) we lost power. Engine cut out, not really sure why. So with a relatively slow airspeed and no thrust from the engine we changed from being a beautiful flying machine to a brick, rather quickly. Well, we dropped like a brick and proceeded to hit the ground in a rather quick manner. The ambulance drivers who arrived on the scene thought we were done for. Things did not look good for us. But after a helicopter ride to the nearest trauma center a hundred miles away, we are still alive and breathing today. I spent about 5 weeks in the hospital, but only remember the last two. To remind me what happened I have nasty scars on my lower lip and chin and a dent on the side of head. One thing I find myself wondering is if I had the chance to relive the whole thing over again would I want to remember? At this point in my life I can say I would not. Such things are not worth remembering. And did we ever fly again? You bet. As soon as my mom was able to pass a flight physical we were both up in the air again

I was on the top floor of a six-storey building in Kathmandu when the almost 7 magnitude earthquake hit Nepal in 2015. I was with my girlfriend and I remember the whole building swaying side-to-side as if it was a reed in the wind. My girlfriend screamed and asked if we were being bombed but somehow I knew it was an earthquake and I told her so. I held her under a door frame, like we'd been taught and when the shaking stopped, we ran out like our lives depended on it.

We were lucky. Our building didn't collapse but so many others did. Thousands of people died in that earthquake. I still have PTSD, whenever my building shakes because of a passing truck or a heavy vehicle, I think instinctively that it is another earthquake

I went overboard in a storm once working on a gill net salmon boat in Alaska. The current swept me under the boat, I ended up pinned face down to the underside of the hull by my life jacket. My crewman saw my rain jacket hood sticking out off the hull, grabbed it and pulled me out.

We were not in the plane; we were under it on the ground. My brother remembers better than I the collision above us. In 1984, the wings of two Pipers collided in the air as spectators watched a kids football game. One began crashing away from us, the other headed directly for us. Somebody authoritatively screamed, "Get away from the field! Run!" Amazingly, within seconds, we all scrambled before the plane crashed in the field before us. It was a very, very close call. Men rushed over to the wreck, ultimately just throwing coats over the parts no person should see. The pilots of both planes perished; the other plane knocked out the city power that night. By candlelight, the event was discussed with the family. Later, I asked my dad, "Do you think we should tell him?" "Tell him what?" "That it wasn't two people. That it was just the same man in two pieces? Brother told the man from the news that he saw two dead people. He was wrong." "No, do not tell him." We never talked about it again. I didn't even think of this event until 27 years later, after a car wreck. I began to experience PTSD symptoms a few months after the head-on collision. My wreck, the planes crashing and another memory of witnessing a deadly ferris wheel accident became my prominent thoughts. Now, when I think about the plane falling on us, running for our lives amidst the scrawny boys in football gear, bellied coaches, referees with useless whistles bouncing off their chests, the ferris wheel people holding on for their lives, strangers cheering you can do it hold on and the letting go people, I try to add on the memories of the people that helped, how calm and sweet my parents were. Even though people died in terrible ways, and we saw terrible things, many survived. I must dignify the worst. I remind myself that I also saw many boring things, beautiful things as a child. Otherwise, I will forget to buy peanut butter and take the good puppers for walks in the woods.

In 2004, I was caught up in the Boscastle floods in Cornwall. I was 14 at the time, and was on holiday with my mum, dad and younger brother.

We’d arrived in the picturesque village of Boscastle to do the typical tourist things and parked in the car park which was right next to the river. I remember standing looking at the river when we got out of the car - others were too. It was really going some, but nobody thought anything of it. After a few minutes, we headed further down the river towards the ‘witches museum’, which was quite the attraction for the sleepy village. I can’t remember much of the museum, but I’m sure it was excellent.

We were near the end when the owner ran round saying we had to leave immediately as the river had burst its banks. We left, but at 14 years old, I was rather annoyed we hadn’t got to the end. Obviously that was where the REALLY good bits were!

Unfortunately, by this point, the route back to the car park was blocked by a torrent of water. Fortunately, there was a high pass that we could walk along to snake up and around the village and get back to the car. It was however a long walk (run) back and by the time we reached the car park, it was knee deep in water.

My dad took his shoes off and rolled up his jeans and went to fetch the car. At this point, cars were still getting out. I can remember the shop on the corner seemed to be getting looted - or maybe they were just giving away stock that they knew was going to waste anyway. We stood for a while, waiting for my dad to pull the car around, but the water kept getting higher.

It wasn’t just the depth of the water though that stands out. Water is powerful! A couple of young ladies had the same idea of rescuing their car and got stuck. They found refuge on a glass recycling bin. The moment scary kicked in was when the water started to move the bin. This was an industrial sized bin, assumingely filled with glass. The water just picked it up and started to move it. At that point, people started to panic and realised this wasn’t just a bit of water you could wade through.

A couple of locals in wetsuits went in and managed to get the ladies on the bin to safety. At the same time, my dad returned - without the car.

As a family, we made our way up to higher ground to a nearby pub and had a cup of tea. Being English, this of course makes everything better. And it did, until I noticed through the window, our red ford mondeo bobbing along the water in the distance. I went to ask my Dad, who was sat next to me facing the window, “is (that our car)?”, but he cut me off, saying “yes, it is the time to leave and move to higher ground”. He’d seen our car too, but didn’t want to panic my Mum.

We went to leave the pub, and the water had risen considerably higher. In the pub, we hadn’t noticed it, but upon us leaving and commenting on it, everyone else left too.

We all walked up the road and were taken in by a local couple who seemed to have an endless supply of bottled water. I’m not sure why they did, or why I remember that, but I’m very grateful for their disaster planning!

We stayed for a few hours before being collected by a minibus that took us to a local sports hall where the Red Cross had setup a disaster shelter. We spent the night there, though none of us (except my younger brother) slept.

In the morning, the Deputy Prime Minister at the time, John Prescott arrived. He made his way round the sports hall talking to each family and person one by one. He reached us, and me and my younger brother stood up. Mr Prescott reached out and shook my Dad’s hand and simply asked, “So what’s your problem?”

I’m amazed that nobody died that day. The rescue effort was incredible and the help and support of the local community certainly played an integral part.

For reference: my parents insurance paid out fully on the car - no questions asked, and provided a hire car the very next day for the rest of our holiday

Survived the Isla Vista shooting of 2014. I still get jumpy when I hear fireworks or other loud noises. My immediate response is almost always to scramble under the nearest table. PTSD is a b***h.

I was in a plane crash, but luckily it wasn't catastrophic. It was about 10 years ago, and I was flying from Seattle to a small airport in the Pacific Northwest in a tiny airplane. It was winter and raining. It was also very cloudy. There was so much turbulence; the place rocked the whole ride. Somewhere along the way, in the clouds, we crossed paths with another flight. The tail of the plane I was on hit the top of the other plane. S**t was insane. The plane lost stability and started dropping altitude so fast! The air masks deployed while we were just falling. Everyone put them on. Wanna know the strangest part? No one said a f***ing word. Silence. Descent. Anxiety and fear. People were praying and just not saying anything. The plane continued to fall; however, the pilot eventually and luckily regained control. You know how in Fight Club, Tyler Durden says no one spoke of the masturbation session? It was like that; no one said a word on the small flight until we landed. I guess we were all afraid that something would happen again. Accepted death as a possibility. Very surreal experience. I have a lot of anxiety about flights to this day. I used to drink before flights. Now I just accept death as a possibility every time I get aboard a giant metal craft defying gravity