Someone Online Asked “How Have You Cheated Death?” And 45 People Delivered

I got pushed into the other side of the highway by a 18 wheeler that suddenly merged into my lane. I still have nightmares seeing the oncoming cars.

Not sure if this counts but..

Many years ago I was riding home from our local dirt jumps on my BMX. Behind my house is a quarry which has a really rocky bridleway running down the hill. This is the route I would usually take to get home from the jumps.

Anyway, I was heading home while the sun was setting and was absolutely blasting it down this rocky path. I jumped off of one of the rocks and while I was in the air, I watched my front wheel drop out from my forks and before I knew it, they had pummelled stright into the ground sending me straight over the handlebars. I flew a good 20-30ft and landed on a big rock, right on my spine. I wasn't wearing a helmet at the time but fortunately I was wearing my backpack which cushioned my landing.

I walked away in shock but completely unscathed apart from a small graze on my knuckles. I have never felt so lucky to be wearing a backpack in my life, without it I'd certainly have been paralysed or worse..

I (unkowlingly) had a UTI, never really had one before but I was always told the symptoms were things like dark urine, pissing blood, being itchy, I had NONE of them. I was trying to "tough guy" it out but I had pain in my stomach for at least 5 days and I decided to go to Urgent Care because I couldn't eat or walk anymore. They thought my appendix had f*****g blown so they sent me to the ER but it was a UTI abt ~24 hrs away from going septic and infecting other organs. I felt pretty f****n stupid but at the same time I had no symptoms other than pain. Shits scary.

My cousin and I were sitting on the back of a houseboat when we were little. All the adults were inside, as adults were in the 80’s. After a while we stumbled inside instead of falling asleep at the back of the boat. We had carbon monoxide poisoning. Had to be rushed to the hospital. Grandpa bought a new boat motor the next day.

5 years ago I went tendum skydiving. After about 30 seconds the dude pulled the parachute but it wasn't opening. After pulling on the ropes a bit he got his knife and cut the chute, then pulled the second one. By the time the second one was fully inflated we were almost on the ground and landed somewhere in a field instead of the small airport we were supposed to land. They had to pick us up by car. Save to say I'm never going skydiving again.

Messed up when I tried to overdose, by not taking enough pills. I was 15. Genuinely, I’m so happy that that I made that ‘mistake’. I got help, found so much love and support from family and friends, and have managed to help others. My life is so great nowadays, I just can’t express the gratitude I have for being alive.

I was a C-17 Loadmaster and back in 2003 we flew a mission out of Baghdad and our plane got hit by an SA-14 at about 1200 feet. I just happened to be sitting behind the pilot in the Left ACM seat and I got to stare at a giant blow torch erupting out of the top of our number 2 engine and flowing over the wing, where the fuel tanks were full. I fully expected the wing to explode any second until we were on the ground and the fire trucks were spraying us down.

I was born into a life with every reason, incentive, and all the motivation to kill myself.

Yet I didn’t.

And on top of that, I survived all the countless absurd stuff that should have killed me.

No S*** there I was, Afghanistan. 15 minutes till midnight. Me and another guy were standing outside on guard duty. Every 2 hours you're supposed to get in the humvee and run the engine so the battery didn't die due to the onboard computer that was always on. 2 minutes after we get in, are doing the radio checks etc and BOOM, rpg hits exactly where we were standing (Im sure they were aiming for the humvee). Oh what a night....

During 2002, on the day my mother went into labor and went to the nearest govt medical College. Now govt medical college means free treatment but it also means the worst patient care there is. Dirty lobbies, dirty beds, inhuman toilets, nurses treat you like animals etc etc.
Anyway, my mom went into labor and she was admitted shortly afterwards. She had her checkup and ultrasound. There was another woman in her ward who also went into labor that day and that woman's child didn't make it. She gave birth to a deceased baby.

Anyway, the stupid f*****g nurses(and I know you all have huge respect for nurses but I can't help it) then told my family that my mom has a dead baby inside her and they need to remove it. My dad was asked to buy an injection required for the process. That injection would've killed me. When my grandma arrives at the hospital, and she got told that I died, she lost it! She started screaming and saying how even the last night when she was applying oil on my mom's belly, I was kicking and was healthy.

Mind you this is a woman who has given birth to 8 kids of whom only 3 are alive. She knows what she is talking about. Even then those nurses were physically fighting her and won't let her into the ward, she fought her way in and went to my mom(who was oblivious to all this and could still feel me kicking) and demanded that the doctor comes and sees her immediately.

After that I was born, at the exact stroke of midnight(not making this up, I was literally born at exactly, 12 am).

This is the gist of how I cheated death. Ofc there's more to this tale of hell, like mom bleeding for hours after I was born and not even being given some water to drink etc.

When I was around 5yo I shoved a nail into an electric socket and the breaker didn't activate. I kept being hit by a steady current until my body eventually vibrated out of the socket.

Survived a bear attack, survived being lost at sea for 4 days (on a fishing boat, ra out of gas, no land in sight), walked away from falling out of a two story window when I was like 4 or 5, walked away from crashing my motorcycle into a guardrail, walked away from my friends 300zx TT crashing though trees and splitting in half....think that's about it.

Went into a coma from pneumonia that turned my blood septic and woke up 2 days later. The doctors didn't think I would wake up.

I was hung with a rope and ripped my ear off to get out(when they execute you they use a hangmans noose for a reason).

Put in a cd at a stoplight and the stereo kept spitting it back out. In my focus to get it to work I didn't see the light turn green. Just as the guy behind me honked a car ran the red light at full speed and hit the cars that went beside me when the light turned green. The guy behind me didn't move, even when the traffic cleared.

I know a gentleman that had colon cancer found like this.

At his semestral check-up he says to his doctor that his stool hasn't been "the same" for a couple days. His dad and his grandad both had gastrointestinal problems, so his doctor decides to do further testing.

It's colon cancer, but it's found so so early that they got it out with a small surgery and that was it.

One morning my GF convinced me it was worth being late to work. *Nudge, Nudge, Wink, Wink, Know-whot-I-mean-Guvna?*


An hour later when I got to my bus stop, the bus stop and the light pole behind it had been totalled by a car. The lady who had been there had been taken to hospital with multiple broken bones.

I had a tumor removed *before* it progressed to colon cancer, which it likely would have done if I hadn't gone to the doctor.

I passed out while drunk/high after going to the bathroom and broke a toilet with the back of my head. Woke up in a pool of blood and ended up with ~30 staples in the back of my head. I showed a doctor a picture of the bathroom scene once and he looked visibly shook.

I was on a mountain trail in South Dakota. I’m not sure if we took a wrong turn or the trail just ended, but along a mountainside the rope just ended, and the next bit was very sloped and covered in fine gravel.

12-year-old me clambered across but barely, and my parents asked me to come back.

Only later did I realize that the drop was many tens of feet, and a slip was very likely.

This is not a climactic or crazy story, but the slow, creeping reality of death haunts me whenever I think of it.

6 yo and I drowned, was pulled out of the pool and resuscitated. I firmly believe I experienced NDE similar to that of people who have described psychedelic experiences but it was so long ago it's hard to know for sure. In any case with those types of experiences I think it's each to their own.

Managed to get back into my hometown as it was on fire and managed to rescue two dogs. The entirety of the journey throw town was navigated by GPS and feeling the road as it was a total brown out. I did rear end someone but there was no scratch since it was low speed. I also almost was in a head-on collision with a fire truck screaming down the road in said total brownout. You would think I have smoke damage to my lungs because I was walking around outside too trying to recover things. I did lose my house and almost got killed by a falling tree I couldn’t see, missed me by a couple feet because it fell onto where I was standing 3 seconds prior. I managed to get out unscathed with 2 dogs. Sadly I could make it out with my 4 cats as they perished in the fire and their charred bones were found by me and ex fiance the next day. Was sad but I’m thankful I became a hero for the dogs as one is still with me today and loves me a lot. Eastland Complex Fire 2022 if you’re all curious.