50 People Who Survived The Craziest Moments Of Their Lives

When I was 28, I spent 4 and a half days in the hospital for pneumonia that went septic. I had called off on Friday for a cough, it felt like a normal upper respiratory infection. Stayed about the same Saturday and Sunday, but it got significantly worse overnight. I went to UrgentCare Monday morning, they told me to get X-rays to check for pneumonia. Their X-ray technician is off on Mondays, so my roommate had to drive me to the nearest hospital with the referral.

Around 5:00 PM I get a call from the hospital, it's pneumonia. They send over the prescription for antibiotics. At this point I am *really* out of it. I was not aware of how sick I was. Around 7:30 PM, I sit up from the couch to take a swig of Gatorade. I start coughing on the third sip, next thing I know I'm sprawled on top of the coffee table with a small puddle of blood from a bloody nose. Based on the size of the blood stain on the carpet, I was out cold for at least a minute.

I call my mom to take me to the ER, since my roommate was at work. They do the standard intake stuff, check my vitals, fever's about 102.5°F, and draw a vial of blood or two. Next thing I know, I'm getting hooked up for IV antibiotics and transferred from the ER to the main hospital ward because I was in early stage sepsis. It only took 3 and a half days to go from a moderate but normal-feeling cough to deadly serious infection.

Thankfully the antibiotics did the trick, but it was not an easy recovery. After I was released from the hospital, I was on short term disability for almost 3 months. I got sick the last week of January 2023, and I didn't have the stamina to work a full 40 hours workweek until mid to late April. I had a job that was 95% desk work at the time.

Ran out of air 80ft underwater on a shipwreck in Vanuatu when I was 16 (took quite a long approach and the swim to the shipwreck was a workout so I burnt oxygen fast). Second time the ocean nearly ended me so now I stay out 😂.

I was dispatched to a CPR in progress, arrived on scene and the PT was not in cardiac distress. They were however under the influence of h****n and the caller was elderly and had no idea what was going on. I arrived on scene and after a few minutes of this “person” yelling and treating medics like s**t, got up and walked away.

I was getting ready to leave the area and observed a random car I hadn’t seen before. Ran the plates and it was stolen. Different neighbor advised that the occupant of the car was the same subject of the medical call.

I recontacted the subject about a block and a half away and they wanted nothing to do with me. After 15 or so seconds of telling the subject to wait and briefly explaining they were legally being ordered to stop I told them to put their bags down. That’s when they started reaching into their duffle bag after being advised not to. The fight was on at that point and for the next minute or so, I held onto their right hand (in the duffle bag) while wrestling to the ground and eventually arresting.

A loaded 357 short barrel was found in the duffle bag after arrest.

My cover that shift was an officer who was afraid of conflict and actually drove the OPPOSITE direction after hearing the tones and that I was contacting the subject.

Made it out alive with few scrapes but boy am I glad I trusted my gut and relied on my training.

Motorcycle. Another motorcyclist turned into my lane and was on a collision course. I yanked the handlebars real hard right then back left and the rear wheel picked up and skipped to the right by about five feet. Onward we went.

Somehow it felt like nothing despite it being literally everything.

Sepsis following a nick to my small bowel during a routine out-patient procedure that no one noticed. I was in a medically induced coma for a week and in the hospital/rehab for 3 months. My abdominal cavity was open for a month, and I have seen my own insides.

10/10, do not recommend. But it was the quickest and easiest way I've ever lost 50lbs.

My friends and i went to pukkelpopfestival in Belgium, set up camping etc. and had an amazing fun time the first Day. The second day started with as much fun and drinking and music as the first one, amazing weather and all around good vibe. 


We wanted to go see Rise Against on main stage an hour later but it suddenly started to rain just a tiny bit. Gf decides we should get our raincoats from the tent, we could do with a time apart from the rest and have some 'privacy'. We make plans to meet up again and we go to the camping. 
And then the sky turned GREEN. 


The most voilent storm i ever witnessed happened upon the festival, wreaking havoc, wind that just pulled tents out of the ground and trew them in the air, trees fell over, one crashed into a festivalstand,large hail started hitting everywhere. 
And it was over in almost 10 minutes. 


People died. A couple who went to shelter in their tent had a heavy construction stand fall on them. Another one lost his leg apparantly, a tree branch hit someone else in his face and he was also death unfortunatly. 


That first hour was hell. Nobody knew what happened, nobody could reach eachother and everybody reported some horrific story about people that had to be carriers away or needed medical attention. It took more then 4 hours to find my best friend again, who had his guardian angel working overtime. He was right under the big tree that fell into the crowd. He last minute ducked under a steel table and that saved his a*s. 


My gf and me went relatively unharmed, i had bruises from the hail. 
The only thing i vividly remember is the colour of the sky. Just GREEN. Calm, beautifull green,and then the horror that followed. .

I had a diving accident that dislocated and fractured 2 of my vertebrae 1mm away from my spine. I had no buoyancy device keeping me afloat and my EMT brother had to rescue me from drowning since I couldn’t keep my head out of the water. It was in the middle of nowhere in Indonesia and had to be airlifted to Singapore to have surgery.

A long with that I had fractured a bunch of other bones like cheek, collar, sternum and one of my eyes was toast for a while because blood filled it up

I was never really at risk of death other than during the surgery where my surgeon said it was more or less. 5% chance of critical failure in the surgery.

Thankfully I don’t have any lasting issues other than chronic back pain and a stiff neck

Made me realise life is worth living for and have been changing my lifestyle since to be better to myself and to those around me, especially my girlfriend who wouldn’t leave even if I had given up and was sure that I would become tetraplegic.

Guy cut the Jacob's ladder on the freighter we were boarding in the Malacca Strait. I hit the water wearing 45ish lbs (22kg) of gear at 16 knots. Felt my life jacket get yanked over my head as I hit the water.

I swear someone reached in the water and just caught my hand as I lost grip on the tattered life jacket. I broke the surface and one of our boat crew got a boat hook for me to grab.

After being pulled back in, all boat crew swears I was 60ft (18m) in front of them on impact since I was last off. No one could or did reach in the water for me from their report. Only reason they drove up was for potential body recovery, hence the boat hook.

Broke my right collar bone, was unable to swim/ rescue myself since I'm right handed. Arm flat out wouldn't raise. Took two guys to pull me out of the water since I was basically helpless.

No matter how much I argued, my statement wasn't accepted until I removed the part that someone grabbed me. "I was in shock." "I was delirious." "I misremembered." 6 witnessed my fall, no way I could recall correctly. I took the hint, re-wrote the statement, and finished my tour.

I know what it feels like to be pulled in water, and I know I'm hear because someone or something did. Whether the boat was closer and didn't want to be in trouble for being to close, or divine intervention, I'm alive. I'd just like to know who to thank.

Either a 50mph head-on collision with a drunk driver, a Ford Focus driver running me over while on foot, or a school shooting.

Seen some s**t...

I was in a car accident that I don't remember anything about. I remember parts of the morning leaving home, but my next memory is waking up in the back of an ambulance and hearing my son crying and feeling blood go down my face and legs. I couldn't see anything. I asked if my son was OK and said I could feel the blood coming from my leg and face, and then lost consciousness again.

Woke up again on a gurney into the ER, then again in the trauma room with my wife there. I was OK enough, not moving. My son was OK, bump on his head, but he was discharged and I stayed in the hospital for a few more days. Couple of lacerations on my forehead and legs, couple fractured vertebrae, but overall I made it out pretty OK considering. Car was totalled (I miss it to this day), never found out what happened. I still feel lucky I'm here though.

When I was a kid, my parents and I were caught in a tornado while in a single cab pickup. I watched the clouds roll like waves, the fields laid flat, and the air turned green. A spout came down near a house, and I watched as parts of the house started going up. I started panicking and crying. The tornado came directly at us and shoved us and a little red Mazda into a ditch, stuff hitting our vehicles. As the winds were dying down, our truck was still being pummeled by what I thought was debri. The debri was softball sized hail. My mom had pillows in the cab because we were on a long trip. We ended up having to use the pillows to hold the windshield in. Once everything stopped, the ditch we were in was full of rushing water. My dad somehow managed to get the truck out - I don't remember how. In the aftermath, I saw fields of smashed watermelons and peppers and trees completely stripped of their leaves. I saw quite a few dead cows, and for the first time in my life, I saw a dead man face down in a parking lot. I'm 43 now and still get nightmares.

150+ mph car crash as a passenger, flipped at least three times and landed upside down. Only injuries were airbag bruising and I burned my hand on the muffler trying to get the driver out.

Used up all my luck, though, I can't play roulette anymore.

April 27, 2011, in northern Alabama. The sky turned green and everything went silent as my family and I huddled in the middle of the hallway. Our house was the only one on the block without a functioning basement or storm shelter, and with one arm around my little sister and the other around my parakeet's cage, I prepared myself for the worst. Everything started swirling around us, I could see it through the Hello Kitty bedsheet we used as curtains for my room, which was straight across from the highway. A tree at least a century old fell toward us from the neighbor's yard, short of our house by inches.

Then, as suddenly as it began, it stopped.

If it had touched down, we would have been dead. My mom was telling us to pray and be ready to go to Heaven and meet Jesus. When the tornado did touch down, it was rated an F4 I believe, and caused multiple casualties. The whole super outbreak k****d over 300 people. We narrowly cheated death that day.

Got grabbed by a rip current at dusk. Went from “I’m fine” to “this is it” in 10 seconds, floated sideways and washed up two coves down shaking.

Pancreatic pseudocyst that was 15cm. I knew I was in pain and pretty sure I had to stay in hospital, but I was worried about getting a parking ticket. I walked two km from a long term parking spot and collapsed at the hospital at my checkup.

I almost got crushed by a landscaping truck pulling a trailer about a year ago. I was going down a 3 lane road on my Harley. He was waiting to pull out on the right. I was in the middle, and moved to the far left anticipating him coming into my lane because of the trailer. What I wasn’t anticipating was him cutting across two whole lanes into the lane I had switched into. I ended up between a median and his trailer with my front and rear brakes locked up, so I was basically sliding. I’ve been riding dirt bikes all my life so an unstable motorcycle isn’t anything I can’t handle. But having *inches* on either side of me to keep the bike straight and upright, or probably die was enough to scare the s**t out of me.

Unknown guy came up behind me and held a knife at my throat, dragged me by my hair several blocks away, a car pulled up at a cross street so he stopped for a second. I slid out from under, hit the ground, he kicked me in the head and ran off. Although it’s unconfirmed, I think it was the same guy who killed a man while robbing a dry cleaner later. This ruined my freedom to walk around for many years. It was early evening in a safe area.

Mass shooting at a festival. Left a couple hours before the shooter snuck in. The one time I went when it opened at like 8am and left at like 11am. Shooter came around 1pm.

8 (9?) year old me, kayaking with my dad. We get pulled against a big rock by the current, kayak flips against the rock. The rock slants down towards the bottom, current pins me against the rock. Luckily my dad managed to yoink me out from there.

At 23 I survived a car crash I still have no idea how I walked away from. Was the passenger in a friend’s car. We pull up to an intersection. No traffic coming, this was at 5ish in the morning. We start driving, suddenly a van driving like a bat out of hell comes from the right. My friend saw it coming just in time, managed to turn the car just enough where the van hit the front of the car and not fully on the side. It would’ve nailed me otherwise. Car was totalled. Van driver was going about a 100 on a 30 road. No way we could’ve anticipated.

Friend saved my life there, I’m sure of it. I’m 36 now, and I’m still skittish about things coming at me from the right fast(-ish), inside or outside a car.

During my student teaching, a kid brought a gun to school. I had three kids behind me, a scared, angry kid with a gun in front of me and I was hoping like hell that the kid who got out of the room found the principal ASAP because the kid with the gun was getting angrier and I wasn't confident of my chances of getting the gun away from him without someone getting seriously hurt.

I was 22, the kids were 6th graders, so roughly 11 years old. Fear is knowing an 11 year old holds your life and the lives of three others in their hands.