Hey Pandas, What Was A Near-Death Situation You Faced? (Closed)

I don't have a near-death story, but both my father and his father do:

Around the 1960s, my grandfather was catching a ride with a friend of his, and they were nearing a railroad crossing. However, as this was in the olden days, they didn't have a good warning system when trains approached, and there were a lot of trees around the track. My grandfather's friend was driving a little too fast and not paying much attention, and he didn't notice the train approaching. Just as they went onto the railroad crossing, a train hit their car. My grandfather's friend died on impact, while he sustained some cuts to his head and got a concussion.

Around the 1980s, my dad went to the local dam to swim with some friends and family. It should be noted that my dad wasn't good at swimming since he never really had access to a pool. When my dad and his cousin swam towards the deeper part of the lake, his cousin started to panic, and he grabbed my dad. They both struggled, and eventually, my dad went under. He says that the last thing he remembers is bubbles coming out of his mouth and rising to the surface. Then, the next thing my dad knew, he was on the river bank on his hands and knees, with an Indian man standing by him. He found out that this guy saw everything and dove in to save him. The most impressive part? This was during Apartheid in South Africa and this Indian man chose to save the life of this white boy without thinking twice. From that day forward, my dad chose to stop supporting his parents' racist beliefs.

Sailing with friends on a huge ship for a weekend. Someone made a mistake with the ropes and the gaff came down and swiped the deck. My husband grabbed me and yanked me away just a split second before my head was crushed to bits.

On the night before my 19th birthday I had a hemorragic stroke out of nowhere. It meant being 1 full month in the hospital, including a whole week in coma in an ICU. I woke up with severe memory loss and the left side of my body completely paralyzed. After 3 weeks I could move normally, but I still don't remember many things of that whole year. I still have a few insignificant memory issues, but nothing serious, luckily.

About 2 weeks ago, I went to a guys apartment to interview him for a documentary I'm working on. As I was setting up the lights, his roommate came home. In the worst case of "what a coincidence" I've experienced, it turned out the roommate was a member of a far-right militant organization that I had outed in a previous doc. My current doc has nothing to do with politics at all. Which made it even weirder.

The guy recognized me from the protests I cover as a First Amendment Auditor and told me I had 5 minutes to leave before he was going to kill me. He counted down while I packed up all my camera gear. "You got 2 minutes...then I'm locking that door and you're going to die."

Got all my stuff and walked out. So that was fun.

Me & my best friend almost died because of severe teenager idiocy. Still can’t be believe we did this.
After a night of drinking & smoking (not cigarettes), we ended up on the roof of the 5 storey house she lived in. It started to rain and we noticed the roof, made of some soft black material, became partially slippery. Instead of leaving the roof, as we should have, we decided to full-body-slide on the flattest part of the roof - several times!!
One time we got too close and my friend started to slide onto the steep part of the roof. I held on to her hand and almost fell with her. A tiny metal pipe I managed to grab saved our lives. Thinking about this still makes me sick. Today I am the most boring person alive.

I almost died on a rollercoaster called Candymonium in Hershey Park. I forgot to wear my seatbelt, but at least I held onto the handles that were on the ride. The rollercoaster Candymonium WAS THE TALLEST ROLLERCOASTER IN HERSHEY PARK. I think. Plus, my friend's long hair (she was next to me) hit my face repeatedly lol.

I'm type 1 diabetic and growing up in the US I remember plenty of low blood sugar episodes that led to ambulance visits. Yet my near death experience from the diabetes happened when I was living in Ireland - I'd just finished my master's thesis and was watching a movie with my roommates in our on-campus apartment. I remember vague images of the TV screen but nothing aside from that until I woke up in the back of an ambulance. One of my roommates rode to the hospital with me and told me later that my heart stopped a couple times in the rig as well as when the paramedics were treating me in the apartment. I was fine after a sugar IV and some food but that was definitely a bad one. Do not recommend 😂

Happened on Tuesday. I'll set some context.

I was doing the recycling, which involves me having to go down to the basement of my apartment complex, and I live on the first floor (I know, I'm lazy, lol).

Normally, I'd take the elevator just because I'd carry overflowing bags worth of recycling. One of the elevators was in service, and the other was going up. I said "Screw it, I'll take the stairs".

Nearly tripped down the flight of stairs before I could get down the first step. Luckily, I managed to just grab the rail before I fell face first down the stairs... though the clean up of scattered recycling was a little annoying.

In April of 1987 Central Ohio was hit with a freak snowstorm. I was a student at The Ohio State University at the time. Some friends had come to visit from Ohio University in Athens before the storm set in. The trip from Columbus to Athens normally takes about 45 minutes to an hour. One of the people who came to visit was actually from another school, but had gone to Athens for a track meet. The meet was cancelled, so she came to Ohio State with the others for a visit. This woman had to be back to Athens by 4:00 the next day to get her team bus back to her school. The people she came with weren't comfortable taking her because the storm was coming in, so I volunteered (It's a fraternity/sorority connection thing, but I really felt obliged to make sure she got back in time.) Things were fine on the way there, but as I was coming back the storm hit with a vengeance. Two to three feet of snow fell in a couple of hours with high winds and drifts. A snow emergency was declared and all roads were closed. That meant that there were no plows working and no police or state patrol officers on the roads. I'm trying to drive through a rural area, virtually snow blind in a tiny little 4-cylindar car (1974 Mazda GLC). The inevitable happened - a wind gust caught me and I slid into a ditch. This was of course in the days before cell phones. Being stuck in that ditch, with no way to call for help, in a freezing blizzard; I just knew that I was going to die there. I sat there crying for about an hour and it was getting very cold. Fortunately, this was a very rural area of South Central Ohio. A local guy in a pickup truck happened to be driving on that road. He had a winch on his truck and was able to pull my tiny little car out of that ditch. There was no damage to my car and I was able to limp it home. A trip that was supposed to take only 45 minutes took me almost 6 hours.

Side Note: You might be wondering why I didn't just stay there in Athens and go back the next day. One of the women who had come to OSU that weekend was my girlfriend at the time and she was staying (illegally) in my dorm room. If she had been discovered, I could have lost my job as a Resident Advisor, so I had to get back to make sure she was ok. When I walked back into my room that night, after my near-death ordeal, her first words to me were, "Where the Hell have you been?" She was pissed off that I was late. She didn't ask what happened, or if I was ok. She was just mad that I kept her waiting. She became my EX-girlfriend right then and there.

1. There was a booming here in Finland in a shopping center in 2002. I was there with my grandparents and we left an hour before it all happened.
2. In 2012 I was 18 years young and went to a bar with some friends. One got really drunk so we had to leave and on the way home there was loads of policemen, ambulances and firetrucks coming towards us. Found out the next day that we had left a bar that had a shooting in a few minutes later.

I almost got attacked by a female black bear with cubs because a bunch of people were getting too close and she was getting angry. I also got charged by a moose and had to hide behind a rock on the edge of a cliff. Later I jumped into the splash pool at the bottom of a waterfall and had to fight the current.

I was driving my brother's truck to help a friend move. Their house was on the top of a valley and the road home was in the valley. The road in the valley did not have stop signs, but the hill sides did. I was at the top of the steep hill when the brakes failed on my brother's truck. I had no way to stop and knew I would be flying through that intersection at full speed with no way to warn cross traffic as, of course, his horn didn't work. I debated several times on slamming it into a tree, but in the end was lucky enough to sneak through the intersection right after a car went through. Then came the other side of the valley, I had to wait until the apex of the uphill to slow the truck enough to slide it into park, which despite some clicking (RIP transmission) did stop the truck and prevent it from rolling backward into traffic again. Needless to say, I paid for his tow and bought a truck of my own so I never had to borrow again. 🤣

My best friend of 12 years has pretty severe celiac disease (if you don't know, it's a severe allgery to gluten). We went to pizza hut to get pizzas for a Halloween party she was having at her house that night. We asked them multiple times to MAKE SURE it was gluten-free. They said ok several times, seeming a little annoyed. Anyway, we got our pizzas and went to her house to get in costume and let people in. Everybody's walking around, hanging out, and my best friend wanders over to the pizza. She grabbed a slice of what she thought was gluten-free, but the good people at Pizza Hut had NOT made them gluten-free. She walked over to me about two minutes later to say she wasn't feeling well. She then promptly vomited on the floor and passed out. When we were 14, I was trained on what to do in case of this but it was never really clarified what to do at a crowded party. So I started screaming for someone to call my mom, but since it was Halloween, everybody thought it was a joke. Once I drilled it into their heads that this was a real emergency, we got help. I'm glad they finally listened, or that night could have had a very different outcome.

My appendix tryed to burst and if not removed it would have killed me

I crashed my old car (without airbags) into a tree. It was a windy day and I somehow lost control, went off the road, back on, back off, and at some point I had a very clear thought in my head, surprisingly without fear: "Well, Birgit M, that's it." The next thing I remember was coming to in my completely destroyed car, in terrible pain and with blood dripping from my head onto my knees. I was very lucky because my car skidded and hit the tree with the door behind the driver's door.

a few years ago, a student driver(a highschooler) almost ran me over while i was walking to school (i usually take the bus, but due to it being covid at the time, my dad drove me halfway and let me walk the rest.)

It literally stopped like an inch in front of me. i legit thought i was gonna die.

I have been pulled out by the rip current and needed to be rescued by lifeguards several times. Once it was twice in one day. Im stupid :C

I was riding my cargo ebike on a cold day here in Colorado, the remnants of the last snow still clinging to the sidewalks and streets. I was on a stretch of sidewalk that runs adjacent to a busy road with no bike lane. I was approaching a narrow gap in the compacted snow/ice, and I missed by a hair. My bike tires slid out to the right, and I began to fall toward my left, into the street. I used almost every muscle in my body to keep the bike upright, and barely managed to avoid getting hit by the traffic whizzing by. I did not contemplate how close to disaster I had come until later when I recounted the episode to my family. PHEW!

Close to 15yrs ago, I had gotten a flu shot. Most of you on here know I'm a type 1 diabetic. Me getting sick is usually 2x worse than the average person. IDK what it was with the shot, but I was rushed to the ER, had 2 IVs in me, my blood sugar levels were in the upper 500 levels (which is VERY bad), and I could barely move. They told me had I waited an hour or so later to come into the hospital, I might not of been made it. I haven't had a flu shot since then.

I had appendicitis during the pandemic, but because I also had endometriosis I didn’t seek medical help for ages, thinking it was that. I was in shock when I finally had a video consult with my GP, and when he saw the colour of my skin and heard what my blood pressure was he called an ambulance, and I was in surgery in no time. Pain tolerance can be fatal. I’m glad it wasn’t in my case.