“What Was The ‘Survival Tip That Will Save Your Life’ That Actually Saved Your Life?” (50 Answers)

To preface, I was 21, weighed all of 95 lbs and looked like I lived to party.

I was at a bbq of a wealthy family member of my friend in San Francisco. I knew nobody except my friend.

The host let his dogs have the rib bones. One of them started gagging in distress. While everyone sat staring at the choking animal I jumped up, grabbed the dog, shoved my arm down its throat and retrieved the bone. I threw it onto the patio and looked at the host with fire. “Do not give your dog bones!” I screamed.

Not a single person responded, not even a thank you, but I saved a dogs life that day. Yeah me.

My Gido (grandfather) was a jovial man. He was short, a Ukrainian-Canadian immigrant, a WWII RCAF vet, bald since he was 30 with a combover, and a retired railroad man who grew vegetables and roses. Nothing really bothered him.

But we were getting ice cream when I was 12, and I was an overgrown kid, but some guy in his 30s tried to flirt with me and squeezed my butt. My Gido, who was shorter than me with a grandpa gut, squared up on this tall, muscular man and growled out a threat I don’t remember, because I’d jumped and backed up when the guy touched me, but something about that silent generation cold fury made this dude beat retreat.

He turned back to me, gently took my hand, and we went back to the ice cream window and ordered. I could feel the heat leaving his body. I didn’t even feel that upset - the guy had touched me and scared me a bit, but I never felt unsafe because I had always felt protected because I was with him. He had always been there to catch my falls and pull me back from danger. I told him that.

But he said, “I won’t always be there. You’re going to go to high school and university, and go off with your friends, and sometimes you’ll end up alone. What you have to do is be scarier than them. I learned that in the war.

If we ever came across a Jerry and the boys, we were supposed to act crazy, like rabid dogs, and start shooting. The bullets don’t scare ‘em, but you put the two together and they panic, and you can get ‘em in the back.”

When I was 20 (before cell phones) I was walking home alone, three beers and some magic mushrooms deep. Gido had been dead a year after a massive stroke. But a man following me had just made it on my radar, so I turned right. He followed me. I turned right again. He followed me. And I remembered Gido telling me if I saw Jerry…

So I turned around and started howling like a trapped dog. Just screaming and awooing and thrashing in the air. He stopped. I screamed F**K YOU YOU SON OF A B***H FUUUUU*K. I flailed some more. I acted like a feral werewolf in a movie. I knew it was partly the mushrooms and beer uninhibiting me, and Gido’s rage in my veins.

And the guy turned around and started walking, then jogging, as I screamed and spat. When I was sure he was gone, I ran home in my heels.

If you see Jerry….

“STOP THE CAR, IM GOING TO VOMIT”

I used this twice. Once with a friend who was driving super SUPER high and I had no clue (she actually crashed her car 2 days later) and once with a guy who wasn’t taking no for an answer. He stopped and I booked it.

If you’re freaked and need to get out of a car, and if the person is not listening and stopping, say you’re going to be sick.

Drowning. I saved my son from drowning in a pool. He had swallowed so much water that he couldn’t breathe. I put him on his back, rolled him to his side and hit him on the back. He ended up throwing up numerous times. His first words to me were, Thanks for saving me Dad. I still get choked up, 15 years later.

A bar in the bottom of a sliding glass door track to prevent it from opening.

When I split from my ex, I moved with an infant into a ground floor apartment with a sliding glass door. My dad asked my brother in law to cut a piece of wood to put into the bottom of the interior door track to prevent it from opening. Sure enough when he showed up to k**l me, that piece of wood saved my life. It kept him out and bought me time.

Also, plenty of people heard him taking a crow bar to my front door and no one else called for help. My neighbor saw him and recognized him but didn’t want to get in the business. When someone is trying to k**l me, please get in my business. I am much older and wiser now and I will error on the side of my safety and yours.

My best friend was held up at gunpoint. The dude pointed and told her to go to a more secluded area. She remembered a police officer once telling her "Never go to a second location." She refused and she's here today and I'm forever thankful.

“Everybody in, nobody out!” River safety is no joke.

My friend’s dog jumped into a river and started to get swept away due to the increased current from flooding. My friend jumped into the river to rescue her dog. I started to jump in after her, heard this safety phrase in the back of my head, grabbed a branch and swung myself back onto land (there was a decent drop into the river). I ended up having to run down the shoreline a bit to catch up to them, and then hoisted both my friend and her dog out of the water. None of us would have been able to make it out had I have also jumped in.

Woke up around 1am and went to use the bathroom. Started sweating profusely from what felt like every pore in my body. Then started feeling like I had to throw up.   Individually, they were concerning. Together, they were not good. 

Woke my wife up and said “I need to go to the ER…like right now”.  Got there, told them what was going on and sent straight into a room. Wife was let in a few minutes later and  we were told I was in the midst of a heart attack.  

Asked my cardiologist a few days later what would’ve happened if I had just tried to sleep it off and see how I felt in the morning. He said “you wouldn’t have woke up”. 

Don’t ignore the signs, folks. .

“Always let someone know where you’re going.”
Many hikers, travelers, or solo drivers were rescued because someone knew their route and raised the alarm when they didn’t return.

I rehabbed aggressive dogs and learned how to act in a dog attack situation.

If its one dog, stay still. Don't run, don't fight. Put your hands up so it doesn't grab your arms or nip your fingers, and don't give it any stimulus.

If you run, its a game. If you fight, it's a fight. Either way you're going to lose.

Be prepared to fight if you have to, because running you'll die tired. Hit it hard, hit it fast, and get ready to have a really bad day.

Then the day came, I was getting out of my car and my neighbor's untrained pitbull that he was walking without a leash decided to charge me.

I did all the things, and as he got up to me he was confused because nothing was happening. It stopped and tried to goad me into doing something, leading to him trying to nip my leg.

So I took the bag of Arizona Ice Tea cans I had just bought and swung like that s**t downwards like a medieval flail. C*****d it right between the eyes and on top of the nose and backed it off. I'm not sure it even knew what just happened.

And THEN the owner showed up, so who knows what would have happened?

Not my life, but DON’T MOVE ANYONE WITH A POTENTIAL SPINAL INJURY. I recently drove up to a very fresh, very bad motorcycle accident (bike vs. pickup truck). The injured guy’s friends were about to try to TAKE HIS HELMET OFF. I ran up like a crazy person and yelled to not touch him, then kept his head and neck immobilized until the EMTs showed up. He was conscious but not oriented and kept asking his friends to move him, which was quite obviously not in his best interest. .

"Rettungsgasse"

In case of a traffic jam on the German Autobahn the cars in the left lane go as far to the left as possible. The cars in all the lanes to the right of the very left lane go as far to the right as possible. (It doesn't matter if it's 2 or 6 lanes). That creates a passageway for Police, Firetrucks and Ambulances so they can get to potential accidents. My mum and I got into an accident that flipped and squashed the car. First responders were able to get my mum out, but I was stuck and bleeding heavily becausemy broken femur broke throughthe skin.. Only because of everyone creating a proper emergency lane, the firefighters and the ambulance were with me fast enough to get me out and stop the bleeding. If thst hadn't been the case, I might have lost the leg or died.

When traveling, leave all your real jewelry at home. Get cheap costume fake jewelry to wear. Fake Rolex, fake rings, etc. When you get mugged, they think they made a good score, and run off. They’ll find out later that instead of $5000 worth of diamonds, they got $5 worth of garbage. This paid off when we were robbed in Jamaica. .

Knew nothing about it so took a scuba diving certification class during grad school, I was paired with a strangely nervous guy, the rest were couples. He had to retake the pool test a few times. On the first open water dive day, we swam out in pairs as a group with wetsuits, flippers, maybe bc and weight belt. Half way out, and in mild surf, my designated dive buddy had a full panic nutty after swallowing some water and tried to climb on top of me.

Had long ago been a Boy Scout and took the lifeguard merit badge where they described this exact scenario and what to do. I gulped air, dove down so he’d let go of me and swam up behind his panicked a*s, put him in a light headlock as I recalled taking for that ancient merit badge test and swam us both in to shore like that. The dive master was apoplectic screaming at us swimming away from the rest of his group and turned everyone around and brought the entire group back to shore. He was pissed until he understood what had happened. They expelled him, and the dive master was my diving buddy for the rest of the sessions and final dive with full gear.

"Truck water and food"

Always carry sealed drinking water in the vehicle.

Keep some no-heat-ready-to-eat food stuff in your vehicle.

I got stranded in cornfield Iowa during a snowstorm and had to wait it out for four days until I get get dug out.

Lost myself in Idaho and got my rig STUCK really good way out in the back country for a week.

Beef Jerky and a five gallon jug of potable water got me through.

I once saw a post on Reddit about someone who had a weird red line going up their arm. Everyone told them to go to the ER, that it was an infection leading up to their heart. A couple of years later, my husband cut his elbow. Two days later, he started with a fever and when I looked at his arm, I saw the line and made him go right away (we were on vacation and he wanted to wait until we got home). 3 days in the hospital and a surgery later he was ok, but the nurse told us he could've lost his arm or died if he brushed it off like he tried to. So thank you to that reddit poster!

Self-heimlich. I choked on food while driving in a busy street, didn't breathe for over a minute because it was standstill traffic and I was in the middle lane. Ended up cutting people off at the slightest sight of room, put my car in the ditch and 8th grade home ec came to mind as I heimliched myself on the spoiler of my car. C*****d a rip, spit the food out and cried for 10 mins because my vision started to go black. .

Someone else’s life: I’m glad those Heimlich maneuver posters are everywhere. I was having lunch on a Monday in a neighborhood that’s mostly residential, so it was just me and one other person at another table. He choked on a piece of carrot and I successfully did the Heimlich on him. I have zero other emergency preparedness skills but I’m glad I had that one that day!

Not quite life saving, but it sure felt like it at the time:

I didn’t realize I had heat exhaustion and got on a roller coaster. When my vision started going gray at the edges I remembered the Mythbusters Blue Angels episode where they talk about the full-body-muscle-clench thing they have pilots do to counteract the G forces pulling blood away from your brain. I did those clenches for the rest of the ride and managed to avoid passing out, got off the ride and toddled off to a sheltered area to drink some water and cool off.

Lessons about my heat tolerance were learned that day, but the pre-existing lesson about Hook Maneuvers meant I got to learn them while conscious and in private instead of from an impatient EMT after they revived me.

Electrical fire smells like fish. Caught it before a fire even started.