62 People Share The Scariest Few Seconds Of Their Lives, And Explain How They Survived

Not really a time thing as much as a distance thing. I was at a car festival (BMW e30 fest) and this modified BMW e30 with a 4.4 supercharged V8(400 hp-ish) was doing a burnout in 3rd gear, so the wheels were spinning, probably at like 80mph, something like that.

Anyway, the car moved a bit forward and I just hear "whoosh **PTING**" and this walnut sized rock just flew straight past my ear. My best friend and I just locked eyes and went "Whoah" and then continued watching.

I just don't want to know what a walnut sized rock does to a human head when it's traveling 80 mph.

Later we got drunk and watched flames shoot from exhausts. Was fun.

I crossed the road behind a tram not seeing the track beside it going the other direction the oncoming tram missed me by inches.

Literally last week I was crossing the street with my sister and we saw this huge lifted truck with a big trailer connected with a tractor on the back. He was stopped and checking his left for a few seconds and we were waiting and finally decided to start walking, but the second we started walking he slammed on his gas and turned right and never once looked in our direction. If we had started walking 1 second sooner we would've been flat.

I used to work on a farm for a doctor that had antelopes on the property and one of my jobs was to feed them, my third day on the job was my first time actually doing it since my coworkers did it before. I went out there with the feed and started to pour it out so that they could eat, my supervisor shouts from the other side of the fence not to turn my back to the male antelope and I couldn’t hear him so the first thing I did was turn my back on the male antelope to ask my supervisor what he said, almost immediately I’d realized what I had done and turned back around to see the antelope about to skewer me. I jumped out of the way and he ripped the shirt off of my back.

I was about 4 when I was playing a game of "slide under before the garage door closes." At one point, I got stuck. This was before the safety features of these days. As i was stuck there with the door so heavy trying to crush my bones into dust, I knew I was about to be gone. The door was too relentless to even allow me to make noises.

Luckily, the postal worker was delivering and spotted me. She was able to alert the adults inside the house about me being trapped.

I was traveling in Guatemala having a beer and food before crossing the Belize border. A local runs in yelling to the point we couldn't understand. The bar tender yells leave! Dont pay! Run! Go back to Belize! (In a loud concerned, not angry voice) So we run to the border about a mile away, and it's totally deserted with no one to stamp a passport. So we cross over looking back at the Guatemalan army heading to secure the border. There were a lot of people who passed away in that revolution. And we were foreigners in a border town where Americans were thought of as body snatchers who stole organs at the time.

In 2015 I was planning to go to Paris with my friends. We lived in NL at the time and planned to take the afternoon bus, and then be there for dinner. But then, we realised if we take the afternoon bus we would have to skip a class, so we decided to take the next available bus. Later that evening, the Paris attacks happened. The restaurant we planned to have dinner in was within the affected area. We were "trapped" as basically the country went into lockdown for a few days, but at least we didn't get ourselves hurt or something.

I was working on a pipe crew in 1998, we were installing a large concrete vault in a pretty big hole. I'm standing in a ditch about six feet deep marking grade while the excavator operator is digging. So to the front of me is a large excavator bucket, itself weighing hundreds of pounds and backed by powerful hydraulics and thousands of pounds of steel armature, and behind me is a solid concrete wall about a foot thick. And the ditch is only a few feet wide and too tall for me to jump or climb out of with any kind of speed.

Suddenly the excavator spins to one side and the arm snaps out to full extension with full force, and the operator shuts it down. The bucket missed my head by about a foot. He climbs out of the machine, visibly shaken, and tells me that something has failed on the machine and the arm "wasn't supposed to have done that." So as he's been digging he's been noticing that ever so slightly there's a bit of a delay between his inputs and the machine's actions, and in the moment before failure he just felt "something wasn't right" and tried to pull the bucket in; when it didn't seem to want to, he turned the excavator "just in case" and that's when the arm extended. Had he not, I would have been crushed.

There were two other excavator operators on that crew, and they were basically idiots. Had one of them been with us that day, I'm sure I'd be gone.

A couple months ago I was in a head on collision with some dude driving down the wrong side of the road with his headlights out. I was going probably around 50 before I saw him (speed limit was 55 so that’s my best guess.) saw him with a second or two of reaction time, managed to brake hard and swerve over only bad enough to total my car, but I still walked away with nothing more than a sore neck. If I hadn’t seen the dude I don’t doubt that I could’ve passed away or been seriously injured.

Went to a corner store for a drink, literally two minutes after I left someone robbed it and shot the cashier and another person in the store.

Edit: well this blew up.

I don’t know if I would’ve been gone, but when I was very small I woke up in the middle of the night with a feeling like the dog was missing. I woke up everyone in the house and we went looking for the dog. Somehow we were all outside when a Molotov cocktail was thrown into the neighbor’s house and their house exploded setting only one room in our house on fire—mine and my sister’s. If I hadn’t had everyone frantically searching for the dog, who knows what would’ve happened. The dog must have known something was up, too because she had gotten out of the house and was hiding under a porch across the street.

Had a bad hangover and was kind of nervous/jittery, which in turn made me extra watchful. I was driving home, light turned green and I started to go. Car going about 45 in crowded city traffic doesn't care and goes right through the red. I slammed on the brakes and felt my anti-lock brakes engage for the first time in I don't know how long. Guy missed me by inches. Didn't even slow down.

Had I not been hungover I doubt I would have given the cross traffic that second look to see him barreling toward me. He likely would have t-boned me right in the driver's door.

My backpack got hit by a car while I was wearing it. Knocked me flat on my behind but I was okay.

I briefly looked at my phone to skip a song on Spotify and barely missed walking right in front of a my neighbor’s truck. I didn’t notice at the time, and was actually told by said neighbor the next day. It’s a weird feeling knowing that you were completely oblivious to almost being gone.

Not me, but my dad decided to stay for one more drink at a bar after work back in 1989. if he left before that last drink, he would have been on the old Bay Bridge, very close if not under the section that collapsed, during the 1989 Loma Prietta earthquake.

Back when I managed a clothing store, I had to walk from the mall to the bank every morning to drop off the deposit. To get to the bank I had to cross one street at a 4 way intersection. One day as I was making my way across, a van was in the middle of the intersection waiting to turn left and was patiently waiting as I had the right to cross the street. Some jerk in a black sports car apparently couldn't wait and SWERVED AROUND THE VAN and almost ran straight into me. Car was so close I could feel it behind my legs and everything went in slow motion. Good thing I thought to start speeding up as I saw the light start to flash, signaling the end of being able to cross or I could have been hit.

The jerk sped away and I ran to the other end of the crosswalk a-okay. I was on the phone with my now husband when this went down and he heard everything. I broke down crying when I got to the other side and it wasn't because I was almost hit. The thought that my husband could have heard my ending is what shook me up.

I was walking home at 2am and these guys in a truck started trying to run me over and at the last second I dived into a small wooded/bramble area and went the 7 feet to fence behind it amd hid. They then tried to find me for a while and left.

I waited for an hour probably then decided to sneak out. I saw their truck sitting at the end of the alley with no power on, so I snuck along the wooded area till it merged with the road and made a break for it. They almost ran me over again, but I made it to the path behind a house that was too narrow for them to fit.

Probably 2 seconds from being ran over both times.

Was pulling out of the driveway when I realized I left my phone in the kitchen, so I went in to grab it. on my way there was a terrible car accident two cars in front of me, definitely would have been me if I hadnt left my phone.

Driving on a country road at night with a mate who just got his license, anyways doing 80km/h and all the lights went out, it was nearly pitch black and he slams on the brakes, car stops, lights come back on and we were greeted with a "sharp bend" sign and a sheer cliff 50m further on down the road with a 30m drop off into the ocean.

Hell, that was scary and a tense ride home.

The other month while I was walking the dog (Dobby, Cockapoo, cute as hell) I collapsed and ended up in the road
The only reason I didn't get run over was a bus was stopping to let a dude off and he and the driver helped me get up and out of the road.

I spent a few days on the cardiac ward, I now have a heart monitor inserted into my chest, I've lost my driving licence and haven't worked in three months.

Turns out I have low blood pressure that then occasionally plummets rather than any heart issues so now I'm on medication to up my BP. I should be able to go back to work next week and with the doctors help get my licence back.

It's all been very emotional.