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#1
10-09-2006, 03:37 AM
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Closest you have come to dying
Thought this might make for an interesting thread. I think it odd how we flit through daily life with all these things that can so easily kill us, and yet most of us emerge completely unscathed. What's the closest you have come to biting the big one? Here's mine (pretty tame, but I'm sure others will have spicier contributions)
I was scuba diving, and all 8 or so of us divers were in a line, one behind another, with me at the very end, and the 2nd instructor behind me bringing up the rear. This was my first underwater certification dive, and I apparently hadn't affixed the tank properly to the tank-holding apparatus, and -- as was told to me later by the instructor behind me -- it slipped out, and was free-falling in the water deeper and deeper but he saw what was happening and caught it just before it would have consumed all the slack in the line going to my mouthpiece. Had he not noticed it and caught it, it certainly would have ripped my regulator (aka mouthpiece) out. I was only around 15 feet underwater, and might have been able to shoot to the surface unharmed, but I prob would have panicked and taken a big gulp of tasty lake water. I don't really know if taking on a ton of water is enough to kill you...or whether being resuccitated Hasselhoff-style is a straight-forward procedure...but it was enough to spook me pretty good. 
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#2
10-09-2006, 03:41 AM
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Re: Closest you have come to dying
Late one night on an interstate in Arkansas, I hit some road debris and slammed on my brakes in a panic. I blew out both front tires and did at least a 540 on the road before coming to a stop facing the wrong direction. I do not want to think of what might have happened if there had been other traffic behind me.
The worst part about was that after I got to a motel for the night, I needed to have a beer in the worst possible way, and I was in a dry county. @!#$@# baptists.
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#3
10-09-2006, 03:43 AM
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Re: Closest you have come to dying
Been done before, but ...
Was passenger involved in a high-speed car accident, in which our vehicle T-boned another vehicle at an intersection. My buddy was trying to make the light, and failed miserably. I'm not wearing a seatbelt. I'm in the center in one of those tiny foreign pickup "trucks," between my two buds. My buddy (the driver) put his teeth through his lip on the steering wheel, and had quite the concussion. My other buddy also had a consussion, as he hit his head on the windshield. (No airbags) Me? My buddy said he looked over, and for an instant thought I had gone through the windshield. I ended up UNDER the dash, but basically came out without a scratch. The other driver was pretty banged up, including a broken leg. Worst part was we could see it coming. And I can still hear the sound of the metal crunching. P.S. Oh yeah - same night, three boys were killed in a car accident. You can imagine my mother's initial reaction when the hospital called her early in the morning to tell her that her son had been in a car accident.
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#4
10-09-2006, 03:45 AM
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Re: Closest you have come to dying
You are probably in more danger riding a bus than in that situation.
On a related note, I think the closest I ever came to dying was everytime I rode a bus in the mountains in Costa Rica.
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#5
10-09-2006, 03:52 AM
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Re: Closest you have come to dying
Probably a lot of repressed memories.
I was in gridlock at a major intersection. I hear sirens approaching from the side and then I heard a loud crash behind me. I look in the rear-view and watch the car behind me spin around about 270 degrees from a collision. Stupid kids in a stolen car. I went to a plaza nearby an hour later, and just then they getting the innocent driver on a stretcher. That was a few years ago. Last week I was driving on the highway, it was raining. A car in the lane to my left is driving slightly faster than me and slowly passing me... he starts to drift into me, I jerk the car away from him, he overcompensates in the other direction and, as I've grown accustomed to, I watch him do a 270 in my rear-view. He wasn't hit. Creepy stuff. I think I'll just live on the internet from now on. There were probably some worse non-driving ones, but I can't think of them right now... oh, I ate at McDonalds once.
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#6
10-09-2006, 03:53 AM
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Re: Closest you have come to dying
When I was 14 I went under for knee surgery, and woke up 3 days later in ICU. Turns out I have malignant hyperthermia, a rare genetic disorder which causes an often fatal allergic reaction to certain anaesthetics. It was the first time this had ever happened at the hospital. Two other surgical teams were just finishing up when I went into shock, and came to help. Thank God the anesthesiologist immediately knew what was happening and saved my life with a dose of dantrolene.
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#7
10-09-2006, 03:55 AM
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Re: Closest you have come to dying
[ QUOTE ]
When I was 14 I went under for knee surgery, and woke up 3 days later in ICU. Turns out I have malignant hyperthermia, a rare genetic disorder which causes an often fatal allergic reaction to certain anaesthetics. It was the first time this had ever happened at the hospital. Two other surgical teams were just finishing up when I went into shock, and came to help. Thank God the anesthesiologist immediately knew what was happening and saved my life with a dose of dantrolene. [/ QUOTE ] Wow.
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#8
10-09-2006, 03:57 AM
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Re: Closest you have come to dying
[ QUOTE ]
I was only around 15 feet underwater, and might have been able to shoot to the surface unharmed [/ QUOTE ] One breath of air is enough to get to the surface from any depth while scuba diving. If you didn't already know this then you were likely in much greater danger of dying of an embolism than drowning.
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#9
10-09-2006, 04:11 AM
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Re: Closest you have come to dying
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] I was only around 15 feet underwater, and might have been able to shoot to the surface unharmed [/ QUOTE ] One breath of air is enough to get to the surface from any depth while scuba diving. If you didn't already know this then you were likely in much greater danger of dying of an embolism than drowning. [/ QUOTE ] If you're 55ft under, you are NOT getting to the surface safely on one breath of air. (besides that, it was my first dive)
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#10
10-09-2006, 04:12 AM
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Re: Closest you have come to dying
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ] I was only around 15 feet underwater, and might have been able to shoot to the surface unharmed [/ QUOTE ] One breath of air is enough to get to the surface from any depth while scuba diving. If you didn't already know this then you were likely in much greater danger of dying of an embolism than drowning. [/ QUOTE ] If you're 55ft under, you are NOT getting to the surface safely on one breath of air. [/ QUOTE ] I hope you failed your scuba test, because you are dangerously wrong.
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