Ever Nearly Been Killed?

[JustYield]

Then, all of a sudden, everything clicked back on in my brain and I was fine. Very odd sensation.

Was it like the feeling when you wake up but can't quite remember where you are for a minute?

[Kingding]

Is it anything to do with born again Christians?

Class!

[quine]

As backpackers are wont to do.

OK OK..didn't explain myself properly. It was my xmas treat to myself after working 3 bloody awful months in a discount bookshop in Sydney during the day and a greasy spoon cafe at night!

[EUBanana]

Was it like the feeling when you wake up but can't quite remember where you are for a minute?

Yup, pretty much. I could still speak perfectly and I knew where I was, but people and names and what I was doing were totally blank, though sometimes with the feeling that it was sort of on the tip of my tongue but not quite making it. It wasn't really very worrying when experiencing it, just very very confusing. I was more worried about the traumatised driver at the time.

The really weird thing was the transition from not remembering from being fine, it was literally like a tick of the clock, thing, suddenly everything was A-OK. The system had rebooted.

[Tiger Woods?]

I've had an angry bull grey seal with his jaws clamped around my head gnawing with intent. We were both in the water at the time, and he could swim a whole lot better than me.

That's 3 metres and 250+kg of testosterone filled blubber with very sharp teeth.

I was reasonably calm when it happened...the wobbles only started a couple of hours later when how close I was to having my skull explode like a watermelon sank in.

[Guest X-QUORK]

I've had an angry bull grey seal with his jaws clamped around my head gnawing with intent. We were both in the water at the time, and he could swim a whole lot better than me.

That's 3 metres and 250+kg of testosterone filled blubber with very sharp teeth.

I was reasonably calm when it happened...the wobbles only started a couple of hours later when how close I was to having my skull explode like a watermelon sank in.

Bloody hell, how did you get out of that one?

[Guest Noodle]

I've had an angry bull grey seal with his jaws clamped around my head gnawing with intent. We were both in the water at the time, and he could swim a whole lot better than me.

That's 3 metres and 250+kg of testosterone filled blubber with very sharp teeth.

I was reasonably calm when it happened...the wobbles only started a couple of hours later when how close I was to having my skull explode like a watermelon sank in.

Sounds like Quorky.

[Tiger Woods?]

Bloody hell, how did you get out of that one?

The now Mrs D'oh punched him in the nose. He let go. We swam away very fast. He was satisfied that we were going in the direction he wanted us to go.

I knew she was a keeper then (though not a girl to piss off!)

Thinking about it, I've had a couple of other near misses.

The other time I came close to death (or more likely a really scary few minutes) I had no idea. Was sitting on the upturned hull of a battleship 210ft under the water with only 20bar of gas in my dive cylinders, whilst my buddies ******ed around, and I didn't know about the gas issue as my pressure gauge had stuck.

Also got dragged to the surface by someone else's surface marker buoy whilst I still had 70 minutes worth of decompression (on pure O2) left to do. That would probably have been wheelchair time rather than death though.

Edited to add: Just thought of another. I was travelling through the US with a couple of very pretty (relevant) girls in 2000. We'd just visited Yosemite and were looking for somewhere to stay outside of the park. Saw this motel on the side of the road, but decided against it and went an hour or so up the road and found a very nice hostel.

A couple of years later I was watching TV and this motel popped up on one of those grisly crime programs. "Wow", I said to the person who was watching TV with me, "I knew the place." It got really creepy when the date of the crime was announced. The very same night as we had passed the motel, a couple of girls and a bloke checked in and were brutally raped and then slaughtered by another couple of blokes who had been watching the motel looking for victims. If we'd pulled in, it probably would have been me and my friends.

[winkie]

Late teens...this guy sort of knew asked me and a couple of friends if we would like to take a spin in his new motor like....well it was the spin from hell, I hate fast driving and shouted for him to slow down....all of a sudden the car came off the road, jumped a gully and smashed into a lamppost....we were all lucky to be alive with no serious injury.

[Guest theboltonfury]

During the football a few years ago, we lost the picture. I was getting out the ladder to go on the roof to fix the aerial; I had one foot on the ladder when my mate Rod said 'I'll go'.

I let him. I still feel bad to this day. Could have and should have been me.

Finished 1 - 1.

[Guest X-QUORK]

I very nearly sailed under the bow of a pleasure cruiser (The Maid Of Antrim). Not sure if I'd have been killed, but it might've smarted.

[Tiger Woods?]

Another time was when I first flew the hills local to me. We had been waiting for a while and I was the first to get some lift and to fly off. I got to about 1,000 feet up and I looked up to see the canopy go soft and collapse in front of my eyes like a bag of washing. I had hit some bad air (a gust front, a thermal and convergence all in one that sucked me into the worst area and kept me there). My canopy kept collapsing again as soon as I could recover it and I started to spiral and swing my way down before managing to get out and hitting the mother of all thermals. So up I went again but by this time I was wanted to get down. So I started doing big-ears, which is when you deliberately pull in the wing tips to reduce your lift. Unfortunately I kept going up so I just pulled more and more. I don't know how big my big ears were in the end but they were commented on!

I saw a guy plummet (in a tight spiral) whilst driving on the M40 just north of Oxford a couple of years ago. All his buddies started heading to where he hit. Never found out what happened to him. Was sickening to watch.

[Guest X-QUORK]

I saw a guy plummet (in a tight spiral) whilst driving on the M40 just north of Oxford a couple of years ago. All his buddies started heading to where he hit. Never found out what happened to him. Was sickening to watch.

That would be at Weston-On-The-Green, the Paras do part of their jump training there, or they certainly used to.

[Sledgehead]

Had my neck broken as a passenger doing >70. Months in traction. Car left the road, gravel flew at my face (open top had popped, windscreen shattered and we were skidding upside down). Apparently took off , scooting up a heap of gravel (according to friends following). All I know is we cleared a 4ft wooden fence upside down and landed in a wooded area. I' d say on the roof, but there was no roof. The margin between having my face slammed into said fence, rather than passing just over it must have beed pretty slim. At this point I tried to release myself but felt completey wedged. I was also suffocating. This was the point at which the thoughts of impending harm that 'occured' during my long 'slide' into the copse formed into a realisation that death was indeed close and inevitable. And in the next moment I was free and able to breathe again. In fact I was never wedged, nor were my airways restricted: rather I was paralysed, not as some would have you believe, from the neck up, but arsee-tarsee. Mercifully a friend who had been following in the 'convoy' had released my seat belt and with it the pressure on my spinal chord.

I now have a C5 that looks like, well, a C5 - the Citroen sort, and four dents around my head from halo traction.

There's been other stuff, but that's the closest.

[A_Landlord]

I very nearly sailed under the bow of a pleasure cruiser (The Maid Of Antrim). Not sure if I'd have been killed, but it might've smarted.

AK47 pointed at me by a bunch of soldiers at a checkpoint in Abidjan trying to get money out of us to pass through - don't think I would have been killed, but not nice.

In my 20s decided to swim around what looked like a small headland on a Greek Island - took bloody ages and some nasty currents. Later checked and it was a large headland of about 3.5km around and took me nearly 2 hrs (with rest stops hanging onto the rocks) to get back. Got onto the beach where girlfriend woke up from sunbathing saying I was a long time and I just collapse.

Pissed up as a teenager climbing all sorts of scaffolding for a laugh - remember being very high up and sobering up very quickly on slippy metal poles.

[Tiger Woods?]

Being barged off the road by a truck in India. The van we were in rolled over several times and me and the sales agent were thrown out the back. We landed in a tangle of arms and legs. Surprisingly no-one was hurt. We pushed the van back onto it's wheels (it was on it's side against a tree). I was crapping myself that the axles had been weakened by this, but we carried on and got to the customer and did the job*. By far the most dangerous thing when you are travelling is the possibility of road accidents.

This seems to be dreadfully common in India. A friend was doing research there and the (what is the Indian for motorised rickshaw?) he was in was driven off a 20ft embankment by a truck. His driver died and he had a broken leg, a dislocated shoulder and various other injuries. No one stopped or did a thing. He pulled himself up the embankment to the side of the road. Still no one stopped. He crawled into the middle of the road, and luckily someone stopped.

[Guest Noodle]

Gravity, water, velocity and blubber with teeth so far.

Avoid all of these things where possible.

[Guest Skinty]

The other time I came close to death (or more likely a really scary few minutes) I had no idea. Was sitting on the upturned hull of a battleship 210ft under the water with only 20bar of gas in my dive cylinders, whilst my buddies ******ed around, and I didn't know about the gas issue as my pressure gauge had stuck.

Also got dragged to the surface by someone else's surface marker buoy whilst I still had 70 minutes worth of decompression (on pure O2) left to do. That would probably have been wheelchair time rather than death though.

It's pretty scary when that happens. The first time I did a dive down to 30 metres when I was first learning, my air tank got lighter near the end of the dive as I used up the air. I was also using a dry suit for the first time. I didn't have any ankle weights and my feet started to float upwards. The more I kicked though the more one of my fins started to become lose. Eventually the fin came off and I started a runaway ascent. I had been told about how to roll into a ball and squeeze the air out but I hadn't actually practised it. There's a first time for everything though. I remember constantly blowing out as much as I could until I started to wonder if I was going to soon black out but my ascent slowed and eventually I started to descend again very slowly. I very tentatively and gently breathed in again after what seemed like an age!

The second time it happened was the last dive I made. I was diving with a club at university and hadn't been out for ages. Nor where the club that particularly friendly. I had had some equipment problems with the pipe on my BCD having eroded so they all went off and left me. Some friendly middle aged Glaswegians diving nearby helped me out and we mended the pipe. I went diving with them and 7 metres down my weight belt slipped off and I made an ascent to the surface. With the stress of everything else just to get into the water I had put it on the wrong way (it's one of these complicated weight belts where it's supposed to be quick release but also more reliable than something held together with a short pin). After that I decided to concentrate on my paragliding instead.

[Tiger Woods?]

I can't be the only one who's fallen asleep while driving at 80mph and required the front seat passenger to steer the car off the central reservation?

Did that once whilst driving alone on the A11. I knew I was tired, but couldn't find anywhere to stop to take have a nap. Was only about 4km from home at the time, after having driven across the country.

Since then, I always find somewhere to nap well before it gets to that stage.

[Guest theboltonfury]

Did that once whilst driving alone on the A11. I knew I was tired, but couldn't find anywhere to stop to take have a nap. Was only about 4km from home at the time, after having driven across the country.

Since then, I always find somewhere to nap well before it gets to that stage.

You're a ******ing disaster area!

[Tiger Woods?]

It's pretty scary when that happens. The first time I did a dive down to 30 metres when I was first learning, my air tank got lighter near the end of the dive as I used up the air. I was also using a dry suit for the first time. I didn't have any ankle weights and my feet started to float upwards. The more I kicked though the more one of my fins started to become lose. Eventually the fin came off and I started a runaway ascent. I had been told about how to roll into a ball and squeeze the air out but I hadn't actually practised it. There's a first time for everything though. I remember constantly blowing out as much as I could until I started to wonder if I was going to soon black out but my ascent slowed and eventually I started to descend again very slowly. I very tentatively and gently breathed in again after what seemed like an age!

The roll thing does work, you just need the confidence to do it...but serious floaty feet is much more likely to happen when you are a novice and you are lacking the confidence. On about my 3rd dive I can remember gripping onto a boulder for dear life with my feet pointed towards the surface whilst the instructor and buddy swam off into the murk. My current drysuit has thin tight fitting neoprene legs, so I can swim in it more or less like a wet suit. Mrs. D'oh found that using knee braces (the sort you get in the chemist) around the lower leg/ankles works wonders on a trilaminate drysuit...just makes the boots a bugger to get off.

The one thing that really puzzles me is people's reactions to having regulator problems. When I was a novice I had the 2nd stage blow off the hose. Instructor offered me his octopus and I just didn't recognise it as something I wanted...until I got short of breath at which point I decided I wanted it, NOW. I've done a fair bit of diving and instructing in the years since then, and in almost every case where I have seen someone end up out of air due to a sudden shock (such as cylinder valve going or unexpected uncontrolled free flows) they never seem to want to take their buddy's octopus - either they bolt to the surface or, if too deep, sort of sit in shock and then go for the reg in your mouth. Funny how people react.

The Darwin award for diving must go to 4 members of an unknown club diving off the Farnes in about 2000. They'd been doing 2 40m+ dives a day on air for a week when one of them had their drysuit inflater get stuck. They shot to the surface and their buddy decided to try to slow them down by gripping onto their ankles, before they too lost control of their buoyancy. the best bit though was that another pair who saw the accident followed up in sympathy. Result: 3 badly bent divers and a fourth who was sent to the pot as well. Saw the helicopter come to pick them up. Story was related to our boat's skipper by his mate that evening.

My old club nearly had a close call in the early 70s. In the days before buoyancy vests, you were taught to take some weight off your belt if you were going to 30m or more to accommodate the loss of buoyancy due to the neoprene in your suit getting compressed. One of the instructors forgot to tell his 2 charges to do this before their first deep dive. Result: both new divers stuck on the bottom of the ocean not able to swim up. Instructor swam one to the surface then went down and found the other unconscious. Got him to the surface and, luckily, he came around.

[Guest Skinty]

The roll thing does work, you just need the confidence to do it..

Well I tried the roll for the first time during my runaway ascent at the same time as blowing out all the air from my lungs and I don't think I would have recovered if I hadn't.

As I became more used to the dry suit after that I quite enjoyed being surrounded by a bubble of air. I found that you can stand on your head on the ground with your arms crossed and rotate on the spot just using your neck muscles for example. I had a couple of buddies for that dive because of odd numbers in the group and they were wondering if I was suffering from nitrogen narcosis at 8 metres

[Guest X-QUORK]

I had a couple of buddies for that dive because of odd numbers in the group and they were wondering if I was suffering from nitrogen narcosis at 8 metres

Nice way to kick the bucket apparently.

[Bob8]

I was cycling one day (indicating and everything) and realised that the car next to me was moving in to where I was and if I avoided it, I would either go behind under a lorry or in front of the car in the other lane. I saw the situation, that the lady had no thought of not running me out of the lane and quietly thought to myself I was about to die. It was all rather undramatic.

Fortunately, the lorry driver saw what was happening, went to drive into her and she quickly changed her mind. I doubt it would have troubled her as she had the cheek to be annoyed by the lorry driver. I am very grateful to that chap.

The odd thing was, I saw I was going to die and it seemed a rather incidental fact.

[Sledgehead]

The odd thing was, I saw I was going to die and it seemed a rather incidental fact.

Yeah, I wonder how common that is for these sudden threats?

IMO sure beats "I'm afraid you have 6 months to live". More like 6 months to die!