THE CLOSEST YOU'VE EVER CAME TO DEATH!

[457Brodix]

I'm not trying to be morbid or anything like that but I'm sure some of us have had near death experiences. I've had several but the two closest ones were, dropping half the weight of a 57 Chevy on my chest in the middle of the night with no one around and then the second one was falling 47 feet and landing on an Asphalt parking lot! Lets hear them?

[Brian Lohnes]

Re: THE CLOSEST YOU'VE EVER CAME TO DEATH!

Oh, you GOTTA tell the parking garage story.

What the hell happened?!?!

[Loren]

Re: THE CLOSEST YOU'VE EVER CAME TO DEATH!

I agree. That's gotta be a good one...

I've had two kinds of near death experiences. One is where something happened-and-it's-over, then you realize how close you came, and get that feeling. The other is when you've got that feelling during the experience and you're dealing with that as the clock ticks down. Two near-drownings fit with the latter. Ugh. While not religious I do strangely believe in angels to an extent.

[Pumpkin]

Re: THE CLOSEST YOU'VE EVER CAME TO DEATH!

Whitewater paddling solo after hurricane Opal 1995. The Cartecay river, 6' above flood stage. Sounded like a good idea at the time, until I missed the only sane line at what happened to be the largest rapid that day. Portage around it. I got stuck in a hydraulic wave for I don't know how long. It's said the best way out is to take off your pfd and swim down out of it, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Cold sweats whenever I think about it.

[457Brodix]

Re: THE CLOSEST YOU'VE EVER CAME TO DEATH!

In my past life I worked for AT&T Technologies, we were moving equipment into a 3rd floor doorway on a skid (think heavy frame with rollers on it) and the skid was in the building and it was lunch time, we were pulling the skid all the way back into the building when the ground crew took off for lunch, the only problem with that was the guide rope attached to the skid was also attached to the bumper of the truck they were taking to lunch! 3rd floor might not seem very high but 1st and 2nd floor each had 20' ceilings. I ended up with a broken heel, broken thumb, lacerations and two compressed vertebrae, not bad considering I should have been dead, made me a believer. I can tell you this, you think about a lot of things in those few seconds of free fall!

[BOOOGHAR]

Re: THE CLOSEST YOU'VE EVER CAME TO DEATH!

I was in the navy and went out riding my mountain bike in a rough mountianous area close to the mexico border south of san diego with some other friends, I was coming down a grade carrying some pretty good speed and hopped over a group of rocks, well I didnt know there was a very large hole on the other side of those rocks, this was a time before mountain bikers wore helmets so I wasnt wearing one, never wore one before, never gave it a second thought.

Well the last thing I remember was going in the air, looking at my landing and seeing a hole - then darkness, I dont know how long I was out, but I woke up in the hospitial with doctors standing over me saying how lucky i was, they wouldnt go into details but would only say how lucky i was to be awake but said I did do some damage, I never gave it any thought til a few years later when I went to my 10 year class reunion, I had people come up to me talking about our school days, I didnt remember those days or those people so it appears I lost a good portion of my memory from the mid to late 80s

[Schtauffer]

Re: THE CLOSEST YOU'VE EVER CAME TO DEATH!

We were dropping an engine into a '77 K20. The oil pan was about even with the tops of the fenders. I went in to push some wiring out of the way; my head was between the oil pan and the crossmember. A few seconds after I got myself out of there, the seal in the ram of the cherry picker left go and the engine crashed down hard.

:o

[Aircooled]

Re: THE CLOSEST YOU'VE EVER CAME TO DEATH!

Lets' see..
I was pulled from the Persian Gulf and resuscitated when I was 5.
I ruptured my spleen snow sledding when I was 10. Due to various medical mistakes, I wasn't admitted to a hospital for 3 days.
I fell 20' out of a tree when I was 14. I broke my back on a large tree root sticking out of the ground. If I had landed two foot farther south, I would have hit the root with my head and surely died.

I am very grateful that my first child is a girl. Girls don't seem to have death wishes like boys.

[BangShift McT]

Re: THE CLOSEST YOU'VE EVER CAME TO DEATH!

Where to start...

*End-over-end wreck at 70mph in a '84 Escort when I was five.

*Having a '75 Volvo 242 slide off the jack and pin me down...missed my chest.

*Consumed enough chocolate one night to actually give myself chocolate poisoning.

*Five Combat Action Badge certificates, more close-calls than I want to remember, and a near-Purple Heart. I still have that AK-47 round, missed my legs by no more than a couple of inches.

[Lon_H]

Re: THE CLOSEST YOU'VE EVER CAME TO DEATH!

Jan. 15 2001. Delivering windows and siding, in an Isuzu NPR. I was on a 2 lane country road going north, a school bus going south turned left in front of me. I swerved hard to the left and the passenger side of my truck took most of the impact. They cut me out and I got to ride medflight back to Huntsville.

[TC]

Re: THE CLOSEST YOU'VE EVER CAME TO DEATH!

Lon, WOW!!!!!! Glad your here to post that.......


I got T-boned by this chic that ran a red light in a '92 Isuzu P-up, the truck flipped onto the drivers side, slid for about 150 feet across all lanes of on coming traffic, hit the curb and flipped into a parking lot back on all 4 wheels. I walked away from it with a broken nose and messed up back.

Other than that last February, when I had surgery to remove a golf ball sized cyst out of my neck, I woke up because I stopped breathing and promptly threw a male nurse across the room, they had to knock me back out and shove a breathing tube back down my throat.

[Chassisman]

Re: THE CLOSEST YOU'VE EVER CAME TO DEATH!

August 19th 1991....night of my 21st B-Day....I was driving in a Demo Derby in Merced,Ca. I had moved the trans cooler inside the car to protect it from damage. Well instead of hard lines leaving the trans and going all the way to the cooler I decided to make splices near the trans with hose......well...I didnt get trans/power steering hose....I used fuel line....BIG MISTAKE. I'm down to the final 3 cars.....my Dad is hung up and watching me do battle with 2 other team cars. Everything is singing hot. I can smell everything to the boiling point. Well...we attach our shifters to the trans in case things break free.....so that leaves a large hole in the trans tunnel that we cover with inner tube. The floor got so hot the duct tape holding the tube down melted so the tube slid of leaving the big hole. As I was pulling a Lincoln that was stuck in my back window of my 72 Chevy Kingswood Wagon the rubber fuel line sprung a leak down next to the trans....it sprayed the entire interior with boiling hot tranny fluid. I was soaked with it down around my legs. As I reached up and hit the kill switch the 350 Buick backfired out the exhaust and ignited the fine mist of trans fluid. Instant Naplam. The entire car seemed to be on fire. I looked up and the whole roof inside was full of flames. I decided....IT's TIME TO GO ! I reached for the release on my 3" lapbelt. And I couldnt find it(dummy me had it against the drivers door instead of dead center). It took what felt like minutes inside that burning car. Well I got the belt undone and dove out of the front window on fire....The track crew shot me with extinguishers ....the worst part was I wear a bubble face shield and they shot dry chem under it and up into my face and eyes. I passed out from the dry chem. They loaded me up and checked me out. My clothes were toast....my tennis shoes were melted....I lost all of the hair on my legs and arms. But by the grace of God I did not have a single severe burn. I did however get a wicked lung infection from the dry chem that damn near killed me 3 weeks later....LOL

I got back to the track later that night in time to share a beer with my Dad.....my Wagon looked like a burnt marshmellow...As we finished that beer my Dad said....Glad your still here......then said...I think it's best we don't tell Mom about tonight. For 7 years my mom never knew how close I was to burning to death. Then on my 28th birthday my brother showed her the video. She cried for 2 hours.....I never drove Derby cars again after seeing her cry like that.

[JOES66FURY]

Re: THE CLOSEST YOU'VE EVER CAME TO DEATH!

Clicking off about 80MPH in my truck on I10...the wheel bearing decided to let go, along with the ball joints...Tire and hub, caliper and outer part of front axle went for a short vacation....truck nose dived, ass end came up and I was looking straight down at the road thru the windshield....the ass end fell back down the tire bounced under the left front part of the cab and acted like a skid...I slid off to the side of the road. Pucker factor 9.5

Had my intrepid jacked up in the driveway doing the brakes...no jack stands like an idiot....it fell towards me while my legs were under it...I got out of the way before it landed on me.....


Thats about it...nothing too crazy

[66Fury3]

Re: THE CLOSEST YOU'VE EVER CAME TO DEATH!

September 1986 @3am , while plugging in 440v Refrigerated Containers being off loaded from the ship arrived with no electric cables... Having had this problem before I knew that the longshoreman did not power down the units before removing form the ship..... which meant that there were live 440v cables hanging loose on a steel ship just waiting to kill someone..... I rushed to the ship, yelling about the danger to the Steveador (Man in charge of unloading the ship) as I climbed up the gangway and to the hole where they were working..... I had to climb up 3 levels of contaimers to get to the area where they were working..... I was warning them about the live 440v cable's..... As this was going on, I was unaware that the Crane operator was not told to stop unloading the ship... a container from the hole came up and towards me about 18" off the top of the containers I was standing on..... I was 125 feet off the dock and 8 feet from the edge....... I nosed dived flat and the container brushed me leaving grease strips on my back.... It scared the shit out of me!!!!!!
Needless to say I was pissed at the Steveador and almost kicked his ass.......

[Monk]

Re: THE CLOSEST YOU'VE EVER CAME TO DEATH!

Summer of '66

Coming back from local drive in....about 10 miles
out of town

On a long straight stretch back to town.....riding shotgun in my
buddies '66 Charger
We start to pass a '65 Vette on the way back.....guy we both know.. the race
is on

We reach about 115 mph when stretch runs out and headlights
come over the hill

We left the road at the last minute to avoid collision...probably looking like the Dukes of Hazzard...
into a garden nursery
The soft dirt really saved our ass and the car

I didn't have my seat belt on and for a minute my thoughts
were 'whats a head on collision gonna feel like'

The next night we were pulled over by the Missouri Highway Patrol to
let us know it was his headlights we saw

He was wondering where we went