the closest you have ever been to death?

I nearly drowned when I was 13 because someone else was "horsing around". It was very nearly 7 years ago now but it's still scary.

I'm getting on though - I haven't really heard from her apart from some dropping out of college (British version of college which is post-GCSE education) and **** like that so I think I came off the better person in the long run.
 
Oh wait, I also forgot the time I got caught in a gang crossfire while talking a walk in Silver Lake. Two cars pulled up alongside me and started blasting at each other.
 
My deal involves an industrial shredder. . . . .

Worked in a board plant that made 4x8 fiberboard from sugarcane bagasse (the leftover strands after the juice is squeezed out).

They would take the bagasse and bail it, store it, then take it to the dryer section of the plant to shred it and pass the fibers through a dryer system. I worked as the lead dryer operator/supervisor and the shredder would get clogged a lot. The shredder could almost fit a small car into it and had five ripper shafts that would grab the bails and pull them in and the middle shaft would shred. Anyway there was a clog and a backup of material so I stopped the conveyor and my helper and I went up (while leaving the shredder running) and pushed the backed up material into the shredder. There was only two problem bails left that caused the problem that were lodged in the throat of the shredder so I thought, hey I'll just lean over and kick one of the bails and it'll go down.

It did, but in the process it caught my leg between the 2 bails and down I was going. I told my helper to go turn it off since I knew that him trying to free me was wasting time that he could be using to get to the emergency stop. I knew if he could get to it I would be ok, I had taught him everything about the system. I never really thought about dying, but thought that if it finally chewed enough of the bail and started to catch my leg, how would they get me out and how mangled would I be. I screamed a few times to hurry so I'm sure he heard that as he ran to the e stop. Finally I heard the shafts stopping (it was geared really low so it took a while to stop). I yelled for my guy to come and get me as my foot was caught, but loosened because of the movement of the bails on the way down. He had already ran into the plant to get help so I figured I'd chill while waiting.

Everyone gets to the dryer area and were debating who was going to go up the conveyor to see if I was ok, or cut in half, or nothing there at all if ya catch my drift. I was silent so they didn't hear anything. There was a guy from Nicaraguiqa who came up to see. I told him I was ok and I just needed a little help to get out. My helper had to take the rest of the day off because he was so freaked out by the whole thing. The last thing he saw was me going down. We both knew what the shredder was capable of. There was once a 1" piece of steel plate that went through and the blades chewed a hole in it. After the ordeal was over I went right back to work and re-started the system. I was alone and looked at the shredder and the worst felling came over me as I thought about if I had been alone. . . . . . my body, (or what was left of it) would have fit into a five gallon bucket.

I spoke to the shredder engineer who came to visit two weeks after (I had met him before) and after I shook his hand he told me it was great to able to do that as most cases don't turn out like mine. I was lucky. Never again did I put a companies production over my personal safety.

Glad to be typing this.
 
Batutta said:
Oh wait, I also forgot the time I got caught in a gang crossfire while talking a walk in Silver Lake. Two cars pulled up alongside me and started blasting at each other.
Click to expand...


Nice

I forgot, I've had a .357 Magnum put to my head while repo'ing a car. Good times.
 
I got a last minute offer to take some video of this lakehouse for a project... from the ownser's uncles's helicopter. He'd called me over to the chopper and yelled the offer and I was so excited, I exited the helicopter at a run... heading towards the tail rotor. Somehow I managed to be not clumsy. I didn't trip and fall forward, nor did I keep running. I froze in my tracks about 3 feet from the blades... then went and got the camera, got chewed out by my wife (who had been watching) and then got chewed out by the pilot. But I was glad to listen. The alternative would have sucked.

Driving back to Sonoma county one night from San Francisco. It was raining like hell, water coming down in sheets, ann there I am driving my little Geo Metro and not completely sober. It had been a VERY good party. Anyway, there were HUGE puddles of water on the road so naturally I was a little nervous, but for some reason I'm pushing the Geo Metro up to 85MPH... concrete barricade on my left, open road to my right... and I hit a puddle that was more like a lake. Hydoplaning took over. My tail end swerved right, with me looking directly at the concrete barrier... then somehow, I got it (hah!) to turn back left, and I'm looking out over open freeway, then it started to straighten out... and BOOM! right back on the road again and solid land, still going forward as if it never even happened.

When I was 8 there was a hill that w used to like to take our bikes out to. It was a good hill, not too steep that you could get some distance from if you built up enough speed at the start... you could coast for about 2 miles without ever having to pedal again. Except that it crossed one main road, and then one major intersection. This is in Barbados so it was a rural area. This one day I got on my bike and at about halfway down ( I still remember this clearly) I just kind of tuned out... When I woke up, I had crashed into my own mother's motorcycle (streetbike, not some little scooter) and was lying on the side of the road with people all around. Apparently my mom said that I'd just come straight at her, didn't make an effort to turn, slow down or nothing, eyes wide open. If she hadn;t turned, she would have killed me. Spent a couple days in the hospital, swollen knee, twisted ankle.

Discovered I was allergic to shrimp by eating said shrimp. Couldn't breathe... the only thing that saved my life was having my asthma inhaler... that at least opened up my airways so I could breathe.

Drowned when I was 14. I came back though.
 
Drowned?

Drowned?

I only nearly drowned but it is kinda haunting. I got picked on throughout primary/secondary school and 6th form. At the time, I thought I'd had everything that could've happened but it wasn't the case. The person only got suspended for saying **** to a teacher. Which hurt considering that she hit me, pushed me in the water and then shoved me under holding my neck.

Wow this is pretty morbid.
 
hmmm had a few:

(1) electrocuted x 3

(2) sliced foot and nearly bleed to death.

(3) nearly drowned.

(4) car crash x 2 (1 = car totaled) witnessed bullet time..

(5) run over by car (age 7)

(6) crash bicycle into ditch at bottom of hill, witnessed life flash before me..

hmmm..
 
I got hit by a car while doing 25+ mph down a hill on my bike. hit front wheel first, flew over the car, landed about 20' down the hill, tucked and rolled. I was able to drag myself and my totalled bike out of the street, but everything suddenly got very bright and I had to just lay down and pass out for 2-3 minutes due tot he shock/violence of the ordeal. I wasnt wearin a helmet and if I hadn't of had so much experience falling from my bike ( I freeride/race DH) , it could of been much worse. my injury's were superficial - some minor road rash on my left arm, and a bruised thigh. bike was completely totalled. both wheels taco'd, frame and fork bent, cranks bent - I just left it on the street. Its the scariest experience of my life, even though I've fallen much harder before and broken a couple bones.
 
Mine was on a film, a western. A Shotmaker arm broke with me strapped in it. I was slammed to the ground. I spent the next seven weeks in a hospital.
 
I once sank on a fishing boat and had to shoot a shark with a rifle; luckily I put a tank in his mouth of compressed air.
 
....robbed at gunpoint while bartending....he runs in, fires a shot over everyone's head, the comes behind the bar and shoves the gun in my face... then my temple and jaw...then my ribs....all while wired on something and shaking...his eyes were crazy... then after he takes the cash, pistol butts me to the floor and puts the gun to my head before he runs out and fires a 2nd shot as he gets up to leave.... 2 shots fired and no one hit....never squeezed my ass cheeks harder in my life...
 
J.R., that wasn't a shark.

jaws_kitten_2.jpg
 
Two.

A couple years ago, I had an appointment at a busy construction site at a home on a Mill Valley, CA hillside. The only parking was right along the curb of the carport with my driver-side door opening out along a low hedge. Well, turns out it wasn't a low hedge but the neatly pruned tops of 15' privet trees. I slipped on the curb as I exited my van and freefell backwards between the branches. Landed on my back, head below feet, about 10 feet below the curb. That was kind of scary, but I actually was completely unhurt. But then I had kind of a hard time wriggling out of my upside-down position. I then realized I was wedged between two privet stumps, each about 2" thick and 18" tall, and cut to resemble pointed spikes. Each was wedged against one of my arm pits.


In '87, I was driving through the desert southwest. One afternoon as I was traveling through A Navajo reservation, the skies opened-up, unloading the fiercest downpour I have ever experienced. I thought it wise to slow down. I could barely see the road even with my wipers set at their fastest. Problem was, the guy driving the bobtail truck behind me was tailgating like a MF. I started to say to myself "what the hell, if some guy in a bobtail can drive 50 MPH in this rain, surely I have nothing to worry about". Just as I started to speed-up to get out from under my rear companion my truck seemed to lose power. Then it suddenly seemed as I was floating down the highway, completely unable to influence my direction. I was nearly completely sideways as I crossed the yellow line. I could barely make out through the passenger window the headlights of the oncoming car. Completely impotent at having any influence on my fate I closed my eyes, hunched-down in my seat, grabbed the wheel for dear life and screamed unmentionables at the top of my lungs. An eternity passed as the oncoming car's horn sang its doppler song. I opened my eyes as my truck began violently shaking like a Chilean bunk bed. I was now sliding to a stop, tailgate-first, in the muddy bog of a shoulder on the opposite side of the road.

After collecting myself and with only the sound of the pounding rain on my roof, I looked out my window to see the bobtail truck pulled-over. Turns out he was tailgating me as a survival strategy, relying on me to clear tire tracks so he could maintain traction.

I managed to get out of the shoulder with four-wheel drive, but I had to limp to the nearest underpass because the mud lining the insides of my rims threw them so out of balance that anything over 15 MPH was like driving along a dry riverbed.
 
1. Nearly drowned in a 12 ft pool as a child, was saved by my cousin.

2. Went 21 days without sleep, serious crap here.

3. Toxicity thyroid type storm which can lead to death if not treated due to Grave's Disease.

The rest are just bumps, bruises, nerve pain, broken bones, ruined tendons/ligaments, etc.


***

Oh and after eating at Taco Bell, saving 4 burritos having one a day caused such severe constipation
and pain I had to go to ER. Nurse told me never to eat there again. Curse TACO BELL!
 
I got my pilots license about 15 years ago. I had reached the point in my training where I was doing solo flights, and was doing touch and gos at the airport, practicing take-offs and landings.

Coming in for one of my landings, I flared a little to high. This caused the plane (Cessna 172) to drop hard onto the rear wheels, which started me wheelbarrowing. Basically, the rear wheels are mounted on leaf springs, so hitting hard caused the back end of the plane to bounce up, and the front to drop down hitting the runway solely on the single front wheel. This hit hard enough to bounce the plane back onto the backwheels, then onto the front, and back and forth and back and forth. The whole plane was rocking like a small ship in rough seas, hitting harder and harder each time, and my view is rapidly alternating between cement and sky.

After the second or third bounce I realized there was no way I was settling this thing down onto the runway. I gunned the throttle, and did my best to hold it level and keep the nose down to build speed and not stall out. After what felt like a long few minutes of bouncing (really only another few seconds), she levelled out a few feet off the ground doing about 70. It took another few seconds to gather my wits, then I started my climbout. I don't think I started breathing again till I hit 1000 feet.
 
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