These people have experienced terrifying situations that could've ended terribly, but they miraculously escaped and survived.
Terror Behind The Wheel
“Mom had a seizure while driving and I was in the passenger seat. Couldn’t reach the brakes so tried to take the wheel and do the best I could. Drove into a guard rail just before a pretty steep cliff and went under it, but it stopped us before we went over.”
Jumped By Strangers
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‘A friend and I were jumped by 4 grown men and accused of selling illegal substances, which was totally untrue. Unfortunately, this was on the top floor of a 5-story building. My friend was punched but escaped, I was cornered.
These 4 grown men kicked me all over the body and head before eventually telling me to get on my feet as I was to be thrown over the balcony. No way was I getting up but literally just as I was dragged to my feet the police showed up.
As soon as I was in front, I ran as fast as I could to the police who had gone into the shop on the ground floor presumably to find whoever had called them as they must have been alerted by my screams.
It messed me up for a long time and even now, 22 years later, I am still uncomfortable in situations with groups of people who I don’t know.”
The Frozen Pond Wasn’t As Solid As They Thought…
“When I was 12, 3 of my friends and I were playing near a pond near our house on a snow day. My friend threw my brand new Nerf football onto the snow-covered ice (he was a jerk) playing keep away and I went out to get it. I was 12 and grew up in New England, I knew better, but it was brand new!
The ice under the snow wasn’t thick enough and it was a deeper part of the pond where I couldn’t touch the bottom standing but only to bob up and down. The water was so cold though and all my clothes made me so heavy I couldn’t keep doing it. I kind of held the ice but it kept breaking. I’ve been cold before, but never that kind of cold. One younger friend ran home, not to get help, just ran to avoid getting in trouble. One friend ran to a house to have someone call 911 and the other friend, the one who threw it, just started to yell for help (there were houses nearby). Luckily eventually one neighbor was a teacher and was home because of the snow day and came out. He ran out and threw a rope to me but I couldn’t hold onto that. My brain knew what to do, my body just couldn’t. I was out there a while now and was fading, so he ran out and slid on his stomach, I tried reaching out but couldn’t hold onto him. He grabbed my coat and just started sliding back.
By now the woman who called 911 was out there with my friend’s mom and they started making a chain and pulled me out. I remember the guy carrying me into his house and everything getting pulled off me, I couldn’t feel it but I could see it. I remember seeing myself naked before they found blankets and the seeing color of my skin. I looked like ET when they found him in the creek. They threw blankets on me and the whole way to the hospital they were warming me up by holding me and keeping blankets on me. I warmed up and they kept me for observation but, that was pretty close.”
She Thought He Just Had A Common Cold!
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“About 2 years ago, I had a cold; I didn’t think much about it except something along the lines of ‘screw it, it sucks but it will go away.’
Well, 10 days later, it was still there and had gotten worse but it still wasn’t going to keep me down! I went out with a couple of friends, met a guy and ended up sleeping with him. It was ok, nothing spectacular but I was kind of out of breath. I just ignored it.
The next day I met the same guy for lunch and ended up at his place again. Same thing happened, I was completely out of breath again but this was much worse. Guy noticed and thought it was his ‘spectacular’ performance. I knew it wasn’t that good.
After I left, I thought maybe I should stop at one of those walk-in clinics at Walgreen’s or CVS. I tried to make an appointment but there were no openings. I was about to just go home when I drove by an urgent care place and decided to stop. By this point, I was still out of breath but naive as to what could be going on.
I checked in and they took me right away despite having a pretty busy waiting room. They took my vitals and my blood pressure was 80/50 and my oxygen level was in the low 80’s. The nurse was amazed I was still standing. She ran and got a doctor who came running in immediately. She verified my vitals and said I had to get to the emergency room immediately and an ambulance was on the way to take me there. I said I could drive and I was told I would probably pass out shortly so they wouldn’t allow me to drive.
I started to get a little concerned after that.
Things get a little hazy after that but I remember arriving at the ER and being greeted by several doctors. I remember getting X-rays, MRI’s and CT’s.
My mom and friend also showed up. I guess someone had called them since they were my emergency contacts. The last thing I remember is the doctor explaining to them that I had severe pneumonia, both my lungs had collapsed and I was septic. I was in and out of it for several days. I was in the ICU and in isolation for a couple. It took awhile to recover and I still have some lasting damage but for the most part, made a full recovery.
On the positive side, since I was in the hospital for so long, I was able to quit smoking and I have never gone back.
I was told after I got out of the hospital that had I gone home that night instead of getting the medical help, I probably would not have made it.”
The Worst Driver Ever
“Some friends and I used to go to the beach to play volleyball some evenings.
One night, one of the guys and I walked over to a gas station across the road in between games to get a snack. A minute or two later, someone pulled up in a car. When we went to go back, the chick driving (who no one really knew that well) was like: ‘Hey, just hop on the trunk and hold on! It’s just right back across the road.’ So my friend and I are like ok cool and hop on. Well, this girl had the brilliant idea that once we were in the parking lot to take a turn going about 40 mph thinking it would be funny. My friend and I both got flung off the back of the car. Luckily, he landed in the grass but still ended up breaking his arm. Me on the other hand, I was thrown onto the pavement where I cracked my head open, broke a collarbone, ankle, and 3 ribs. I went unconscious, and from what I was told, one of my friends literally sat there holding the back of my head together while they waited for medics to arrive. I had to get life-flighted to a hospital about an hour away. I had 2 or 3 seizures on the way.
When I came around in the hospital, later that evening, the doctor told me that had my friend not been holding my head together or had the medics shown up like 5 minutes after they did, I probably wouldn’t have made it. But all is well now. Actually, the dumb girl LEFT after she saw how bad what she had done was, and actually ended up getting arrested and charged with something or another. The last I heard she was in jail but that was like 2-3 years ago.”
The Accident That Led To Him Waking Up In The Hospital
“During gym class in high school, I was shot with a bow and arrow. My friend’s story was that he was messing around with the draw on his bow while I was collecting my arrows and he stepped on a mound of fire ants and accidentally let one fly. I just remember it feeling like I got punched in the chest really hard and then it felt very hot and the next thing I remember I’m waking up in the hospital.
The arrow hit me in the chest and luckily missed my vital organs so I made a full recovery. Even though I forgave him, my friend who fired the shot and I no longer speak…”
Dangers Of A Capsized Boat
“I was 17 years old and I was sailing along solo in my boat during a race. I was kind of in the middle of the pack, but I’d gone a different tack to everyone else and so was quite far away from them all.
Then I capsized. Usually, this is no big deal, happens relatively frequently. The only problem was this time the boom swung around and hit me on the head on the way down, throwing me into the water and leaving me stuck in the ropes. I was underwater, feeling groggy from the blow to my head, but remembered the training and calmly tried to untangle myself, which I managed. At this point, I tried to surface, as I was now free and running out of the air.
The way the boat had gone down had ended up with me underneath the sail, which itself was now covered with (ridiculously heavy) water. I started panicking and trying to force the sail up with me under it, unable to breathe. I realized I’d never get up so I tried to calm down again and started struggling to swim along under it (swimming underwater, wearing a life jacket SUCKS by the way). I realized the current was pushing the boat along with me and trapping me under the sail, so I did the only thing I could think of: I tried to force myself further underwater, swimming down and pushing my feet on the sail.
You see, the current is actually weaker further down than it is on the surface, so my hope was to let the boat drift over me as I drifted in the weaker current.
I held there for a few more seconds, still not having breathed in I don’t know how long, before clawing my way back up – if I didn’t hit the air, I knew I’d die. Thank god the current higher up had pushed the boat over my head, leaving me relatively close by. I grabbed onto the boat (now fully upside down) and kind of pulled myself onto it.
After a few minutes spluttering up water and gasping, I righted the boat and just lay inside, sails and ropes flapping everywhere, just glad to be alive.”
Snakes In Australia
“I was working in Queensland, Australia at a beautiful hotel resort. I was a dishwasher, mind-numbing boring job but popped my tunes on and went at it. We, the staff, lived on the outskirts of the resort in a staff house and it was about a 15-minute walk from the main complex with the restaurant and whatnot.
I finished up around midnight most nights and would walk back to the house. The walk was relatively straightforward but about halfway back, there were no more lights (there weren’t any guest rooms that far out). At first, it was scary and I’d get my phone out to light the way, but then I started getting used to it and then just going for it without the phone, quite enjoying the serenity of the darkness and the stars in the sky.
So anyway, one of the waiters wanted to use the computer at the complex one night after service and said to go and get him when I’d finished so we could walk back together. Cool, I said. So we’re heading back, get halfway, and I’ve found myself writing an elaborate text to someone, subconsciously navigating with Alfie just behind, torch on. The way he said these words still make me shudder: ‘Scott. Stop.’ That was it but that was all I needed. I could tell that he was scared and his self-control was on the verge and I just froze.
It took a couple of seconds as I had a bright phone screen in my face but once my eyes adjusted, there, 2 steps on from where I was, was a long, dark rope-like object silently and slowly swerving its way across the road. My heart was pounding, it was brown with a triangular-ish head and it was as if time stood still as this snake, so freakin’ slowly slithered across in front of me (I was later to find out that I was lucky it was a cold night and that made him less energetic).
Telling my tale in the morning to the locals, they said I would have been in deep trouble if I had trodden on that, like dead, horribly dead. They put a warning out that a poisonous snake had been spotted in the area.
Here’s the sad part – Alfie saved my life, undoubtedly. About a year or so later, he was diagnosed with cancer and started a crowd-funder to try an experimental treatment in the US and whilst I did donate money, I felt, and still feel, absolutely shameful not being able to do anything else – he died not long after.”
Rushed Into Immediate Surgery!
“So when I was 10, I had just gotten back from a Cub Scout camping trip in the middle of nowhere Ohio. There was no phone service and we were over an hour away from the nearest place with phone service. It was the day after and I was out with my dad picking up firewood when my stomach just started hurting so much as if I was taking the biggest dump of my 10-year-old life. I had to lay down in the back of the truck, my mom felt bad for me, my dad thought I was faking. He was in a bad mood for the rest of the day.
Anyway, I got home about 3 hours later, still feeling terrible and it had gotten even worse. I then proceed to sit on the toilet for another hour, in agonizing pain trying to push out as I thought it would help. My mom comes in and asks if she can put two fingers up against my lower waist and push for a second, she does so, and I feel the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my entire life. I get rushed to children’s hospital and I lay in my mom’s lap for 3 hours in horrible pain waiting to get in to see a doctor.
When I finally do get in, they do an ultrasound on my lower chest and waist, and I hear the nurse gasp, my mom says: ‘Oh no…’ The nurse tells her that the appendix is supposed to as big around as your pinky finger, mine was about an inch and a half in diameter, and I was rushed into surgery. I was in so much pain that, normally 10-year-old me was absolutely terrified of needles, I kicked a nurse in the chest multiple times last time I had to have a shot, that I just let them stick the IV in without fighting. I was so exhausted from waiting and the pain that I passed out before they put the mask on.
Before my mom called my dad, my dad still thought I was faking until she yelled at him to get down to the hospital. I wake up the next morning and look over to my dad, and the first words I say to him were: ‘I told you so.’
It’s hilarious looking back on it but also terrifying because, normally, symptoms last 24 hours, mine lasted 10. I later learned I was 2 hours away from the appendix bursting, it was even scarier thinking that I was just at a Cub Scout camp miles and miles away from help, and I would’ve died there more than likely.”
Scuba Diving In Malaysia
“I was scuba diving in Malaysia at about 20m (not very deep). I am not a very experienced diver, but I have my advance PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) certificate and am fairly confident. We were a small group diving in an area with many ‘swim throughs.’ To give you an idea of what a swim through is, it’s a little like a cave on the ocean floor that you can swim into and then eventually you can swim out of (hence the appropriately descriptive name ‘swim through’).
So swim throughs are really fun because you can see lots of cool stuff in them. We’d done a few already and were having a good time when we reached one that my instructor signaled was very narrow. A couple of people in the group skipped it, but the rest of us decided to go for it. The instructor and another guy went first and I followed. It was super narrow and maybe 10 meters long. I swam into it a few meters and thought I could see the exit a few meters further ahead of me. Except the exit looked way too narrow. It looked about wide enough for a normal human to fit through, not a human who was carrying a scuba tank on their bank.
Anyway, my logic was ‘well, it must be big enough because the other guys swam through just fine’.
Except it wasn’t big enough. I swam into the hole and heard my tank jam. I was totally stuck – wedged into the hole between these rocks. And then I began to panic – which is one of the worst things you can do when you dive because, aside from preventing you from thinking clearly, you use more oxygen when panicking. In my daze, I tried to push further into the hole and began flapping my fins around like a madman, which caused silt from the ocean floor to cloud my vision. In that moment, I couldn’t move, and I couldn’t see anything and I was totally alone. It was petrifying. All I could think of was how it would be so terrible to drown in this place alone because I was so stupid as to try a swim through that small hole.
The feeling of ‘I’m going to die’ lasted about twenty seconds, but felt much longer. At that moment my brain kicked in and I realized that I needed to stop kicking the floor. Once I could see again, I gained a ton of calm and rational reasoning and realized that I could probably just back out of the hole carefully. And that’s what I did. I was still worried that I might not be able to get free, but fortunately, I could.
I backed up about three meters or so and then looked to my left. There was the actual exit to the swim through – I had missed it in my excitement. It was totally fine to swim through. When I escaped, I saw my instructor who looked mildly panicked. When we were back on the boat, he told me that he’d seen my bubbles and knew I’d gone the wrong way.”
Don’t Joke Around On Trains…
“I was hanging out in a train yard at like 1 am with my boyfriend in high school. We climbed on top of a train that had two storage containers stacked (so it was probably about 30-feet off the ground) to watch the stars. We really didn’t expect the train to start moving because we had watched some other trains take off and we could see the lights and stuff come on well beforehand.
Well, this one started moving with no warning at all so we had to scramble down as fast as we could. It was heading downhill-ish so we had to move really fast or we weren’t going to make it. My boyfriend did fine coming down to the little platform between the cars because he’s tall, but I’m more than a foot shorter than him so I missed the footing and slipped down the last five feet or so.
He had already jumped off because space was small and he had to get out of my way before I reached it. I hit the platform and stumbled back and my foot went over the edge into the gap between the cars. I was so freaking close to slipping into the gap and being crushed under the train that was now moving pretty fast. I still had the room with my other foot so I pushed as hard as a could and kind of launched myself to the side where I tumbled down the gravel hill.
I had some cuts and bruises but other than that I was completely fine. I started laughing uncontrollably and basically thought, ‘What a cool thing that just happened! I could have died!’ But then I had nightmares about being crushed by a train for like a month. Stupidest thing I’ve ever done and I’m never gonna mess with trains again.”
Surfing During A Hurricane
“It was 2004, the year where Florida got 4 hurricanes in a season (Ivan, Charlie, Frances, and another one). It was a few days before Ivan, so we were off school and the house had already been prepped for evacuation so we were just kind of hanging out. Being the bored/stupid 14-year-old kid that I was, I called up my buddy and we decided to go surfing.
I grew up surfing, but the waves in Florida never got that big unless there was something like a tropical storm/hurricane offshore. I had surfed a few hurricane swells before, but nothing like this. The waves were about 8 feet that day, more than double what I normally surf and the frequency was unbelievable.
After an exhausting 15 minutes of battling the surf, we made it out past the break line. I had never felt more tired and more accomplished in my life to that point. We were two of maybe 15 people that made it out, and the youngest people to do so by at least a decade.
After catching our breath for a few minutes we were ready to start catching some waves. My buddy moves on the first wave of a pretty big set moving in, and I decide to go on the 2nd. It looks like it’s going to have a nice break, and I’m in perfect position to catch it. I start paddling and catch it relatively easily. As soon as I start to stand up, I notice that the entire wave is about to ‘close out’ (break all at once), but I’m pretty much committed at this point. I took a huge breath of air and tried to jump over the back of the wave before I dropped in, but I didn’t clear it and was swept over the top of a crashing 8-foot wave.
I had never been thrashed that bad by the water. The next thing I knew, I was somewhere underwater with no idea of which way was up. After a few seconds, I figured out which way I needed to swim by letting my surfboard float to the top and following my leash. I surface next to my board and throw myself over the top of it, surfboard parallel to the beach with my back to the waves, completely forgetting where I was in regards to the break. I had barely gotten a breath in before the next wave was on me, throwing me off my board and pushing me down into the break. At this point, I’m almost completely out of breath and starting to really panic. My heart is beating a mile a minute, and I’m frantically grasping at pitch black water trying to find my leash. I eventually find it and pull/swim myself to the top. This time I’m ready – I throw myself on my board and make sure its perpendicular to the beach. The next wave hits me and I hold on for dear life and ride the whitewash to shore on my stomach. I could barely stand when I got to the beach.
That was the last time I ever screwed around with hurricane waves.”
Getting Hit With A Golf Ball
“When I was 8, I was at a driving range hitting golf balls with my older brother who was 19 and quite good. It was just me and him there since my dad was playing in a small tournament on the course and we were waiting for him to get done.
I hit a crappy shot that went like 15 feet in front of me to the right and I decided it was far enough away from my brother that he wouldn’t hit me when I went to go get it, and like I said, he was a good player. The last thing I remember was bending down to pick up my ball.
Apparently, my brother had a rare bad swing and his ball hit me very hard on the side of my head. I was knocked out immediately. My body went into the fencing response as a result of the trauma and my brother thought I was having a seizure. He assumed the worst, thinking it hit my temple and he really thought he had killed me. He stayed as calm as he could and called 911 and also tried to get a hold of our dad.
I woke up to my dad and brother next to me and my brother started bawling his eyes out saying how sorry he was and then I started crying too. I did have a concussion and eating for the next two weeks hurt my jaw because of the bruise. I learned my lesson and my older brother is currently an amateur on the PGA tour so I guess it had a happy ending.”