Back when I was a welder, I was trying to cut something with an angle grinder in an awkward position.

I guess my brain was turned off that day because I decided to grind with the sparks going directly away from me.

So of course, the disc binded, and sent the angle grinder directly at my face.

Thank god I was wearing a face shield, at least. In about 0.1 seconds, my face shield was cut entirely in half.

The fun didn't stop there, though, because I had the trigger lock on (again, genius). So it was still spinning at full force after it jumped out of my hands.

Also, I was on a ladder, so here I am, trying to throw the grinder away from my with my arms, on top of a ladder, all the while the cutting disc is going absolutely out of control essentially in full contact with my face, neck, chest, and arms.

Finally I manage to push it off of me, it falls to the floor and the disc breaks. I finally get off the ladder and unplug the grinder.

At this point, I can see that my face shield is cut clean down the middle. I'm thinking 1000% I'm gonna be needing an urgent hospital visit. I take off the face shield, and carefully touch my face... No blood... I take out my phone and use it as a mirror, not a scratch... I meticulously check the rest of my body... nothing.

Turns out, after all that, the only damage was to the disc and the face shield.

I can't even explain how I felt after that. I spent the rest of the day in an almost out-of-body experience, and was shaken for a few weeks at least. I beat myself up a lot for being so stupid, and I literally couldn't believe how lucky I was. I still can't believe it.

Probably five or six years ago when I was around 20 I went with my Uncle and his family to the beach. After we were finished and the sun began to go down, we washed off in our swimsuits in the outdoor showers.

Nearby they had some benches to sit on that were made out of the same concrete as the ground, smoothly sloping up out of it to form each bench. I was walking across one of these waiting for the rest of the family to finish rinsing off, and extremely stupidly walked down the end, down the slope, which, of course, was completely slick wet from being near the showers.

As soon as my first foot touches the slope, I slip backwards, with just enough time before impact to think "I really fucked up, this might not be good at all..."

The back of my head impacted the concrete slope of the bench, and it hurt like a mother fucker, but I didn't lose consciousness or awareness. After gripping my head and cursing for a few seconds my Uncle arrived at me and found my head to be bleeding, but the cut was not so wide as to need stitches.

We returned to his house nearby and after my head clotted up, i realized I needed to drive myself home, 40 minutes away on the freeway, and I felt... a bit dazed after the impact. I didn't feel sleepy at all, and after waiting for about half an hour, I decided I had to go home. I felt a little foggy until the next day, or maybe I'm just that foggy now and Im used to it.

There's a scar where hair doesn't grow, and sometimes I wonder if my universe forked to keep me alive somehow and I was supposed to just die instead, because it was entirely created by my idiocy and if seems silly I got that lucky. Sometimes I have dreams still where I'll slip on something and relive the sequence of slipping, accepting the imminent possibility of death, and everything sort of slows down increasingly until I fade to white and wake up.

I was going 45 mph on a main road, when an 18 year old trying to show off for his girlfriend, blew threw a stop sign on a residential road and t-boned me going 80 mph. I was one of the luckier victims, with emergency surgery, fractures and breaks everywhere, loss of use of two fingers, and nerve damage in all of my limbs.

The driver's girlfriend did not survive, and my coworker, who was in the car with me, had every rib shatter and his spine broken. 3 years later, he's still on oxy (he had to get special approval and prove that it wasn't addiction).

I don't remember the crash itself, but I remember a fire and waking up to my coworker covered in blood, screaming and delirious. I remember falling in and out of conciousness while I was moved from room to room to get emergency care for the next 3 days. Most of all, I remember the relief at hearing my coworker's voice after 4 days, now knowing that he was still alive.

Had the opportunity to fly in a small vintage airplane (not sure what kind). It was awesome but the following day we got information that the next flight crashed and all passengers died.

The most recent what the severe and sudden blood pressure drop during labor for my two-month-old son. You never want to hear a nurse call people into the room while saying the word "emergency," especially when you are barely able to focus enough to hear anything at all.

Pregnancy and L&D is so dangerous. Not enough people give it the weight it deserves.

Closest would probably when I hung myself from a noose over a stairwell and fully blacked out but the rope I used had so much stretch that I actually fell out of it, fell down the stairs and hit my head on a glass doorknob giving me amnesia. Probably would be dead if I wasn't an idiot about rope choice.

Other than that I mean I have had about 16 concussions and the one I got for accidentally skiing of a cliff and plummeting down below would be second, I'm lucky I didn't seriously injure myself other than the concussion and that people found me because I landed off to the side of another ski trail.

I was on a class trip out on Kjerragbolten in Norway. It is a rock wedged in a cracked mountain, leaving several hundred meters of freefall on either side of the rock. It was a particularily windy day, but somehow our teacher allowed us to walk out on it. I remember walking out on it, and getting basically scarred for life about heights, especially since the quick gusts that day could easily have killed me.

Here is a decent POV video of what I experienced (the video is not mine) https://youtu.be/VqzoC_C2RaI?si=BhECeXwgSu423RfJ

A few months later, our teacher left her position, and we never really knew why she left, but I assume some of the parents informed the board about her recklessness at that trip.

Hiking in remote Tasmania, 4 hours from anyone else, let alone help and almost stepped on a tiger snake. Thankful that they left me be to enjoy the rest of my walking tour.

Australia tried to kill me a few times.

On April Fools Day 2006, I woke up to what I later found out was a spontaneously collapsed lung.

Anyone who's experienced a collapsed lung can assure you the treatment is brutal. They basically cut open your chest between two of your ribs (on the affected side), insert a tube and sew it in place, then apply a light vacuum on that tube to suck out the air and fluid between your chest cavity and lung, causing your lung to re-inflate. You also go through a powerful round of antibiotics and are put on oxygen to make up for your 50% reduced lung function. The suction process takes about a week, and the pain is excruciating and immune to powerful pain killers.

I would have died from this without the emergency surgery and treatment, and if it had been just 60 years earlier, a collapsed lung would have been a death sentence.

When i was really young, i jumped in front of a car thinking i could jump on top of it and look really cool

I have died 3 times. I was a very premature birth and spent my first year in nicu. My mother told me I had died 3 time and been brought back. I had independent verification from my aunt but no documentation for proof.

Some kid got angry and sat on my head underwater. He was several years older and much bigger (I was 7 he was maybe 11 or 12). He was mad because I confronted him about stealing my toys (little miniature transformers not expensive but theft is theft. He had been accusedof theft by others but my Mom thought he was just being bullied, he had a cleft lip, and I should try to be his friend). Both our families went to the lake for the weekend and he was playing with one in the water and for some reason either didn't think I'd see him playing with it or wanted me to be mad. I said I was going to tell on him and he grabbed me and shoved my face into the sand in two foot deep water and sat on my head.

Luckily there was a bystander who stopped it, but that fucker was totally prepared to murder me over some plastic. I later found out he had done similarly violent stuff to other kids after I stopped being around him.

15 year old me tried to drink a bottle of gin (because I tought it would make me even more cool). Woke up in the hospital the next day, was asked if it was an attempted suicide. I didn't even know you could die from alcohol poisoning. One year later I crashed my friends car upside down into a canal (back then the minimum age where you learnt to drive was 18 years old in my country). I did some pretty dumb things as a kid.

My parents sent me to Jesus camp when I was in high school. This particular camp was one where kids would go on week long excursions. I didn't jive with the jesus stuff, but a week of camping and swimming in lakes was great.

This particular year I did a week of biking and climbing. We practiced at the rock wall and got our bearings and we were signed off by some climbing instructor. We then went on the road. Six days later, we arrived at the rock face we were to climb. We started at the top, dropped our gear, then half of us hiked down and our belays hung out on top to help us back up.

I did my climb. It was uneventful but fun. Then it was my turn to belay.

We did everything with just climbing ropes and carabiners. No additional equipment. We were to tie off onto a tree or boulder on the summit and make a particular kind of loop around ourselves that wouldn't allow it to constrict and hurt us if we were hauling the person below up the face. Nbd I get it all set up and we move on.

Well, my climbing buddy was picked randomly and it was the fat girl with homesickness. She finally stopped moaning and decided to give it a shot. I was happy for her and got ready. She hiked down and got herself ready.

"On belay!" I check my stuff, see it's good "Belay on!"

She starts climbing. But she couldn't get past the first major rock and she decided to quit. Oh well.

Then I turned around and found my support rope wasn't tied around the tree and I would've been yanked off of a 60 foot rock face the first time she slipped.

For me it was while hiking. It got dark but I wanted to find some nice camping spot so just kept walking. At one point the path got really narrow and pitch black on both sides but I never saw anything remotely dangerous in those mountains so I just kept walking. After some time it got a bit more vertical but I still couldn't see anything dangerous so I just kept traversing it. Then one hold broke off and I fell backwards, landed on a small ledge half a meter lower and just stopped. I decided it's getting silly so I just found small flat surface and slept there. In the morning I saw were I was and the slope where I almost fell had like 50 meters and was almost vertical. I really don't know but I think if I didn't stick the first small fall I wouldn't be able to stop until the very bottom. 50 m rolling down a rocky hill, alone, in the middle of no where. Yeah, I would probably be dead. So it was couple centimeters really.

Later I learned that this spot is pretty well known: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zGhS3-KVuo

When I was a kid, my family took a tour bus of many sights. I think this was near Stonehenge though it's all kind of blurred together into so many various monuments and settlements.

The bus stopped for people to get out and stretch their legs but gave us just 5 min. I desperately, desperately needed to piss. I was like seconds away from wetting myself so I gladly took the opportunity to go pee.

It was open ground everywhere, the tourists from the bus were all around and I didn't want to pee in front of everyone. There was a field nearby of tallish grass just about up to my waist. I thought that might offer some privacy but as I walked in I realised it was still pretty public so I began running further in since my bladder was about to explode. I ran and ran and ran until I decided it was enough and came to a sudden halt.

I looked down as I prepared to unzip and saw that the spot I'd randomly chosen to stop running was one footstep away from a deep, open concrete shaft full of some kind of agricultural slurry at the bottom. Completely impossible to see through the grass, no signage and no protective grating, no obvious way to have climbed out. At the distance I was from the tour group no one would have heard me yelling for help.

After recognising how close this stupid shaft had come to claiming my life, I duly pissed in it. The tour group were already getting in the bus after barely 3 min had passed and I had to run back. I couldn't quite accurately describe what had happened or how close things had come so no one seemed that perturbed by my dice with death in a pit of slurry.

Descending order:

Real bad flu.

Almost run over by a speeding motorist who was running a stop sign while passing the car that was stopped at the stop sign to let me use the crosswalk.

Stray bullet passing close enough to make my ear buzz.

In 2018, I had an infection and I basically couldn't eat or drink almost anything without throwing up, even a sip od water would make me sick for hours. The antibiotics made it even worse.

I lost over 15kg in 2 weeks, I legit thought I was going to die. It took almost 2 years before I could eat normally again.

I hit a deer while riding my motorcycle. I saw it crossing the road from my left, tried to evade it, heard the bang of my fairing hit it, and next thing I knew I was lying on my back looking up at the sky. I ended up with a shattered collarbone, broken ribs, and some road rash on my left side. I have absolutely no memory of falling or sliding at all (and I'm okay with that).

The most likely explanation for why I survived was that I was only going 30 mph (50 kph). That same day another rider wasn't so lucky. There was a husband and wife in one of the cars behind me that were both EMTs and I got experienced care right away. Plus, I was wearing boots, gloves, a leather jacket, and a full-face helmet. The road rash was from my jeans wearing through during the slide.

Took over 400 sedative type pills in under 40 minutes, tried to o.d. homeless shelter staff found my unconscious body covered in puke the next morning. From an hour after taking pills to 18 hours later... complete black, like I wasn't here. Coming back to this reality was slow, painful, surreal. Nurses afterward said I nearly died, or did die and they brought me back.

An experience unlike any other.

I stepped on some Lego 😧

I fell while skiing and slid down the track, head first, towards a large boulder. When I finally stopped and looked up it was around 10cm away from my face.

I never got very close to death but my dad did. Four times.

(The first two were before I was born, so I can only tell from what he told us.)

First one was when he was 4. He fell into a big hole in a circus. He lost audition from his right ear in the accidentt. To this day, he still can only hear from his left ear.

Second one was after graduating high school. Excited from his graduation, he crossed a road on the way back home without paying attention and got hit by a car. Thankfully he hasn't got any long-term sequel from this one. But this served as a lesson, always pay attention when crossing the road.

Third one was during a holiday with all the family 7-8 years ago. He was paragliding when he hit a tree and fell from the height of the tree. Broke an arm and couldn't use it for months after that. He was supposed to drive us back home at the end of the holiday, instead we got back home by taxi. No long-term sequel for him after either.

Fourth one was at the beginning of 2019. It was late in the evening when his vision from the left eye started getting blurry. He called the emergency service and, as during the call he had struggle finding his words, they sent an ambulance. It turned out he had a stroke. Had he thought he was just getting tired and gone to sleep that night, he might not have seen the next day. The day after we tried talking to him, but he was only responding with gibberish. He eventually mostly recovered, but is still sleepier than before his stroke to this day.

got a meningitis once. My mother is a doctor, so when I told her that my cheek felt weird, she had me do all sorts of weird movements with my face, then discovered that half of it was starting to get paralyzed and told the whole family (we were sitting in an italian restaurant) "The boy's got a facial paralysis. Let's all eat up so we can go to the hospital". Since we did not really wait until the symptoms got any worse (what most people probably would have done since no normal person would have spotted the paralysis that early), I was "only" disabled with several neurological issues for about a month. Had I been to the hospital later... well... chances wouldn't have been great.

Driving down the main road from my village to the nearest supermarket and as I was coming around a corner my rear tire clipped a puddle that was in the shadow of a tree and my car started to spin, somehow I managed to recover after fishtailing down the road for about 50 metres but it was terrifying. If I had been slower to react or if I’d hit the brakes at any point I would’ve ended up either in a fence or in someone’s barn.

What's the closest you have ever been to actually dying?

There are a few stories. Since we are in public I'll pick one that won't freak out onlookers.

tldr

I was drawn down on by two soldiers from my own unit because I was unexpectedly left alone in a place where single actors were not allowed. Cold War stuff.

full version

I was working with a [redacted] which had a 2m "dead man zone" around it in this context, demarcated by a paint stripe. SOP was for the guards^1^ to shoot anyone who entered the zone solo; the assumption being someone would only do that for sabotage.

When maintenance or other operations were required, we would

• team up with another person of equal knowledge of the operation
• coordinate to enter the zone simultaneously
• perform the operation. maintaining line of sight with them and their hands
• coordinate to exit simultaneously

I got assigned to do some maint with a squadmate who was both highly intelligent and also a fscking idiot. We entered together, started the task, and then he unexpectedly walked out.^2^ I snapped my head around and saw him passing over the line. The idiot had left me alone in the Dead Man Zone and things were turning to shit. The guards chambered rounds and were yelling at me to get away from the [redacted].

I'd already put my arms up and had started backpedaling out. I don't remember the immediate aftermath clearly because my stressmeter was pegged at aneurysm / this isn't happening. Through some miracle I did not download into my drawers.

I never saw him working in the Zone again so I suppose he was blacklisted from that duty. And no one else ever got left alone in there AFAIK.

^1^ our unit were also providing the guard rotation; no one else had the clearance required to be that close to the [redacted]. So the guards in this story were my buddies and were abso-fscking-lutely willing to shoot. We all were; it was part of the job. We did have infantry support on the outer perimeter but they were so far outside the razorwire fences we never saw them working. Perhaps it was just as well; they told us they hated us every chance they got. They thought we were [insert homophobic slur here] and [insert MOS-specific slur here] because we rarely carried rifles and did not engage in recreational fistfighting. But we were grateful for their protection, however begrudgingly provided.

^2^ IIRC he walked out to get a torque wrench or similar

So, a few years back, probably a bit more than a decade, there was one hell of a conflict on the village I lived, with gangs every corner and tensions rising. The police didn't do shit and crime was through the roof. One day, one of the gang leaders was murdered and a whole war between the gangs developed. And instead of fucking helping, the government decided to isolate the place, no one in and no one out, fuck the civilians. A week into this war, explosives were used to destroy buildings and spread chaos, both from the gangs and military alike. Me and my family hid wherever we could, but it was never enough to be safe for a long period of time. Three of my family members died during the first week, trying to find food. Then the military decided to make an assault with everything they had and raided the entire place. Me, and everyone else, ran for our lives or hid on any building they could. I hid on a small house, but it was not built using the best of materials, and it collapsed over me due to a bomb detonating nearby. I woke up on a hospital about a month later with a broken leg.

I once while hiking in the desert I fell off a sandstone monolith and landed in a bush that broke my fall. If Id missed the bush I'd have hit rocks and died, ants would have eaten my corpse.

I was shot with an rocket propelled grenade once.

I hit by knee really hard on a tree when I went snowboarding I had to wait an hour to have my brother come carry me to his car. If I didn't have my phone with me I could have frozen to death

Tried to crash my car into a bridge stanchion, chickened out, tore the mirror off.