Grim Reaper was knocking!

[Darkwood]

Quirky thread and doesn't have to be Electrical related.

Have you ever been in a situe' where you thought that's it your time is up!!!!!

My 2:-

About 14 we were playing dare in winter to cross the local dam that had frozen over... my mate got about 3m in when he went under with arms flapping and looking like he was a goner - i edge out to grab his hand and as soon as he pulled to me i went under as the ice gave way, the temp' locked my muscles and i couldn't breath, i still had his hand and thought this was it but someone grabbed my other hand and we spent like an eternity trying to get out - 10 seconds in real terms. I saved him and someone then saved us both, the half mile walk home in -5 degrees gave me hypothermia and lesson learnt.

About 15 we use to play on the old coal storage yard and had done many times before but at that age you don't think about the thunderstorms overnight will have made it a death trap and within 20mins 2 of us were up to our necks in 'Quick coal' .... like sand but coal dust and faster getting you ... we were screaming and shouting and luckily a tall passer by jumped in and could reach the floor and saw our heads starting to go down so with his height advantage got us out and home... its one of the biggest rollockings I ever got from my family.

 

[Richard Burns]

Driving on an icy road in Germany and the wheels were running in ruts in the ice, the road then turned left and straight ahead was about a 1 mile drop to a forest valley OK follow the road, no wheels would not turn and I was very close to panic which may have given me enough strength to wrench the wheels over the rut and turn left, I had to stop for a bit after that!

 

[D Skelton]

18 years old, 2005, Iraq, Telic 6, top side in my Chally, I'm loader so have the GPMG. We're driving up the Route 6 from Basra to Amaragh, the Tigris on our right. We enter Qal At Salih, a small cluster of compounds halfway between Amaragh and Al Qurnah and we get hit, the first I know of it is an incoming round that cracks past my head so close I felt the breeze on my ear! As soon as we break contact I realised how close I was to being brown bread! For some reason though, adrenaline does funny things to your body, I was shaking like a mad man and laughing hysterically at the same time, a very strange experience.

 

[HandySparks]

Driving down a long straight road, heavily wooded each side, in a stream of traffic at about 50 or 60 mph, the morning after a stormy night.

First thing I knew was my rear view obliterated by a huge conifer which had dropped across the road between me and the car behind. It was close enough to flick the radio aerial on the car roof, which made a small dent in it.

I had to stop and let it sink in for a few minutes before driving on.

 

[Fin170]

Driving down a straight bit of road in my peugeot van in winter, suddenly side ways, then 360 then sideways towards an oncoming lorry

Got very lucky and stopped with my nearside mere centimeters from the lorry

Dont remember breaking or any ice, remember being very shaken and the lorry driver with a jolly expression coming over, "ya'll right bhay?"

 

[Rockingit]

The Thanks to Mr Skelton wasn't for the telling of the story, it was for having been in that situation, knowingly, risking it all for a cause, and that same thanks goes to any number of other ex service personnel on here who have done likewise. You boys will always trump any muppetry that the rest of us are guilty of.

Speaking of muppets.....where do I start with myself?! I've been shot in the head (Clay Pigeon accident), fallen 160' off a rock face, near drowned in Lake Buttermere, done the 'triple flip over' in a car accident at 90mph, a barrel roll all the way down the side of a hill in a soft-top landrover (green-laning error of judgement!) ...all before my 20th Birthday. I've been attacked by a knob with a knife (not his wisest decision), had a couple of 415V belts, been trapped in the middle of a mafia drugs deal gone sour (wrong time wrong place) and narrowly avoided half a ton of steel tumbling down on to my head. But without equal, the nearest I've come to death was the look my ex-mother in law gave me just after I'd ditched her daughter!

 

[trev]

Sent my first car into a tailspin on an icy road while being over confident, it all seemed to happen in slow motion. Like Rock, I was attacked with a knife once. It didn't end well for him
Had several heavily armed American navy personnel point (I assume) loaded weapons at me after I wrongly turned into their missile testing range while on autopilot late one night.
All seems like pretty small beer after reading Damian's post.

 

[7029 dave]

1998 with the family (then) on aeroplane going to canneries, all of a sudden the plane was near on vertical engines reviving bloody loud scared the living day lights out of me!!!.

 

[High Tower]

105 mph into Druids at Oulton park, front washed out on the count of tyres not up to temp, throttle and clip on snap of wedging the throttle cable wide open, bike flips up in the air and then follows me into the gravel, all I could hear was a GSXR1000 at 14000 rpm catching up behind me, lucky it dug into the gravel and changed direction!

 

[Rockingit]

Oh.....I almost forgot the first memory of a proper close shave (if we dismiss the usual childhood falling out of trees stuff..) Those above a certain age will remember the Hungerford Massacre, well he started his shooting spree at a garage. I was still a teenager, and out with the family on some day out somewhere and we transited through Hungerford, and the cctv from the garage showed him pulling in, just as our car pulled off!

 

[D Skelton]

All seems like pretty small beer after reading Damian's post.

Nah, I was stupid enough to sign up for that $hit! Young, impressionable and eager to prove myself. I make it sound exiting but I should probably point out that was one of only three bits of action I ever saw out there, 99% of my time was spent picking sand out of the engine and NBC filters on the tank, drinking copious amounts of tea and getting sunburn. Endless monotony!!

At the end of the day, we weren't going out there to hand flowers out were we, we were going out there to shoot 'ragheads'! A pointless and inhumane excersise IMHO and if the worst happened and I did end up getting slotted, it'd have been entirely my own fault.

The point I'm making is that when you're just driving home and you end up inches from death, that's far scarier, because you don't expect it, nor did you sign up for it! Lol.

I had a motorbike accident a few years ago, ended up flying head first through a taxi drivers wind screen (totally his fault), and although being nowhere near as much of a close call as bullets flying past your head and much less of an interesting story, that was far far scarier waking up in a hospital bed with my two year old daughter sitting at the end of it! The thought of what could have been is what scares you the most! I gave up riding after that.

 

[Kate]

2nd closest

 

[D Skelton]

View attachment 23699

2nd closest

Bloody women drivers ;-)

 

[gnuuser]

many years ago i used to hunt wild turkeys in the hills around our home.
one season i was walking up an old logging road and a large hole appeared in the bushes just in front of me.
yelled out and royally chewed out the young twit who fired the shot! his response was he thought i was a turkey and fired at the sound.
got his hunting license number and reported him.
he had to take the safety course all over again plus pay a hefty fine.

me I quit hunting turkeys (still like to but my knees are knackered too badly to walk the hills much without a cane)

 

[Robotstar5]

Learning canoeing as a teenager at swimming baths we were praticing rolling over and escaping from canoe, so I rolled and pulled the spraydeck tag which came off in my hand. So I was hanging upside down wondering how to release the spraydeck so I could get out before I drowned when I remembered an earlier of banging on the bottom of canoe and holding hands up for someone to right me, luckily someone did after what seemd an eternity but was probably only a few seconds.

A more recent one was 70mph in outside lane of M40 when this happened...