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