What has been your closest dice with death?

Mine, passing out in just a tee-shirt and jeans in one of the coldest nights of the year in a foot of snow in park after a party - luckily a passer-by found me after about twenty minutes but it was a hell of job to wake me and if nobody had come that way (it wasn't a busy park at night) I doubt I would have survived til morning.

Sat down on the grass by the side of a road watching a firework display when a car veered off the road and ran straight over the top of someone sat about 50 feet away from me. Weird moment.  

Fell off a horse, broke my neck and back. Unstable fracture, made to walk back to riding school by twot riding teacher.  The fall could have killed me, and the stupidity of the riding teacher could have rendered me tetraplegic 
 

When about 11 years old I was nearly hit by an arrow another child had launched skywards to see how high he could shoot it. I was oblivious (didn't see him release the arrow) but the teacher taking the archery activity said he was terrified because he didn't know whether I should run forwards or backwards to avoid it. In the end it stuck into the ground a couple of feet behind me.

lindaradlett

13 Jan 20 15:39

Fell off a horse, broke my neck and back. Unstable fracture, made to walk back to riding school by twot riding teacher.  The fall could have killed me, and the stupidity of the riding teacher could have rendered me tetraplegic 

=

Same happened to my brother!

I was in a skinny tyred toyota coaster operated by a particularly glib and negligent branch of the famously lethal Australian budget tourist industry on a switchback rainforest road in tropical queensland during the rainy season. The hopeless vehicle, driven by a woman who gave the impression of never having operated machinery of any form before, skidded on a wet downhill bend and would have slid off a 50ft cliff edge had it not bumped against a small earthen bank and stopped. That was on my 25th birthday.

Pridemonth I read an absolutely haunting account in the guardian last year of a woman who as a child, accidentally killed a classmate with a javelin.  It ruined her life.*  One of the saddest things I've ever read.

 

* yes OBVIOUSLY it ruined the lives of that child and her family, that's exactly why  

When I was a kid a PE teacher at the other school in town got a javelin through his shoulder. I’m not sure of the details of how it happened, but OUCH.

children should not be allowed anywhere near bows and arrows

if the result of this is that the stupid sport of archery ceases to exist, so be it

Nearly drowned at the beach as a child. Had a few very near misses as a novice driver. Worst was probably when I went to overtake a lorry when I shouldn't have done and met another lorry coming the other way. Ended up between the two lorries with a few cm on either side, praying that I would make it out the other side.

Ruptured appendix, taken to hospital in an ambulance for emergency surgery. Killed by a vestigial bit of my own intenstine, what a shit way to die that would have been. 

When I was 4 my mum walked out of the kitchen to find me sitting on the 4th floor balcony railing playing motor bike. She slowly approached me and picked me up. 

My eardrum grew inwards and attached itself to the membrane around my brain (and an assortments of nerves in that part of your head). For years doctors struggled to find the cause of my ear problems but it was hidden behind my eardrum. I was told I was walking around with a loaded and cocked gun in my head. I was 15. 

I got run over by a taxi after a particularly good Friday night at the student union in Newcastle.  Luckily I was so drunk that despite flying and landing head first I just had scrapes and grazes to one side of my head and the imprint of a black cab headlight in the side of one leg.

I did archery at school and we never had any near accidents but had a good teacher and he'd only let a few people do it at a time so he could keep an eye on all of them.

holy shit hoolie, what happened after? were you in traction for months / have you ever ridden again?

 

me: falling asleep with a raging headache (& marvin gaye's what's going on album playing on loop) while carbon monoxide leaked into my flat. I haven't been able to listen to that album since. Thankfully a wiser mind than mine guessed what was up and opened windows / woke me up. THe landlord didn't even apologise

I collected three hambone shaped lumps of metal and rust I found on Constantine Bay in 1984 and used them as a wicket for a game of cricket and two hours later the beach was cleared by the bomb squad and these three mortar bombs from D Day landings practice were subject to a controlled detonation that blew a hole the size of a swimming pool in the sand.  

Heh @ grenade wicket story. Presumably the bowling attack wasn't too explosive that day. Who/how discovered that these were more than just rusted metal items?

PE teacher at our school used javelins spiked in the ground to mark the end of the 100 metres. On a windy day one of them got blown so that the spiky end was pointed at one of the on rushing kids, a bit like that scene in braveheart where the jocks use those long poles to impale the oncoming cavalry charge. All quite nasty, kid airlifted to London, survived though.

 the reason I had found them is  that they had been placed next to the lifeguard's flag tripod and thee emergency services had been contacted, but there was no lifeguard around and no "This is a bomb - leave it" notice. 

I was offered surgery, which I refused (I maintain my view I was right about that). So I spent three weeks on absolute flat bed rest, with a catheter and a bed pan, not permitted  to move more than my arms from the elbow downwards by myself. i felt like Katy in What Katy Did.  It was AWFUL

i did ride again but my nerve was gone. It was a shame, I had got quite good and was in the shape of my life 

"the reason I had found them is  that they had been placed next to the lifeguard's flag tripod and thee emergency services had been contacted, but there was no lifeguard around and no "This is a bomb - leave it" notice."

The very opposite of health and safety going mad....

Oh I've also nearly died in a carbon monoxide leak! I'd forgotten about that. They're very scary. 
 

when I say nearly died I mean that my mother insisted she could smell gas (CO has no smell of course) my father argued, they eventually rang the gas board, who said he had no idea how she could tell but we did indeed have a leak and would probably all have been dead by morning 

particularly pisspoor and baffling given that Margaret and Dennis Thatcher were staying in a house on the headland between Constantine and Treyarnon that summer and she was doing dog walks on the beach with her stupid little King Charles spaniel and during this the Special Bunch (or was it the Brady Branch?) had been going through our bins for ages, looking for signs of Republican Irish tendencies and/or devices as things were quite hot at that time (Brighton bomb soon to occur).

fook me we have really gone the full spread on this thread- from exploding wickets to attempted suicide...

Seriously, hope you are no longer in such a dark place Warren...

Aside from the obvious risk of ending up dead from CO poisoning, even if you don't cark it, the potential permanent neurological damage is pretty terrifying.  Met someone about 10 or so years ago who'd been poisoned as a kid by a dodgy boiler leaving her with injuries which would be described in the media as "Life changing. Very". 

Nearly drowned (Ireland)

Nearly carked from undiagnosed organ failure (NHS)

Fell onto a busy motorway and they all missed (alcohol)

None interesting enough to warrant explaining on this mighty thread.

 

When I was seven I fell backwards off a railing some 20 or so feet onto a concrete playground below.  Was unconscious for a while so my olds have told me.  I remember waking in a strange place (hospital Kowloon side).  I had a fractured my skull and had perforated my left ear drum.  Apparently it was all a bit serious.

When I was a kid we moved into a house where one of the gas fires - in the dining room, quite a scary looking contraption vaguely reminiscent of the scary furnace from Quincy's Quest - was condemned when we moved in (it had no flue, apparently - that's right, none) and disconnected but left in situ for the entire two years we lived there, because my parents never got round to renovating the house.

All I was told was that it was "dangerous", no further info given. I was terrified to even go in the room alone with the thing.

I think the motorway story warrants further info Royalty - what did you fall from?  How long were you in the motorway? Were cars careering around you? 

Down an embankment and over the railing. Not from a height or off a bridge.

Not sure was unconscious, but still clutching the bottle. Friends on the scene so can't have been more than 30 seconds or so.

Apparently yes I was in the slow lane and there were a few trucks that had to swerve.

Fat lip, many cuts, no long term damage.

This was decades ago.

Seems Rofers are an accident prone bunch.

All the fire stories have reminded me of a friend I saw at the weekend who as a toddler in the 1960's grabbed the element in one of those old fashioned electric fires.  The doctors wanted to amputate her hand because the burns were so bad but her parents persuaded them to hold off and she was able to keep it albeit missing a few finger tips.  She's told the story a few times in my presence and it still makes me shudder.

Both of mine were at the same friend’s house when younger.

We went climbing beach cliffs at night, drunk. This was so dangerous I have no idea why we thought this was a sensible thing to do and looking back on it is horrifying. It was about 10 meters so maybe wouldn’t have been fatal but easily could have been.

Once I also left his kitchen by the normal door at night not realizing that they were building an extension so there was just a massive ditch with metal spikes for foundations in it. I fell right in between a load of spikes and everyone thought it was hilarious. That could have gone really badly.

Lost control on a patch of ice, and the whole car went down the road sideways at 50 mph. Then struck a bank and flipped it. This was a problem as it was a soft top. Only the windscreen frame stopped me from leaving a neat red and grey stripe down the middle of the road.

Rufty has reminded me of my own ice experience which resulted in using an oak tree to stop my car.  Walked away with scrapes and bruises but the tree still bears the scars.

if it wasn't the explosives in 84 then it was the electric fire in 1979.

My parents had one of those concave duck egg blue 1960s three bar electric fires. like all mindlessly badly designed electrical items of its era it had a metal switch on the side and a metal case, all designed to ensure there could be no isolation of current coursing through the case or switch in the event of a short circuit.  After a while of it not going on after being plugged in, I walked over to it and flicked the switch on the side and received the full charge which projected me back across the room and through a glass partition. Due to the way I seemed to be carrying one hand out as I flew, I managed to slice my wrist open quite neatly and nobody to this day understands how I didn't sever the artery that was fully visible, all blue and pumpy, in the open wrist as I lay there unconscious.

drove over the tripwire of a bomb (N.I.)

touched exposed wire plugged into socket and saw my hand close convulsively around it

found I couldn't swim back to shore against the tide, deserted beach in France

two close shaves on motorways in dense fog

Good to be alive, eh?

This thread has made me sad. An old colleague who was full of life and energy and really contented and happy with his lot and his family life without being wildly successful in the conventional sense, ie. not bossing the dollar but just really serene and cheerful... died fairly recently whilst staying at a holiday home abroad that he'd just bought... carbon monoxide. Lucky his family weren't with him I guess but fook it's such a horrible waste of an amazing person.

Had pyloric stenosis (bit between stomach and intestine blocked) which means I would have died at a few weeks old a hundred or so years ago.

Got attacked by a nutter at a bar with a knife - luckily he was more slashy than stabby and my coat protected me.  A few got hurt though, but nobody badly luckily.

Similar to Linda. Seven years ago I had a rotational fall whilst jumping a horse. Got back on. Went to hospital five days later in agony and had broken three vertebrae.

Four years ago, my horse took off over a swinging five bar gate. He cleared it, I got dumped. Even now I have flashbacks to that day and it makes me feel sick to think what could have happened had he caught a leg on the gate.

So - the wasp thing (see mutters' other thread); breaking neck (see rof passim, now stuck back together with bits of my arse); puking blood everywhere from a stomach ulcer (2 pints plus they reckoned - does get u fast tracked thru casualty tho); cliff diving in spain in a place where you had to wait for the tide (bloke who went next broke his back); etc etc

I was lighting me farts in the barth an one was so exceptionally huge the gas had not had time to fully exit my arse before it had bubbled up and ignited at the surface. Long story short the the backdraft travels, instamatically,  all the way to me rectum where it proceeds to set off a chain reaction in me lower bowel. Blew off both me bum cheeks and me cock hanging by a flap. Miracle workers them NHS. 

Riding a big, fast-moving horse jumping a hedge and ditch and crashing.

Air ambulanced. KO for 6 weeks, in hospital for 6 months.

Not the cleverest thing I have ever done...

Just read that javelin girl story. How awful. The school were fooking incompetent allowing kids to stand in range of the javelin. Mind you, if (as I have recently) you study the history of the Olympics, the last people you’d trust to organise a javelin throw safely are the IOC or the IAAF, and they’re allowed to do it on television, so.

Her stepfather “banned her dead friend’s name from the house”. What a fooking moron.

Septicaemia  

ischemia

gangrene

peritonitis 

multisystems organ failure ..

3 months in hospital... two weeks in the ICU ... 26 days nil by mouth ... 12 surgeries and 3 years later... 

less than 3 % of people survive what I had. 

The plaster cast on my leg tried to kill me when I was 23.

I had a broken bone in my foot. Plaster cast which went from toes to halfway up my calf restricted my blood flow and caused a blood clot on my calf. This is in turn caused a pulmonary embolism.

Boykl caught my fall as I collapsed and the ambos arrived pronto. A very clever ER doctor worked out the problem. There was clapping and cheering in the ER when they stabilised me.

When I woke up in ICU I had no idea what was going on. Doctor told me I was lucky - "The options are you die or you live, and you lived so you'll be fine, as long as the rest of embolism doesn't break away." Cheers Doc. I was 2 weeks in hospital on heparin, not allowed out of bed til day 9.

A couple spring readily to mind. Under 10 years old I nearly drowned in a swimming pool. Father had to fish me out while the life guard was totally oblivious. In the last decade some moron nearly shot me with a 9mm when he messed up.

When I was a baby, the car I was travelling in suddenly caught fire and a passing lorry driver had to pluck me from the flames.

Cycling in the Alps as a teenager, misjudged a hairpin completely and screamed across it and the front of a bus coming up the hill luckily onto a path at 40 mph+. A few seconds later and i would have been splatted.

Also, slightly different but was in the close vicinity of a couple of bomb explosions exactly 24 hours previously.

Age 7 ice broke and fell into lake – rescued by passer by.

 

Age 8 sailing mast fell on my head and knocked me out for 36 hours.

 

Age 15 was running to catch a cricket ball and heard a big shout of “heads get down” crunched in a ball and a discus hit me flat on the back. I was winded and in sever pain with a big discus mark on my back, but it missed my spine. Had it my spine I am sure it would have shattered it.

 

Several close calls skiing and driving (one where I was on the M1 at night, on auto pilot, no other cars and was in the middle lane when I passed through a crash of two stationary lorries – had I been in the inside or outside lane I would have ploughed into a stationary lorry at 70 mph)

 

Several in Afghanistan: (i) IED struck vehicle in front of me and all de-bussed, septic soldier did what he was not supposed to do and got in a ditch and was 6 inches from triggering the secondary device which would have killed me and a number of others; (ii) in a culvert and the barma man in front of was clearing it, his device bleeped and did an about turn (only time I have seen someone’s face actually go white); and (iii) big contact where thing that hit me hit me in an extremity rather than somewhere soft and vital and the bigger thing hit the bod next to me in the neck not me.

 

Honourable mention – was riding and milling around waiting to mount up. A horse gave a huge kick which went right past my knee by an inch. Had it hit my knee I would have lived  a different life as I am sure I would not have been able to run again after much reconstructive surgery.

 

 

a perfectly normal human being14 Jan 20 09:03

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How many of you went to schools that were fooking negligent about track and field fgs

 

my sons school doesn't do javelin and I am   Happy with that 

Me? In heavy surf having to go out and pull in my brother, sister and cousin back to shore, I was 14. I am a good swimmer and not unused to surf but it was effing hard for me. It was me or them.

My brother.... perhaps being mortared by his own side while attempting to outflank a Taliban machinegun. Only 5 of his OMLT were hit but a couple of ANA were killled.

As for the OP - 

1 - had malaria when temp went up to 107.4. Passed out and don't know how I survived

2 - fooking chicken pox at 33 - lost 14 kilos in 10 days. Lungs were close to collapsing

3 - on board a vessel - lashing the booby hatch on the fo'c'sle during a storm in the Atlantic. On the way back to the accommodation (180 meters walk) got carried away in the wash on the deck. 

 

I spent my early years living on a farm until my father sold it. We used to go to the Royal Show every year and there was always the HSE stand to visit. It was just full of information and videos of the many ways a child could die on a farm such as crushed by a bag of fertilizer or drowned in a slurry pit. Amazed none of them happened to me. Friend of my father did unfortunately manage to bale on his sons.

Farms have always been a hot bed of nasty gory incidents.  When I was a kid one guy who worked on the farm slipped with a chainsaw and stuck it in his foot and another was lucky to just lose a couple of finger tips when stuck his hand in the back of a running combine to clear a blockage.  Farmer's Weekly also used to have stories of people losing an arm in machinery and carrying it half a mile to the nearest house to summon help.

Went to a local Middlesbrough landmark called Roseberry topping.  At the top, I was dicking around with my friends and slipped over the edge of a shear drop of several hundred feet.  Managed to hold on by my fingers and my mates pulled me back up.  A soupcon more momentum and I would have been dead.

Field event injuries seem very common as Linda notes, but if you step back inviting kids to throw heavy sharp objects in very close vicinity to lots of other kids does seem a bit fooking mental.

I have watched several people walk (or in some cases shuffle) out onto the end of Old Harry Rocks in the Isle of Purbeck.  Every one a potential Darwin winner.  I posted a photo of one such hapless loon on Instagram and everyone thought it was me.  

 

For those who don't know: https://matadornetwork.com/read/visit-old-harry-rocks-england/  (the lady at the end of this film has not gone out to the farthest point "reachable"*.  I saw someone canoe through the "gate" once too.

 

*by a lunatic - one bloke carried his toddler out there.

Wang, a lot of people spend too much time staring at their phones to film where they are instead of watching their footing. I have seen them almost slip in exactly that spot.

On the subject of javelin, me and my m8 dave and others decided to do a Phoenix Close Olympics when we were about 12.  We chalked out running tracks and fashioned javelins out of bamboo canes.  A hefty stone was our shot put and a frisbee the discuss.  I made a high jump using two fence posts with nails carefully hammered in every 3 centimetres.  Bamboo cross piece.  

I got my sister just to the side of her eye with the javelin and Dave near brained another kid with his shot put stone.  Noone died on the high jump because I said the frosberry flop was too risky on a front lawn.

I once also shot my cousin, dave, in the side eye with a pellet gun on boxing day.  It was a very cheap one that could fire pellets darts or spud ammo.  I had thought it was on safety.  I hid in the loo for much of the rest of the day.

It is one of the most beautiful spots in England imo Dusty.  Pisses all over Australia's 12 apostles tbh.

I read that it, and the other spikes towards Swanage, are the remains of the land bridge to the IOW, with the needles being the other end.  Have no idea if this is true

There's always people getting into trouble around there. There were some people trying to walk along from Swanage around the headland towards Old Harry and got caught in the tide and had to hide in a cave. Luckily they had phone signal and were able to be rescued, but how stupid can you be?!

 

At the age of 15 or thereabouts, my friend and I thought it would be a good idea to light a "screamer" firework, aim it down the end of the garden, run down the end of the garden and try to dodge the rocket. The speed of that thing was entirely unpredicted and it flew by me at the speed of light oh so very narrowly missing my head. Impossible to dodge. If that had hit me, it may well have been game over. I stopped playing with fireworks after that.

Dusty an amazing number of people are totally unaware of tides and don't seem to notice that the beach is much bigger at certain times of day than it is at other times.

2 - fooking chicken pox at 33 - lost 14 kilos in 10 days. Lungs were close to collapsing

err, dude. I don't think this was chicken pox.

There are loads of people who die from Chicken Pox every year - the whole "Chicken Pox party" thing seems a bit sick once you realise this is something that really could kill your child (albeit the odds are low).

FWIW closest for me feels like my proximity to the 7/7 bus when it blew up.  But I don't think any pedestrians actually died so frankly I was probably closer at various alcohol related things.

Wow. I can't compete with most of these.

My puny offerings:

-choking on a boiled sweet as a child.  I can just remember the horror of not being able to breathe in or out.  It was cherry flavoured.  Someone thumped my back hard enough to dislodge it.

-driving at *ahem* speed round a bend in the M6 through the middle of a massive crash.  Cars in the central reservation, cars spinning off to the hard shoulder.  I just happened to be on the clear bit in between them

-diving in Cuba.  The equipment was terrible.  My weight belt came undone midway through the dive.  Mr Nex grabbed me and managed to hold me down and stop me shooting to the surface.  The dive master and rest of the group were out of sight by the time we had sorted it out.  We decided to give up on the dive and surfaced and then had to get the attention of the boat.  Somehow we managed it.  There was no safety equipment, the boat was massively overloaded and no one counted the divers out or back.  We didn't dive again in Cuba.

I have always suffred with bad colds, which if not nursed properly develop in to flu/bronchitis. At 3 weeks old I was given the last rites, when my respitorary system failed/ was failing and my parents were told I wouldn't last the night.

Having had bronchitis on more ocassions than I care to remember , I went to my new GP complaining of bronchial flu. He examined me , did a peak flow and said I think you are an astmatic.He sent me home with steroids and antibiotics and said if my breathing didn't improve call 999. I could barely make the stairs but assumed the drugs would kick in soon. I was coughing and spluttering and breathless. It was winter so I put my head out of the window to get some cold air thinking that would help. Long story short I called 999, they came in 2 minutes , where I was een by A&E pumped full of drugs and felt immediatley better. I began to collect my stuff 5 or so hours later to leave and the nurse begged me to stay until the morning where a consultant would see me. She said all the drugs we have put in you, you were bound to feel better.

Consultant saw me and said 20 minutes later admission I would be dead. I was diagnosed as an astmatic , and stayed in hospital for 5 days before I discharged myself. The respitorary ward was grim as fvck and I couldn't be sure who was alive or dead.

My old GP had forever been diagnosing me with bronchitis and should I am told sent me for an asthma referral/examination. I t was then I was told asthma is britains silent killer, and kills more males under 40 than anything else. They think they have bronchitis, and are embarassed to call an Ambulance, as was I , so the die. Scary stuff

 

this has cheered me up no end!

1. aged 9 or 10 ice breaking on a raft in a pond and fell in - completely submerged- still remember the shock. we managed to get out and run to mate’s house where his mum had the sense to put us in a warm bath. 
 

2. several Jimi Hendrix events - vomiting while unconscious from booze and/or other stuff. 
 

other self inflicted circumstances I’m too embarrassed to recount. 
 

when I look at my two year old boy I do hope he’s a bit less of a daft muppet teenager than I was - really don’t want to be going to his funeral.