I have had a hand-gun aimed right at me by a geezer in a balaclava does that count?
It wasn’t a terrorist, it was a robber. These guys robbed a nightclub next door to a venue where we’d supplied the PA for a fashion show. The nightclub had just closed, it was gone midnight and they were probably expecting the place to be deserted except for some of the club people. As they came across the fashion show stragglers they told them(us) to lie down. I bumped into one of these guys in a corridoor and he pointed his gun at me said ‘get down’ and wandered off. Well if he wasn’t hanging around to make sure I was lying on my face with some dangerous bastards running 'round the building I was gonna stay on my feet and get the fuck out of there. I got my then gf and a few other folk who were prepared to move, and we scampered down a fire escape and out of the building.
The hairyest moment was unlocking the balcony window to get to the fire escape, which meant standing on a chair to get at the top latch. That felt pretty exposed.
After the fact I don’t think we were actually in much danger, even at the time I what worried me was that the robbers seemed very nervous and they might shoot someone by accident. As it happens they did shoot the club manager, but only to persuade him to hand over the money, he wasn’t killed.
The robbers got away in a Police car :rolleyes:
The one time I have literally thought “so this is it I’m going to die” was an incident involving mains electricity and not really relevant to the OP.
I think madmonk probably has everyone beat danger wise. On the other hand OtakuLoki has been attacked by drunk squids!
Lots of times, but the closest I guess would be the time I got shot at point blank range in the gut with a .45 long colt. In the front and out the back about 1/2" beside my spine. I lost about twelve pounds of my digestive tract and had a fist sized hole all the way through my body. It was not much fun.
madmonk I’m okay now. However, you are still in harms way. Be careful and maybe we can swap stories in person one day. I’ll buy the drinks. What’ll ya have?
I was the victim of random violence.
I was driving through the city after work with my boss and two coworkers. We stopped at a light and were minding our own business when two black guys jumped on the back of our car and started jumping on the roof and tried to kick in the rear window. Simultaneously, one of his friends ripped open the passenger door and punched my boss. At this point I hit the gas and sped off. A car pulled out of the KFC parking lot where the attacking group eminated from and pursued us, they pulled up next to my car and brandished a revolver. I hit the brakes to evade and let them pull ahead, as I was doing this they fired three shots aimed directly at me (I was the only target, as all of my passengers were making friendly with the floor mats.). I turned and evaded at high speed. Miraculously, I was not hit nor was my car.
Who needs to go to Iraq to get shot at,when you live in the US of A?
I was held at gunpoint at an aquaintance’s kitchen table while his dealer went through his collection routine.
I was attacked by crazed guys dressed as ninjas because Mr. Kalhoun and I tried to help a guy who was beaten to near-death by them. He was laying in the middle of the street with brains coming out of his ears. I felt the need to assist. I may have to re-think that the next time.
I was in a house fire on New Year’s Eve on my first babysitting job. It was sooo cold the windows were frozen shut. One of the kids helped me get things under control. She had to lead me to the dryer (which was smoking) and the back door (which I was able to open).
Hmmm…I figured I’d get around to telling this story at some point.
I am in the process of divorcing my husband. He is an alcoholic who had been on the wagon since before we met until about a year ago. He has a tendency to lose his temper when drinking, and on the day he received a letter from my lawyer scheduling a mediation, he really lost it! Of course he knew I planned to divorce him, but I think that’s the first time he realized I really meant it.
When I came home from work, he started to argue with me. I didn’t want to fight at that point because my seven year old was in the room, but my husband was yelling threats. I started to pick up the phone and he yanked it out of the wall. As I ran toward the door, he grabbed me by the throat and started to choke me. I screamed as loud and as much as I could. My son was screaming too.
In the struggle, I think my husband and I bounced off every piece of furniture in the room. We wound up on the cement floor of the laundry room. His hands were still locked around my throat and he was pounding my head against the floor. One of my hands found his face and I dug into his eye socket. As my thumb slipped into his mouth, he bit it to the bone.
It’s hard to know how long this went on, but it was ended when someone pulled my husband away. The man who was repairing our air conditioner in the back yard had heard my screams. As he and my husband faced off, I grabbed my keys and my twelve year old daughter (who had come out of her bedroom when she heard the commotion) and headed for the door again. I reached for my seven year old as well, but my husband yelled, “You’re not taking my son!” I left the house and called 911 on my cell phone as I drove away.
If I may make a long story a little shorter, I do believe that my husband would have killed me that day. When I returned with the police, he had barricaded himself in the bedroom with our son. He attacked the police, cursing and screaming that he would kill them. He was tasered three times before he was arrested.
And now we are going through lots of counseling and legal stuff, I am safe, the kids are safe, and things are getting better. Thanks to the air conditioning repairman and the police.
I was on Lake Superior during a lightning storm with no gas, no depth guage, and new maydays popping up on the radio every other minute or so. All the while at the helm of a forty foot vessel that essentially had a 45 foot lightning rod sticking straight up in the air. I hoped the suppression equipment on the mast was okay, but considering the state of the rest of the equipment, I wasn’t to sure. I told my crew to head below and stay away from metal, and lied to them when I said I was perfectly safe. I checked my chart for a lee side of an island that wasn’t filled with rocks, hauled up the storm sail, and bee lined it. That was the last time I bareboat chartered through Sailboats Inc.
I’ve had my metal tested in other ways as well. I’ve found myself in the midst of gore and grevious bodily harm a few times, and I’ve always managed to take charge and keep my wits. I’m always amazed that people will choose to stand by and do nothing, or worse, run away. I did stand in the middle of highway traffic to stop the morons from running over those of us who were trying to save an elderly woman. And I stepped up when one guy’s pals left him in a snow bank.
Sadly, I’m 0 and 3. It turns out dead people have a knack for staying dead.
2 weeks ago I walked in on two burglars in my apartment. When they saw me a knife was pulled and my balls went inside my body. All I could think of was that I was going to be found dead in this poxy apartment. I said something like"just fuck off lads will ya" They left with about 40 of my DVD’s and I kept all my blood in my body.
I felt very strange afterward. A lot of macho bullshit came to the fore and I felt like a coward for not doing something. I’m over that now but it bugged me badly for a day or two.
Had to wrestle a pistol from a guy during an attempted home invasion, have jumped from several viper strikes and was in some pretty nasty situations during mountain climbs. Pales next to some of what I’ve read above.
I was once in danger of falling down the cliff of Niagara Falls. I was with the guys in my band, and after many beers in the parking lot of the Falls observation area, I got the bright idea to climb over the fence and go down to the bottom of the falls, at 4 AM. Going down was no problem. Standing at the bottom with my arm in the fallinhg water was no problem. Coming back up was a different matter. I recall being about 3/4 of the way up and grabbing a root for stability, which came loose. It never occurred to me that this was illegal activity, and that not only could I have been dashed on the rocks, but any remaining live parts of me could have gone to jail. If the cops had seen me there, it surely would have involved orders at gunpoint to stay where I was, a helicopter rescue, and handcuffs and all that…
I was in 8-10’ seas with swells as high as 12-14’ in an 18’ open bow boat after a thunderstrom snuck up on us in the Atlantic. I was the pilot/captain and we were taking on rain water at a pace that threatened to sink us (was outrunning the bilge pump).
We started getting hit by bow-breaking waves and the boat felt like it was in cement because the weight of the water was forcing it down. Grown men cried as lightening struck so close you could here the 'ZZZZZZZWAPPP!!!" of electric charge before the thunder BOOM! which came.0001 secs after.
We rallied some covers to keep the rain from sinking us, and the bilge pump managed to pump out wave water that found its way in (mostly wind-driven, rather than breaker-driven now).
About 50 yards from the Cape May, NJ inlet (the MOST dangerous place to be, where the bay meets the ocean with rip tides and huge rollers) the motor cut out. We almost got rolled by the first two rollers.
In the valley of the first two rollers, looking out we saw two mountains of water and we felt like you were in hell. I somehow got to the motor and noticed the fuel line was knocked off and re-engaged it. Someone knocked it off in the scurry to cover the boat.
In the nick of time, we had power as the next roller was about to roll us in like and abandoned surf board. I got the bow up and road the top of the roller, about 15 feet high…and the engine was fighting to stay on it. The risk of having the next roller take us over from behind was the point of convergence: where I felt powerless.
We got into the inlet before the next roller could devour us, and we basically had to shit our pants only over the lightning strikes, the electric sounds of which I will never forget.
I was a block away from the WTC when it collapsed. It didn’t occur to me at the time, but if either building had toppled to one side (the east specifically) instead of collapsing straight down, I would have probably been crushed or severly injured from debris.
I used to freelance with a forest fire fighting company during my summers in college which is good for some near miss stories, but the best one was during a fire in Northern California. One of my fellow workers who was about two feet ahead of me tripped a booby-trap meant to protect someone’s marijuana field. It was a shotgun shell glued on a set rat trap. You hit the wire and BOOM. Nice little home made claymore mine. Luckily it must have been wet as it just snapped and came flying out of the woods at us. Needless to say we walked a lot slower after that.
Of course you’ve done the “my life is worth more than some DVDs” equation so you know by now that you made the correct decision in not trying to jump them. Besides, if you had killed them there would have been a lot of paperwork.
I had a Moose Lodge member empty a 9mm into a car parked outside my shack. Apparently the owner of the car and the gun wielder had swapped wives but apparently the gun wielder thought badly of the deal later. Fortunately, engine blocks do stop pistol rounds.
There was more moose lodge related stupidity later but I’m not ready to discuss it.
Yes, (in sequence) Bolivia, El Salvador, Panama, here. I missed a terrorist bomb in Madrid by a few hours one time, that doesn’t count. A few rough landings. One helicopter forced landing.
(By the way, cows can run in an undignified fashioned when scared by a helicopter.)
I’ve never been shot at or beaten near to death, but back when I was flying small planes I was in a couple of hairy situations. One involved being in the back seat of a plane with my flight instructor and another student in the front when a thunderstorm cell started forming nearby. The winds picked up very quickly. My instructor took over and tried to land, but the strong crosswind pushed us so hard that we nearly went off the runway and he had to go around for another attempt. I’d never seen him so nervous while flying before. He got us down safely the second time around, but man, that sucked.
Another time, I took off with my girlfriend from the local airport and discovered that the rental plane I was flying had engine trouble and couldn’t maintain a climb. Despite full engine power I was slowly descending. I thought I was too close to the ground to turn around and land so I just continued on, hoping the engine would perk up a bit, all the while looking for places to make an emergency landing if I had to. Luckily the engine did reach full power eventually and was fine from that point on. That was the last time I rented that particular aircraft. Later the same instructor I mentioned before actually had to make an emergency landing in that same plane for the same reason, only he had even less engine power available.
The only other time I came close to dying was when I got hit by a hit-and-run driver in a pickup truck at about 1:00am. I was riding a moped and was trying to cross the street when this guy came up behind me hauling ass. He clipped my front wheel, I dragged along the side of the truck and fell over. The moped went one way and I went the other. I walked away with nothing more than road rash but if I’d turned a second earlier or been a few inches further into the road I’d have been hit dead-on and very likely killed. I walked home and called the police, who took a report, but of course they never caught the guy.
