Gee, I coulda had a V-8. . .
“I wonder what’s for dinner tonight?”
You could have just referenced the start of that James Bond movie where a Soviet agent got sucked in.
If that doesn’t win the thread, I don’t know what does.
About 30 years ago I drove my Chevy Cavalier into the back of a Dodge Ram truck at 60 miles per hour. The truck was completely stopped. This happened because the driver of the car in front of me swerved at the last second before he would have crashed into the stopped truck. Suddenly I went from having a car in front of me moving at the same speed as me to having a truck in front of me that wasn’t moving (I admit that I was following too closely). There was no time to react. I know that I tried because I had the torn-off turn signal stalk in my hand after the crash - I tried to change lanes but crashed before I could. I remember thinking one thing: “I’m sorry”. My sister was in the car with me and I wanted to apologize to her for what was about to happen but I didn’t have time. I was sure that we would be killed or severely injured. Nobody I knew bothered with seat belts back then, the car had no air bags, and we were in a tiny car about to smash into a huge truck. We actually walked away with just a few cuts and bruises because the front end of the Cavalier folded up like an accordion. But I still remember the feeling. There was no terror, no fear. Just resignation and remorse.
Thanks very much Gus. That was the kind of reply I was hoping for. I’m curious about what people might think in the last few seconds before facing end of life.
Half-Elf too. Thanks.
So you got hair implants after the weight loss?
“Did I remember to unplug the iron?”
Yep, motorcycle going out from under me I thought;
This is going to HURT!
Because she was a slapper?
I guess I missed that one. I loved Goldfinger. But, IMO, all of the later Bond films have fallen fallen short of Goldfinger. I don’t know why, but I could just never get behind the notion of Roger More or Pierce Brosnan playing Bond.
So, I don’t recognize the film to which you refer. Do you know the title?
The Spy Who Loved Me.
I’d like to also take it from the other side. If you are the person who has done something that will kill someone, what are your thoughts, then and later?
In other words, don’t look down to put a CD in your CD player, and then look up to see the guy on the motorcycle you are about to strike, sending him into the next vehicle, and killing him. Do you think “Oh shit!”? And how do you live with yourself afterwards?
Red snow in the morning, plow drivers take warning.
There were TWO fairly recent incidents, IIRC, of people (one of them a little kid in front of his father’s eyes) getting the Rapid Unscheduled Wood-Chipper Therapy.
We recently had some big trees taken down. A neighbor took the trunks for firewood, but the tree dudes chipped the rest. Their wood chipper was scary-awesome. Big branches, 3 - 5 inch diameter, were grabbed from their hands violently.
I recently cut my leg quite badly while doing some work in the yard. It was at least a second before I was able to wrap my head around the fact that I was bleeding at all, and I have no specific recollection of the instant it happened - just mental reconstructions of it.
Had the hole saw been a wood chipper as described here, I would have been dead before I could have thought anything.
It’s possible that time would slow down in someone’s mind right before they die.
If so, I think I might think these two thoughts:
“So THIS is how I’m going to meet my end - THIS is how I’m going to die.”
“If only I could go back in time a few seconds before; I could have avoided this mistake.”
I had a wreck that totaled my car back in October, similar to Gus Gusterson. As the SUV in front of me swerved and I attempted to miss their back bumper I thought, “NO, Not now!” and there was a quick flash of all my responsibilities and the people I would be disappointing. At the moment of impact, as I saw the hood start to crumple, I thought, “The car won’t be drivable”. I feared for the other driver and then for my own safety.
After that I was dazed and hurting. There were so many thoughts racing through my head that I could barely make sense of them. I couldn’t focus on what was happening around me until I saw the front end of my car. I couldn’t stop staring at it. Then I was hyper-focused. I had some trouble answering the police officer because I just could not look away from it for more than a few seconds. I remember the medics putting a blood pressure cuff on my arm and maybe sort of mumbling some answers to their questions. I was staring at the car the whole time and the only thing in my mind was this low kind of echoing sound. I’m not sure how long that lasted. I came out of it before the police left.
In 1978, my entire family was in a high-speed head-on collision at night. I was a child sitting in the back middle seat. When I saw the headlights suddenly rushing straight at our windshield, my two thoughts were nonverbal, but essentially 1) disappointment that it was a huge truck, because we wouldn’t survive; and 2) “I wonder if I should tell Dad? Nah, he probably already knows.” I definitely recall thinking that in the last moment before pandemonium.
It turned out to be a small car that had apparently bounced off a bridge pylon and gone airborne, hence the headlights appearing to be high like a semi-trailer truck. It descended into our engine block instead of decapitating us. My family all survived with minor injuries. The other driver was not so lucky.