My exboyfriend and I got creamed by a tractor trailer on the highway- it crushed the front of the car, the back of the car, and sent us spinning while it bounced us off the guardrail. As we were spinning and crushing, I was sure it was the time. All I remember is that I screamed “ADAM!” once, then closed my eyes and waited. It was scary for a moment (like a panic wave) then incredibly calm. When we came to a stop and I was alive, I was afraid to open my eyes until I heard him speak. We both, unbelievably, walked away with minor injuries.
Yea, the calm thing has happened to me, too. I remember two or three times, but the one I remember the most happened only a few years ago.
I was driving in to school on the Expressway, doing about 70MPH, listening to the radio, in pretty heavy traffic. I was in the far left lane and right in the middle of one of those lazy, swooping turns so popular on major highways and coming off a hill. There was one of those huge, thick concrete barricades seperating the lanes going in from the lanes going out.
About halfway through the turn, there was a huge BANG and some fire and smoke from one of my wheels (blowout, natch). The car CLUNKED and every warning light blinked on. It looked like one of those scenes in movies when a fighter plane gets hit, just beeping and buzzing and blinking lights. (This car had serious problems). And the momentum of the turn and the blown tire and so on conspired to drag my car towards the huge, thick concrete wall at high speed. This was all in about a quarter of a second. I had enough time to register a “Oh, crap, that wall’s gonna be hard, I’m toast” and then I got that calm feeling. The very tip of my rearview scraped the wall, but I managed to wrestle the car back into the lane, then over to the side of the road.
Where, of course, I freaked out for about five minutes.
The calm point is when you truely know your in trouble. I have had three attempts to wipe me out by military medicine and one bear.
1.) A full injection of a drug to which I am horribly allergic
2.) Perscribed multiple meds by one doctor that interacted with each other and then another long stay in the hospital.
3.) Doctors accidently cut my LAD (the artery to the heart). One heart attack, two stents, and lost three days of my life plus even longer hospital stay. After this I believe in an after life.
4.) While stomping around the woods in West Virginia ran into a brown bear and cub. Bad day to say the least. I ran to the nearest tree and shot up it. I do not know if my weight or the bear knocked the tree over the edge of the gully. Few cuts, stiches and bone bruises later I lived.
Man, I got hit by a wave of claustrophobia just by reading that.
Mine is a bit iffy, since I was intending to die:
Back in April 2001, I was having girl troubles, was failing at school, and just wasn’t getting along. Finally, I said “to hell with it” and rode my bike to a creek. It had been raining for the past several hours, so the creek was real swollen. It’s normally a small trickle, but even a few minutes of rain can turn it into a raging, ten-foot-deep flood. That’s what happened here. The water was going at least 30 miles an hour, and was about six feet deep where I went in. I got to the creek, and decided to jump in, hoping I would drown.
I was swept for about a half mile before I decided I didn’t want to do this. Unfortunately, I was now in ten-foot-deep water. Finally, I was swept under a fallen tree, and was dragged underwater. I ended up losing my glasses, so I couldn’t see too well. Finally, I was swept toward one side, and I got to a small tree. I pushed up against it, pressed my feet on the branches, and got out of the current into a pool of stationary water. I then climbed up the bank, and got out of the river, soaked and glasses-less, but alive. I walked upstream, and got back to my bike, and rode home. I told my parents I “accidently” got caught. It was a long time before I told them it was a suicide attempt. I’m convinced if I weighed 20 pounds more at the time (I was 120 lbs), I would have broke the tree branch and been quite literally up shit creek.
I was on a flight from Seattle to Newark last September. About 20 or so minutes after take-off, the oxygen masks dropped out of the ceiling.
I’d read in a Stephen King novel that dropping the O[sub]2[/sub] masks is the airline’s way of telling you to make peace with your god - a pressure leak can cause the plane to pop like a pricked balloon (not true, as I actually learned after the fact from the SDMB). The plane was dropping very quickly, and the air rushing by outside made this terrible sound (also as I later learned, this is all according to procedure).
So even though perfectly safe, this was the first time in my life where I couldn’t honestly say, “I’m probably going to make it.” I just didn’t know. I looked at the people sitting next to me, to figure out whether this was a situation where we were supposed to panic. And most of the people I could see had the same look on their faces - how bad is this? There really wasn’t all that much going through my head… just sort of an unpleasent kind of white noise, really.
Oh, and BTW, Stephen King, if you’re reading this, shame on you for writing The Langoliers. Not just for misinformation about air travel, either. 
My most memorable experience where I though I was going to die actually posed no real threat to my health or well being. I was on a flight from Lexington to Houston. I had been up far too late the night befor, and passed out as soon as I was on the plane. I had closed all of the window shades near me, so I couldn’t see outside. The plane was almost empty so I had a chance to spread out a bit. I woke up to the sound of the engines spooling up to full power, and a sensation of falling. I thought “Well, were crashing. I’m going to die. Screw it, I’m going back to sleep.” All with a complete calm that suprised me afterwards. As I closed my eyes I glimpsed the runway as it sped by. We had actually just landed in Houston. I was actually dissapointed because I would have to wake up in a minute and drive home.
My other experience was actually a possable life-ender, also involving airtravel. And is the reason I refuse to fly into O’Hare (sp?). As we began our final descent for landing I heard the engines hit full power and I could see vapor-trails coming off of the entire leading edge of the wing. “Hmmm, that’s a bit odd”. I looked to my left to where the stewardess was sitting (I was in the back of the plane) and her eyes were huge as she looked out of the window at…the other plane vying for the same airspace as us. We ended up landing fine, but I remember thinking “We are going to make a huge dent in someone’s house.” No concern for my well bing or the fact I was about to plumet a few hundred feet to my firey demise. Nothing as interesting as the other stories here, but it’s all I can offer.
A few years ago I became convinced that I was on the verge of having a fatal heart attack. Basically, I started having periodic chest pains for no apparent reason (i.e., not after exercising) and, combined with the fact that I am overweight I just assumed that my heart was giving out on me. Stupid, I know, but I was utterly convinced nonetheless.
At the time, I wasn’t that thrilled with how my life was going. I was 34 years old, still single, hadn’t been in a meaningful relationship for a loooong time, and was pretty sure I was going to spend the rest of my life alone and unloved. I was also a bit depressed because I was paying a lot for rent and the market was such that I couldn’t afford to buy a house on my salary. I wasn’t suicidal, in the sense that I wasn’t about to do anything to affirmatively end my life, but at the same time I just really didn’t care if I lived or died. So, when I became convinced that I was close to having a heart attack, I just accepted it. For awhile, at least.
Eventually, after a lot of soul searching, I decided that I did want to go on living after all and finally went to see a doctor. It turns out that my heart was fine, although my blood pressure was through the roof. And that, it turns out, was mostly due to stress at work. And so, I made some adjustments at work to decrease the stress and also started on a diet and exercise program to lose some weight. I also bought myself a sports car, figuring that I could at least have one nice thing to enjoy even if I wasn’t ever going to have a wife, family, or a house.
Of course, within a year I was introduced to a woman who I ended up marrying 10 months later, and we just bought a house together. Best of all, I got to keep the sports car!
Barry
A couple of years back I was having a problem with drugs. One night at a friend’s apartment we were partying and over the course of an hour I did ten grams of coke and took eleven “ecstasy” pills. I say “ecstasy” because, as it turns out, the pills were actually PMA (paramethoxyamphetamine), which is a very powerful stimulant and neurotoxin, as opposed to MDMA (methylenedioxymethamphetamine) which is pure ecstasy. I was flying high for a little while, then I felt nauseous and light headed and laid down. My friends noticed I was very pale and picked me up to put me in the bathroom to puke up all the shit I had downed. My skin was so hot to the touch that they had to let me go before we reached the bathroom. I started puking lots of blood. They finally got me to the bathroom and decided to toss me in the bathtub to run a cold shower on me to cool me down. This is when I started to black out. I remember them trying to talk to me and keep me conscious, and I specifically remember one guy say that they could not call the cops or paramedics with the quantity drugs present and that if I died or got too bad they would drive me out of the city and dump me in a field. As everything got darker, I decided that I was definitely an atheist in the hopes that when I died I would cease to exist in any form and finally be released from the chains of existance. As it turns out, I eventually came to and got to keep some minor brain damage as a souvenier. Shit, that story always kinda depresses me.
Moral of the story: Everything in moderation. The hard way is not the only way to learn.
I was driving SE on the notorious Rand Rd, late for work in my new '87 Pontiac Sunbird (yee ha!) approaching an intersection with several vehicles in the left turn lane going in the opposite direction. The light turned yellow a bit before I entered the intersection and the first car in the left turn lane went for it. Then the second car went for it. “What an idiot!” I thought, but he did safely make his left turn in front of me. At that point the light was still yellow, I had been coasting since the yellow and was going maybe 35 mph, the pavement was wet and with no ABS, I felt the prudent thing to do was roll through the intersection because there was no way I was going to stop in time and there was no way any sane person in the turn lane would attempt a left turn in front of me with a vehicle in the intersection going the opposite direction.
Unbelievably, the third vehicle, a 5000 lb conversion van, tries to make a left turn in front of me. Right before the impact, sudden death was an inevitable conclusion. At the last instant it occured to me that my life was in grave danger and I shouted “Oh my God!” at the top of my lungs. The next few seconds were literally a blur, but when everything had stopped, my car was an accordion pointing south, leaving many colorful fluids on the pavement. The front end was swayed to the passenger side at least 12", IIRC, and the driver rear quarter panel and rim were crushed–I had struck the conversion van in the passenger front door and then the van kept going and plowed my car such that my driver side rear struck her vehicle, again. The van wound up crashing into the left turn laners of the cross street.
IIRC, I crawled out of my car through the driver side window. I had not even a scratch. My seat belt contributed to my lack of damage, no doubt. I have some lingering minor back pain but was in so many major collisions as a youth it would be difficult to attribute any bodily woes to this particular wreck.
When I spoke on the telephone to the manager of the body shop where my Sunbird had been towed, he could not believe that anyone could have survived that collision and then yelled to everyone in the shop that the driver had walked away from that Sunbird without a scratch. The manager described the physics of such a collision and concluded the outcome was nothing short of miraculous.
Although I was by no means a particularly spiritual person at the time, in my time of need I called on the name of God and am glad I did.
I remember the second that I hesitated to see if there were cars coming, but not which one of us ran first. I know the exact second that I realized we weren’t going to make it. I remember the glaring headlights and felt the heat from the car as it passed just behind me. So close, that for a second, I had braced myself, eyes closed, ready for the pain that was going to come. Time slowed and the thoughts that went through my head must have travelled very fast, but at the same time crystal clear. I hoped it wouldn’t hurt, that my family knew I loved them, that I was sorry I’d never have kids. I thought maybe I would just break both legs, but somehow survive. Then, amazingly, my foot made it to the curb.
One step, that’s all that kept me from being hurt, if not killed. I had actually turned to my friend Janelle, smiling, ready to say, “Wow that was close.”
The words never left my lips. I remember the smell of the burnt rubber as the speeding driver slammed on his brakes, after hitting her, then reconsidered and kept going. I remember the way her body cartwheeled through the air, and the horrible jerking motion it made when her head bounced off the curb. Janelle was struck and killed by a speeding car one summer after a group of us had danced all night at a local club.
She was nineteen; full of plans and dreams and she lay dying in the exhaust stained grass of the boulevard, her eyes open but seeing nothing. She died and I lived, because my legs were longer and my step faster. She died, a virgin, a kind person, her clothes partially torn from her body, her last unaided breath lost in the laughter of a couple of drag-racers that weren’t watching. I will never know if she saw what was about to happen. I heard a scream, but don’t know if that was she, realizing the horror of what was to happen, or I. The car disappeared in a haze of tire-smoke and exhaust.
I ran to her side immediately. Always the strong one, always the “mom” in the group, I thought I would have to tell her to lie still, in case of a spinal injury. Around me, witnesses called out that a dog had been hit. I wanted to yell that it wasn’t a dog. It was a wonderful sweet girl named Janelle. She would not get to the coffee shop we had been walking to, where the guy she had a crush on would be working.
All around me, people starting panicking. A few of our friends were screaming and crying. Right away I became very calm. She wasn’t moving; her eyes were open and staring. The first thing I did was fix her shirt. I thought about how embarrassed she will be when she wakes up and realizes everyone saw her breasts. Then I checked her over. She was breathing, and she had a heartbeat. All the while I kept talking to her. I read once about how unconscious people can still hear stuff around them. I told her that she would be okay, that I was there and would take care of everything. I told her that I knew she was in pain, but that I would make everything better. I told her that I loved her.
Her heartbeat stopped then. Two of us started CPR. As I exhaled into her mouth I could hear the gurgling sound in her throat. It occurred to me I should’ve gotten a guy to do mouth-to-mouth, what a shame that this last kiss would have to be from me. We brought her pulse back, but it was no use. Her skull fractured, her neck broken, her legs and arms shattered, she was barely in one piece. The ambulance arrived what seemed like hours later. I helped the EMTs put her on the stretcher and my right hand was warm and wet as I inadvertently rested my palm on the open wound on her leg. Muscle, fat, blood and bone together, open to the air. I rode along in the ambulance and was shocked later to find only ten minutes had passed since we left the club.
Once at the hospital I had to call her mother. I had never met her mom. Our first meeting would be in the waiting room after I phoned her to tell her that her eldest child was dying. I also called my mom to ask her to come pick me up, and then I went and sat in the waiting room. Looking down at my hands in my lap, for the first time I noticed the blood. I remembered the soft feeling to the back of her head, the cold meaty feeling of the leg wound. Gagging, I washed the blood from my hands and my knees. I looked at myself in the mirror. So calm and cool, I scared myself with the apparent lack of feeling. Alone in the washroom, I tried to cry. Tried to allow myself to feel everything that happened, but the tears wouldn’t come. Leaving the washroom, I found everyone else had arrived, most were crying, some were praying, everyone was waiting. Stopping to hug a few friends I walked towards the door, wanting some fresh air.
The breeze was cool on my cheeks. A few people were outside, smoking, discussing the accident. One drunken man was muttering about being from the car that was involved. I went back inside to report him to the cop. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I wanted to feel, but couldn’t. Everything was too bright, too hard, too loud. I went from group to group, comforting, hugging. I was there for everyone, but no one was there for me. I felt like I was on-hold or holding my breath waiting for the exhale. I looked up from yet another hug to see my mom coming through the automatic doors.
Almost right away, the fog lifted and I was like a child again, running toward her after skinning a knee. My mom wasn’t there for anyone else; I didn’t have to be strong for her. All she said was, “I’m so glad it wasn’t you.” I fell into her, leaning hard. All of the strength and calm dissolved and there, but how could I tell her? How could I explain that for a second I had tasted concrete and blood? Imagined myself laying bleeding from being hit? That I had lived and couldn’t understand why?
It took two and a half years and some therapy to get over that one.
I guess in retrospect, I was not in any real danger of death as I still had my reserve parachute but, at least for a moment, I found myself face to face with that ugly monster we call death. It changed my life in an instant.
I had been through an extremely traumatic divorce that summer and it pretty much seemed at the time that my life was over. I had been torturing myself with suicidal thoughts (although deep down I sensed that was something that I would never actually pursue) the thoughts were nearly inescapable. What a completely wretched state to find oneself in. I guess its no small surprise that I soon found myself attracted to skydiving. I remember telling friends it was no big deal, that there was always a chance that the parachute would open.
I become so smitten with skydiving after the first jump that I wasted no time at all in buying a parachute rig and completing the student program. Things seemed a bit brighter but I was still wrestling with my inner demons.
Fast forward to jump #13 (go figure…). This was the first jump on my new rig and I made the mistake of allowing a somewhat inexperienced skydiving friend (he was actually my cousin) to pack the parachute for me as I was still not trained to pack. My rig was slightly different than his and as he routed the bridle and pin to the closing loop, he made a crucial error. At 3000 feet I threw my pilot chute as planned but nothing happened. I looked over my shoulder and there was that black and white pilot chute trailing helplessly in the blue sky above me. It was pulling on the container instead of the retaining pin and could not open the container and pull the parachute out into the airstream. Odd that such a small thing could have such an impact on life itself.
As a student skydiver you think a lot about how you will react to a malfunction while hurtling toward the ground at 120 miler per hour. Will you be able to collect your thoughts and choose the appropriate course of action? Will you fall apart and freeze? Will you spend the last moments of your life flailing and kicking in a blur of incomprehension? These are questions that can only be answered through experience. My experience was that a deep surreal calm came over me. The voice in my head said “well, this is it, do you want to live or do you want to die?” in that split second, I realized that there was no question in my mind whatsoever.
I wanted to LIVE!
No flashback of my life, no desperate thoughts, just a surreal calm and a small affirmation of life. What came after that was really quite simple. A training manual I had read on emergency procedures came to mind verbatim. the main parachute is not out, do not waste time trying to free the malfunctioned main from its container. Dont further complicate things by cutting away the main if it is still in the container. Pull the reserve handle and release your reserve. Simple as that.
The beautiful blue shade of my reserve parachute was forever etched into my mind. As well as a new found knowledge that I loved life and everything about it. To my way of thinking, I believe the circumstance that happened, happened because at some level, I wanted it to happen. But in that instant of uncertainty, I released my demons and reached out to embrace life as it was intended.
To this day I tell people that a skydiving malfunction may well have saved my life.
Note: This event was caused by human error. I hate it when the news reports that a skydiver died as a result of a parachute failing to open even when the facts indicate that the jumper actually failed to open a parachute. Very important distinction. Humans are immensly more fallible than parachute equipment. It is also well known within the skydiving community that by far, the most dangerous part of a skydive is the drive to the airport.
Back in 1986, the city where I work as a police officer was evacuated due to an impending tsunami (AKA tidal wave). It took two hours to completely clear the city, and we had about an hour to go until the wave was supposed to hit.
I heard a report on the radio that a 50 foot wave had wiped out a city north of us. Since the maximum elevation here is 33 feet, that would wipe this little sand spit we live on quite clean.
Then the Chief of Police asked for volunteers to stay in town to prevent looting. Since I was one of the only single guys in the department, I volunteered to stay and was assigned to man the station and the radios.
At the estimated time of arrival, I was staring out the window to the west, wondering if the motel across the street would hurt when it came through the wall.
In the end, we got a three foot wave that only NOAA’s instruments could detect. The report on the radio, needless to say, was bogus.
Wow. That whole story is the saddest thing I’ve read in a long time. Yikes.
I was going to tell my silly story abou dodging bulls in Pamplona. It seems a bit insignificant compared to your story. I hope you’re ok now.