Just ran across a story about a man who was crushed while sleeping in an elevator shaft. Seems like a dangerous place to be, no?
It brought to mind a story someone told me of doing some behind-the-scenes work in a skyscraper. At one point, they were walking very near some huge electrical relays; all he would have had to do is reach out, lean over a railing, and zap himself into oblivion.
Certainly, combat counts as a dangerous situation.
There are plenty of YouTube videos of stupid “Hey y’all, watch this!” stunts a-la Jackass.
I don’t have any good stories, as apparently I’m a big pussy with a good self-preservation instinct
Far out on Lake Michigan in an aluminum canoe by myself without a lifejacket on an extremely windy day with absolutely no other boats in sight, save for the kayak I was trying to reach. A little girl had been blown out away from shore in it.
Didn’t turn out well for the girl, sadly. When I reached the kayak it was empty, and she was never found. I came very close to not making it back either, capsizing the canoe as I tried to search for her in the water nearby. Water temperature was about 50 degrees. Got rescued eventually by a Sheriff’s boat sent out to find us.
I’ve gotten rides home from the club with so many random dudes I just met in my younger, stupider days. My friends and I would go there with the plan of getting some dude to drive us home. We seriously thought we were being responsible because, hey, we’re not DUI.
Backpacking and crossing a swollen stream at 10,000’ during a snowstorm. Two hours earlier in the other direction (before the storm caused our retreat) it had been 1-2’ deep. But with the rain/snow of the past couple of hours had raised the level to be 5-6’ and having not found a good place to get out of the storm we opted to cross as we knew our old campsite and sheltered area was just on the other side. We roped everyone and everything back and forth, but we were still frozen and worthless afterward and it took every ounce of energy to get one tent set up and all six of us into it and huddled to get warm. I’ve never approached being that cold or tired any other time in my life and I wonder what would have happened if it were snowing just a bit harder.
I’ve been up some damn steep and dangerous cliffside trails – rabbit-path trails, i.e., not formally maintained hiking trails, but bush-whacking off cross-country.
I saved my sister’s life, when she started sliding down a rockface.
Climbing Longs Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park. There’s a trail you can get up to the top without gear but you have to scramble up 45 degree slopes a couple times. You summit along the south end, which is a cliff face with only a precarious shelf between you and a fally death (made even more precarious by the fact that it is a really popular hike, so sometimes you have to walk around each other.)
There is even one point at which you have to negotiate a 4 inch wide ledge. Which was easier than it sounds because you can lean against the wall which is at an angle.
Except. When I was walking across the ledge I slipped on some black ice. I may have died had I not been walking foot over foot veeeerrrry slowly.
Wow - I’m a very careful fella comparatively. I’ve done lots of camping and canoeing, but never such extreme stuff.
The most dangerous stuff I’ve probably done was going on the roof of my own house to trim some branches. Also I’ve done some of my own electrical work.
Probably the melt shop of a really outdated steel mill. It was positively Dickensian in atmosphere – dark and gloomy, dirt floor, incredibly noisy, huge cascades of sparks from the ladle. I’m sure I wasn’t in THAT much danger, although there were certainly plenty of opportunities to touch things or stand underneath things that could have had disastrous consequences.
I’ve been caving in locations where the rocks are loose enough that I could literally punch the wall and knock off a hundred pound chunk. Combine that with a low ceiling and getting pinned to the floor is a real possibility.
No possible way would I have gone there solo. But if I had, well, remember the story/movie about the idiot that had to cut off his own arm with a dull multi-tool?
Depends on what you mean by voluntary, I guess. Last summer I was canoeing alone on a sparsely populated lake in New Hampshire when I capsized while trying to turn against a stiff wind. I had a life jacket and snagged the seat cushion, but I don’t swim.
I hung onto the side of the canoe for more than an hour and a half (Always stay with the boat!) before I decided that nobody was going to happen by anytime soon. (Friends/family back at the cabin across the lake were blissfully unaware of my predicament. Nobody else was out on the lake that morning.
Finally I had to let go of the damned boat and get myself ashore. It wasn’t really a long distance, but scary as hell for a fifty-something-year-old who had never swum farther than a single breath could take me. (I get the mechanics of swimming, just not the breathing part. . .) With the aid of the flotation cushion and my life vest, keeping my head above water, I got ashore.
Worked in a combined open-pit and underground mine operation. Lots of nice places to die voluntarily in, with choices of a quick painless death or a slow agonizing one. The closest I came to it was when I was trapped in narrow part of the tunnel and met a 3-tonne mine car trunddling along at a down-gradient so it can’t brake. I was squeezed to to wall of the tunnel in maybe a 10-inch gap between car and rock. People can’t believe I escaped with just a small cut on my butt.
Did you raise your sword and call Thor a candy arsed pansy?
Hm, Pennsic tales. Camped as camp mommy with Bloodguard on the serenghetti Pennsic 25 and watched the tornado rolling towards us while sitting in a tent. Survived several plague years without actually getting the plague!
Fell 90 feet down a very steep embankment while skiing, breaking a number of bones and having to be hauled out strapped to a backboard in one of those spiffy frame basket thingys. Not one of my funner experiences racing cross country.
