Pretty much. Once I figured out what was going on, my reaction was immediate, so no time to make a conscious decision.
I had no idea there were any female school shooters. Where was this? And when?
Twice: a roller coaster almost took off before I was hooked in properly. And my oftmentioned being dead for 45 minutes as a baby, due to a really high fever, likely caused by my MMR shot. (And that likely did cause brain damage–but little kids’ brains adapt.)
I can think of two times. About 10 years ago I went on a hiking trip. I climbed up this steep mountainside with no experience. I had some anxiety and altitude problems and just sat on this steep cliff face for about a half an hour. I felt like i was going to fall to my doom on the way down. Glad I didn’t.
And this year I rolled my car. Came out completely unscathed. My car was totaled. I quit my job and no more long commutes on the highway for me. That really could have been it if I had been near a lake or if I had rolled into the oncoming lane.
I said twice. The first was when my horse flipped over on top of me. I was sure I was a goner, but he managed to twist his body just enough that he landed beside me instead of on top of me.
The other is when I had double pneumonia and strep throat at the same time. I ran a 103-105 fever for about a week. I was pretty much too sick to move.
I won’t vote because I’m not sure how close I really was, but when I was a young kid, my even younger sister and I were in the pool together, and she started freaking out and pushing me under water. Luckily adults were around to pull her off of me, and I didn’t drown, but even to this day I remember being awfully close to sucking in a bunch of water into my lungs. Even if I had, they probably could have saved me but yeah. So either 0 or 1, depending on how you count that.
My brush with death is a brief but intense and clear fraction of a moment in time when I was 4. My parents were poor as my mom was waiting tables while my dad was going to law school and we lived in a dump of an apartment complex.
What I remember was wandering off to the edge of a lake and then seeing nothing but intense bright orange and not being able to breath. I had fallen into said lake and had no ability to swim.
My dad had just awoken from a cat nap and noticed me gone, frantically searching for me and as fate would have it, noticed the front door cracked and instinctively - he later - recalled went racing towards the lake before he even searched my room or the apartment.
He said he arrived at the lake and could not see me, because the lake edge dropped down about a foot into the water. He was going to turn around and search elsewhere when he heard the splashing… if he was even a minute or two delayed I suspect there would be no more splashing or noise and I would have never seen 5. 
Wow, some really intense experiences people have been through…interesting thread.
Here’s mine:
Ten or so years ago I blithely got on a motorbike that I didn’t know how to ride, and took off. Trouble was I didn’t know how to stop it - instead it kept going faster and faster till it reared up and threw me. I was banged and bruised though ultimately not seriously hurt. But the knowledge that if I had landed differently I could have been killed or paralyzed scared the dickens out of me.
Then last year I was on a military base in Afghanistan. There were a number of times we had incoming, but two stand out in particular: once we were running to the bunker and shells were exploding right over us, bam bam bam. The closest bunker was full so I was basically standing on the edge of it, totally exposed.
Another time we woke up to an attack and ran to the bunker. After it had gone on for an hour or so it seemed to be dying down and I and a couple other guys tentatively stepped outside to see what was going on before the all clear was called. Whoops - a huge explosion went off right then, and the shock wave pushed us back inside.
Finally, I used to run around the airstrip on base and the path took me by the entrance to an Afghan Army compound. I never felt comfortable on that stretch (a great inducement to keep running!) and later heard that some ANA soldiers had been arrested for plotting to shoot soldiers jogging past.
Hats off to you Rodgers01, for braving moments like these for us. Once, while I was fingerprinting a guy at the police dept. (civilians only, for a job) he and I got into a conversation where he told me he didn’t sleep a wink during his year in Vietnam. Unlike Afghanistan, where stints have been extended…over and over.
My first (known by me) brush with death happened when I was about three years old. I was playing with a girl under some kind of tent. Could have been a sheet but we were outside. She had a tea set and told me I could have some but not to ask her for more or she would have to kill me. I tipped up my empty cup and then asked for more. (A pattern I’ve repeated throughout my life.) She put her hands around my neck and tried to strangle me. A neighbor woman came to my rescue.
Fast forward fifty years (when it happened to me), past near-drownings, self-mutilation and psychos holding figurative guns to my head. I got ARDS. I’ve mentioned this before in a few threads and mention it again because I don’t think it’s that common and other people could be a clueless about it as I was. Had an operation, was doing fine, then a couple days later I was fighting for my life with no idea as to why. I was in a drug induced coma for 3 1/2 weeks (brought “to the surface” periodically so doctors could check (?) on me…(torture.)
I was suffocating to death, just like it would feel if somebody put a plastic bag over your head. I couldn’t breathe. My lungs had “frozen”…I couldn’t inhale or exhale. I was on life support; trach, feeding tubes etc. I was living on the tiny puffs of air urged into my lungs that barely enabled me to hallucinate. I was afraid I was going to die, then I begged to.
Too much to go into. I missed Halloween and my favorite aunt’s death, but I survived. By Christmas I had crocheted a bunch of little Christmas trees with safety pins through their backs; my husband glued on the sequin “ornaments” because my hands were too shaky. When we got off the elevator on ICU, walking toward the nurses’ station, my husband lifted his chin to point out “She was your nurse.” As we got closer she started to cry. So I did, too, though I didn’t recognize her. She grasped my arms and said “You almost died.” I said “I know.” She said “No. You pulled your trach out—twice. The second time, I…we, couldn’t get it back in.” Which explained why I’d come to with my wrists tied to the rails of the bed. Always the master of my own fate.
Then my husband and I went around the floor giving out little fuzzy green emblems of joy. I’m glad we did. Most patients had family hovering nearby but this one guy was by himself. His serape was flung over the back of the visitor’s chair. His scruffy beard told me was a transient before he did. He wasn’t religious and neither was I. We talked. He thanked me for giving him the only thing he got for Christmas. It was a hard one, but we made it.
Penn State, '97 I think. This was before school shootings were a thing. At the time I was thinking back to the shooter in the clock tower at a Texas university in the sixties. Unfortunately it has become all too common.
Wow. Like QTM said, good on you for stepping up.
No question you saved lives, no question you’re a true and honest hero.
Thank you for doing that. This world needs a few more like you.
That’s what I keep telling my girlfriend. I’m not sure she buys it.
Thanks, though.
I put zero, but maybe I came close once?
I was driving from Vermont to Arkansas, stopping only for gas and the occasional nap when I was nineteen. I was trying to keep going as late as possible so I had a steady supply of soda, coffee,… And No-Doz…
Obviously, no one had clued me in on the danger of too much caffeine. I was stopping to nap for a few hours. The coffee I had just had must have been the tipping point. A few minutes into trying to nap my heart started racing.
It was one of the scariest moments in my life. It was that adrenaline-fueled feeling of extreme fear, but it didn’t end. Being nineteen, I decided the smartest thing to do was wait and try to ride it out.
At the worst point, the slightest unexpected noise would cause my heart to max out, my chest to burn, and my whole upper body to ache. I labored to breathe for some time. Needless to say I didn’t get any sleep. These effects continued even after I continued my journey. It took probably six or more hours from the start for the incident to run it’s course. I never took No-Doz again.
Looking back, I’d have to say I used up my quota of luck for that year, if nothing else.
Also, add me to the list of people that are glad their lives have been so boring. 
Never know how to answer these things, as it’s sometimes hard to understand just how close to or far away from tragedy I may have been.
That said, off the top of my head:
Several instances of anaphylaxis as a child, AFAIK all from poison ivy. And, as I recall, never treated as an emergency… like, oh my eyes have swollen shut and I am having trouble breathing, better get an appointment with the doctor tomorrow. Thankfully, I’m now less sensitive to poison ivy; my last bout (from rehabbing a house with a charity about five years ago) left me with rashes on my arms but nothing else.
T-boned by a semi on an interstate after my car lost control on black ice. Not sure how close to death I really was, though, as my car was a monster – early 80s Olds Delta 88 – that absorbed the impact and remained drivable for another couple of years despite being crescent-shaped after the impact; I ended up junking it for a new-to-me car not because of crash-related damage, but because the radiator eventually gave up the ghost and the repair was more than I cared to pay. The semi was disabled, however. I recall being more surprised by watching the bonnet/hood of the semi detach, flip over my car and continue down the road for a few dozen yards, and cause another accident that disabled yet another semi.
Dated a crazy girl with a crazy ex who had threatened me a few times. Caught her cheating on me, broke up with her, and within a few days, the new boyfriend (the cheatee) was beaten to death in her apartment, and she was on the run from the police; never figured out if it was the crazy girl or crazy ex, but felt like I’d gotten out in the nick of time.
Dated another crazy girl (literally, in and out of mental institutions during the relationship), woke up a few times in the last few days of our relationship to things like having her putting a knife to my neck or trying unsuccessfully to cut me elsewhere. She usually seemed to be in some kind of reverie when she was doing that. I’d grab the knife away and hold her down, she’d “come to” and claim that she had confused me with an abusive ex or whatever. That didn’t last too long, of course. She is still bothered by the fact that I won’t be friends with her on Facebook.