General

[ThisIsPaintball.ca]

Please see post (One Reason Why MCB Is The Best Online Paintball Community) that would be the most recent one. For those not clicking through no MCB was not a near death experience (unless I added up how much I have spent on paintball that might cause many of us heart attacks). Not a good sign when ever nurse/doctor + cops telling you that your lucky to be alive.

But for one that I often tell folks would be 2007 Xmas Day trying to leave a tiny Island Off of Bali/Lombok, Indonesia in a storm on the smallest, wooden boat you could think of (will share image of boat travel over in good weather) The weather was so bad that most tourists had booked a ride out on the real boats and so our spot which we thought was there wasn't a possibilty.

Being so rocky that I don't think there was any point that the waves were not rushing over the sides, & since I grew up on an Island & had worked on boats even in some what bad weather at times. I was fine with the thought the boat would go down & swimming would be the only option so the passport was stuffed into the short pocket along with the wallet and the bag of items I had with me would be the first thing ditched. Only issues with the thought of a sinking boat would be the lack of knowing where the closest land was & knowing that sharks are much faster swimminger than even the best Olympic swimmers...

The instant transportation was a domestic airline which all are black listed by the EU due to failing safety standards.

[sniperfan]

Drowning: I was on a day canoe trip with a group of guys from my Action Shooting league on the Russian River north of Healdsburg CA. We had a half dozen canoes in our group. The river was fairly high that year due to heavy rain. It was a really fun day- about 6 hours off the beaten path.

So we come around a sharp left bend in the river and hit a downed tree- canoe rolls and sinks immediately. I step out of the canoe and into the tree, which was dangling off of the high bank on the right side of the turn. The rest of our party stopped before the turn to "help" (read: watch the chaos). I was in the front of the canoe; my friend was in the back and swam away, as he wasn't in the branches.

I took a test "float" to see if I could swim out and immediately sank- the current was really bad, and all the limbs of the tree made it next to impossible to paddle. The other guy tried to throw a float on a line over, but couldn't throw it far enough.

My boss tied a rope around his waist and floated over on the current and said' Let's go", and threw has arm around me, but he didn't get that we would be pushed through the tree- and boy, did we ever. They call them "strainers" for a reason.

I kept my eyes open as we were pushed under the tree, and the rope went between our legs. I could see a stump on the bottom, and we drifted right into it- klonk, right on the head. We swam across the current and toward the surface (we were about 8-10 feet down) and surfaced. The guys on shore finally figured it out and pulled us in, which rolled us over since the rope was now between our legs. It seemed to go on forever but the whole thing took maybe 20-30 seconds.

As soon as we got on shore my boss and I puked up a big quantity of green river water- so we had been swallowing water to keep from inhaling. That was close. I don't remember being scared, just disoriented.

[Siress]

I'm sure I've forgotten more than I remember at this point. It's funny how few of them are related to my adrenaline seeking behavior, though.

a) My first scenario game had a lunch break, and we decided to pile into the truck and hit a nearby Hardee's instead of the boiled hotdogs at the field. Me and another guy are in the bed of the truck holding the gear down while they're going down the highway at about 60mph. I was uncomfortable with this situation, to begin with and yelled at the driver to slow down. He didn't. Shortly after we're going down a large embankment that launched me out of the bed of the truck. All I saw was a huge tree branch that I was about to hit face first, superman style. The other guy was pinned beneath the toolbox of the truck and managed to pull me back down before I hit the branch. It was amazing the truck didn't flip or roll considering the angle of the embankment was about 55deg and a depth of about 10ft before going into dense woods. I wanted to put the driver in the hospital, but the guy that pulled me back into the bed told me to let it go. I never hung out with those guys again.

b) I was mountain biking at a new trail system after getting pedals that clip to my shoes. It was great, but the trail was shared with horses and hikers in sections and then branched off. I came to a section where the trail was about 4' wide and branched, and I couldn't see any signs indicating which direction was for bikers. So, I started to stop and pull my map out. As I came to a stop, I didn't twist my ankle to unclip...so I fell sideways. Now, I'm pretty chill when I'm on a 4' wide section of trail...so I'm chuckling as I turn my head to look where I'm about to fall. All I see is a steep mountain side covered in leaves. "Shhhhhiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeee..." I managed to unclip before hitting the ground, luckily, and proceeded to fall down the side of the mountain. I hit a few trees, trying to grab them as I went down, which started me tumbling. I finally grabbed a tree, though. As I looked around, I realized I was only a few feet from a cliff face that had a drop into a rocky riverbed. I wouldn't have survived that fall, and even if I had managed to...no one could've found me to save me. My bike had caught a tree much higher up. I had to use trees as footholds to climb back up that mountain side was so steep. Then I had to throw my bike up and try to hook it onto a tree higher up. Catching it when it didn't...not pleasant.

That's enough for now, I think.

[gunangel]

I must have been 5 or 6? Our martial art group went to a wave park, while I didn't know how to swim, it wasn't going to keep me from jumping in with everybody at the 3 ft mark and walking my way out. The wave pool started just as I jumped in and the water level quickly passed where I could keep my head above water, and started to pull me further in. Within a few moments I found myself facing black slits (back then they didn't have any fencing, or anything, it was just assumed no one would make it that close), and I remember thinking that I was going to be ground up by the paddles that generated the waves. Right as I got within within arms reach of death, I felt a strong pull, a passing man had dove in after seeing me in distress and pulled me out. I just remember coughing up a lot of water and being very shaken and the man in the black speedo just stood there until I caught my breath. A few friends found me and asked how I had ended up all the way down there probably a good 30 meters from where we had been jumping, they hadn't noticed, neither had the life guard or the instructor. If the man hadn't been standing there I wouldn't have been alive today.

[baader]

We were backpacking Equador and booked a river rafting trip. The guy that sold the trip said that the river is class 3 or 4 and piece of cake.

There was only 5 of us in the 6 person raft. Me, my wife, two quides and an Austrian fellow who claimed to be experienced rafter. We had a bout 2 minutes of going through the safety procedures, and off to the the river we went. We also had a safety person on a kayak.

Pretty much from the start it was obvious that the river was not as calm as they said, and the whitewaters were really big, and we had to paddle like crazy to get through.
(I really don´t even like swimming, and waters usually scare me)

About 10 min in, we couldn´t paddle enough for one big wawe and the raft went over.
I remember that time was really slow, I realize that my shoe is stuck in the raft, cause they have speedlaces (never wear speedlaces to a raft ). I somehow manage shake my foot loose, and come to surface.

Now I´m in a raging river and about every 5 seconds I go underwater. I keep banging lightly against rocks at the same time.

The 2 minute safety cafe to me clear as day. I first looked for my paddle, and the started to float and same time looking for the raft. I manged to get to the raft and other were the already. We came to not so bad point in the river, and the guide flipped the raft over. I was the last to climb up, and at that point we had been probably about 3-5 minutes in the water.

We took a breather on some rocks and checked that everyone was ok, apparently the austrian guy had freaked bably and had grabbeb the guide, almost drowning them both, also the safety guy lost control too, even he was with a kayak.

Worst part was continuing after this, as we were only halfway through.
Afterwards they told us that it was class 5, and only experienced rafters should be there.

[Luckless]

Nearly every rocket me and a few friends launched when we were teens.

Nearly every rocket engine we made/fuelled, or batch of fuel we produced.

Then there was the time we had a major failure, and set a gravel pit on fire. And I don't mean the grass and stuff, I mean we actually got something hot enough that something in the rock began to oxidise and spread. Fun times.

Climbed in under a fallen concrete slab to do first aid on a guy while we waited for paramedics and jacking equipment. (Turns out the only thing that had been holding the slab off me was a bent nail that was rated for less than 1/4 the force that would have been against it.)

Had a safety/work harness hard point let go while I was helping with repairs on a bridge. Ruined a good pair of paints and took a good cut down the leg in exchange for my life, fair deal. Snagged myself on a nail on my way down the side. Had we been 10 feet closer to the centre i would have been over slow deep water, instead of a large slab of concrete sprouting old rebar. (Rebar was actually something I suggested get cut back, and was on the work plan for later in the day when the guy with the saw got there.)

And lots of other times being around my friends doing stupid things. Like jumping a bonfire on their 4 wheelers, one of them doing it with several loose jerry cans of gas on the back.


Not all of my friends were smart enough to be rocket scientists. Even those that were had a knack for ignoring obvious safety concepts.

[cirkle68]

A few years ago driving home after work late one night during severe wind and rain from a hurricane. I did a 540 on interstate 95 outside of richmond va. Ended up with part of my car hanging off an overpass..stupid cop tried to give me a ticket for reckless driving. Luckily the judge laughed and said have a nice day.. Ended up only bending a rim..