How many times have you cheated death?
 

We were discussing this at work earlier in the day.

Whether it was in your young 'n foolish days...or just circumstance.

Curious how many times others have seriously cheated death - where it could've gone either way.

Five, that I can remember.

- a buddy and I got into a high-speed wobble (over 100mph) on a motorcycle.
- nearly got cut in half during a car accident.

I won't elaborate on the foolishness of the other three. :1orglaugh

never - and i am not really sad about it either

7 at least...

Once. Too much of a good thing.

:Oh crap

Twice. That will be enough thank-you...

One round zero times. Not even 0.0001, but actual zero :)
I am just too smart to risk my life in even a small chance..

Twice.I worked in the petroleum industry for 18 years.Almost fell off a storage tank about 100 feet high.and just barely hung on. the other I jumped in a tanker which was empty but was filled with gasoline fumes.I was overcome by the fumes instantly and barely managed to pull my ass out.My line of work was dangerous at times but I'm still here.

Ever see that movie North Shore? When the guy tries to surf Pipeline on his first day in Hawaii and gets pulled into the spin cycle and almost drowns. That happened to me at exactly the same spot, except after I made it to the beach Nia Peeples didn't ride up on a horse and rub aloe on my reef rash.

Had a scaffold break apart while I was on it, My safety belt saved me from falling down an elevator shaft
Numerous other time and I have the scars to prove it, starting with a accident at age six that cracked my head open pretty bad

cocaine is a hell of a drug.

Smart isn't always the determining factor, though.

A bunch of us were returning home from a campground (I was driving) and we stopped at a rural garage sale along the way. My GF at the time had spotted a nice grandfather clock they were selling.

Anyways, we were parked on the shoulder of the road - wheels several feet from the pavement. A few other cars were parked in the same way/same area. Normally a safe spot in the middle of nowwhere.

We just got back to the car and I'd gone to the trunk to re-arrange some lawn chairs that'd been rattling around. I was leaning into the trunk when an 82yr. old woman slammed in to us. She hit the rear quarter-panel fender just a foot or two from where I was standing...and literally sheered all down the driver's side of the car. The impact was enough to bend the axle and royally fuck up the entire car (a fairly new Pontiac Grand Prix GT).

She'd fallen asleep at the wheel.

All the smarts in the world wouldn't have prevented it - unless someone at the ministry of transportation had been smart enough to revoke her drivers license years earlier.

Definitely. You can not be safe form everything, for example some driver hitting your etc or whatever.
I mean that I just minimize the risks in all ways possible. I am do not even jump from a plane because there is a 0.000000000000000000001% chance that my parachute would not open.
I do not snowboard just because there is a chance that I may break something (or 0.00000000000001% chance to end up like Schumacher). Etc etc.
It is strange to some people, but this is my way :)

Driving a motorcycle at 100 mph is beyond possible with me. And I mean driving it at straight line, let alone racing :)

I believe that you can not cheat death. She just came not for you in this moments.

sounds pretty damn boring... by that logic you shouldn't do anything at all... I would even avoid turning on the computer, there is .000001% chance you might get fatally shocked...:2 cents:

I was anticipating this exact response. And no, not really, I have lots of fun. Just stay away from few certain dangers :)
I have a blast at a parties, I like to travel etc, Euro trip style etc. I like to wind surt, kite surf etc (I know it is dangerous, but psychologically it is easier to anticipate hitting the water instead of a tree in snowboarding). Or I do "boring" things like yachting... I also like to motorbike (but again, no extreme racing).
I still have more fun than 90% of population, just add some smarts in the mix.
And i do not do drugs :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

I'd say 4 times and the last time I spent 29 days in the hospital back in 2008. Fun times

fair enough, so you are pretty much normal, just afraid of snow and heights... :)

though I would think surfing is a bit more dangerous than snowboarding (as long as you start off on an amateur slope)... with surfing you could slip, hit the water, pass out, drown, or get eaten by a shark, or get paralyzed by some toxic jelly fish, etc...

Yes, but I have pretty unique way of assessing risks, I never met anybody like me :)
That is why I can safely say that if I look death in the eye it would only be because of something I could have not prevented (opposite lane driver hitting me etc).

3 that I can think of, was booked to be on the 9/11 flight from Boston but my grandfather wanted me to stay an extra week so he called a few days before and rescheduled it to the same flight and everything, just a week later :Oh crap

a few times :1orglaugh been shot stabbed and hit by a car :Oh crap

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh :1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Whoa...that's definitely side-stepping fate.

I've heard a few similiar stories over the years of people who either missed the flights or re-scheduled.

Your gramps unknowingly staged an intervention. :thumbsup

for sure! I see a Final Destination marathon in my future sat or sunday. Love those movies!

Getting hard to count...

Bike run over by garbage truck but even though I was still holding the handle bars the rest of me wasn't under the bike or the wheel of the truck...

Jumped from 65 foot cliff but didn't clear the rock but managed to bounce into the water and not impale myself on some metal pipes at the water's edge.

On shrooms dove into water about a foot deep and cracked my head on a rock but walked away with minor concussion...

Thrown 75 feet from the roof of a Volvo station wagon i was riding to go get more beer for a high school kegger... walked away from that with just a broken foot having managed not to hit the telephone pole the driver drove into...

Friend at a gun range had a misfire and instead of setting the gun down turned toward me and said "something is wrong with this" then the gun went off right under my chin and the bullet went past my ear...

Fell asleep at the wheel in Ashland Or. and rolled five times according to witnesses. Walked away.

Lived in Venice CA and was an eyewitness to a shotgun murder in broad daylight. Killer almost ran me down trying to get away. I was the witness that put him away. And guess what? White guy. Just saying because I know all the gfy racists were thinking crip v13 when I said Venice.

Threatened with death during LA riots while getting video footage...

Scuba failure in 80 foot depth with buddy no where in sight in very poor viz...

Almost fell 120 ft while trying to rescue friend while doing free climbs in Joshua Tree..

Called Chuck Norris a pussy... to his face... Ok, just kidding there but I am pretty sure I actually died a long time ago and everything since then has been a dream in purgatory.

You easily beat any cat...

Impressive resume. :1orglaugh

Grim Reaper is a fail here.

Far-L for the win!!

3 times for me.. robbed at gunpoint twice. Once last year and they got my camera, the other time in the ghetto a guy had an Uzi. Having a gun to my face makes me smile lot more more now. The other time was at 18th street in Newport Beach during El Nino. The surf was over head and a freaky clean up set rolled in. I took a few waves on the head and got held under. Seemed like forever and I waved at the lifeguard to help. That's when I learned they dont help people with surfboards. Said my prayers looking up at these big walls coming at me. Stopped surfing anything over 12 feet, now if its 8 foot I'll stay on the beach and chill. I dont have anything to prove to anyone :)

OMG I forgot about this one i don't know how! that happened to me in 60 ft which isn't as bad but it was my reg and mask at the same time and I freaked out.. yeah worst thing to do. It was on a night dive right as they were turning off the flashlights to see the glowing shit and i pulled the I'm dying hand signal and started to swim up :1orglaugh thank god we were traveling and the guide was a rescue diver! scariest moment of my life by far!!!

you cant go prep in tha hood holmes. i got fam in compton la stockton watts all over cali i walk that shit never been robbed. you got a beautiful family stay out of the hood :2 cents::2 cents:

3 Times.

Once when I was 17, one my lungs collapsed in the morning and I didn't go to the hospital until that night.

Another time I fell asleep at the wheel on the way to Toronto from Montreal. Switch seats with my passenger and then she fell asleep, hitting the steel border of a road into a curve (a small cliff was just passed that wall). Entire right side of my car was destroyed. Nobody was hurt.

The last time was a pretty bad car crash about 10 years ago. Near head-on (They were driving the street), major damage to both cars, but nobody got hurt.

Crazy.

This is EdgeProd Yale V 2.0 shit

Back in the 80s my ex-brother-in-law (and good buddy) lived a hundred yards from the DVP (Don Valley Parkway) in Toronto. Often we'd get hammered, hike over to the 200ft railway bridge adjacent to the Parkway and fire off a few bottle rockets into the valley below. Rather harmless fun.

But one night we took a few buddies with us and went past the rail bridge and got on to the big arch bridge over the actual DVP...watching six lanes of traffic zoom by below us at 100km/h. The bridge is maybe 40-50ft high over the Parkway.

One of the guys had brought a can of white spraypaint and decides to spray a 'Don't Drink and Drive' logo on the bridge over the southbound lanes. Seemed like a cool thing to do at the time - according to Jack Daniels.

So for a lark I decide to show off a little and climbed over the edge of the bridge and hung by one hand directly over the centre lanes of the expressway to finish the bottom of the logo. I (sorta) knew what I was doing...but it freaked the hell outta the other guys at the time.

But I finished the logo. :1orglaugh

It looked good, too. City crews let it stay there for a few years - to this day you can still see the patch where they eventually covered it over.

Now in my 50s, in hindsight...it was probably one of the stupidest stunts I pulled.

Grabbed the roof ledge from a penthouse suite about 25 stories high,sliced the pinky wide open hanging on and almost fell.went to hospital for shock and stitches.
My first job was at 15 and a dishwasher.walking home around midnight,jumped and boot stomped by 2 guys I knew from school.split my head wide open and then raced me to the hospital after they realized how they almost killed me.
bad memories. I should have been dead multiple times thinking about it

A good half-dozen off the top of my head...

Rare medical stuff, near electrocution, almost fell 80+ floors off the edge of a skyscraper construction site and a few others. The strange thing is how there was never any warning. It's not like a movie where the ominous music starts up -- One minute all is well, the next minute you are looking back scared out of your mind because you know you almost just died.