Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The closest you've ever been to death?

Collision at sea submerged on a fast attack submarine in the Straights of Gibraltar at night. Hit a Greek freighter. Fairwater planes put a gouge in the Greek ship 5’ wide and 80’ long. I was in the Control room and heard the sound of the Greek ship’s screw through our hull, while wearing a set ESM headphones. Hit us so hard it broke a frangible (designed to break under a given instantaneous load) mounting pin that failed under 5G’s of instantaneous acceleration. Bent the shaft of the fairwater planes (look them up) that was more than 20” of diameter. Hit the pressure hull, not superstructure) within 20’ of my head. Manned the phones to receive emergency reports from all compartments. Was pretty sure the “green monster”, sea water flooding to a submariner, was coming in until each compartment, in correct order and sequence, reported no flooding. Pulled into Rota, Spain for emergency repairs. Over indulged at the Sangria Shack with a shipmate soon thereafter.

Then there was the time we lost all air conditioning, same nuclear powered (giant tea kettle amid ships) attack submarine, lost all air conditioning submerged under a hurricane. After about 30 hours temps in Engine Room Lower Level were over 120 degrees F sustained. You could only stand to work down there for about a 20 minute shift, max. Wrenches were hot to the touch. Pulled into Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico for emergency repairs. Sent over a dozen people to the hospital, 4 to ICU.

Thresher Class Submarines, got to love them.

I heard "Blue Whistlers" from buckshot on a deer drive once. Sounded like a cotton sheet betting ripped right next to my ear.

In 2018 I contracted West Nile Virus and it developed into encephalitis which almost killed me. I was told that 14 people in PA got it that year and 8 died. I dropped almost 30 pounds in the 8 days I was in the hospital. Was weak as I've ever felt. It took me months to get back to where I felt near normal.

March 2020. "Routine" abdominal surgery. Went septic. Organs started to shut down. Brain objected to the chaos. Emergency surgery. Got gutted like Dogcatcher described. The kicker, I was so drugged up that I did not know how close I came to dying until weeks later...

"But for the grace of God..."

USS NIMITZ (CVN 68) Launch of the waist cat (3), high winds, heavy seas, the row of A-7s parked on Cat 2 acted as a wind barrier and the second we cleared, aircraft rolled violently to the left, passing 20 Deg AOB, I had tension on the lower ejection handle, had we ejected, it would have been close...

If I told it, no one would believe it.

I don't know that I could quantify how close or one specific time but likely several times I've been close.

Rolled a lot of vehicles
Been shot at
Had knives pulled on me (drunk female)

Bout 9 years ago, I got really sick. ICU sick and the local docs couldn't figure it out. Sent me to Mayo. They claimed they knew what it was about 98% but not sure. I was probably the most scared in my life then, don't know about dying. Did some bone marrow biopsies to look for cancer. I looked at my symptoms combined with what they had also tested for and it would be one of 3 things. 1. Not cancer, 2 Cancer A, 3 Cancer B. If it was either of the 2 likely cancers (I had 9/10 of the symptoms) then I had at best 6 weeks to live. I was pretty scared then. My son was just in middle school. Lots of thoughts. When I got the news it wasn't cancer -I broke down pretty good. I hadn't told any family what was going on at that point. Was a heavy weight to carry.

Heart attack last summer.

I was a passenger in an OH-58 that crashed when the pilot was flying at a very low level, like 15', and hit a communication tower when he hopped over a hedge row on the Fort Riley maneuver area. We had a hard, unplanned, landing and nobody was hurt, but the tail rotor was damaged when it got a lot of commo and guy wires from a series of RC-292 antennas wrapped in it. Needless to say, a lot of a$$ got chewed.

I was in another helicopter accident in the Sinai while I was on UN peacekeeper duty when the engine on an Egyptian MI-8 stalled when were about 30' off the ground. I managed to get my seat belt off and stand up before we pancaked, so I took the impact with my legs. My boss didn't get his seat belt off and suffered career ending back/spine injuries. I think that the helicopter ran out of fuel, but the pilots invoked "Inshallah" instead of landing while we still had enough fuel for a powered landing.

GOD was looking out for me in 1984 when I was in Beirut. A mortar round or an RPG round exploded within 20' of our group as we were planning how we were going to remove some unexploded rounds that had been shot at the airport. I was in the shadow of the shrapnel pattern, everybody got hit with some fragments, but I only got 1 fragment hit that is still embedded near the top of my right tibia.

About 1979 or so,my heart started to skipping every 3rd beat.. Ambulance to hospital. Fast gurney into Cardiac ICU.That night 6 other patients didn't make it. by 6AM, I was the only one left. Doc said if it went down to every two, I would have been among those..

2 M miles on a truck gives one plenty on chances to puckerup and pray or say oohhh [bleep]. from a trailer getting screwy on an icy road to breaks starting to smoke on the grapevine or just some fool cutting you off to make an exit in a hurry, add to that ,finding out you have type 2 diabetes when you wake up in a hospital 500 miles from home cause you passed out in a truckstop with a bs of 55!! yep no more driving for you, It did keep me alive so I could have 2 heart attacks a couple of years later , one while they were giving the stress test to check the condition of the 1st one ,3stints later I am still above ground

Almost died in a roll over Jeep wreck in 1984.

I was pinned in the jeep with a small fir tree tree holding me in.

The paramedics asphyxiated me with chainsaw fumes, cutting out the tree and I quit breathing for a few minutes.

Thank goodness they got me breathing again after they got me out of the jeep.

Virgil B.

Come daylight following a night ambush firefight, I found a dud grenade lying about a foot and a half from my position next to my pile of brass. That and untold 7.62x39 bullets whizzing by on other occasions. Grace of God…

well......you'll have better weather than last week......today is a ++10 day here

'Breezy' rest of the week.......

ATV's & SxS's ??

I have no idea how "close" or which were closest, but three or four times have been informed by those who should know - "very close". Overall, the proximity did not feel ominous or scary, although scorching pain can make quite an impression.

Just the words I chose to use. If I would have said a hunting rifle you would have asked how did I know.

Several times, I have had a loaded rifle pointed at me from 10ft.....

I was driving into my rural City in the evening and it was dark, all of a sudden there was a vehicle in front of me coming towards me with his headlights off, so roughly 50 mph x 2....I had just enough time to swerve, then swerve again because of the sign I was now pointed at.

When I stopped and realized what had happened I started after the other guy, it was a Datsun 510. I figure I know who it was and he was/is bi-polar and had a death wish.

Then as a faller, like Nestucca, you come close to death if you do it long enough and it is only the luck and grace of God that you live.
I had a tree about 36" at the stump land beside me about 5-6ft away from me while I was sawing into another one to push it over with, my fault as it often is.
Then I have had a top about 20ft long land right beside me, I wondered what the whooshing sound was...found out.

Walked 15 miles in the dark down the mountain after getting stuck during a blizzard, no snow when I started walking, over 2 ft by the time I got to the bottom of the hill. I was young and wasn't prepared for it, I had a wool blanket that likely saved me and I now always have one in my truck, I don't think I could do that walk today.

Was the last man out when a roof collapsed. The falling portion of the roof just caught me on my heel as I was bolting.

Another collapse, a large ridge beam came down right on me landing on my air tank. It happened to hit a 4' pony wall I was standing by so it drove me to my knees pretty hard. 6 or 8 inches further forward may have crushed my neck and killed me.

Twice that I can think of. One wasn't very exciting, was cutting some steel with a chop saw, somehow the saw grabbed the cut off chunk of steel and flung it upwards, it nicked the bottom of my lower jaw and sliced it open. Just a few inches more and it would've been my jugular vein. The other time on the fire dept. we were working a car wreck out on the interstate at the merging point on one of the on ramps. Traffic was not heavy but it was starting to back up. I was going to walk down to where the traffic was getting jammed up and about that time an 18 wheeler come flying through with the brakes locked up and he's sliding sideways towards the rest of my crew who were working the wreck. Somehow he shot into the median and crossed over into oncoming traffic but luckily there wasn't any traffic real close at the time. He stayed on the oncoming shoulder until he hit a crossover area which was about a quarter mile away. I really thought we were gonna be wiped out on that one. I'd rather fight a big ass fire then work a car wreck on an interstate!

In Southern California you can't avoid the freeways. I've had some scares but you're right, freeways were a lot scarier to me.

Blood clots 2009. Paktia province Afghanistan. I got a quick trip to FOB lightening for a round of clot busters and then Medevac'd to Bahgram. One day there and then to Germany. 4 days later I was sent home. They loaded me up with clot busters and I flew 1st class back to the States.

kwg