17 Extremely Wild Ways People Narrowly Avoided Dying

Life is extremely fragile. One wrong move or decision can lead to serious consequences, which sometimes result in near-death experiences. Oftentimes, when people have experiences, they feel compelled to share their harrowing stories with others…

That’s why when Redditor u/benjamin_frfr asked, “What’s the craziest event you’ve made it out alive from?” hundreds of people shared their wildest experiences that made their life flash before their eyes. Without further ado, here are 17 of their most unforgettable stories:

If you have ever had a near-death experience, feel free to tell us about it using this anonymous form!

1.“I almost died getting a burrito. When I was in college, I would walk to a Mexican restaurant a few blocks away to buy burritos. I also love listening to music and had a ‘hype’ playlist I listened to while walking…”

“Well, one day I was listening to music on the way to the restaurant. I got there, bought my food, and started walking back. On the way home, I felt someone swipe my backside as I crossed the tracks. It made me angry, and I turned around to see who did it.

Turns out, it was a freight train that had passed by. It wasn’t going fast, just pacing through the neighborhood, getting ready to pick up speed once out of town.

I was on autopilot and didn’t even hear the horn. A part of the train ever so slightly grazed me from behind, and that’s what I thought was someone swiping my back.

When I ripped my headphones out, I immediately heard two things: The horn and a bystander yelling at me. I stopped wearing headphones for about five years after that.”

—u/click2Install

2.“While walking to my dorm, I was carrying a kombucha bottle and tripped on the edge of the sidewalk. The bottle shattered, and I fell onto it, causing the glass to sever my right radial artery.”

“Campus police arrived and applied a tourniquet. Eventually, I rode in an ambulance and got over 25 stitches.

Because the cuts were so clean from the thick glass, the hospital called me a week later asking for my permission to use the photos from the ER visit for education purposes.”

—u/m4yannaise

3.“April 27, 2011, northern Alabama: The sky turned green and everything went silent as my family and I huddled in the middle of the hallway. Our house was the only one on the block without a functioning basement or storm shelter. With one arm around my little sister and the other around my parakeet’s cage, I prepared myself for the worst.”

“Everything started swirling around us, and my mom kept telling us to pray. (Our neighbor’s century-old tree fell and stopped short of our house by inches.) Then, as suddenly as it began, it stopped.

If it had touched down, we would have been dead. When the tornado did touch down, it was rated an F4, I believe, and caused multiple casualties. The whole super outbreak killed over 300 people. We narrowly cheated death that day.”

—u/logalogalogalog_

4.“Four years ago, I was dealing with intense pain in my groin area. It was to the point that I couldn’t walk or put any weight on it. My leg eventually turned purple and was freezing cold. I went to the ER, and a terrible doctor did an X-ray for a dislocated hip, told me I was just cold and should go home. Even the intake staff were surprised that I was being released.”

“I got home around 2 a.m., wrapped my entire leg in heated blankets, and tried to sleep. When I woke up later, my leg was twice its normal size. I called the hospital and they told me to go back to the ER. This time, before I even had a blood test, they wrote ‘PCD’ on the intake form (phlegmasia cerulea dolens, a life-threatening complication of DVT). I had a blood test, and another doctor pulled me aside to tell me that my levels were through the roof for blood clots and showed me all the clots on an ultrasound, which was quite fascinating to see.

I was told I saved my own life by wrapping my leg in heated blankets, as it dilated my blood vessels enough for a tiny amount of blood to get through. Without heat, blood would have been cut off to my leg. I was hours away from losing my leg or dying. Turns out, I was riddled with clots through my thigh, groin, and abdomen.

I wrote a five-page complaint to the hospital, and the original doctor was no longer allowed to be in the ER. I probably should have sued, but I was so happy to be alive that I didn’t. I had to learn to walk unaided again, but I can now walk up to four miles per day. I’m still in pain sometimes, but ultimately I’m just thankful I lived to tell the tale.”

—u/anniestandingngai

5.“My family took a guided horse ride in the mountains from Real de Catorce. As we were walking along a ridge, my horse became spooked. Earlier, my sister and I had prodded our horses to go faster, but this was a flat-out run. I was barely holding onto the horse when it reared back…”

“I fell to the right and landed a few feet from a vertical shaft to the mines below. I don’t know how far down I would have fallen because it looked like an endless pit.

Needless to say, I did not get back on the horse that day.”

—u/will_da_beezt

6.“Twin pregnancy and birth: During my pregnancy, I had so many things go wrong with my body. I was swelling so badly that my pores were leaking fluid, my blood pressure was constantly 90/100, I couldn’t breathe while lying down, and I could barely eat or drink much because I would automatically vomit…”

“I made it to almost 38 weeks and had a C-section. That part went smoothly, and both babies (a boy and a girl) were born healthy! Shortly after, I had massive hemorrhaging and ended up in congestive heart failure. I had to spend almost two more weeks in the hospital.

It was the wildest nine months I’ve ever experienced, and the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through, both emotionally and physically. The twins are 7 months old now and are healthy and thriving. They’re the happiest babies I’ve ever seen.

Even though I almost lost my own life in the process, I would do it all again for them.”

—u/sillybanana2012

7.“A few years ago, I was struggling with job hunting and decided to become a rideshare driver. Well, one Sunday morning, a trip request turned out to be a robbery/hijacking…”

“The rider pulled a gun on me as soon as they got in, and three other people came out of nowhere at that exact moment. I was searched and forced into the trunk. This was around 9 a.m., and they spent the rest of the day driving around and randomly robbing people.

Later, the one in charge promised they’d let me go, but they left that task to a teenager who was angry that they wouldn’t let him drive earlier, so he picked up his girlfriend and went joyriding.

Eventually, my people sent out the tracking company to find the car because I was unreachable for too long. The kid tried to outrun the guards and police. Once they caught up, he missed a turn and drove the car off a steep riverbank. I could feel the car was not on the ground for a good while. Somehow, I managed to walk away with only a dislocated shoulder and a few bruises.

Looking back, I can laugh about it, but that was the longest day of my life. At one point, I decided I wasn’t going to live past that day, and simply accepted it.”

—u/Rust_Bucket2020

8.“I was in a hot air balloon that hit the side of a concrete block house. Everybody in the balloon thought we were going to die. The weird thing about a hot air balloon accident is that you know it’s happening minutes prior, yet there’s nothing you can do. You just keep watching as you get closer and closer to impact.”

“Luckily, the basket hit the house about midway up, so we flipped sideways and got pulled across the roof before dropping off the other side, instead of taking the full impact ourselves.

We just kept floating until we landed with only mild injuries. It was one of the weirdest scenarios I’ve ever been in. Many people were just nervously laughing about what had happened. We were all somewhat shell-shocked.”

—u/mac2885

9.“I was dispatched to a CPR in progress. I arrived on scene and noticed the patient was not in cardiac distress. They were, however, under the influence of heroin. After a few minutes of the ‘patient’ yelling and terrible attitude towards medics, I walked away.”

“I was getting ready to leave the area when I observed a car I hadn’t seen before. I ran the plates and learned it was stolen. A neighbor told us that the occupant of the car was the same subject of the medical call.

I recontacted the subject about a block and a half away, yet they wanted nothing to do with me. After 15 or so seconds of me telling them to wait and explaining that they were legally being ordered to stop, I told them to put their bags down. That’s when they started reaching into their duffel bag (after being advised not to). The fight was on at that point, and for the next minute or so, I held onto their right hand (while it was still in the duffel bag) while wrestling them to the ground and eventually arresting them.

After the arrest, a loaded 357 short-barreled revolver was found in the duffel bag.

My cover that shift was an officer who was afraid of conflict and actually drove the OPPOSITE direction after hearing the tones that I was contacting the subject. I made it out alive with a few scrapes, and I am glad I trusted my gut and relied on my training.”

—u/Nowherefarmer

10.“I survived an avalanche: My fiancé, my friend, and I were hiking up a valley towards a glacier. It was early June, so we weren’t too worried, but this valley was extremely narrow, and the mountains were situated so that the area was prone to avalanches. You constantly hear booming and popping.”

“Along the trail and valley, there were the chutes, where we saw where previous avalanches had come down, but with them already calved and 50 other people on the trail, we assumed things were good.

We decided to continue on the trail and followed it around a chute and outflow of snow. When we were halfway around, we heard a loud ‘boom’ matched with a series of ‘cracks.’ When we stopped to look at the mountain tops, my fiancé pointed straight above us and yelled, ‘We need to go right now.’

We all looked up and saw a massive cloud of snow and ice at the top of the mountain. We were directly in the middle of the previous chute, so we turned around and started running up the other side of the valley, all while yelling, ‘Get as high as you can!’

We ran maybe 200 yards up the mountain when I turned around to see where we were. We were in a cloud by that point and couldn’t see the snow traveling down, but we could hear it. I saw my fiancé and our friend duck behind a massive boulder when a shockwave of wind and ice slammed into me, knocking me backwards and blowing my hat away.

Eventually, the cloud began dissipating, and we could finally see the snow and ice 50–100 feet away. I saw my fiancé and friend were okay. Thankfully, we all survived.”

—u/WigginFromCiggin

11.“I had a diving accident that dislocated and fractured two of my vertebrae, only 1 millimeter away from my spine. I had no buoyancy device keeping me afloat, and my EMT brother had to rescue me from drowning since I couldn’t keep my head out of the water. I was in the middle of nowhere in Indonesia, and I had to be airlifted to Singapore to have surgery.”

“Along with that, I fractured a bunch of other bones, and one of my eyes was useless for a while because it was filled with blood, yet I was never at risk of death other than during the surgery. Thankfully, I don’t have any lasting issues other than chronic back pain and a stiff neck

It made me realize that life is worth living, and I have been changing my lifestyle since the accident to be better to myself and those around me, especially my girlfriend.”

—u/vismaron

12.“One morning, I was in the bathroom and leaned over a candle when my baggy (and extremely flammable) shirt caught fire while I was wearing it. Thankfully, my mom was home and I had happened to leave the door unlocked, so she quickly came in and doused the fire.”

“The pain was unbearable, and the smell of burning flesh and hair is like no other, but I was very lucky to have only walked away with second-degree burns on a small part of my body. If my mom weren’t home, I would not have survived.”

—u/throwaway74729582

13.“I was white water rafting once, and everyone was experienced except for a dad who was there to spend time with his son. The dad sat directly behind me. When we went over a set of falls, I was fully locked in and secured. I had ridden over these falls before, and they are a fun, 8-foot drop. This time, we became fully submerged, and I was suddenly ripped out of my seat. I felt a hand on my shoulder, keeping me underwater.”

“The dad had been ejected but grabbed me on his way out and pulled me under with him. He started to panic and was basically trying to climb on top of me and use me as a float.

We were in 7 feet of water, still churning from the falls, and I could not get away from him. I started punching him violently when I was finally released. Next thing I knew, a friend was pulling me up by the vest and put me back in the boat.

I spent a good three minutes chewing both the dad and his son out. We got through the rest of the rapids, and I called the truck to pick us up early. It was the last time I ever rafted with his son.”

—u/red_beered

14.“One day, while I was walking in a forest with a couple of friends, I found a fallen tree and decided to climb up and walk along it. It wasn’t terribly high, only a couple of feet, but I got halfway up and slipped. I fell off and didn’t hit the tree on the way down; instead, I landed on my back into a patch of mud.”

“Over the years, I’ve learned to keep my head up when falling, so when I stood up from the mud, I looked down at where I’d fallen, and noticed there was about a four-inch piece of tree stump that had broken into a sharp spike. Had I not kept my head up as I fell, that spike would have been driven into the back of my skull through my neck.

Even though the fall itself wasn’t scary or painful, just seeing that spike was terrifying and made my legs wobbly for a bit.”

—u/Kaita13

15.“Scuba diving: My two friends and I went out to do a deep dive to 130 feet (the recreational dive limit) in Cozumel, Mexico. During the dive, one of them developed gas narcosis. When we reached 130ft, we were ready to head back to the surface, yet our ‘narc’d’ friend faced downward and started kicking deeper. I made the decision to go after him.”

“I finally caught up to him, yanked on his fin to stop him, and communicated to him that we needed to go back up. I knew we were deep, but I was afraid to look at my dive computer. All of our computers were in decompression mode, beeping at us to make decompression stops at certain depths for a period of time. To make matters worse, we were in a very strong current, so we were getting pushed further from our original entry point.

As slowly and as controlled as possible, we made our way to 15 feet to do our final safety stop. When we finally surfaced, my friend who got narc’d immediately apologized. I looked at my dive computer that had the excursion’s summary, and it showed, ‘Max depth: 217 feet.’

We looked around to see where we were, and discovered we were in a boat channel with a huge barge. A crew member was yelling and telling us we were going to be turned into ‘hamburger meat.’ Thankfully, there was a smaller sport boat that asked if we needed help. They threw us a rope and dragged us back to the beach where we started.

We were all in a divemaster program and terrified of telling our program director. For safety purposes, we should have told them immediately so we could have assessed if we needed to go to the decompression chamber. In short, we were threatened with being kicked out of the program, but allowed to stay after a very harsh reality check from the program staff about the dangers we were in.

After the dust had settled, I completed my instructor course and taught scuba diving for two years in the Cayman Islands, and my friend who got narc’d is a successful pediatrician. I still use that dive computer, which has my max depth logged still as 217ft, so it will always remind me of that day.”

—u/Absolute209

16.“When I was seven years old, my mom and I were driving on the highway. I got tired and hopped in the backseat to sleep. A few minutes later, my mom screamed, and I opened my eyes to an 8×4 sheet of drywall coming through the windshield.”

“It hit the driver’s side pillar and rotated, driving the corner into the passenger seat. We were fine, other than my mom had some bruising on her arms, and I had some glass in my eyes.

There was a grapefruit-sized hole completely through the passenger seat where my heart would’ve been.”

—u/Photon6626

17.“This isn’t my story, but it is my best friend’s: Years ago, my bestie was terrified of horror movies. At the time, they were visiting a friend who suggested they watch Hereditary. My friend asked how scary the movie was, and their friend reassured them and said, ‘Oh, it’s fine, it’s pretty tame.’ It is NOT.”

“My friend didn’t sleep at all that night; they couldn’t even close their eyes. They had to catch a train early the next day to go back home, where they were living in their first apartment while attending art school. They were supposed to hang out at said school during the day to spend time with friends, but once home, they decided to just rest their eyes for a minute, and they, of course, fell asleep.

Several hours later, they were awoken by banging on their door and someone screaming their name. When they opened their door, a family member was staring at them. They asked, ‘What’s going on?’ to which their relative replied, ‘Call your parents right now.’

As it turns out, a small bomb filled with nails had been detonated at the place they ate lunch nearly every day, at the exact time they would have been there.

If they hadn’t been scared out of their mind after watching Hereditary and slept that night, they would have probably visited their friends at school like they planned and would have likely gotten lunch at that place, at that exact time.

Luckily, no one was killed by the explosion, so all’s well that ends well. But still. Hereditary may have saved my best friend’s life.”

—u/merlintheenchanted

Which one of these stories surprised you most? Have you ever had a near-death experience? Tell us about it in the comments or using the anonymous form!

Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.