It's either the time I was a passenger in a car that rolled over 5 times and landed upside down in a creek. We all walked away from it uninjured but could have been really bad.

Or the time I was a passenger in a car when some dumb ass lady ran a red light and t-boned us. She hit the front right fender at 45-50mph. My head ended up busting out the passenger side window and I got a concussion, severely bruised shoulder and could barely walk for the next 4-5 days.

Or the time some idiot decided to drive in my lane on a narrow ice covered road. Long story short, I ended up hitting a tree head on at 35mph and the idiot didn't even stop to see if I was OK. I hit my head where the top of the windshield and roof meet and it knocked me goofy for a few mins. Pretty sure I got a concussion but didn't go to the hospital.

I wasn't wearing a seat belt in any of those accidents and feel like I got really lucky. Now I make sure to always have it on when I'm in a car.

edit: Can't believe I forgot about this. A few months ago I had bronchitis and pneumonia at the same time. Had major problems breathing and ended up going to the hospital. I actually stopped breathing a few times so they hooked me up to a breathing machine. The doctors said it was good I came in when I did or I might not have made it through the night.

yep, closest I got was driving through a wet new england snow storm on 91 North (4 lane divided highway) when this Big scary truck decided it had to pass me (I was doing ~40mph) and threw a huge pile of slush at my car. I lost control and did a 180 avoiding the guardrail thanks to subaru's AWD and thank fully no traffic behind me. I'm not in favor of murder over road rage, but that truck driver could have killed me and I'd like to explain that to him.

Now go on with the real Middle East War near death experiences.

I've probably actually come closer to actually dying, but back in 2009-2010 I spent 5 days in ICU and the first 1.5-2 nobody was really telling me exactly wtf was going on. I went in because I randomly could not breathe without pretty bad chest pain - had a resting heart rate of ~130/bpm - xrays showed collapsed lung. They took CATscans and told me they were looking for blood clots in my lungs, they asked to take blood for an HIV test, told me the air in my chest from the collapse could give me a heart attack, they scared the **** out of me and no one knew what was actually wrong. For almost a full 2 days I waited for a specialist while they pretty much left me in the dark, I even asked if it was life threatening and they said I'd have to wait for the specialist.

Turns out it was just a random partial collapse of the lung (spontaneous pneumothorax) that isn't even extremely rare for thin guys. But I really was thinking and preparing for the worst.

Changed my life.

2am in the winter, going down a hill with a turn at the bottom. Black ice on the hill.

Lost all control, fish tailed through the corner, then violently spun into a curb, went airborne, landed I this dudes yard.

He came home at about 3 but didn't notice the ****ing car in his yard. Took two hours for cops to come out, I didn't get cited though.

Tons of polls I could have hit, giant decorative rock I was close to hitting. Could have easily totaled myself

Wow, most of these posts stink. Mine probably does, too.

Gee, it was just a "I thought I was gonna die but I was never in danger" story, funny that it should be the one that sparked all the questions.

I had just lost a lot of weight (again! About the fifth time, lifetime, that I've dropped 80 or more--and don't worry, it's all since come back, again!), and my tighty-whitey's weren't remotely tight, there was about twice as much material swimming around in my pants than I needed. The elastic legbands weren't even grabbing my legs, so naturally they weren't staying in place, either.

My nuts weren't involved in this, they must have been off to the right while the gigantic briefs found their way to the left. I was in a poker tourney when my left leg went numb (yes, just the leg, from the hip to my toes), and trying to walk it off only made it worse. I stepped out of the room to try to pull myself together without making a fool of myself, but it just got worse instead of better.

About the time someone came looking for me (who gets up and walks from a tourney table?), I had just figured out the true problem, and was fine in a minute or so.

ITT a bunch of people have close calls because they didn't wear a seatbelt

A few days shy of my 21st birthday, I went to Chinatown in Boston for dinner with a couple of friends. As I parked my car, for whatever reason, I decided to turn around instead of just pulling into a space. I backed into a car that was sitting in the parking lot with a couple of young guys in it. I park, and we get out. The young guys get out, and the passenger has a short stick in his hand. Oh-oh, this doesn't look good, I thought. The driver and I discussed the damage and insurance, which I had, but did not have the paperwork.

Meanwhile, my Aryan-looking friend is making racist comments to the kid with the stick, and jumping out of the way of the swings. Eventually, I get pushed, and go into the parking lot attendant's booth to call the cops (This was before cell phones.) I'm debating whether to call 911 or the regular number (which I didn't know,) and a new guy comes in with a similar stick and bonks me on the head. It didn't hurt much, or stun me, but I figured I'd better just leave.

As I headed back toward my car, five guys advanced on me, and one of them was saying, "What do you want? What do you want?" I replied, I just want to get in my car and leave. At that point, they closed in, and I ducked down, and felt like I got hit with a baseball bat in the head. I jumped in the car, and drove off the lot, luckily in the direction that my friends had been chased. They were freaked out. "Holy ****! Move over, I'll drive, we gotta get you to the hospital!" I then realized I was soaked with blood from head to toe, and so we wrapped a jacket around my head, as my friends told me to hold on.

The hospital is right around the corner (New England Medical Center, now Tufts Medical Center), and we found the emergency entrance. As I staggered in, the desk people were also freaked, saying "Oh my God!" You'd think they would have seen it all, but this was in the days before ER, so maybe they didn't know how to act. The doctors quickly put a giant stainless steel oil filter wrench around my head to stop the bleeding, and then fished through my wallet to get my health insurance card. They were trained well -- stop the physical bleeding, then start the metaphorical bleeding. I had a wound on my shoulder, very clean cut, and they stitched that up first. When they were done, they removed the head clamp, and blood literally sprayed out of my head, causing the doctor to jump back.

They stitched up my head with two layers of stitches, one set underneath the skin, and then surface stitches. They diagnosed it as a depressed skull fracture, and the weapon turned out to be a meat cleaver, not a baseball bat. The kids whose car I bumped turned out to be gang members. Apparently, someone called the cops, because a cop came to interview me, and told me that the kid said I "left the scene of an accident." I spit took, and said, "They hit me with a meat cleaver! That's why I left!"

I've always thought I was lucky that I ducked, and that the cleaver hit me in the shoulder as well as the head. If it had hit me in the neck, no way would I be alive. I ended up IDing the passenger, and helping convict him, but they didn't catch the guy with the cleaver. Also had bill collectors hounding me for years about this or that medical charge stemming from this incident. Lol health insurance.

Cliffs: Bumped into a car; gang member tried to decapitate me with a meat cleaver; survived by a lucky duck.

Was riding on top a bus in Nicaragua. Everyone else got off, I figured it was their stop. Rolling along enjoying the view and breeze when a guy pops up in back and says "cuidado." I turn forward and see a tree branch headed towards my head. I flatten myself. It would have nailed by head and swept me off the bus. Gracias compa.

As a small child I'm told I was bouncing on my Grandpa's knee, then went and lay down on the carpet and turned blue. Carrot junk in wind pipe.

A bunch of auto situations.

I forgot my only other significant brush with death.

Fall Weekend my junior year of college, which was basically an excuse to get plastered for two-three days. Started drinking after my noon class on Friday and was already pretty well wasted by that evening when I also took some kind of medication (don't remember which med or why I was taking it).

Last thing I remember was a sudden rush and the overwhelming urge to pass out while sitting in my friend's room before we went to one of those cheesy shows they do in college. It would have been better for everyone if I had.

Apparently I went to the show, ran up on stage, babbled incoherently into the microphone before dropping and breaking it, then had to be chased around the building before my friends could convince me to go back to the dorm, where they called an ambulance. I fought the paramedics so I had to be strapped down. Was put in full restraints at the hospital with a NG tube of charcoal and the whole detox works.

My BAC was .345. The combination of that much booze and the medication basically triggered a mini-psychotic break, and I was pretty close to a lethal level of alcohol poisoning.

I'll always wonder how many brain cells I killed off that night.

When I was little we went swimming. Me and the bigger kids knew how to swim so we went over the head deep. The smallest of us didnt know how to swim, but she wanted to hang out with us so she tried to join us and as she was near me she started to panic so she jumped on me to stay afloat. Next thing I remember was being on the shore (her sibbling saved me).
The next might have been when I getting near the main road and discovered my car breaks dont work (thankfully I made it across the main road without a scratch, but it was a mini heart attack).
Plus eating some toxic plants as a kid. Cant remember anything else - oh every new years eve is a near death survival for me (god, learn to use your fireworks, guys!).

My dad has a friend who didnt board "MS Estonia" thanks to a little car accident. The ship sank claiming 852 lives out of 989 on board.

Riding a bicycle when I was 15, got hit my a driver making a right turn.

what the hey.... Driving in the center lane of the highway and nodded off for a moment and slipped into the center divider which was basically just grass. Lost control and ended up going straight across the other side of the highway of oncoming traffic. Fortunately there were no cars coming at that moment so I just smashed through a chain fence on the other side and travel along a grassy landscape for a hundred or so yards before stopping. Only damage to the bumper and radiater and no injury, which I considered to be pretty amazing.

The grassy landscape happened to be the outskirts of a military base. When police and firemen arive, one of them gets a little bit irrate when I don't seem to be taking the whole event seriously enough. I could understand that sentiment, but then he starts talking about 9/11 (this was no too long after trade center attack) and how it could possibly be terrorist activity (!?!?), I suppose to help emphasize the serious nature of the situation. I thought that was pretty laughable. Yah, I might be a stupid terrorist who tried to cause serious trouble by crashing through a fence on the edge of military property in my little toyota. WTF?? lol

50 Tylenol

came seriously close to dying as a newborn from some illness or something, never really asked my parents because i don't really care considering im still alive

I lost my footing and fell at the top of feather falls, California. The cyclone fencing on the top has since been replaced, as it appears in these photos. I fell against one of the posts. Had I fallen between them I'd have fallen under the fencing and straight down 640' or so.