I have actually had a near death experience similar to these 13 Quora users, and I thought I might as well add it to the mix – one time, I was in the car with my mom, going to pick up my dad from Logan Airport in Boston. We were going through a tunnel when all of a sudden we heard a big boom. All the cars sort of slowed down and pulled over a bit, but all we cold see behind us was dust, so we kept going.
It turns out that a 2-ton chunk of concrete had fallen from the ceiling of the tunnel and hit the car two cars behind us, killing the person in the passenger seat. I was sitting in the passenger seat.
This was the collapse of part of the Big Dig in Boston, which was major news when it happened. But I’m still here!
1. Friends to the Rescue
“The television show Friends saved my life.
It was the year of 2000, late October. Friends was in its prime. My mother was pregnant with me. It was a smooth pregnancy up to that point, and as she was approaching her due date, the doctor had told her to come to the hospital on x day at x time.
My mom, being the wonderful Friends geek she was (is), politely asked if it would be alright to check into the hospital an hour or two prior to the time Friends would air, as this was on a Thursday. She wanted to be settled in and situated in her hospital room so that she could view that night’s episode with as little distraction as possible. The doctors agreed with a chuckle.
So, October 26th, 2000 comes and my mom checks into the hospital, early as expected. She gets situated in her room, hooked up to all the machines and monitors, with the slight ‘swish swish’ of my heartbeat portrayed on a monitor calmly in the background. The Friends theme-song played shortly after.
Swish swish ‘So no one told you life was gonna be this way-‘ *mother claps to theme song probably* swish swish ‘your job’s a joke, you’re broke-‘ swish swish ‘your love life’s DOAAAAA’ swish swish ‘It’s like you’re always stuck in second gearrrrr’ *swishing stops* *mother notices, nurse notices*
The next two minutes were a blur. Like the movies, doctors flooded into the room and rushed her bed down the hall.
So an Emergency C-Section takes place at the speed of light. I was pulled from the womb with all five fingers tightly wrapped around my umbilical cord.
Yeah…I cut my own circulation off, almost killing my unborn self. What a dork.
The scary thing is, had my mom not asked to go into the hospital a few hours early to catch Friends, she would’ve been at home when my heart stopped beating!”
2. “It couldn’t have happened”
“A mysterious phone call saved me life while I was in Afghanistan. To this day, I still can’t explain it.
I was directing fire of a heavy weapon on an enemy post. The corrections were coming from an observer over a telephone line. Suddenly, the phone went dead due to enemy fire which cut the line.
In order to continue firing, I now had to come out from the bunker and observe the fire on my own. While doing so, suddenly, the telephone which was dead, rang! In order to pick up the phone I moved back towards the bunker.
While doing so, I felt a massive push which threw me inside. The whole bunker was filled with black smoke. It then dawned upon me that an enemy shell had hit our bunker at the exact same spot where I had been standing a few seconds before.
I would have died had the phone not rung. But the phone was dead. The line was cut. It couldn’t have happened. But it happened.”
3. Dreaming
“One cold winter’s night, I had an incredibly vivid dream that a doctor was examining my dead body. He was dictating a verbal autopsy. I heard him say, ‘The victim’s cause of death was asphyxiation due to gas poisoning.’
I woke up. It was after midnight. The apartment was ice cold, my vision was blurred and I was disoriented. I immediately opened up my bedroom window and breathed the outside air. Feeling a little better, I put on some warm clothes, walked past the heater and saw that the pilot light was out. I opened up all the windows, the doors and went outside. That dream saved my life!”
4. The Hedgehog
“A hedgehog saved my life when I was at college.
I used to work nights and cycle home around 4 am. There was a long hill to bike down, then a bend in the road, then a big hill to ride up. I would usually bike around the bend full speed, and rely on my hearing and the glare of headlights to see if anyone was coming.
One night, I was cycling home with headphones in because I’d had a bad shift. I wasn’t really paying attention.
I was going along at full speed when I saw a hedgehog in the road, and braked just before the bend. Usually I would have just dodged the hedgehog, but the song I was listening to just made me feel like stopping and watching it for a second.
Just as I pulled up, a UPS truck came around that bend at full speed with its headlights off. I wouldn’t have even felt a thing.
The hedgehog was killed.”
5. “I knew I was going to die”
“I had a bad scuba-diving experience. I found myself on the surface, too far from the dive boat to swim back, in rising seas, with a leaky tank and out of strength, being pulled out to sea by the current. My friends were still on the bottom exploring a sunken ship and I knew I was going to die.
There was no one around, no land in sight and I could barely keep my head above water. I had pulled my weight belt and was constantly filling the BC but I knew it was over for me.
Then a Coast Guard motorboat appeared. I called to them, they came over and pulled me out of the water. The mere fact that they appeared there, at that moment, in the middle of the huge ocean, is absolutely inexplicable.”
6. Cave-In
“I was in the kitchen eating lunch with my father. He lived in a very old house.
I was eating a burger, but when I took a bite all the vegetables fell down on the floor. I was always clumsy like that. I got up from the table to grab a rag to clean up the mess.
While I was reaching for the rag, the entire ceiling collapsed, right in the spot I had been sitting! There was glass and debris everywhere. My dad and I just stared at it in shock. If I had stayed there, there is no way I would have survived.”
