We hear a lot in life about people getting super unlucky – bad things happening that they couldn’t avoid, or that they didn’t catch in time – but what about the people who had the exact opposite experience?
These 14 people found themselves in the position of being extremely lucky? Of catching the thing in time, or avoiding what could have been deadly, or just making an innocuous decision that ended up saving their lives – so take a look, and be inspired!
14. A couple of minutes.
Almost wound up in the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis years ago. My uncle, cousin, and I were on our way to a Twins game. We were originally planning to take the route that crossed the bridge, but last minute decided to take a more “scenic” route.
After it happened, we were talking and we figured it probably would have been within a couple minutes of the time the bridge collapsed that we would have been on the bridge.
13. This is lowkey terrifying.
Was chatting with a woman at the bar, nothing flirtatious just casual banter. I told her I needed to head out and she asked if I could give her a ride. I was headed that way so it wasn’t a big deal.
We pull into her driveway and I can see a guy at a computer in the living room through the window. I ask who it is and she replied “that’s my husband, he’s a pansy. I’ll bring him outside and you scare him off, then we can have the house all to ourselves for the night”
Every alarm bell in my head was ringing and all I could think was ‘how do I get this crazy out of my truck without a big scene?’ so I said “sounds good” as soon as she was half way to the door I put it gear and burned rubber.
12. The right decision.
I really liked my professor advisor in college, and my senior year, I took a graduate course he offered. It was on nuclear fusion history and technology, and he was an expert in the field, and it was a really interesting and challenging elective. As a senior in a graduate class, it was really interesting having a class with just 2-3 other students. All of them were graduate students, and at least two worked with the professor at the side company he had founded.
As the year progressed, as I tried to figure out where I was going after I graduated, the professor offered me a spot in his graduate program and a job at his company. I had recently married at the time, and my wife had already graduated from college, and the place she worked (lead tech support for a start-up ISP) offered her a full-time business analyst job, her dream job at the time.
After much consternation, we went a different path, and moved away.
Within the next couple years:
The start-up my wife worked for went out of business less than a year later.
My professor was arrested returning from an overseas seminar, for sharing classified nuclear information. He ended up serving time in prison and his company was closed.
One of his employees, a graduate student, also pled guilty and served time. I believe he was one of the other students in the class.
One of his employees was identified as a foreign national and was arrested and deported. I believe he was one of the other student in the class.
Often in life you make decisions with the best information you have, and you’ll never really know if you made the right one. In this case, I know beyond a doubt that my wife and I made the right decision.
11. The best time and place.
I had some chest pains one night and woke up my wife to tell her. She got a little scared that it might be a heart attack and we agreed that I should go to the ER. The nurses were pretty sure it was a false alarm but would run an EKG as is common practice.
In my head I was hoping that the chest pain would come back, not to prove a heart attack, but so that we can find out what the chest pain was. The EKG was done by one veteran nurse and a new nurse. I was watching over their shoulders. Something was flashing on the screen that made both nurses look at each other with disbelief.
They ran it again and one nurse went out to the station for help. The other stayed with me and very nicely told my wife and daughter to go back out to the waiting room. A few seconds later 5-6 more people came into the room slowly and calmly and began prepping me for something.
It turns out that I was having my second heart attack that night in the ER. The doctors and nurses found an obstruction in my heart and were preparing me to have it cleared and a stent placed. When I got out of surgery, the doctor who placed the stent told me “you probably picked the best time and place to have a heart attack, right here in the ER”
10. Just a scar.
I used to work for a drainage company.
Drove 5 ton trucks with the roll off bins, used to move machine or material with them.
One day, i was super tired. I pulled up to a job, tilted the bed up, got out, opened the dump gates. Got back in cab, roll forward slowly… Nice dump, great.
Get out of the cab, go back and close dump chutes. Oh, crap, still a bunch of sand in there. Dumbass me unlatched the gate of the rolloff bin. About half a yard of sand still in there, and the bin was still on an angle. That door opened SO FAST. The latch got catapulted into my cheek so hard it broke my orbital and knocked me to the ground. Blacked out briefly. The gate itself swung out, somehow missed me, and JUST had clearance over my steel toe boot. Dented the steel, scraped all the fabric off the boot.
I ended up with just a small scar under my right eye. But could have easily lost my toes and an eye if I’d been standing about 1in to the left. DO NOT OPERATE HEAVY EQUIPMENT WHILE TIRED, DRUNK, OR UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF DRUGS. Urg.
9. Not much of a party.
Didn’t go to a Halloween party because I got a bad feeling.
Found out years later 5 girls were waiting for me so they could pummel me to the ground all because I was friends with one of the girls boyfriend at one point and he had admitted he found me attractive.
8. Legitimately terrifying.
Probably the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me, and at the time I had no idea. This still scares me today thinking about it.
My dad worked at a church when I was elementary aged. The youth minister was fun, had all kinds of cool stuff in his office and my brother and I liked spending time with him and playing with his nerf guns and whatever else he had for students.
We established a tradition where on a monthly basis he would take us to a restaurant for breakfast. My brother and I thought it was awesome he paid us any attention since we were younger than the students he worked with for his job but he still took time for us. He had a parish which we’d visited, multiple car issues in which we occasionally would have to walk somewhere, plenty of opportunities where we weren’t in public.
He took another job a couple years into this at a different church and was arrested shortly after for child molestation. People came forward from both before and after he was at our church, but none that I’m aware of from when he was there.
So my brother and I were groomed by an experienced pedo and we were clueless at the time.
Nothing happened to either of us, we have no idea why because the opportunity was there.
7. A lucky rainstorm.
When buying our first house, everything was ready to sign but at the last moment the realtor and company realized the home was in a designated flood zone. 1 in every 100 years or so. Very minimal chance but still required by the bank
Home was fully renovated, gutted to the bones and redone.
I had taken the day, hired the movers etc and last min on a Thursday the seller couldn’t meet and wanted to postpone a day for Friday
Rain came that night, flooded the house at least 2-3 feet inside the property.
While surveying the damage, seller said himself he wouldn’t buy this thing, even after a clean out so we got our small deposit back and found the home we live in now about 3 years ago
Seller wasn’t aware the property was in a flood zone and as such, had no insurance for it.
6. Talk about luck.
Yesterday I was helping my fiance’s dad cut some tree limbs from his yard. He was on a lift trying to cut some limbs that were dangling dangerously high over a steel propane tank. The tank itself had $1500 worth of propane.
Had. He cut off a limb and it hit the tank with the largest bang I’ve ever heard. Propane came pouring out the top like smoke from a mortar. He struggled to get the lift down enough to jump out run for his life.
We would later find out that the limb hit the gas valve and it fell straight down into the tank. If it had sparked once, it wouldn’t have mattered how far we ran. We would be dead. Him, me, and my fiance who was showering inside, unaware.
Now he has no gas, is out $1500, and almost died. Big twist is that I saw him smoking up there. There’s no way we should be alive, let alone could.
The gas is still leaking out even after 24 hours.
5. It blew up.
My father in law: Was working on construction of a power plant and was scheduled work Sunday (was a union pipefitter). Saturday he got a call from another company asking him to run a job much closer to his house, think 5 minute commute vs 50, so he accepted and didn’t go to the power plant job Sunday.
That day there was an explosion at the plant and people in the crew he was working with wound up getting killed.
Edit: Doing everything to avoid using the cliche “this blew up” given the context. To confirm because it was being asked a lot, yes this was the plant in Middletown, CT. This was a pretty significant event in the State of CT and made national news so I’m not shocked so many of you were able to identify exactly where it was. I’m sure my father in law wasn’t the only one that didn’t go in that day as it was also Super Bowl Sunday….
4. It takes your breath away.
There was an apartment I really wanted but at the last minute I found a slightly better one.
The apartment I almost moved into burned to the ground a month later.
3. The last time they played.
We were in Italy on a school field trip. We decided to play “schweinehaufen”, pig pile, dogpile? Anyways on person is declared the pig and everyone has to jump on them. We played this on a beach at night. Just sand, no danger, right?
Well, the last round we got up and realized we formed this pile next to a 1m metal pole sticking out of the ground. It was maybe ten centimetres away and could have easily impaled the first 3-4 people. We didn’t play that game again.
2. What a genius.
I quit a job after my boss yelled at everybody for faking being sick when one guy came in with the flu and passed it around the office. He claimed that people don’t get sick by being near each other.
One guy got it so bad he was hospitalized for 2 weeks. I quit with no back up in October 2019. By February 2020, his company went out of business
1. A near miss.
Few years ago I was in a small fender bender.
Someone merged into my lane, with me in it, and smashed my driver side door and their passenger door together.
I had pulled my arm in from having it hanging out the window about 15 seconds before that happened.
Would have most likely had my arm ripped off.
I love these stories, even though they also kind of take your breath away, right?
Has something like this happened to you or someone you love? Tell us about it in the comments!
