scariest thing that ever happened to me

Good thing you're alright.
I've fell through ice too... luckily it was only 1 meter deep water. Not funny, not funny at all. Now I don't go on the ice without these.
 
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Mine has to be when i get ran over by one of these at my old job.

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Broke both of my shins and ankles, eventually ended up costing me the left leg.
 
I'm glad to hear you're alright, Ramseus. That was really scary.

As for the electronics: maybe you can salvage most of them. If they were turned off, they might still be ok if you clean them very carefully (casing open) and let them dry up completely.
 
Note to self - no walking on ice.
Glad you're still with us.

My scariest was being caught in a bushfire. I'd rung the info line and been told that it was miles away. So went up to the place where I keep my horse to catch him, put him on a float and take him out to a friends' place 'just in case'.

I stopped at the road blocks on the way to check if they had any more info, and they were pretty calm and not concerned. So I went and caught my horse. As I was helping someone else load their horse onto the float (they were going to take my horse with them as I don't have a float of my own), I looked over my shoulder and saw the smoke start to roll up the shallow valley we were in. About half a second later we saw flames come over the crest of a hill about a kilometer away. All the air went away and we couldn't breathe as the flames leapt to trees halfway down the hill and were suddenly racing across the paddock just north of where we were standing. A quarter turn to our right and we see flames coming up the valley floor behind us. We had been cut off from leaving the property and the fire coming up behind us was headed to meet up with the first one. We let the horses go and headed for the cars. My horse started trotting up the single lane road to our paddocks and then turned left, straight into the fire that had come over the hill. We headed the other way towards the house on the property. Couldn't see, couldn't breathe, flames around us now. We got to the main public area, parked and I got out. The car filled up with embers and I figured that I'd lost my horse and was about to lose the car, so we just ran for the solid brick office building and found others there.

We could hear horses panicing in the stables next door, so we ran over to open the doors. Unfortunately some fuckwit had locked them and we couldn't get all of them open. The stables caught fire and we had to leave. We had buckets and wet blankets but we lost the fight. We basically spent the next hour fighting to save what we could. Then went about the property finding people. Lots of idiots had been out in shorts and thongs (and this unfortunately seems to be a standard uniform for idiots in a fire) and had some very serious burns. I got on the phone and actually managed to get a helicopter in to airlift the worst ones out which was the first miracle. I found Den alive and well, missing only a few whiskers, eyelashes and the feathers (long hair on his feet) burnt off. And the car was unharmed. Second and third miracle.

About half an hour later I get a txt from my brother telling me the back fence at home had been on fire when he had been kicked out by the police some time before. There was a big backlog of sms in the system it would seem. I round up what horses I can find because someone has managed to get a vet en route and head home. I'm driving through the suburbs where half the houses are burning, barely able to see through the smoke, trying to call my family but as you would expect the mobile service is either out of action because towers have gone down or is overloaded. I finally get to my parents' house, in among burning buildings to find them there hosing down what they could, but the house was intact. Neighbours behind and beside us had lost everything. I present them with proof that I am indeed alive and intact.

It was then back to the property to see what else I could do and work out how I get my horse out of there asap. I won't bore you with the rest. But yes, I pretty much used up every life, every piece of good luck and every bit of outstanding good karma I had that day.
 
The scariest things will have to be owning a Yamaha moped with the capability to accelerate to 100mph in an insanely small number of seconds. If sitting in Superman posture on one of these doesn't scare you already (no windshield, minimal dash, just your face in the wind), consider that I can pick up the bike literally singlehandedly.

It eats back tyres like crazy and they're of the tubed variety, and tubed tyres put together by incompetent China mechanics means random failures. There's nothing scarier than falling victim to random tyre failures just when you need the bike most (being stuffed into public transport is no fun, and it's expensive/slow).

Thankfully I knew a bit of racing physics so I knew my fair share of emergency maneuvers and got out of deadly situations every time. 5 years later I had enough of the damned thing starting to eat its own heart out requiring costly repairs (again, refer to unscrupulous, incompetent China mechs) and traded it in for a old crap bike that I maintained myself.

Every time I pull into the infamous garage to pay them a visit aforesaid China mechs wonder why I never need repairs ever. Their ineptness encouraged me to learn to take care of my own horse, and I do it much better :p
 
Scary stuff there man... as everyone else, glad you're fine. That walk must have been torture. I had the opposite last summer when biking on a trail not far from here, under some 30-35?C my chain snapped off and my knee hit somewhere, it hurt a lot, and then I had to push the bike back home uphill and all, it wasn't pleasant.

One other scary moment was in a vacation in south America. I made some friends in the local cyber caf? and we all went for hot dogs at a nearby stand. While walking back, saturday night at about 3 am, we get 'overtaken' by one guy on each side... and suddenly I felt something hit me in the back of the head. For a split second I thought someone was hitting me on the back of the head as a joke or to call my attention, but then I feel like a wave of coolness and what I call "white noise", which is what you feel when you hit the back of your head hard or your elbow. It washed all over me and I lost control of my body, fell to my knees. Reached around my head and my hand came back soaked in blood. My friends by now had turned around to face and fight the guys but the guy who hit me reached into his pocket and pulled out something, which my friends thought might be a gun so they backed off. When he pulled an empty small whiskey bottle, my friends went forward again but he just took off running like lightning.
Afterwards we concluded he hit me over the head with a bottle like the second one he took out... Needed stitches, still have the scar on my head.

One other time that same vacation I got picked up by the same friends and we started walking towards the cyber caf? to hang out and what not. We walked like half a block and then turned left at the corner, and walked another half block... when we turn around and saw some guys hanging out at the corner we had just left behind (so they were behind us). Suddenly we hear Paff! then *Clonk* right next to us, which sounded like metal against metal (we were walking next to a street lamp post, and some bar which had metal columns). Didn't take more than half a second to understand we were getting shot at so we ran for it. I think two more shots were fired but those we didn't hear the impact. We turned the next corner right, out of reach of the shooter... That was the most adrenaline filled 30 seconds of my life and I never want to live them again.
 
Holy shit! This is one damn lucky group.

I think the scariest thing that has happened to me was just the realization that at the tender age of 14 I could NOT drive a 4-wheeler with a person on the back. Almost ended up rolling into a lake. Also almost crashed into a concrete wall on the highway, but that's part of the typical teenage driving scares.

So yeah, I haven't been though anything close to what you guys have been through...
 
Woah, glad you're okay Ramseus.

The scariest thing happening to me was probably almost drowning, too, but I was too young then and can't remember anything. Apart from that, almost running over a pedestrian on the Autobahn at 190 kph. I needed several months to exceed the recommended speed of 130 kph again after that.
 
Not to sound like your mother, but you never walk on ice in November! Same thing happened to a guy in Regina a couple weeks ago, though unfortunately his dog didn't make it. Even if it's cold, you're never sure just how thick the ice is.

As for scariest thing, a friend and I were driving on the highway one icy evening when a van slid in front of us. Just before we hit it the woman driving corrected and the tail slid the other way. Quite scary to have your entire vision occupied by a sideways van.
 
Glad to hear you are alright Ramseus, could have so very easily gone the other way. Scariest moment of my life was taking a high school buddy boar hunting with my father and I... he decided it was a good idea to follow the boar with the barrel of his gun and ended up pointing the gun right at me with his finger square on the trigger.
 
Wouw, that's pretty heavy, Glad to hear you're ok Ramseus.

I once dreamt I bought a Prius.......willingly!
 
Ha! My electronic devices seem fine. Not touching my ipod until tomorrow because I don't feel like intentionally killing it by opening it up, but everything else seems to be fine (other than some water I can't get out of my lens).

Scary stuff there man... as everyone else, glad you're fine. That walk must have been torture.

I've been colder before. In colder temperatures with inadequate clothing, to be precise. But I obviously couldn't wear my gloves and had to alternate between holding my doggy's leash in my left and right hands (buried in my sleeves). And holy shit, I wonder if those people wanted to mug you or were just being tuff gangsters aiming to kill someone to prove how hard they are. Fucking people, man.

Not to sound like your mother, but you never walk on ice in November!
I know, mom. :blush:
 
And holy shit, I wonder if those people wanted to mug you or were just being tuff gangsters aiming to kill someone to prove how hard they are. Fucking people, man.

My friends pinpointed the guy who did it after some days and they were out to get him but I told them it wasn't worth it...
Some night a couple years later in another vacation I was hanging out with them having some beers and the guy was near, talking to someone from our 'group'. We approached him and told him the story, and he confirmed that during that time he was just out of it with drugs and alcohol, and probably mistook me for someone else (I now remember after hitting me he said something like "that's for messing with bla bla bla"), we told him I was just there for vacation so it couldn't be me who he was looking for. He apologized and offered me to go out back and have a 1 on 1 fight... to which I said no cos we'd both get hurt for nothing. Weird people.
The guy who shot at us we never knew who it was but I dont think he was sober, either. Thankfully, cos his aim suffered as a result.
But yeah, fucking people, it's unbelievable sometimes
 
Damn. That some scary shit there, dude. Glad you made it out ok. Same thing happened to my mom once when she was young (fell into an icy river). Scariest thing to happen to me was probably when I got caught in an undertow at the beach when I was about ten years old. Luckily, I managed to grab hold of a floating barrier/net that was there. My friend's dad was nearby and took me back to shore.
 
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Ha! My electronic devices seem fine. Not touching my ipod until tomorrow because I don't feel like intentionally killing it by opening it up, but everything else seems to be fine (other than some water I can't get out of my lens).



I've been colder before. In colder temperatures with inadequate clothing, to be precise. But I obviously couldn't wear my gloves and had to alternate between holding my doggy's leash in my left and right hands (buried in my sleeves). And holy shit, I wonder if those people wanted to mug you or were just being tuff gangsters aiming to kill someone to prove how hard they are. Fucking people, man.


I know, mom. :blush:

Hey man, just glad you & your dog are OK.

This guy had a similar experience and made the local news, both he and dog were OK too.

BBC News ? Man rescued after falling through ice at Radley Lakes
BBC News said:
A man has been rescued after falling through the ice of an Oxfordshire lake while trying to rescue his dog.

The man's daughter raised the alarm after he fell in about 40m (130ft) from the bank at Radley Lakes near Abingdon.

Fire and rescue crews were called and used throw lines and inflation equipment to pull him from the water.

Continues
 
Just remembered another incredibly scary moment, it was about two years ago walking to the bus stop and it was absolutely pitch dark out because it was the dead of winter and was two days after a decently big snow storm, the school had even made that day a half day because more snow was expected.

Anyway I was walking down my driveway which was covered in black ice and was being extremely careful in my walking so I wouldn't slip, I was tired and extremely hungry because I didn't have enough time to eat breakfast (I took an apple and a pop tart and was going to eat them on the bus while drinking my hot chocolate).

My body decided it didn't have enough sugar to function though so I blacked out as I reached the end of my driveway and immediately hit a patch of black ice and flew forward hitting my face off the bump at the very end of the driveway, I don't know how I managed it but I caught myself on my elbows and somehow didn't lose my hot chocolate.

All fine was fine as I regained some consciousness and realized how close my head was to being in the street, completely unseen for the darkness. I stumbled onto my knees and then my feet as a car flew down the road staggered to the bus stop just as the bus arrived, all the while chugging my hot chocolate to get as much sugar into me as possible, while blood was pouring out my my cracked lip.

I was so happy I had a packet of tissues in my bag to hold against my lip. From then on I made sure to always try to eat something for breakfast no matter how late I got up. I still dread to think how close I came to getting run over that day and what would have happened if I tripped any closer to the road.
 
Just remembered another moment. A bunch of friends and me were in a cab in Baltimore. I was sitting up front with the cabbie. We were going along, and suddenly got cut off by a van. The cabbie pulls up beside the van at the next red light, and started yelling at the two very large black dudes in the van, shouting "you're what's wrong with this country, go back to where you came from" (ironically the cabbie was Egyptian). They yelled back and forth through two changes of lights, with many derogatory and racial slurs thrown about. And the cabbie started reaching for something under my seat. And then we decided to throw some cash at the cabbie and make a run for it.
 
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