The CLOSEST you've ever been to death, without actually getting injured?

[LaughingAtlas]

I died in a nightmare, if that counts. Long story short, I was stabbed with an over-sized knife, which felt like a giant icicle forcing itself through my insides. As the world went dark and my veins filled with icewater, the dream replayed itself very quickly. (life flashing before my eyes, always thought it was a myth) Fortunately, I awoke with no injuries, so no chance of being Freddy Kreuger'ed, I think. Still, felt pretty real to me.

 

[Flig]

I actually have a bit of a list:

Almost drowned when I was four or five. Just kinda sunk to the bottom of a pool before somebody pulled me out.
Got hit by a car going 35 mph, by some stroke of luck I just had a few bruises on my legs and elbows, and a scrape on my chin.
Got mugged at knifepoint walking home from a concert. The funny thing about robbing someone at knife point, if you aren't close enough to lunge at them, it's not all that hard for them to run away.
And I tried to jump into a moving car, but I missed the door and smashed my face into the side of the car...that was probably a stupid thing to try in the first place.


I've decided that I'm either extremely lucky(I prefer "invicible"), or Willy the Coyote is trying to kill me.

 

[baconsarnie]

I nearly got hit by a firework that fell over as it was going off,
So many times i have nearly crossed the road as a car is coming,
Putting stuff into a skip from a van (i was standing half on the bed of the van, half on the edge of the skip itself) someone throws something heavy into the skip causing a plank of wood to be levered up and would have skewered my head with the nails that were through had i not caught it i time,
Also everytime i go near the edge of something high up there is a little part of my brain t at says 'just jump'.

Edit: Christmas dinner one time i was leaning back/sideways when my younger cousin decides it would be good idea to try and tip me off my chair into the big all-glass display cabinet we had int he dining room, lucky i managed to grab the table in time

 

[drbarno]

When my mother was little, she was leaning on the car door while her mother was driving on a highway. The door was unlocked and it opened, causing he to fall out of the car. A bus managed to slam the brakes and stop inches from her face.

mmy mother suffered a similiar misfortune when she was younger. but luckily instead of falling out of the car my grandad grabbed a hold of her before she fell out of the car. while driving.

 

[Whispering Cynic]

Well... I was born pretty much strangled with my umbilical cord (purple-blue skin, some resuscitation was needed and all that).

Then there was that time I nearly electrocuted myself with a faulty extension cord - I was eleven, trying to unplug something from it. I was holding the socket in my right hand and pulling the plug with my left. As I pulled, the whole plastic casing of the socket somehow slid away, leaving thumb and index finger firmly grasping the live wires. I managed to let go somehow, I was shaking so badly I couldn't stand for about ten minutes. Quite a shocking experience.

And one near-miss by a car, taught me a valuable lesson about being aware of your surroundings at all times...

 

[redisforever]

I was once shoved underwater by a kid, and he kept me down there, couldn't breathe, obviously. Eventually, I shook him off, after about 45 seconds. Thought I could only stay under for about 30, managed to say alive. I was 7. Air, how I love you. Since that time, I have learned how to stay underwater for up to 2 minutes, no problem.

EDIT: Half-remembered another one.
I was maybe 4, and I was standing in a bus stop with my grandfather. he was talking to someone, and I was bored. I decided to lean on the glass side of the stop, like I did often. What I didn't notice, was that the window was smashed. I fell down, directly into the pile of broken glass on the floor, and got the wind knocked out of me by the metal bar that held the glass in place. Don't remember what happened then.

Another time was when I fell down some very, very high steps. Painfully. Hurt like hell, got home, and lay down. By the next day, I was fine.

 

[Danglybits]

Last week I was almost hit in a cross walk by a speeding taxi. He was going so fast the way was clear when I started and it's a short distance. I wasn't sure he was going to stop. Then again, on that day I didn't particularly care if he stopped or not.

Years ago I had an episode of toxic shock syndrome. So much vomiting, shaking and chills. I think my fever as around 104F at its highest (107F is when you start worrying about brain damage and death). I escaped all of that but should probably have gone to the hospital. I didn't realize how sick I was until my mother (a head nurse) told me a few weeks later.

My mom nearly choked to death on a pill. My brother gave her an improper and panicked Heimlich maneuver and she lived. He did break a few of her ribs though.

 

[MetaKnight19]

I fell down a cliff a few years back. That sucked.

 

[Xerxesrogue]

I once fell through the ice of an underground river that barely reaches the surface every other kilometer or so, in a snow covered nowhere land far up in the mountains. The overwhelming stream immediately pulled me under, and I felt the mountain itself almost swallowing me, and my eyes and mouth filled with the clearest, iciest you can imagine.

Then, as I in my panic realized, I would die now, right in front of my little sister, I felt an edge of stone by my shoes, that I where able to kick myself of from, onto the side of that winter-blue and black abyss, and held onto the snow by where my sister was standing. I still can't remember how I got out of the water, but I figure she must have helped me getting up.

No injuries, just sat a while if front of a the fire, tucked in blankets, and ate some of the food we had brought.

 

[Danglybits]

Then there was that time I nearly electrocuted myself with a faulty extension cord - I was eleven, trying to unplug something from it. I was holding the socket in my right hand and pulling the plug with my left. As I pulled, the whole plastic casing of the socket somehow slid away, leaving thumb and index finger firmly grasping the live wires. I managed to let go somehow, I was shaking so badly I couldn't stand for about ten minutes. Quite a shocking experience.

Did you have any burns or a scar?

 

[jamesmax]

I have rindin on top a bulldozer (ON TOP) at 34MPH down the highway

I could have fallen off and died (BUT it was fun!)

will post how i got ther if sumone asks (all and all not vary cool)

 

[Bocaj2000]

Actually, the closest I've been to death is right now. You see, I am in the middle of a

 

[chief_ben]

Errrm i didn't not get injured but i got horrifically drunk one night and fell off the platform at our local train station onto the tracks. Didn't think too much of it until the very next weekend i saw a train parked on the bit of track my head had hit, at about the same time i had fell the weekend previously. I was soo drunk at the time i just didn't realise what had happened, just bleed everywhere until i passed out....then continued bleeding. Didn't go to hospital but woke up the next morning feeling ok considering. All i had was one broken nose and a nice gash about half inch away from my temple....i consider myself lucky...and even better it didn't stop me drinking.

 

[Cracker3011]

Shimmying along a ledge of loose gravel, in an old mine, next to a 200 foot deep pit.

 

[Will Munro]

Went out hunting a year or so ago, and a storm closed in in the early evening (the forecast was for good weather) I was away from my campsite at the time and got drenched, then, due to the storm, it got darker a hell of a lot earlier than it was meant to, and I got caught out in the storm overnight (I'd been dumb enough to buy a green tent, so it pretty much vanished in the twilight).
In the morning came the realization I'd spent the night about 20 yards or so away from my tent, so I went and ate everything I had and spent the day in my sleeping bag trying to warm up, which unfortunately didn't work, I ate pretty much all the food I had and attempted to sleep.
So I spent another night out in the bush (I was due back on the second day) and decided to try my luck getting back on the third day, but by that point, a tiny stream I'd crossed on my way in had turned into a torrent, so I pitched my soaking wet tent again and after 8 hours of walking with mild exposure I slept another night, and was in a pretty serious condition by that point, by the time morning came along I was dilerious, hallucinating and shouting at trees and so on, which meant the team who had been out looking for me managed to track me down by following my voice.
By the time they eventually found me I'd lost consciousness and I had to be flown out by helicoptor, I was in a coma for a few days and never actually met the guys who saved me.
I went out and spent a good deal of money on a GPS after that, and I've suffered from a huge fear of being cold since.

 

[ace_of_something]

I'm assuming a major health issues counts as being injured?

If I'm correct in that assumption.

That would be getting into a shoot-out with a man who was so high on drugs he assaulted his mother, jumped out of a closed second story window while nude, and then began shooting random houses and cars. The only person wounded (and it was fatal) was the 'shooter'.

Shortly after my life was turned upside down by the fact local news has a tendency to put all the names of the officers involved in an officer shooting all over the news several times a day. Then tells the whole city know a few days later it's your bullet that killed the guy...
Yeah, people hate you're guts for a few months.

Except his mom, she forgave me. I send her flowers on mothers day, it was her only child, and it happened around that time.

 

[Danglybits]

You ever drink until you pass out? A startling number of people do this regularily, and think nothing of it... but I know something that most people don't.

You see, passing out from alcohol use is a defense mechanism activated when the body decides that you have to stop drinking, right now... or you will die. And I don't mean, like, if you keep drinking for an hour. I mean you are literally one or two drinks away from the lethal dose of alcohol for your body mass.

The scary part is, that had you not passed out, you would almost certainly kept drinking. and if you had, you would have died. Not might have, but would have. When you pass out, your body is literally protecting you from yourself.

People who die from alcohol poisoning either drank their booze too fast for the body to react, or somehow managed to stay conscious. Not trying to be an advocate against binge-drinking here, I have my moments too, but the next time you think it might be a good idea to break out the beer bong... well..

The same is true for vomiting. Sometimes people die after they've passed because people don't realize how sick they are and think they just need to 'sleep it off'.

 

[oooooooooooooooooooooooooo]

Well the one that comes to mind is when I stepped on a puff adder on my eighth birthday which I had in the Drakensberg. The snake immediate swung around and bit me, however I had gotten a new Spiderman costume for that birthday and was wearing a pair of red gumboots to match the outfit. When the snake bit me it struck my gumboots and its teeth didn't make it through the boot to my leg. Had it bitten me properly I would have died; I was in the mountains and many miles from any hospital or aid of any kind and I was eight, meaning my body was small enough for the venom to be drastically more effective then usual.

 

[bbad89]

My brother rolled a compact car when I with him, went right in a deep ditch and couldnt get out for a while. Not really a near death moment though, I was shot at a few times does that count?

Detroit?
Mine: Like the OP I didn't know how to swim and almost drowned. The surprise made me breathe out so I was literally millseconds from drowning. Someone got me though, so I'm good. But I might have a minor case of severe brain damage.

 

[ace_of_something]

From that point on, the chair was, and will be forever, known as 'Spider Chair'.

That sounds like a good name for a band/album.

That chair would be called 'that chair we took to the dump' at my house. The missus is terribly phobic of spiders.